Author: silentfuzzle

Good Boy

When I watched Dog in theaters a few years ago, I realized I have zero tolerance for sad animal movies. It was marketed as a comedy, and some of it may have been funny. Ultimately, I found then entire movie about a dog with PTSD and an incorrigible man disturbing. Sure, the dog didn’t die at the end, but I didn’t see anything to be happy about.

I had a similar experience with Smile a few months later. The first half of the movie was uncomfortable and disturbing. When the protagonist found her dead cat gift wrapped in a box, I seriously considered walking out of the theater. Fortunately, it became a standard, silly horror movie after that, but I wasn’t tempted to come back for Smile 2.

Recently, knowing nothing about the movie except that it was a horror, I went to a friend’s house to watch Good Boy. When the first scene depicted a sad, frightened dog, I wondered if I should leave immediately. Good Boy turned out to be quite tolerable though. The movie depicted a dog’s worst nightmare told from a dog’s perspective. I found it really interesting. And secretly, I wanted to coo at the screen the whole movie, “Look at that good boy!”

So for those of you with a similar sensitivity to animal movies, don’t be afraid to give Good Boy a watch.

Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth

Near the end of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth is about an hour and a half of cutscenes mixed with a quick time events, choices, and short battles. It’s also an hour and a half of pure nonsense, but more on that later. During this time, there’s a scene where Cloud has to choose a gift for Aerith and a type of candy to try. The result of the first choice is he gets a gift that wasn’t an option. The result of the second choice is he and Aerith get a candy that wasn’t an option, and they think it’s disgusting. At the time, I wondered if these two choices were actually a meta message from the creators to prepare the player for disappointment. My choices don’t matter, I won’t get anything I want, and what I do get I won’t like.

That’s kind of exactly what happened in the end. Because Square Enix is too cowardly to either commit to the original story or commit to pleasing the fans who wanted to save Aerith, Aerith is both dead and not dead, and both states are dissatisfying for existing at the same time. Presumably in the main multiverse storyline, she’s still dead and will continue being dead, but in another timeline and Cloud’s hallucinations, she lives on. So what if she’s alive in another timeline? She’s still dead in this one. Why introduce a multiverse at all? You don’t need a multiverse for Cloud to have hallucinations! He does that on his own! The only purpose the multiverse bullshit served in this entire game was to muddle its most emotional moments.

There’s a point in the original Final Fantasy 7 where Cloud goes crazy and beats up Tifa… or was it Aerith? Anyway, he doesn’t pin anyone down and punch them repeatedly in the face in Rebirth, which would probably be disturbing to recreate in HD, but he does throw Tifa into a pool of mako. I was totally on board with this scene being a replacement or supplement for how Cloud goes crazy… until Tifa fell into the mako and all the nonsense happened. I was so mad. I don’t give a fuck right now about the battle between the universes! If Tifa got thrown into, you know, a mako reactor and got mako poisoning, fine! Good! If you want to kill Tifa, I vehemently disagree, but make up your fucking mind and do it! Can’t I have my scene where Cloud goes crazy and attacks Tifa without alternate universe bullshit mucking it up!? God damn it!

The Tifa scene, the entire universe with Zack and Biggs, the hour and a half of nonsense, the timeline in which Aerith lives, all of it is so inconsequential that I can pretend none of it even happened, but I’m still disappointed that it exists. It’s not just adding nothing to the story. It’s detracting and distracting from it. I’m not sure how the characters got to Calm at the beginning of the game, or why they decided to reminisce about Nibelheim. I’m not sure how they got from the Temple of the Ancients to the Lost City or what prompted them to do so. I’m not even sure how Aerith died. Maybe if I didn’t have to wade through so much irrelevant crap, I would understand. Isn’t Final Fantasy 7 complicated enough without adding a multiverse side plot for no reason?

That said, I kind of hope Aerith continues appearing to Cloud and being inconsequential. Some people were so desperate for Aerith to live in the original game that they hacked the game so that Aerith could still be in their party and fight in battles. She just didn’t say anything and was kind of broken. I think it’d be funny if Square Enix made it canon. “We didn’t give you the option to save Aerith, but you can still see her all the time. Constantly. You don’t even have to hack the game anymore!”

Predator: Badlands

Predator: Badlands didn’t feel like a Predator movie. Granted, it’s been more than a decade since I’ve seen a Predator movie. Actually, I can’t remember if I’ve seen a Predator movie. Was it Alien vs. Predator? Was it Alien? Was it something else entirely? Is there a Predator movie? O.o I remember nothing about what I’ve seen of Predator except that it should be scary or at least attempt to be so.

Watching Predator: Badlands was like what I imagine watching modern Star Wars is like. Given that I also have very little experience with modern Star Wars, I’m basing this opinion entirely on The Mandalorian & Grogu trailer I saw before Badlands started. About at the midpoint in the movie, Badlands introduces a cute mascot character. From that point forward, I felt like I was watching a ripoff of The Mandalorian & Grogu: a brooding protagonist, a comedic side kick, and a cute mascot having a space adventure.

Also, there’s a series of shots of the Predator and his side kick walking through fields and over mountains. After the first couple shots, I predicted the next shot would show the Predator walking along a mountain ridge. Lo and behold, the next shot was the Predator walking along a mountain ridge. Hell yeah! I’m watching a Lord of the Rings ripoff, too!

Overall, I don’t know what I watched or what I expected, but it seemed like something else with the Predator brand slapped on it.

The Madman’s Hotel

In The Madman’s Hotel by Niall Breslin, a descendant of Julia Leonard, a former patient in the now-abandoned St. Loman’s Hospital, reaches out to Niall, a mental health advocate, for help finding Julia’s body after almost all markers and crosses are removed from the hospital’s graveyard by Ireland’s health department, the owner of the hospital’s grounds. Julie’s determination to bury her great-grandmother’s remains next to her grandfather is surprising and remarkable given what little information she and her grandfather had about Julia.

It’s an interesting story that wants to be like other audiobooks where the narration is interspersed with snippets of interviews, but its bizarre editing style hampers and distracts from it. The audio editor frequently cuts off an interviewee’s answer with a hard fade while the narrator takes over speaking for them or over them. Sometimes the narrator even speaks over himself in his own interview. It’s as if the producers assume the listener doesn’t have the attention span to listen to the interviewee’s answer in their own words.

Alternatively, it’s possible the interview audio was so bad that it would have been distracting to use more of it. The interviews often sound as if they were conducted in an echoey room without the proper equipment to pick up clean audio. I’ve listened to audio books like this in the past, and they can be annoying and difficult to listen to. Even if that were the case, however, My Mom’s Murder’s approach, where the narrator repeats what the interviewee said when the audio is difficult to decipher, would have been a less distracting choice.

30 Days to Thrive with ADHD

I frequently listen to Alok Kanojia, better known as Dr. K, on the Healthy Gamer YouTube channel. As a monk-turned-psychiatrist, his lectures, video essays, and Q&As cover topics in psychology and Eastern medicine, meditation, and practices.

His latest book 30 Days to Thrive with ADHD is an Audible exclusive and narrated by him. It’s much like listening to one of his YouTube videos/podcasts except more structured. The book features thirty strategies for managing common challenges those with ADHD face. The strategies and reasoning for them seem practical to anyone who has problems in the areas they address though. For example, if you can’t sleep because you’re restless, you may have missed your window for going to sleep. This window is when you’re tired enough to go to sleep but not so tired that your frontal lobe can’t control your thoughts and impulses to allow you to sleep.

I often wonder when watching videos on ADHD, autism, introverts, personality types, etc., are these symptoms, solutions, or tendencies really specific to this group? Or are they specific to unique individuals with or without a formal diagnosis in this group? Dr. K has more credentials than other random YouTubers and the misinformation they spread, but I still found myself asking these questions once in a while. Regardless, he shares practical tips that seem applicable to everyone!

Mr. Black and Night

Night and Mr. Black merging into one.
The first names I thought of when considering what to name my black cats was Mr. Black and Night. “People are going to think I’m boring,” I thought. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t care and proceeded to take them to their first vet appointment where my veterinarian struggled to keep their names straight. Perhaps I named them Black and Night to annoy people. How do I even keep them straight?

There’s a reason for my madness though. I’ve been obsessed with the music artist mind.in.a.box since 2017. With the exception of R.E.T.R.O., each of mind.in.a.box’s seven albums are a chapter in a science fiction story. My obsession has been particularly intense this year. Prior to adopting my new cats, I spent several months studying mind.in.a.box lyrics. Mr. Black and Night are reoccurring characters and seemed like perfect names for a short-haired, black male cat and a long-haired, black female cat.

If you happen to have any interest in an electronica/futurepop musical without the stage play, I highly recommend it. For those wanting the TLDR version just so you can keep my cats straight, however, “Travel Guide” suffices:

And just because I can’t resist sharing two of my favorites featuring my cats’ namesakes…

Mr. Black

Night

My Mom’s Murder (Seasons 1-2)

My Mom’s Murder and My Mom’s Murder: Season 2 follow Lauren Malloy in her investigation into her mother’s unsolved murder after she was contacted by a stranger 30 years later. The audiobook is composed of Lauren’s narration and recordings of interviews she’s conducted in the years since her investigation began in 2020. Many of the recordings are of low-quality phone conversations, but Lauren does a good job of repeating what the interviewee has said when it isn’t clear.

At first, Lauren struck me as a journalist who happened to discover this bizarre event in her past. She is contacted by Louise, supposedly her mother’s best friend in childhood, who tells Lauren that her mother didn’t die of natural causes as she had been told her whole life but had been murdered. Lauren’s inclination to begin recording her calls with Louise almost immediately seemed like someone hunting for a story, and she so happened to strike gold in her own life. She also seemed adept at interviewing.

I also had theories that perhaps Lauren was a TikToker trained to find and record content to gain attention. This theory came from her mentioning that she shared her investigation and frustrations on TikTok. Occasionally, she has discussions with her best friend, who seems to be in the audiobooks only for Lauren to talk to (because a podcast is often more entertaining with two people than one). Lauren has also attracted the attention of the news in the past when she found and reunited with her long lost siblings or step-siblings several years before the events in this audiobook series. Perhaps she’s an attention seeker… but if she is, it’s for the purpose of tracking down her family’s mysteries.

It turns out she wasn’t a journalist or a social media influencer; she worked somewhere in the tech sector, and may still. What she does as a non-journalist, however, is impressive. She doesn’t trust Louise, often suspecting her of lying and even of being her mother’s murderer. Despite this, she talks to Louise as if they are friends for more than a year, all to coerce as much information out of her as she can. She treats other suspects and interviewees similarly, acting as their friend but secretly acting as a journalist, undercover cop, or detective. She built a large social media following for the purpose of forcing the police to take her seriously and reopen her mother’s cold case. Along the way, she built an organization to help others seek justice for deceased family members. She seems like she genuinely took all these roles out of a need to understand her family history, which is a common trait that’s impressed me about the narrators or interviewees of other audiobooks I’ve listened to recently like The Secret Daughter and The Madman’s Hotel.

At times, the audiobooks, particularly Season 2, feel more like a family gossip fest. Before the latest DNA results are revealed, let’s hear more gossip from Louise and everyone else who has an opinion on the latest turn of events! But perhaps this is because the murder is officially unsolved and the listener is invited to form their own theory from the conflicting evidence presented.

While Lauren judges all these people–who’s lying and who’s telling the truth?–as a listener, I’m also judging her, and like Lauren’s, my judgments changed quite a bit throughout the two audiobooks. Very meta. 😛

Spring Baking Championship (Season 8)

Season 8 of Spring Baking Championship introduced two gimmicks, and both of them failed.

The first was the elimination of two bakers in episode one and the introduction of two new bakers in episode two. Typically, a season begins with twelve bakers and one is eliminated each episode until the season finale with the final 3-4 bakers. In this season, two bakers were eliminated in the first episode to make way for the addition of two more bakers in episode two. The new bakers, however, first had to compete against each other alongside the other bakers. Out of the two bakers, the one with the better dessert would continue competing. At the end of the episode, one of the new bakers and one of the original contestants were eliminated, bringing the contestant count down to the regularly scheduled ten. The second new baker, however, was eliminated in episode three, making the whole gimmick pointless.

The second gimmick was the unexpected introduction of a pre-final bake off. Until Season 11, season finales included two rounds. The first round eliminated one of the four finalists. In the second, the final three competed for winner of the season. In Season 11, the four finalists still competed in round one, but then, the bottom two were required to compete against each other in a bake off to join the top two in the final round. Unprepared for the sudden development and overwhelmed by the emotional toll of the previous round, however, one of the contestants simply quit, making the other the winner by default and the whole gimmick pointless.

The first gimmick never made another appearance. Despite its similar failure, however, the second would become the new finale format for all following seasons of Spring Baking Championship. No one has quit since, so it seems the contestants get a warning about it now.

UnagiLogic Shout Out

UnagiLogic gave this blog and other things I’ve written a shout out on Patreon, so I’m returning a shout out. UnagiLogic is building a VRChat game called Tap-ioca Tavern and sharing game development learnings and other aspects of the journey along the way. They will also be hosting regular Micro Jams and are open to collaboration for those wanting to build their programming skills or widen their community.

If you’re interested in game design or game development, you can find UnagiLogic’s Patreon here.

Solo Leveling (Seasons 1-2)

Both of the anime I watched recently, Kaiju No. 8 and Solo Leveling, felt rushed in some way. While watching Kaiju No. 8, my theory was that this was the new format of anime in an era of increasingly shortening attention spans. Or perhaps it was an anime for people who have watched so much anime that they can fill in the gaping holes in its character development with their favorite aspects of the common anime tropes each character represents. My latest theory is that these anime exist more as fan service for people who read the manga than as anime that can stand on their own. Considering I haven’t read these manga, this is speculation, but Kaiju No. 8 may have felt rushed because it was composed only of highlights from the manga.

Solo Leveling stands a bit better on its own and, overall, the pacing feels more natural. The protagonist Jinwoo Sung has a nice character arc across the two seasons. Where Solo Leveling falls short is its side characters. A classic anime like Naruto might spend multiple episodes on a side character’s or an enemy’s backstory (to the point where I just want the show to get on with killing them off). Solo Leveling, however, introduces side characters with just enough detail to make me want to know more but not so much that I can say I like or even know them. Side characters frequently appear in one or a small number of episodes for a few minutes, hinting that they might become important, only to never have any further importance. Even if they do become important later, some are forgettable enough that I wouldn’t recognize them. For example, I’m still not sure if the blond lady Sung saved in the final episode was the same lady who’s only trait was that she thought he smelled nice several episodes earlier.

From what I’ve heard of the manga, the side characters received more development, perhaps even chapters dedicated to explaining their backstories or showcasing their personalities. The anime might have cut even this relatively large amount of development out because it recognized they don’t matter. In the final episode, Sung states he would like to start a guild, perhaps one composed of all the side characters we’ve met throughout the series, and then the story ends.

This might be by design. Jinwoo Sung begins the series by lamenting how unfair life is and condemning everyone as heartless, selfish traitors. He spends the rest of the series focusing on his own development and the two people, his sister and his mom, that are important to him. He saves other characters not because he cares or has any emotional attachment to them but because he can and it’s the right/fair thing to do. In the video game-like world he inhabits, the side characters are NPCs that exist only to increase his sense of justice in a brutal world. As an anime, it’s dissatisfying to viewers for not developing the potential its side characters have, but this lack of focus reflects Sung’s disinterest in everyone well.