I've probably watched every video from the Homestarrunner universe and particularly every Strong Bad email at least ten times since I first discovered it in the early 00's. Whenever I'm reminded...
I've probably watched every video from the Homestarrunner universe and particularly every Strong Bad email at least ten times since I first discovered it in the early 00's. Whenever I'm reminded of it, I'll just binge the whole series.
It's not entirely niche but my knowledge of it is somewhat thorough. Most of the things I found amusing weren't the things that ended up entering popular awareness: Trogdor, fhqwhgads, The System is Down.
The "Peasant's Quest" parody game (and theatrical trailer) still gets referenced among my siblings as much (or more) than anything from the web series itself. "You don't look like a peasant, you...
The "Peasant's Quest" parody game (and theatrical trailer) still gets referenced among my siblings as much (or more) than anything from the web series itself.
"You don't look like a peasant, you don't smell like a peasant, and you certainly aren't ON FIRE LIKE A PEASANT!!"
I read this comment to my brother and we both started singing fhqwhgads and quoting the mothers day short where strong bad loses a bet. I think I still have my da cheet shirt from when I was...
I read this comment to my brother and we both started singing fhqwhgads and quoting the mothers day short where strong bad loses a bet. I think I still have my da cheet shirt from when I was younger and my brother has his strong bad one somewhere too. The web series is top notch.
I love Look Around You! I particularly liked the Music episode, where they build a machine to write music by passing an electric current through the DNA of Gilbert and Sullivan.
I love Look Around You! I particularly liked the Music episode, where they build a machine to write music by passing an electric current through the DNA of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Look Around You is sublime. You would fit in well with me and my husband, as we still quote that "what ARE birds?" line to each other occasionally -- one of the many memes of our marriage (also on...
Look Around You is sublime.
You would fit in well with me and my husband, as we still quote that "what ARE birds?" line to each other occasionally -- one of the many memes of our marriage (also on the list: "The new albumen -- it's out now!" and "Thants/Blants.")
Aww, this comment made my day! Based on your various postings around Tildes I have no doubt that we would get along IRL. I know the struggle of meeting adult friends well: I've moved a handful of...
Aww, this comment made my day! Based on your various postings around Tildes I have no doubt that we would get along IRL. I know the struggle of meeting adult friends well: I've moved a handful of times in my adult life, so I've had to start fresh in a new place more than once. It's tough and takes time. Know that you've got a lot of great traits, and I hope you find people in your community who can appreciate your strengths. Until then, at the very least know that they're valued here!
This seems right up spouse's and my alley. In a marginally related vein, one of the few U.S.-origin comedies that ever appealed to me, Better Off Ted, might be entertaining for you. It's available...
This seems right up spouse's and my alley.
In a marginally related vein, one of the few U.S.-origin comedies that ever appealed to me, Better Off Ted, might be entertaining for you. It's available on multiple subscription services.
As a teaser, Veridian Dynamics, the evil corporation where the hapless characters work, is self-satirized through its little commercial promo pieces, available here on You Tube.
Yeah, I believe this used to be on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. What I like is how they capture the 80s/90s scientific/educational video style of presentation but the content and/or presenter is...
Yeah, I believe this used to be on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. What I like is how they capture the 80s/90s scientific/educational video style of presentation but the content and/or presenter is completely naive.
I keep trying to extol the virtues of Star Trek DS9 to people, overshadowed as it is by TNG (which always felt villain of the week to me) or VOY (which was trying to chase sex appeal from the...
I keep trying to extol the virtues of Star Trek DS9 to people, overshadowed as it is by TNG (which always felt villain of the week to me) or VOY (which was trying to chase sex appeal from the start). It's a darker, different kind of Trek that focused more on character development and interpersonal relations rather than topics like AI rights or "communism bad!". It requires a lot of investment, particularly watching several episodes of TNG and knowing Trek history, and you can't skip episodes or watch them out of order. It's a commitment, and I don't think a lot of people want to make the commitment, even though it's (IMO) the best Trek we've ever had (... still waiting to know what happens in the Alpha Quadrant after the Dominion War... 20 years later...).
I'm not really a fan of a lot of what Hollywood creates these days, especially big budget films. They seem to be about adrenaline, targetted at 14 year old boys. I want something that makes me think, something that questions my viewpoints on life or my philosophy. This is, clearly, not why a lot of people go to the cinema, so I can see why it's not very popular. One film that did do that for me, though, is Dead Poets Society. I was a wordy writerly sort when I first saw it as a teenager, full of passion and fire (and I still am as an adult, more so even), so this film really spoke to me.
If I had to pick one game that I want more people to know about, it would be Duck Game (also available on several platforms besides PC, including Switch!). It's like WarioWare and Smash Bros had a baby with humor inspired by Monty Python. Everyone plays a duck and there are a huge number of weapons. Stages are randomly chosen and you're placed in a random location every time. Your goal is to kill the other ducks. What keeps me coming back is the emergent gameplay. The physics is very consistent but also a little buggy. But I mean buggy in the sense of Goat Simulator, here, where it's always hilarious. It's expressly competitive, but also expressly silly. Humor is a big part of the game, and the players embrace it. I always have fun with Duck Game, even when I'm losing. I'm always laughing at it, always enjoying myself, and I cannot get enough. If you have a Switch, please get it and play! Multiplayer is both online and local. Oh, and it has a dedicated quack button, years before Untitled Goose Game. On PC at least, one of the triggers is dedicated to fine-tuning the pitch of your quack, which is handy for the music-themed levels where the weapons you're given are instruments and not guns. Did I mention this game is silly?
Book? Hmm, that's a tough one. One book? Hmm. Going to go with Rudy Rucker's Infinity and the Mind here. I read through some of this (the parts I could understand) as a teenager and it bent my brain into such a wonderful pretzel shape that it's stuck with me for 20 years. Learning about cardinalities of infinity and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems as a teenager has shaped how I view the world, both in terms of mathematics, logic, science, and otherwise. I should note that this is not an easy read, not something that you want to read like you would a novel. It will take effort, and it gave 15 year old me a headache on multiple occasions.
A lot of my tastes are pretty obscure, so I could talk about this stuff all day, but these are the standouts for me.
I recently re-watched DS9 and I gotta say I appreciated Sisko (and Avery Brooks) a lot more than I did on earlier viewings. I think having seen a few interviews with him on YouTube made his...
DS9
I recently re-watched DS9 and I gotta say I appreciated Sisko (and Avery Brooks) a lot more than I did on earlier viewings. I think having seen a few interviews with him on YouTube made his idiosyncratic style more palatable (and even enjoyable) and I could see the subtleties in his performance a bit more clearly. Sisko was also a lot more optimistic and idealistic than I remembered (and than he's often given credit for): though episodes like In the Pale Moonlight give Sisko and the series a reputation for being "gritty morally-grey Trek" it also has episodes like the anti–Section 31 plot lines and Far Beyond the Stars, an episode which was basically a thesis on the importance of the aspirational nature of Trek.
If any Trek captain in that time period was morally-grey, it certainly was Janeway. Poor Tuvix... Anyway, the only DS9 episode that kinda impressed me was the one dealing with Nog's PTSD. I...
If any Trek captain in that time period was morally-grey, it certainly was Janeway. Poor Tuvix...
Anyway, the only DS9 episode that kinda impressed me was the one dealing with Nog's PTSD. I honestly didn't find the longform story very compelling.
I look at Far Beyond the Stars as part of that grittiness, actually. It's a cautionary tale about racism that's still relevant today, 20 years later. The way Benny is treated by the cops,...
I look at Far Beyond the Stars as part of that grittiness, actually. It's a cautionary tale about racism that's still relevant today, 20 years later. The way Benny is treated by the cops, specifically, is an allegory for racism and, taken in a modern context (which wasn't at all intended at the time, I think), an allegory for police brutality as well. The latter wasn't really part of the conversation in the 90s when the show was written (though it was certainly a thing), but it's entered into the modern conversation in the last 10 years or so. This is why I love the series so much, why I love good science fiction so much: it has a timeless quality that can speak to modern audiences as well as (or, especially in the case of this episode, better than) the audience for the time in which it was written.
I also think DS9 is the best trek. TNG was great for what it did to reboot the universe but DS9 does everything so much better. I hope we see some of these characters make a return in Picard.
I also think DS9 is the best trek. TNG was great for what it did to reboot the universe but DS9 does everything so much better. I hope we see some of these characters make a return in Picard.
Sometime around the year 2000, Rintaro got the rights to produce a movie adaptation of an early Osamu Tezuka comic called Metropolis. He got his buddy Katsuhiro Otomo to write the script, noted...
Sometime around the year 2000, Rintaro got the rights to produce a movie adaptation of an early Osamu Tezuka comic called Metropolis. He got his buddy Katsuhiro Otomo to write the script, noted jazz musician Toshiyuki Honda to write the music, and studio Madhouse to do the animation.
But to call this an adaptation of Metropolis is a disservice to the depth of this film.
The most notable thing about the film is that it's not only an adaptation of the Tezuka manga - it's actually an amalgamation of the manga and the 1928 Fritz Lang directed silent film of the same name, and that is where it gets most of its themes. And the story is absolutely dense with themes; there are morals jumping off of just about every page in the script. The fact that it still has a coherent plot is a real accomplishment.
Of all of the themes in the movie, the strongest, most central theme is "love means never having to say goodbye". That theme is expressed in such a terrible but beautiful way. If you are a fan of bittersweet endings, this may be the king. The climax of the story will absolutely tear your heart out. Without going into detail, the director chose to insert Ray Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You into the climax, and personally I can't stop crying through the entire duration every time. And yet, in the denoument, the movie shows you that there is still this small but shining beauty to what happened in an entirely unspoken manner.
Beyond that, the actual production really deserves to be seen. It was one of the last projects Madhouse produced before they switched to digital animation systems, and it's worth watching just for the visuals alone. You can tell that the people involved poured themselves into the production. The fact that Rintaro decided he had to play a part in the soundtrack shows just how far he was willing to put himself in his work.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, a (fairly long) series of fantasy books. I think they're wonderful, despite some valid criticisms (in the middle of the series Jordan gets very verbose with...
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, a (fairly long) series of fantasy books. I think they're wonderful, despite some valid criticisms (in the middle of the series Jordan gets very verbose with descriptions, which could make certain parts a bit of a drag to read - I didn't personally think so). Apparently there's some combination of a movie or TV series in the works (I'm not sure which, apparently there is some dispute over the rights to such a thing), so if that pans out it might become more mainstream.
They worked that out by giving the squatters on the rights some kind of producer credits. It's going to be a show on Amazon Prime, and they just started filming a few weeks ago. They released the...
They worked that out by giving the squatters on the rights some kind of producer credits. It's going to be a show on Amazon Prime, and they just started filming a few weeks ago.
They released the first table reading, and I'm cautiously optimistic (and by cautiously I mean I already have extremely high hopes I expect to not quite be lived up to). The showrunner seems to really love the books so I have hope, though obviously there will be many challenges translating a series like WoT to the screen.
I really want to finish the series but I got just about to the end of the 'slog' years ago and had to put it down when life happened. I never had the verbosity complaint either but I'm beyond...
I really want to finish the series but I got just about to the end of the 'slog' years ago and had to put it down when life happened. I never had the verbosity complaint either but I'm beyond daunted now at rereading 10 books to get back up to speed on all the plot threads.
If I were to take the question more straightforwardly, I'd say Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. The visual novel's rightfully a masterpiece – and yet there's rarely a meme, and barely a talk of some...
If I were to take the question more straightforwardly, I'd say Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. The visual novel's rightfully a masterpiece – and yet there's rarely a meme, and barely a talk of some form of adaptation. (Lucifer doesn't count.)
But in the spirit of the question... Irredeemable and Incorruptable, by Mark Waid. Two connected series of comic books: one about a Superman-esque superhero and his descend into villainy, and the other – about a former barely-superpowered villian turning into a hero "because the man we hoped for isn't there anymore". Neither is your typical superhero story.
Let me tell you about homestuck. (this is full of spoilers, but to be fair the comic frequently spoils itself so I don't think it's a big deal. I've left out all the surprising twists.) When it's...
Let me tell you about homestuck.
(this is full of spoilers, but to be fair the comic frequently spoils itself so I don't think it's a big deal. I've left out all the surprising twists.)
When it's brought up, it's usually to discuss the cult internet fandom that it had around 2012, rather than the webcomic itself. I think it isn't discussed because it's such a difficult thing to try and quantify. It is broad, there are around 20 main characters which represent four different species, it spans multiple genres while not truly representing any of them, it's told in many different formats and mediums, and the story-line encompasses the creation and destruction of at least 4 universes (or more accurately 2 iterations of 2 universes).
It is an absurd and ambitious comic, that toys with the very nature of storytelling. I have never seen anything else like it.
Most of it is told in the format of long chat-logs between characters. So you experience most of the events second hand as a group of very entertaining characters talk to each other about what is going on. For the first big chunk of the comic, one group of characters (the trolls) are temporally disconnected from the main cast, and so the conversations they have are not linear. The form of time travel (/time talk?) used in the comic is paradoxical stable time loops. From the very beginning, the main kids are being abused by the trolls for bringing about a catastrophe that they haven't caused yet (but the trolls are already suffering the consequences of). But in contacting the kids, the trolls inadvertently help bring about the catastrophe in the first place.
If anyone tries to change events so they don't bring about a future that has already, paradoxically, happened, they wind up in a doomed timeline.
All of this allows for the story line, characters and relationships to be developed non-linearly and iteratively (the characters are also modular, as in-universe mechanics allow for separate characters to be fused together). Nothing makes sense until eventually all the disjointed timelines sync up and we see all the completed time loops. Of course, all these time mechanics based around inevitability raises the question of - who is controlling the timeline?
I won't go into too much detail here, but basically the villain's power is the ability to control the narrative of the story. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the characters are trapped by the narrative, and the author of that narrative (who is also a character) is an arsehole. This metaphor does not go to waste as, among many other things, this is a coming-of-age story.
Anyway, it's definitely worth a read (if you have the spare time). It's not a comic to read with the goal of reaching the end - it is extremely long and the ending actually sucks. But it is worth the time just to experience the way the entire nature of story-telling is experimented with.
I have tried to read Homestuck no less than three times. Every time I stop it is because I lose track of the page I am on and when I try to go back, page navigation is nightmarish because so many...
I have tried to read Homestuck no less than three times. Every time I stop it is because I lose track of the page I am on and when I try to go back, page navigation is nightmarish because so many pages simply look the same. They added a cookie-based page tracker the last time I tried reading it, but for some unknown reason even that failed. I feel like I am cursed to never be able to read it.
I’m going to withhold judgement until there are more updates. I don’t think the new writers are as good as hussie is at writing dialogue, but they might have different strengths. How did you feel...
I’m going to withhold judgement until there are more updates. I don’t think the new writers are as good as hussie is at writing dialogue, but they might have different strengths.
A while back, I realized the only reason I watch any anime at all today is because I'm chasing the dragon from when I first watched Cowboy Bebop almost 20 years ago. The hope that I could again...
A while back, I realized the only reason I watch any anime at all today is because I'm chasing the dragon from when I first watched Cowboy Bebop almost 20 years ago. The hope that I could again stumble across something as wonderfully inspired as that, something as truly deserving of the title masterpiece, is the only reason I bother.
Aku no Hana is one of those precious few shows, and it seems to go largely, criminally underappreciated.
The Devil's Eye, a comedy by Ingmar Bergman! The Devil sends Don Juan, who was condemned to hell, to seduce the virgin daughter of a minister. The Hottest State, by Ethan Hawke, is one of the most...
The Devil's Eye, a comedy by Ingmar Bergman! The Devil sends Don Juan, who was condemned to hell, to seduce the virgin daughter of a minister.
The Hottest State, by Ethan Hawke, is one of the most compelling love stories I ever seen. It also basically ended my relationship with the girl I went to see it with, because the situation in the movie was very similar to ours.
Blue Gate Crossing is a Taiwanese film that put me literally in tears in the movie theater. I only stopped crying when I got to the bus stop. It is basically a movie about love and emotional hardship in the youth. Rather beautiful, but a tough watch.
Seconded! Tristram Shandy is a brilliant work of 18th century postmodernism, written long before anyone had conceived of the term. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, also by Laurence...
Seconded! Tristram Shandy is a brilliant work of 18th century postmodernism, written long before anyone had conceived of the term. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, also by Laurence Sterne, is similarly ahead of its time, and contains one of my favourite novel ending sentences. In fact, if the length of Tristram Shandy scares someone, A Sentimental Journey could be a shorter introduction to the author's style. That said, I don't really think one necessarily needs to read Tristram Shandy in full, or even in order, to appreciate it.
Also, while on the subject, A Cock and Bull Story is a pretty hilarious film adaptation of Tristram Shandy that should definitely be better known.
There was (also is, I'll get to that in a moment) a not very successful game that came out in 1999 called 10Six on HEAT.net made by Segasoft (not to be confused with Sega). The game was incredibly...
There was (also is, I'll get to that in a moment) a not very successful game that came out in 1999 called 10Six on HEAT.net made by Segasoft (not to be confused with Sega).
The game was incredibly ambitious, especially for the time. Ultima Online had just come out in 1997 and proven that the MMO genre could have commercial success, so everyone wanted to pitch a game for it. Along comes 10Six. Instead of fantasy, it was going to be a scifi game set in space. Instead of RPG, it was going to be an FPS/RTS hybrid. And most importantly, it was going to support one million players, simultaneously. Even today, when games like WoW support millions of players, the idea of having one million playing at the same time is insane. But I digress.
So it was going to be an FPS/RTS hybrid. The gameplay was rather simple really. You started in a region by yourself (your "camp"), where you could build some buildings in first person mode. Then you could enter a building and view the area in a top-down RTS fashion. Then you could gather resources, build more buildings, defensive structures, robot tanks, etc.
After you built yourself up a bit, you could choose to teleport to some other camp and attempt to conquer that person's camp and take their stuff. This was done in first person, while commanding your units around. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/MyZVZOsNlsk
Anyway, the game had a lot of gameplay flaws and never really got much traction. However it was the first MMO style game I ever played, and you never forget your first. In the early days of online gaming, it had a huge impact on my life. One of my proudest achievements to this day is that as a teenager I submitted a 3d model and description that was incorporated into the game.
The game is actually still running, today, 20 years later. It was a commercial failure, Segasoft shut it down within 2 years. However the lead programmer took the server and client code and resurrected it pretty soon after, running on donations and subscriptions. He still runs it to this day, and he continues to add features to it.
I've only ever met one other person IRL who had ever even heard of 10Six, much less played it.
My favorite NES game is TROG, it's a port from a midway arcade game that is somewhat like pacman, except that you play as a little dinosaur and are being hunted by cavemen (who cook and eat you if...
My favorite NES game is TROG, it's a port from a midway arcade game that is somewhat like pacman, except that you play as a little dinosaur and are being hunted by cavemen (who cook and eat you if they catch you) it's also two player which makes it a blast. The music, graphics, animations and overall hilarious nature make it extremely fun.
J. K. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy It's a great book! She's one of the most famous authors, and yet.. I never hear anyone talk about it. Even when it came out, I barely heard a peep! I also like...
J. K. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy
It's a great book! She's one of the most famous authors, and yet.. I never hear anyone talk about it. Even when it came out, I barely heard a peep!
I also like the Cormoran Strike books, but I've only audiobooked them, so I can't actually judge the quality of the writing of them - good audiobooks though!
Grim Fandango is my favorite videogame of all time. It so perfectly nails its aesthetic; this weird mish-mosh of meso-american/mexcian folklore, turn of the century art-deco, and classic film noir...
Grim Fandango is my favorite videogame of all time. It so perfectly nails its aesthetic; this weird mish-mosh of meso-american/mexcian folklore, turn of the century art-deco, and classic film noir such that they don't feel like different elements jammed together, they feel like they were made to compliment each other from the start. The story, writing, and acting are all great, and it has one of the best scores of any game I've ever played.
The issue is that most people don't seem to really appreciate it unless they grew up with 90s adventure games. I tried to get my wife to play it, but after a couple of hours, she said that there was no way to possibly know how to solve the puzzles, and that's basically true. You just have to spend a lot of time trying everything, which is definitely not a popular style of gameplay anymore.
The Demon Cycle books series. This is one of my favourite book series ever, and short of the person I used to know who introduced the series to me, I've never seen or known anyone that's read...
The Demon Cycle books series. This is one of my favourite book series ever, and short of the person I used to know who introduced the series to me, I've never seen or known anyone that's read them.
It's a really fun fantasy series that sometimes reads a bit like a D&D campaign (some of the characters are obvious D&D classes), but the world-building is excellent, and the premise of various elemental demons rising up from the ground at night to prey on humans is among the more original fantasy ideas I've come across. Only 5 books, and each are well worth your time :D
I've probably watched every video from the Homestarrunner universe and particularly every Strong Bad email at least ten times since I first discovered it in the early 00's. Whenever I'm reminded of it, I'll just binge the whole series.
It's not entirely niche but my knowledge of it is somewhat thorough. Most of the things I found amusing weren't the things that ended up entering popular awareness: Trogdor, fhqwhgads, The System is Down.
The "Peasant's Quest" parody game (and theatrical trailer) still gets referenced among my siblings as much (or more) than anything from the web series itself.
"You don't look like a peasant, you don't smell like a peasant, and you certainly aren't ON FIRE LIKE A PEASANT!!"
I have the Strong Bad email DVD set ripped to my media server. Still love it to this day.
I read this comment to my brother and we both started singing fhqwhgads and quoting the mothers day short where strong bad loses a bet. I think I still have my da cheet shirt from when I was younger and my brother has his strong bad one somewhere too. The web series is top notch.
My usual gamer name is a reference to Strong Bad's main man since 1987
I love Look Around You! I particularly liked the Music episode, where they build a machine to write music by passing an electric current through the DNA of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Look Around You is sublime.
You would fit in well with me and my husband, as we still quote that "what ARE birds?" line to each other occasionally -- one of the many memes of our marriage (also on the list: "The new albumen -- it's out now!" and "Thants/Blants.")
If this weren't over the internet, I'd say we should have a watching party. 😸
Aww, this comment made my day! Based on your various postings around Tildes I have no doubt that we would get along IRL. I know the struggle of meeting adult friends well: I've moved a handful of times in my adult life, so I've had to start fresh in a new place more than once. It's tough and takes time. Know that you've got a lot of great traits, and I hope you find people in your community who can appreciate your strengths. Until then, at the very least know that they're valued here!
This seems right up spouse's and my alley.
In a marginally related vein, one of the few U.S.-origin comedies that ever appealed to me, Better Off Ted, might be entertaining for you. It's available on multiple subscription services.
As a teaser, Veridian Dynamics, the evil corporation where the hapless characters work, is self-satirized through its little commercial promo pieces, available here on You Tube.
Yeah, I believe this used to be on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. What I like is how they capture the 80s/90s scientific/educational video style of presentation but the content and/or presenter is completely naive.
Reminds me a bit of that Limmy's Show sketch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH0hikcwjIA
I keep trying to extol the virtues of Star Trek DS9 to people, overshadowed as it is by TNG (which always felt villain of the week to me) or VOY (which was trying to chase sex appeal from the start). It's a darker, different kind of Trek that focused more on character development and interpersonal relations rather than topics like AI rights or "communism bad!". It requires a lot of investment, particularly watching several episodes of TNG and knowing Trek history, and you can't skip episodes or watch them out of order. It's a commitment, and I don't think a lot of people want to make the commitment, even though it's (IMO) the best Trek we've ever had (... still waiting to know what happens in the Alpha Quadrant after the Dominion War... 20 years later...).
I'm not really a fan of a lot of what Hollywood creates these days, especially big budget films. They seem to be about adrenaline, targetted at 14 year old boys. I want something that makes me think, something that questions my viewpoints on life or my philosophy. This is, clearly, not why a lot of people go to the cinema, so I can see why it's not very popular. One film that did do that for me, though, is Dead Poets Society. I was a wordy writerly sort when I first saw it as a teenager, full of passion and fire (and I still am as an adult, more so even), so this film really spoke to me.
Much of the music I enjoy I never see anyone talking about. But when I share it with people, I always get comments about how it's so beautiful / soothing / the like. Things like Stellamara - Karuna or Max Corbacho - Light-Matrix Portal or Alaskan Tapes - Leita or Tim Story - In This Small Spot or Nils Frahm - Ambre.
If I had to pick one game that I want more people to know about, it would be Duck Game (also available on several platforms besides PC, including Switch!). It's like WarioWare and Smash Bros had a baby with humor inspired by Monty Python. Everyone plays a duck and there are a huge number of weapons. Stages are randomly chosen and you're placed in a random location every time. Your goal is to kill the other ducks. What keeps me coming back is the emergent gameplay. The physics is very consistent but also a little buggy. But I mean buggy in the sense of Goat Simulator, here, where it's always hilarious. It's expressly competitive, but also expressly silly. Humor is a big part of the game, and the players embrace it. I always have fun with Duck Game, even when I'm losing. I'm always laughing at it, always enjoying myself, and I cannot get enough. If you have a Switch, please get it and play! Multiplayer is both online and local. Oh, and it has a dedicated quack button, years before Untitled Goose Game. On PC at least, one of the triggers is dedicated to fine-tuning the pitch of your quack, which is handy for the music-themed levels where the weapons you're given are instruments and not guns. Did I mention this game is silly?
Book? Hmm, that's a tough one. One book? Hmm. Going to go with Rudy Rucker's Infinity and the Mind here. I read through some of this (the parts I could understand) as a teenager and it bent my brain into such a wonderful pretzel shape that it's stuck with me for 20 years. Learning about cardinalities of infinity and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems as a teenager has shaped how I view the world, both in terms of mathematics, logic, science, and otherwise. I should note that this is not an easy read, not something that you want to read like you would a novel. It will take effort, and it gave 15 year old me a headache on multiple occasions.
A lot of my tastes are pretty obscure, so I could talk about this stuff all day, but these are the standouts for me.
I recently re-watched DS9 and I gotta say I appreciated Sisko (and Avery Brooks) a lot more than I did on earlier viewings. I think having seen a few interviews with him on YouTube made his idiosyncratic style more palatable (and even enjoyable) and I could see the subtleties in his performance a bit more clearly. Sisko was also a lot more optimistic and idealistic than I remembered (and than he's often given credit for): though episodes like In the Pale Moonlight give Sisko and the series a reputation for being "gritty morally-grey Trek" it also has episodes like the anti–Section 31 plot lines and Far Beyond the Stars, an episode which was basically a thesis on the importance of the aspirational nature of Trek.
If any Trek captain in that time period was morally-grey, it certainly was Janeway. Poor Tuvix...
Anyway, the only DS9 episode that kinda impressed me was the one dealing with Nog's PTSD. I honestly didn't find the longform story very compelling.
I look at Far Beyond the Stars as part of that grittiness, actually. It's a cautionary tale about racism that's still relevant today, 20 years later. The way Benny is treated by the cops, specifically, is an allegory for racism and, taken in a modern context (which wasn't at all intended at the time, I think), an allegory for police brutality as well. The latter wasn't really part of the conversation in the 90s when the show was written (though it was certainly a thing), but it's entered into the modern conversation in the last 10 years or so. This is why I love the series so much, why I love good science fiction so much: it has a timeless quality that can speak to modern audiences as well as (or, especially in the case of this episode, better than) the audience for the time in which it was written.
I also think DS9 is the best trek. TNG was great for what it did to reboot the universe but DS9 does everything so much better. I hope we see some of these characters make a return in Picard.
Sometime around the year 2000, Rintaro got the rights to produce a movie adaptation of an early Osamu Tezuka comic called Metropolis. He got his buddy Katsuhiro Otomo to write the script, noted jazz musician Toshiyuki Honda to write the music, and studio Madhouse to do the animation.
But to call this an adaptation of Metropolis is a disservice to the depth of this film.
The most notable thing about the film is that it's not only an adaptation of the Tezuka manga - it's actually an amalgamation of the manga and the 1928 Fritz Lang directed silent film of the same name, and that is where it gets most of its themes. And the story is absolutely dense with themes; there are morals jumping off of just about every page in the script. The fact that it still has a coherent plot is a real accomplishment.
Of all of the themes in the movie, the strongest, most central theme is "love means never having to say goodbye". That theme is expressed in such a terrible but beautiful way. If you are a fan of bittersweet endings, this may be the king. The climax of the story will absolutely tear your heart out. Without going into detail, the director chose to insert Ray Charles' I Can't Stop Loving You into the climax, and personally I can't stop crying through the entire duration every time. And yet, in the denoument, the movie shows you that there is still this small but shining beauty to what happened in an entirely unspoken manner.
Beyond that, the actual production really deserves to be seen. It was one of the last projects Madhouse produced before they switched to digital animation systems, and it's worth watching just for the visuals alone. You can tell that the people involved poured themselves into the production. The fact that Rintaro decided he had to play a part in the soundtrack shows just how far he was willing to put himself in his work.
Excellent shout. Rintaro's Metropolis really is fantastic.
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, a (fairly long) series of fantasy books. I think they're wonderful, despite some valid criticisms (in the middle of the series Jordan gets very verbose with descriptions, which could make certain parts a bit of a drag to read - I didn't personally think so). Apparently there's some combination of a movie or TV series in the works (I'm not sure which, apparently there is some dispute over the rights to such a thing), so if that pans out it might become more mainstream.
They worked that out by giving the squatters on the rights some kind of producer credits. It's going to be a show on Amazon Prime, and they just started filming a few weeks ago.
They released the first table reading, and I'm cautiously optimistic (and by cautiously I mean I already have extremely high hopes I expect to not quite be lived up to). The showrunner seems to really love the books so I have hope, though obviously there will be many challenges translating a series like WoT to the screen.
Table reading if you're interested: https://twitter.com/WoTonPrime/status/1179425813327798273
I really want to finish the series but I got just about to the end of the 'slog' years ago and had to put it down when life happened. I never had the verbosity complaint either but I'm beyond daunted now at rereading 10 books to get back up to speed on all the plot threads.
I'd highly encourage it - the last book is amazing.
If I were to take the question more straightforwardly, I'd say Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. The visual novel's rightfully a masterpiece – and yet there's rarely a meme, and barely a talk of some form of adaptation. (Lucifer doesn't count.)
But in the spirit of the question... Irredeemable and Incorruptable, by Mark Waid. Two connected series of comic books: one about a Superman-esque superhero and his descend into villainy, and the other – about a former barely-superpowered villian turning into a hero "because the man we hoped for isn't there anymore". Neither is your typical superhero story.
Let me tell you about homestuck.
(this is full of spoilers, but to be fair the comic frequently spoils itself so I don't think it's a big deal. I've left out all the surprising twists.)
When it's brought up, it's usually to discuss the cult internet fandom that it had around 2012, rather than the webcomic itself. I think it isn't discussed because it's such a difficult thing to try and quantify. It is broad, there are around 20 main characters which represent four different species, it spans multiple genres while not truly representing any of them, it's told in many different formats and mediums, and the story-line encompasses the creation and destruction of at least 4 universes (or more accurately 2 iterations of 2 universes).
It is an absurd and ambitious comic, that toys with the very nature of storytelling. I have never seen anything else like it.
Most of it is told in the format of long chat-logs between characters. So you experience most of the events second hand as a group of very entertaining characters talk to each other about what is going on. For the first big chunk of the comic, one group of characters (the trolls) are temporally disconnected from the main cast, and so the conversations they have are not linear. The form of time travel (/time talk?) used in the comic is paradoxical stable time loops. From the very beginning, the main kids are being abused by the trolls for bringing about a catastrophe that they haven't caused yet (but the trolls are already suffering the consequences of). But in contacting the kids, the trolls inadvertently help bring about the catastrophe in the first place.
If anyone tries to change events so they don't bring about a future that has already, paradoxically, happened, they wind up in a doomed timeline.
All of this allows for the story line, characters and relationships to be developed non-linearly and iteratively (the characters are also modular, as in-universe mechanics allow for separate characters to be fused together). Nothing makes sense until eventually all the disjointed timelines sync up and we see all the completed time loops. Of course, all these time mechanics based around inevitability raises the question of - who is controlling the timeline?
I won't go into too much detail here, but basically the villain's power is the ability to control the narrative of the story. As the story progresses, it becomes clear that the characters are trapped by the narrative, and the author of that narrative (who is also a character) is an arsehole. This metaphor does not go to waste as, among many other things, this is a coming-of-age story.
Anyway, it's definitely worth a read (if you have the spare time). It's not a comic to read with the goal of reaching the end - it is extremely long and the ending actually sucks. But it is worth the time just to experience the way the entire nature of story-telling is experimented with.
I have tried to read Homestuck no less than three times. Every time I stop it is because I lose track of the page I am on and when I try to go back, page navigation is nightmarish because so many pages simply look the same. They added a cookie-based page tracker the last time I tried reading it, but for some unknown reason even that failed. I feel like I am cursed to never be able to read it.
I’m going to withhold judgement until there are more updates. I don’t think the new writers are as good as hussie is at writing dialogue, but they might have different strengths.
How did you feel about the epilogues?
A while back, I realized the only reason I watch any anime at all today is because I'm chasing the dragon from when I first watched Cowboy Bebop almost 20 years ago. The hope that I could again stumble across something as wonderfully inspired as that, something as truly deserving of the title masterpiece, is the only reason I bother.
Aku no Hana is one of those precious few shows, and it seems to go largely, criminally underappreciated.
The Devil's Eye, a comedy by Ingmar Bergman! The Devil sends Don Juan, who was condemned to hell, to seduce the virgin daughter of a minister.
The Hottest State, by Ethan Hawke, is one of the most compelling love stories I ever seen. It also basically ended my relationship with the girl I went to see it with, because the situation in the movie was very similar to ours.
Blue Gate Crossing is a Taiwanese film that put me literally in tears in the movie theater. I only stopped crying when I got to the bus stop. It is basically a movie about love and emotional hardship in the youth. Rather beautiful, but a tough watch.
Seconded! Tristram Shandy is a brilliant work of 18th century postmodernism, written long before anyone had conceived of the term. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, also by Laurence Sterne, is similarly ahead of its time, and contains one of my favourite novel ending sentences. In fact, if the length of Tristram Shandy scares someone, A Sentimental Journey could be a shorter introduction to the author's style. That said, I don't really think one necessarily needs to read Tristram Shandy in full, or even in order, to appreciate it.
Also, while on the subject, A Cock and Bull Story is a pretty hilarious film adaptation of Tristram Shandy that should definitely be better known.
There was (also is, I'll get to that in a moment) a not very successful game that came out in 1999 called 10Six on HEAT.net made by Segasoft (not to be confused with Sega).
The game was incredibly ambitious, especially for the time. Ultima Online had just come out in 1997 and proven that the MMO genre could have commercial success, so everyone wanted to pitch a game for it. Along comes 10Six. Instead of fantasy, it was going to be a scifi game set in space. Instead of RPG, it was going to be an FPS/RTS hybrid. And most importantly, it was going to support one million players, simultaneously. Even today, when games like WoW support millions of players, the idea of having one million playing at the same time is insane. But I digress.
So it was going to be an FPS/RTS hybrid. The gameplay was rather simple really. You started in a region by yourself (your "camp"), where you could build some buildings in first person mode. Then you could enter a building and view the area in a top-down RTS fashion. Then you could gather resources, build more buildings, defensive structures, robot tanks, etc.
After you built yourself up a bit, you could choose to teleport to some other camp and attempt to conquer that person's camp and take their stuff. This was done in first person, while commanding your units around. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/MyZVZOsNlsk
Anyway, the game had a lot of gameplay flaws and never really got much traction. However it was the first MMO style game I ever played, and you never forget your first. In the early days of online gaming, it had a huge impact on my life. One of my proudest achievements to this day is that as a teenager I submitted a 3d model and description that was incorporated into the game.
The game is actually still running, today, 20 years later. It was a commercial failure, Segasoft shut it down within 2 years. However the lead programmer took the server and client code and resurrected it pretty soon after, running on donations and subscriptions. He still runs it to this day, and he continues to add features to it.
I've only ever met one other person IRL who had ever even heard of 10Six, much less played it.
Being There - Peter Sellers finest work. A black comedy that seems more relevant the older I get.
My favorite NES game is TROG, it's a port from a midway arcade game that is somewhat like pacman, except that you play as a little dinosaur and are being hunted by cavemen (who cook and eat you if they catch you) it's also two player which makes it a blast. The music, graphics, animations and overall hilarious nature make it extremely fun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trog_(video_game)
I don't how niche he is but I really enjoy David Perell's writing and find his content is always fascinating
J. K. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy
It's a great book! She's one of the most famous authors, and yet.. I never hear anyone talk about it. Even when it came out, I barely heard a peep!
I also like the Cormoran Strike books, but I've only audiobooked them, so I can't actually judge the quality of the writing of them - good audiobooks though!
Grim Fandango is my favorite videogame of all time. It so perfectly nails its aesthetic; this weird mish-mosh of meso-american/mexcian folklore, turn of the century art-deco, and classic film noir such that they don't feel like different elements jammed together, they feel like they were made to compliment each other from the start. The story, writing, and acting are all great, and it has one of the best scores of any game I've ever played.
The issue is that most people don't seem to really appreciate it unless they grew up with 90s adventure games. I tried to get my wife to play it, but after a couple of hours, she said that there was no way to possibly know how to solve the puzzles, and that's basically true. You just have to spend a lot of time trying everything, which is definitely not a popular style of gameplay anymore.
The Demon Cycle books series. This is one of my favourite book series ever, and short of the person I used to know who introduced the series to me, I've never seen or known anyone that's read them.
It's a really fun fantasy series that sometimes reads a bit like a D&D campaign (some of the characters are obvious D&D classes), but the world-building is excellent, and the premise of various elemental demons rising up from the ground at night to prey on humans is among the more original fantasy ideas I've come across. Only 5 books, and each are well worth your time :D