Muistatko

Muistatko, veikkonen, sen kultaisen ajan, kun kaikissa tietokonepeleissä juonella oli enemmän väliä kuin ulkonäöllä? Muistatko kun pelifirmat eivät vielä olleet mukana tehdäkseen rahaa vaan tehdäkseen mahdollisimman hyviä tuotteita?

Muistatko, kun Suomella meni hyvin, kaikki oli halpaa, työttömyys oli alhaalla ja olimme nousujohteessa, ihan ilman EU:ta? Muistatko ne hyvät ajat, kun karvakädet ja yön timot eivät vielä vieneet työpaikkojamme? Muistatko, kun veli venäläinen pysyi vielä rajan takana, eikä tullut tänne viemään meidän mökkitonttejamme? *

Muistatko kun kaikki olivat naapureilleen mukavia, elämä hymyili, ruoho oli vihreämpää, talvisin oli kylmä, laivat olivat puuta, miehet miehiä, naiset naisia, Suomessa suomalaisia ja viholliset ikiaikaisia aina talvisodasta lähtien? *

Muistatko ajan ennen kuin olit nostalginen?

Nostalgia nostetaan usein esiin hyvänä, hienona asiana. Onhan vanhojen muistelu kivaa, koska kokemukset ovat hienoja ja tärkeitä, ja jokainen kokemus vaikuttaa meihin ihmisenä. Kokemusten kertaaminen ja läpikäynti taas pitävät huolen siitä, että prosessoimme sen, mitä meille tapahtuu. Yhtälö ei ikävä kyllä ole näin yksinkertainen.

"Aika kultaa muistot." Ja niinhän se tekee, ei tuota sanontaa ole turhan päiten keksitty. Kun tapahtumasta on viikko, ovat muistot vielä kirkkaina mielessä. Mutta kun tapahtumasta on kuukausia tai vuosia, ei kaikkea muista, ja hyvää muistoa vahvistaa itselleen hyvänä kunnes kaikki negatiiviset puolet häviävät mielestä.

Nostalgia voi olla hyvä asia. Se voi vahvistaa oma-arvontuntoa ja tunnetta asioiden tärkeydestä. Helposti se lipsuu kuitenkin siihen, että menneisyyteen katselee kultasilmin ja muistelee, miten kaikki oli paremmin silloin vanhaan hyvään aikaan. Jos jotain kohtaan pitää olla kriittinen, niin omia muistojaan. Vahvistusvinouma on todella helppoa muodostaa, kun tarkistusraati koostuu yhdestä henkilöstä.

*Tarkoitukseni tai pyrkimykseni ei ole tällä tekstillä loukata ketään henkilöä tai ihmisryhmää, vaan käytän prototyyppisiä, usein kuulemiani nostalgian muotoja esimerkkeinä. Käyttämiäni kielikuvia voisi pitää rasistisina, mutta se ei ole tämän tekstin tarkoitus.

Matkalla tulevaisuuteen

Yleensä teknologia ei hämmästytä minua arkipäivän tasolla: olen kasvanut teknologisen kehityksen kärkiaallon kanssa käsi kädessä ja ollut kaikesta uudesta riittävästi innostunut (samoin kuin scifi-intoilija), joten yllätykset ja hämmästyminen ovat yleensä harvassa.

Tänään, tällä hetkellä, aloin kuitenkin miettimään tämänhetkistä tilannettamme, ja ihan oikeasti hämmästyin. Kun siis.

Istun itse kirjoittamassa tätä blogitekstiäni läppärillä, samalla kun lataan päivityksiä kahteen peliin. Itsessään tämä on nyky-yhteiskunnassa melko arkipäiväistä. Teen sitä kuitenkin käyttäen puhelintani wifi-hotspottina samalla, kun lataan sitä verkkovirrasta. Tietokoneeni siis lähettää pakettipyynnön puhelimeeni, joka lähettää sen puhelinverkon läpi palvelimelle Ruotsiin, joka taas palauttaa pyydetyt paketit. Tämä koko hupi on nopeampaa kuin lankoja pitkin tullut internettini viisi vuotta sitten.

Kaverini tuossa pöydän toisella puolella taas on sateliitin välityksellä yhteydessä sekä pilvipalveluun, josta kuuntelemme musiikkia että ystäviimme Englannissa, reaaliajassa. Ja tämä kaikki tapahtuu mökillä, jonne ei ole edes tullut puhelinlinjaa yli kymmeneen vuoteen.

Aloin pohtimaan tätä, kun puhelimeni soi katkaisematta mitään äsken mainituista tapahtumista. Vaihteeksi hämmästyin. Hyvä näin, koska välillä on syytä muistaa, miten siistissä tulevaisuudessa me oikeasti jo tänään elämme. Hoverboardeja ei ikävä kyllä ole vieläkään, vaikka Paluu Tulevaisuuteen tuli ja meni, mutta ihan oikeasti. Siistiä.

Hunting legends

- or the Wolpertinger, Jackalope and why they paint an interesting picture of culture at large.

As all hallows eve has passed us by, I figured I'd say a few words about man-made legends. Horror stories are a thing for darker nights, so we'll discuss imaginary creatures today. My three examples for the presentation will be the Kirin, the Jackalope and the Wolpertinger.

The Wolpertinger. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

The Wolpertinger is said to inhabit the forests of Bavaria, in Germany. It is a chimeric creature, a meat-eating rabbit that has fangs, horns and wings. Oh, and according to some legends it can turn invisible as well.

It is not the only creature of it's kind: in Germany alone, there are also the Rasselbock and the Elwetritsch, both chimaeric woodlands creatures in their own right. The American Jackalope and Swedish Skvader are also somewhat less extravagant versions of the Wolpertinger: the Jackalope lacks wings whereas Skvader is usually described as a winged rabbit.

Now, folklore likes fables and impossible creatures, so the tales of such beings are not surprising as such. What might be a bit surprising, however, is that when taxidermy became a bit more refined, the more skilled taxidermists started fabricating these creatures. As such.

Rudolf Granberg's prepared Skvader. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

Now, it's pretty odd that people should make up a creature, and then really make a creature that looks like the fabricated thing. And these taxidermic fabrications were really, really good. Some taxidermists even changed the bone structure of the creature to make it seem more real. I find it intriguing that people would knowingly create a fake copy of an imaginary thing simply to pass it as real. And not by photoshopping for 10 minutes, or even an hour, to create it: they spent weeks, maybe even months, sewing together a seamless replicated creature. To make a legend seem real.

Now, the final creature I will present today comes far from the East: the Kirin. The Kirin appears in almost all Chinese mythologies, as well as Japan. The Kirin has been described in many ways, but it's common traits are hooves and horns, tigerlike appearance, often a long neck and perhaps even a somewhat draconian appearance. A fearsome looking creature, it is still benevolent and only punishes the wicked.

A statue of the Kirin, in Beijing's Summer Palace. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

The creature in itself is not that odd as a fable: the tale around it largely resembles that of the Western unicorn. The queer part comes here. During the Ming dynasty, China had more contact with Africa again, and there met the giraffes. The Emperor had some brought back to the palace and noticed a resemblance to the fairy tale creature known as the Kirin. Thus, he proclaimed giraffes were Kirin, here to show all that he was a wise and benevolent ruler.

I'm not sure of the situation in other East Asian languages, but atleast in Japanese this proclamation still holds: Kirin means both the legend and giraffe. Perhaps not that many know why the two have the same name, but it all began with a single ruler.

Does humanity have some in-built need to find out if all the unbelievable stories are true, or is this realization of legends simply a means to make stories better? Or are all people essentially trolls?

Everything must go!

Shave everything to grow a moustache! For cancer awareness!

Absurd? Quite certainly. Come tomorrow, it will be Movember, the month of moustaches and November. More specifically, a month where men are encouraged to grow moustaches to raise cancer awareness.

I have a moustache a year around. Of course, it is usually befriended by a beard that lives below it. Come the first of November, however, everything must go! While it might seem absurd, the point of the month is to begin with a clean slate. Enforcing rules to male facial hair for a month is a bit silly, but I'll take up the challenge. I'll even challenge any- and everyone reading this to do the same!

If you can grow a moustache - it need not be a thing of splendour, although that will of course make it all the more awesome - shape up and shave up on the morrow!

"Promotion, promotion, one time only!"

Facebook offered me to "promote" my post today, saying that it would bumb it to a higher standing in the news feed and mark it as both "important" and "sponsored" for my friends. Harken, and bring me my lance, for the windmills need to be tilted at, promptly!

In other words (and excuse my French), what the hell? Fuck me sideways, if this isn't the second most stupid thing I've heard today (I'll get back to the most stupid thing in a few minutes). Now, I know Facebook is used by many for promotion and such, especially with elections all around, companies and whatnot. I also posted a video from Youtube, and have not noticed such a feature before, so this might be related with that as well. But, but - and I want you to hear that but clonking into place there, since it's especially heavy this time - why should there be a button to promote my posts above those of others in the first place?

I'm sure the part "sponsored" will put some extra weight on the post as a small subliminal stick-in in a corner somewhere, and that's sort of who Facebook is catering for. You're the little morsel that's being handed to the big boys that want your details and money, keep that in mind. This doesn't really tick me, although it's kind of sad to see people flock to a system that is made to sell the fact they're flocking to it. What ticks me is that I'm given the option to, in a sort of micro-transactory way, bump my message above those of my peers.

I know all of the people on my friends list personally at least in some way. I don't friend strangers on Facebook. So why should my message, my little nugget of comedy gold or insight of the day or perhaps a link to the "funny ha-ha" meme I found have the option to be more important than what the other friends that my friends have might have to say?

I have yet to see any of these sponsored messages crop up in my news feed, but I suppose it's only a matter of time. What I fear is that they will be given such priority that, to combat the tide, everyone will be forced to use the promotion system if they want to get their piece of mind out there. This system is made to be another gold mine to the company, without any real value. Instead of letting the reader decide what's important, this system let's the poster do it for them.

Now, the most stupid thing I've heard all day is this. It's a few months old, but it seems the idea behind it is still solid, so I'll give a brief summary. A man lost basically all of his internet user id's, everything he had in iCloud (basically everything) and the use of all his online handles because of very flawed online security services. There have been some arguments about "oh, no, it's the hackers" and some tin-foil hatters point fingers at the fact everything's linked. Both arguments are valid, as such, but at fault here are the asinine security protocols that allowed this to happen.

Basically, if you know someone's email, name and address, you can, from Amazon, get the last four numbers of their credit card number. Not a big deal, right? It's just four numbers. Meep. Wrong. Ever heard of a company called Apple? Yes, that one. Guess what you need to get into their databanks? Those same four digits. How's that for security? Every time you order a pizza with a credit card, someone gets the info to hack into your Apple account. From there, if you're an Apple user, they can wipe anything and everything using the iCloud: all the iPhones (no exceptions) and every Apple computer you might have linked with the system.  

That's the most stupid thing I've heard today, and since these two filled my stupid-quota, I'm going to bed.

The devil you know...

Most people reading this will probably have heard the idiom in one form or another. Usually, in it's full form, it reads "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't." I've had a few discussions about how that could be interpreted, and have come to agree that it is rather open-ended when it comes to what this little string of words might mean.

In the modern world, the means of self exploration is usually psychology. Personally, however, I prefer a more philosophical approach. The forays that are made possible by mind games and personal monologue are, to me, more worthy than lengthy analysis into reflections of thoughts and actions. (Oh, and for those of you that actually know something about psychology, I know it's nothing like that, but I prefer the utterly personal touch of philosophy which I feel is missing from modern psychology - which is still better than anything Freud ever came up with.)

How do these two things link to each other, then? Well, each memory fort I build, thought exercise I undertake and each private monologue I have when cooking tells me more about me. It might not be important, it might not even be relevant, but every time I point the mirror at me, there is no other option but to atleast look at myself. And if I look, I have only two options: see, or avert my eyes.

This is the connection between the idiom and my point today. If I refuse to look upon myself, to reflect on my actions, thoughts and the ways I interfere with the world, I refuse to see what I am or am about to become. I become a stranger to myself. But if I look at what I have done and accept it - not accept as such, but accept that it has happened, it is there - I become the devil I know. And if I know me, I can control what I become. For every response I give, I can give a reason, or atleast a reason for why I don't have one. By reflecting, by looking oneself full in the eye, I can chain the beast and give it direction.

Here's a picture with no relation. This summer there were some really cool storms. I was nowhere near the hearth of any of them, but I was close enough to feel like daring the weather. Extremes are kind of awesome, from time to time.

 

Stories told

I wrote a bit about stories last year, and there proposed an idea about calling people over, to tell stories. I had a significance for such tales in mind when I wrote the post, but could not write it down in a way that would be satisfactory at the time. I'm going to try again today, maybe with more luck this time around.

Stories are, by and large, written down nowadays. Most of the stories I tell are not told, as such: I write them down, give them form and status. Writing gives stories a form that cannot be achieved without such labeling of the pieces. When one writes a story down, it includes making it fit a certain mold, certain kinds of expectations. Stories, when written down, gain status but lose freedom.

"Writer" is a profession. Have you ever heard anyone tell they're a professional storyteller? If you have, have you asked them if they were a writer? It doesn't really matter if you did, since they probably were. Storytelling is not something that happens anymore, not on a professional level. It's something that's done to pass time, or entertain children.

I don't mean to look down on writing: it's a profession much worth all the lauding it can get these days. Of course one could argue there's good literature and bad literature, but from today's point of view that's irrelevant: what we want, what we are looking for are good and bad stories.

A good book can be a bad story, and vice versa. Of course it is probable that more good books are good stories than the other way around, but for that I'd need to go to such amounts of research as I'm not prepared to today. In books, this separation is needed, whereas in stories, it is not relevant anymore.

The way the story is told is as important as the story itself, but when telling a story, there is no mold the story must fit. Told stories give free reign to the imagination in amounts that are impossible when stories need to be written down. Stories told might jumble, they might be confusing but they cannot be rigid. A story being told on the spot must flow, it needs to be like a living thing lest it wither and die.

There's a reason I've brought this up again. I've finally gone and started the storytelling evenings I talked about, a year and a half ago. The idea is even older, but now I have finally started. It's a feeble thing, still, but I've begun, and I have no meaning of stopping. Even if it is just me, telling stories to myself, I've found something worth doing, and trying to do it well.

What do we say to the god of death?

I woke up this morning to the title line, one given by Syrio Forel, swordmaster at King's Landing and the teacher of Arya in Song of Fire and Ice's first book. For those of you who don't read, just substitute the end part with "from the tv-series Game of Thrones". Anyway, it gave me a topic: epics, epica and epicness, especially in fiction.

I believe that in the bland, cubicle-bound world of today, the heart yearns for something greater. When I wrote about machismo the first time, I spoke briefly about meaning given to man by the black-and-white causes of fiction, especially in our world of grey uncertainties, but I felt I should return to the subject with a bit more detail for (hopefully) one last time.

There are endless possibilities to experience things unavailable to man otherwise through fiction. In the words of a skilled writer or the songs of a talented musician one can find a way to enter a place that is essentially different from our own. In that world, one can live the adventures of anyone and -thing, if the suspension of disbelief holds.

For me, the aforementioned suspension is paramount: the scenes and characters need to be believable. I'm a fantasy veteran, so they need not be believable in our reality, but they need to be so in their own. Often, this relates somewhat to real world sensibilities, but that makes only sense: we cannot perceive that for which we do not have any reference frame at all. There is no way for us to understand a world in more than three dimensions, for example, because we have nothing to relate it to.

If we can be immersed in the fictive reality, we can be, see and follow people and things that are beyond us in our own, subjective reality. This gives us an opening into experiences that are, on a scope that is not possible in a world where there are no ultimate rights or wrongs, epic. This is one of the most important things about fiction, the gateway that is given for us to experience something vehemently different.

As for the answer to the question given by Silvio Forres: "What do we say to the god of death?" For those of you that do not know, it is a simple one:

Not today.

Kalenteripukeutujat

Viikonlopun vaihteessa oli, kuten moni varmasti huomasi, melkoisen lämmin. Sunnuntaina keli oli suorastaan kesäinen, eikä maanantaikaan ollut missään määrin kylmä. Sunnuntaina kävin itse lenkillä, verkkarit ja ohut pitkähihainen päällä. Lähikauppaan lähdin illemmalla shortseissa ja t-paidassa, kun en jaksanut etsiä lämpimämpää päälle - ei tarvinnut. Maanantaina lähdin yliopistolle kauluspaidassa, hihat käärittyinä, farkut jalassa.

Kertaakaan minulla ei ollut kylmä, enkä kokenut olevani alipukeutunut: jos ulkona on 18 astetta lämmin, ei sinne mielestäni todellakaan tarvitse äskeisiä mainittuja enempää vaatteita. Toki ymmärrän, että viihdyn itse viileässä, ja näin pukeudun selvästi kanssaihmisiäni kevyemmin lähes aina. Sitä en kuitenkaan ymmärrä, että vastaani tuli pipoon, kaulaliinaan, kevyttoppatakkiin ja tumppuihin sonnustautuneita vilutaistelijoita kymmenittäin.

Kalenterin yläreunassa komeilee syyskuu, ja puolet päivistä on jo ehditty ruksia yli, joten suomalainen siirtyy kylmän sään varustukseen, huolimatta siitä miltä ikkunasta näyttää tai mitä lämpömittari sanoo. Sama ilmiö näkyy heinä- ja elokuussa: nyt on kesä, joten ei voi olla kylmä. Vaikka ulkona olisi kahdeksan astetta, sinne mennään shortseissa ja t-paidassa, koska Suomi-Finland-Perkele.

Kalenteripukeutumisessa itsessään ei ole mitään vikaa: jokainen saa laittaa päälleen mitä tahtoo, kiinnittäen huomiotaan vain arbitraariseen ajanmittausjärjestelmään. Mutta jos näin tekee, minua ei saa katsoa pahasti siksi, että olen omasta mielestäni sään mukaan pukeutunut, eikä minulle saa tulla valittamaan siitä, että ulkona on liian kuuma/kylmä/nihkeä. Tai siis saa, mutta sympatia voi olla kiven alla.

Pukeutukaa miten tahdotte, mutta älkää nillittäkö minulle siitä, miten minä pukeudun. Olkaa ennemmin onnellisia siitä, että minulla on vielä vaatteet päällä.

How things went B.A.D.D. (mostly by Pulling)

To most people today (and most people reading this), the acronym B.A.D.D. means nothing, and even on Google the first search result actually relating to what I'm about today is halfway down the page. The B.A.D.D. I'm talking about is Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, and how it still affects our modern culture, almost 30 years later.

Now, B.A.D.D. was started in 1984, in response to two suicides that the media, in their infinite stupidity, attributed to the up-and-rising Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying system. None of this was studied, credited or any of the sort in any way: it just seemed like a nice touch. Now, the mother of one of the suicidees, one Patricia Pulling, tied her conservative knickers in a bunch faster than you can say "one-dee-twelve-damage". With the help of an Illinois psychiatrist, Thomas Radecki, they started up Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons, a bunch of conservatist puritans and fundamentalist crazies that were, well, bothered about Dungeons & Dragons.

Mme. Pulling made a list, dubbed by right about everybody as the Pulling List, that underlined that practically every suicide, murder and act of violence in the US after the publication of D&D was due to D&D. If you had ever seen an RPG rulebook, it had caused every disfunction from thereon in. Satanistic ritual abuse equaled heavy metal music equaled roleplaying games. Some of you might remember this hypothesis from it's effect on popular culture in the nineties, especially in heavier music and any and/or all roleplaying and fantasy related. As a few examples, Black Sabbath would be the biggest on the music front and all those "larpers/rpgers are crazy cultists" rolled into a huge ball on the rpg front.

Here's an excerpt from B.A.D.D.'s manifesto on roleplaying (courtesy of Pulling). I'll let it speak for itself.

A fantasy role-playing game which uses demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder, rape, blasphemy, suicide, assassination, insanity, sex perversion, homosexuality, prostitution, satanic type rituals, gambling, barbarism, cannibalism, sadism, desecration, demon summoning, necromantics, divination and other teachings.  There have been a number of deaths nationwide where games like Dungeons and Dragons were either the decisive factor in adolescent suicide and murder, or played a major factor in the violent behaviour of such tragedies.  Since role-playing is typically used for behaviour modification, it has become apparent nationwide (with the increased homicide and suicide rates in adolescents) that there is a great need to investigate every aspect of a youngster’s environment, [sic] including their method of entertainment, in reaching a responsible conclusion for their violent actions.

Now, this should be a familiar argument, one that the "morally concerned" like to throw about that has very little backing: the hobbies of a person decide how the person turns out. I'm not even going to go into how morbid a point of view that is, it's also wrong. With music, it's been pretty fully debunked that "hard" music has pretty much any adverse effects or is in any way related to satanism or whatnot, but for some reason the feeling, when associated with roleplaying, stuck.

B.A.D.D., and especially Pulling, kept on their misguided crusade as long as it was possible. I'm unsure if they're still at it, but it is possible. When the first big trading card game, Magic: the Gathering hit the shelves, guess who was the first to cry foul about it being linked to satanism? And, as media goes, it seemed like it might sell, so it spread like wildfire. I heard a query about this very subject the last time I think two years ago. Our friends weren't allowed to play with us, because it would lead to devil worship (this, we debunked quickly, thank the lords).

Most of the misconceptions about roleplaying originate from the aforementioned group of nutjobs, and for some reason the media picked up on this every time the kid cried wolf. On to this day, roleplayers are viewed as a bit off, maybe a bit crazy, and from time to time you get the off-handed comment about satanism or whatnot when you tell people you're a roleplayer. Most people don't remember that specific argument, and most of those who do don't care about it, but the stigma remains.  

Somewhere in the back of people's minds, roleplaying remains something that creepy kids do in dark cellars, a way for the crazy nerds to be even crazier. As modern society takes hold, as more and more information becomes available, the odd, biased opinions are disappearing and people are seeing for themselves instead of just believing what they're told. But we still have some ways to go.

No quarter given, no mercy this day

We will be revisiting the subjects of machismo, fist-waving and the relations of these two today. This will be done through fictional storyworlds, mainly the one that is nowadays known as either the Tribes Universe or Tribes Canon. The Tribes have been brought back to the public view by Tribes: Ascend which is spreading through the online community like wildfire. I'll try to go through the backstory and lore a bit here, since this post might be a bit confusing otherwise, but the fine print will not be necessary for today's point.

The Tribes Universe originates from the game series Earthsiege, which later spun off into Starsiege, which became the Tribes series. Both Earthsieges and Starsiege are mecha vehicle simulation combat games with somewhat confusing bunches of lore. (On a completely unrelated note, Earthsiege is probably the reason I like mechas as much as I do.) With Starsiege came two books explaining most of the backstory, which I'll try to shortly recap here.

The series is set in the future of our universe, with the Earth united into an Empire that is rather Terrasentric. With most of our galaxy (and later further into space yet) settled, there's some dispute between Earth and the colonies that eventually (in Starsiege) spins into a full-blown civil war. At the turning point from mechas to humans and cybrids - cyber hybrids, humans that aren't humans, basically - the Empire at Terra is forced to send more and more troops further into the galaxy to quell the rebellion. Eventually, these forces fighting each other evolve from their militaristic (or not-so-militaristic) origins into tribal forces, usually referred to simply as Tribes or Tribals, that end up warring over the edges of space called the Wilderzone. All of this spins into a huge ball of fighting and blood feuds, ending in a huge tribal war at around year 4000.

At this point came out the first Tribes game, Starsiege: Tribes (later followed by Tribes 2, Tribes: Vengeance and then Tribes: Ascend), marking the beginning of the most fast-paced first person shooter game series out there. Tribes also further popularized CTF (Capture The Flag) as a game mode in shooters, a fad that was started by Quake two years prior and is now basically a hallmark in all multiplayer shooters. Anyway, Tribes: Vengeance is chronologically the first game in the series (and the only one with a single player plot), and lines out the beginning of the Tribal Wars, which are played out in the rest of the games. It's unclear how all the Tribal factions came to be, but the four largest "Tribal Nations" are Starwolf, Children of the Phoenix (the "original" Tribals), Diamond Sword and Blood Eagle (the two last ones being old forces of the Empire - Blood Eagles definitely and the Diamond Swords most probably).

Now, as I said, the plot is a bit confusing and difficult to follow, but as the Tribes games are all focused on the multiplayer aspect, backstory has never been a high priority. If this rabbling sparked some curiosity, the Tribes wiki has more on both the story and the different Tribes, although much of what's there could be called speculation. All of this brings me back to the start, however, and the subject of machismo.

It's often argued that war is inherently male, with all the flag waving, boasting and such that comes with it. I do not necessarily fully agree with this, but testosterone seems to have a lot to do with punching people in the face. That said, I find some small part of me inherently answering to the call of duty, honor and blood. I would not wish to take arms for a cause in person because there are few, if none, causes worthy enough, but the fictional possibility to do so caters to me on some level. (And no, nationalism isn't a good reason, it's a fake ideal and the faster we transcend it the better.)

The title of this post is a quote from the newest Tribes game, Tribes: Ascend. Specifically, it's one of the game opening quotes of Blood Eagles. The game has only two of the four large Tribes (the previous two titles having had all four), the Blood Eagles and Diamond Swords. There's a very real difference between the two factions, with Blood Eagles being more the out-for-war, scorched earth faction and Diamond Swords being more the "war philosophers". Both seem to follow a rigorous code of honor, but ones that differ from each other sufficiently to make the teams feel different.

Blood Eagles are more about just pushing it to the limit with full-blown conflict, all out from the start. "No quarter given, no mercy this day." "We'll push those sand-rakers off our world." "We'll make the Sworders pay for their treachery." The Butchers are more savage and more outright and clearly cater more with the machismo. If you don't take my word for it, just take a look at their nickname.

The Diamond Swords are more mystical and aloof, with a more thinking approach to the subject of war. "Invincibility lies in the defense, the possibility of victory in the attack." The Sworders are a tactical tribe, made out to be some sort of space samurai.

Now, the whole game is about these two trashing it out 200mph. The whole point has been to create a sort of juvenile fantasy setting where war is the thing, because it just is. It's kind of goofy if you ever stop to think about it, but on some level, it works. Giving it to the other guy just because he's the other guy - sprinkled with a million underlying reasons and history - works as fiction: it's a perfect steam valve. When I get the urge to cave in some heads, it's not real heads. Gaming doesn't make me more violent, just the opposite: the machismo and stupidly over-done attitude is an outlet. You won't find me caving in heads at the grill because I need to vent my frustrations.

No quarter given, no mercy this day.

Quotes, part 2

There are quotes that are good, quotes that are bad, quotes that feel personal, quotes that feel universal, quotes that pluck one's chords and quotes that seem needless. But there are, in our modern world, a lot of quotes: popular culture and all it's tropes make an endless source of material. Today, I intend to share a few quotes with you, for varying reasons. This first one, as a world view. Also, there's a lot of artsy photographs I've taken during the summer, so there'll be a few of those too.

The appropriate reaction to reality is to go insane.
- Philip K. Dick

We live in a crazy, senseless world. There are senseless people that do senseless things, stuff that simply happens for no reason at all. Entropy is a fact, not fiction, and there's no point in fighting it. In the words of many an aspiring musical poet (rappers, usually), ride the wave.

This wonderful piece was done by Evan Robertson. He's done a set of these, with a piece of art attached to each quote. I found this one to speak the loudest, to me.

The modern need for quotes has made a market for people with a penchant for quotes. When everything is put down somewhere, the ability to put down something meaningful starts to mean a lot. Not all aspirants succeed, of course: most don't. There are those, however, that manage to make something with words. One of such people is Paul Graham, a lisp programmer turned investor and essayist. A man of many words, but he has his bright moments. 

Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as "suits."

- Paul Graham

 

Nerds don't just happen to dress informally. They do it too consistently. Consciously or not, they dress informally as a prophylactic measure against stupidity.

- Paul Graham

 

 Those two speak for themselves about clothing and it's means and meaning, so I'll pull this to a close with a couple of pictures. 

 

Before that, however, a few words yet. This is, as most will know, the last day of August. I promised, back about four months ago, that there would be 40 posts from this summer here come the end of summer. Now, September rolls in tomorrow, and this is the 40th post. I've enjoyed rambling about things: writing clarifies thoughts. There are ventures that were left halfway, others that I pulled through with, and some things I promised I'd write about and still haven't. Thus, I'll try to keep on writing through the winter to come. I hope some of this is worth a read, since most of this has been worth writing. Now, here's those pictures, and have a nice autumn.

 

 

Hahmoja

Jokaisen silmissä hieman erilaisia, nähtynä läheltä tai kaukaa, selvästi tai kuin huurretun lasin läpi, nimittäin fiktiivisiä hahmoja.

Elokuvat jättävät hahmoihin vain rajallisesti tulkinnanvapautta. Hahmon ulkonäkö on elokuvissa enemmän tai vähemmän määritelty, ja näyttelijän (ja ohjaajan) tulkinnat vaikuttavat paljolti siihen, miten hahmo tulee näyttäytymään elokuvaa katsoville. Kirjoissa harvoin hahmoja kuvaillaan niin tarkasti, että näin tarkka kuva muodostuisi - lasten- ja nuortenkirjallisuudessa toki enemmän. Tämä on tietysti yleistys, johon vaikuttaa kirjailijan tendenssi, kirjallisuuden laji ja se konventiot ja varmaankin kaikki kuun asennosta lähtien. Minulle kirjalliset hahmot ovat kuitenkin jättäneet aina enemmän vapautta lähestyä hahmoa.

Ymmärrän, että monet kirjat, erityisesti kun genrenä on ollut fantasia, haluavat näyttää päähahmon tai -hahmoja kannessa. Minusta, jos hahmoa ei ole kuvattu melkoisen tarkasti, tämä on tungettelevaa. En minä halua nähdä, mikä jonkun yleensä melko keskinkertaisen taiteilijan näkemys on siitä persoonasta, jonka matkaan minä aion lyöttäytyä seuraavaksi muutamaksi sadaksi sivuksi. Kuin uhmaiän pahimmassa alhossa oleva lapsi, kapinoin kuitenkin tätä vastana: minä tahdon muodostaa kuvani tuosta hahmosta itse!

Moni kirjoittaja toki kuvaa hahmonsa tarkasti, jopa niin yksityiskohtaisen tarkasti, että tulkinnanvaraa jää vain vähän. Itse vaikutun lähes kaikista taiteen muodoista helposti, mutta usein tempaudun erityisesti sellaisten hahmojen matkaan, jotka luodaan vähäeleisesti. Mitä vähemmän rivejä kirjailija käyttää hahmonsa sinänsä toisarvoisten ominaisuuksien kuvailuun, sitä enemmän tilaa hänellä on näyttää, millainen hänen hahmonsa todella on, miten tämä toimii, millaisia valintoja tämä tekee tilanteissa, joihin hänet asetetaan.

Minulle minimin kautta hahmojen luonti toimii. Kun oma mielikuvitukseni täyttää aukot, joita teksti jättää, hahmo muodostuu minulle helpommin läheiseksi kuin puusta veistetty pahvileikkaus, johon on mahdotonta enää lisätä mitään sellaista, joka kirjoittajalle ei jo ollut tullut mieleen. Kuvittelen vain harvoin, miltä hahmo näyttää, mutta jonkinlainen hahmon muotoinen kuva päässäni muodostuu. Tähän sitten lisään, tarinan edetessä, piirteitä, jotka hahmosta ilmenevät, ja kuvani täyttyy. En muista koskaan tietoisesti kehitelleeni jonkun muun hahmoon jotain lisää, mutta mielikuvitukseni pyrkii kyllä täyttämään ne aukot, joita tarina jättää.

On vaikea sanoa, mistä hyvä hahmo koostuu. Jotkin mielestäni hyvät hahmot ovat protagonisteja, toiset antagonisteja, jotkut käytännössä statisteja. Jokin syy tällaisen minusta hyvän hahmon muodostumiselle kuitenkin on, ja kun löydän hahmon josta pidän, yleensä todella pidän tästä hahmosta. Muutamia esimerkkejä omista lempihahmoistani keksin välittömästi: Robin Hobbin Näkijän Taru -trilogian tallimestari Burrick, Dan Simmonsin Hyperionien Fedmahn Kassad ja viimeisimpänä Steven Eriksonin Malazan Book of the Fallenin Itkovian, Shield Anvil of Fener.

Kun löydämme todellisen hyvän hahmon, joka on hyvin kirjoitettu ja tuntuu aidolta, kiinnymme tähän hahmoon. Lähdemme matkalle hänen mukaansa, hänen tarinaansa. Seisomme hänen rinnallaan ylä- ja alamäissä, taistelun kentällä ja katharsiksen hetkellä. Kun tarina seuraa muita hahmoja, haluaisimme jo tietää, miten meidän sankarillemme käy. Jos sankarimme voittaa, juhlimme hänen kanssaan, jos hän häviää, mekin tunnemme tuon tappion. Jos hän kuolee, me itkemme hänen kumppaniensa mukana.

Minulle kirjallisesti tämän vuoden vaikuttavin hetki on ollut jo mainitsemani Eriksonin Malazan Book of the Fallenin kolmannen kirjan lopussa. (Jos jollakulla muuten on aikaa ja mielenkiintoa lukea kymmisen tuhatta sivua, joihin sisältyy myös muutama isku vasten lukijan kasvoja, suosittelen sarjan lukemista.) Olen oikeasti, todella kiintynyt jo mainittuun hahmoon, Itkovianiin. Itkovian tuntui aidolta hahmolta, joka teki asioita aidoista syistä. Loppuratkaisua keneltäkään pilaamatta Itkovianin kirjan viimeinen valinta ja sen seuraukset olivat minulle luultavasti vuosiin vaikuttavin kirjasta lukemani tapahtuma.

Hyvät, meille tärkeät hahmot jättävät meihin jäljen, joka pysyy pitkään. Fiktion isoimpia aarteita ovatkin nämä persoonat, jotka, olematta välttämättä koskaan oikeita, tekevät meihin tällä tavalla vaikutuksen.

More of the pictures!

And since the previous post was a bit wintry, here's something with a bit more "summer" attitude. And yes, I'm still practically addicted to light photography. Hobbies, eh?

Pictures

It's been a long while since I've done one of these, so here goes. I'll be doing another one the coming week, too. Now, I know it's only early autumn, but as Eddard Stark so aptly put it, winter is coming. So here's some winter moods from last year.

Now, I realised that I've never put up the most classic "blogger from Jyväskylä" picture, which is a sort of a town promo picture with one of the two characteristic bridges of Jyväskylä showing. So here's one: my gift to the promotion of our beautiful town. (I'd like to point out that even though the bridges are cool, the town has quite a lot of other, beautiful stuff as well. We're a bit too stuck next to the lake with the promotion material.)

Now, it's been a long week, so I'm off to bed. I'll have more time to do some thought sinks here next week, I hope. Be back then, for now, enjoy the last of the summer and the first breaths of autumn. Enjoy the morning fogs and the evening hazes: they'll be gone too fast.

That thing belongs in a museum

I've been talking about movies here a lot this past summer. There's at least a partial reason behind this: summer, for me, is a time of movies. As I have much spare time during the summer months, and many of the big Hollywood blockbusters roll out during the summer season, my summers have often been devoted to movies, both the new and the old that I have missed. As I have a penchant for talking about what's on my mind specifically at the moment I start talking, or in this case, writing, it should come as no surprise that movies crop up a lot during the summer. Anyway, we'll be talking about movies today. Again.

I went to watch the Expendables 2 on monday, kind of on a whim. For those of you wandering if you should watch it: it's better than the first one, but it's nothing new. Then again, if you thought it would be, a reality check might be in order. It's sometimes gruesome, sometimes stupid and sometimes funny, and it piggybacks off nostalgia very heavily. If you loved the 90's action flicks and/or the action hero mentality of that time, the movie is clearly meant for you. If you didn't but want to see a little boys' grown up flick, it's probably meant for you anyway. Let's go into a few specifics.

Anyone who's seen a commercial, trailer or anything of the sort for the movie should know by now that the movie is practically more of what the first Expendables was but with a bigger budget and more of the 90's action stars rolled in. The movie isn't soulless, not like the new Spiderman, but it's not high culture either. It's meant to be a blockbuster that rakes in the 20- and 30-somethings that loved the action scene when they were kids, but with a touch of more modern style to bring in the younger audiences as well. It succeeds okay in all of this, with none of the parts truly shining.

To me, the most interesting (if not the best) part of the movie was Chuck Norris telling a Chuck Norris joke: the amount of meta put into that was somewhat huge. Overall, the movie's biggest running gag is making fun about all the tropes that the 80's and 90's gave to the action scene and the jokes run really thick in places. Most of them aren't that good, but their biggest point is, I think, being easy. I don't think I missed one.

As I said, the the movie relies heavily on nostalgia and the action hero machismo. The movie even prods fun at it's own nostalgia drive, with one of the last lines of the movie being "That thing belongs in a museum" by Sylvester Stallone, replied with "Don't we all?". Overall I like the take on nostalgia that the movie takes: nothing too serious, nothing too deep, and poking fun at itself for doing it all the while. I'll get back to nostalgia on a later date, so let's see about the machismo part.

Machismo is usually a word used contemptuously: it's a bad thing to be macho or to like things macho. And still, action movies like this one rake in viewers in their thousands, wanting to see guys punch the lights out of each other. These action flicks, the scifi and fantasy from the 1950's onwards (especially the pulp) and the tropes from thereon have always leaned on the juvenile male empowerment fantasy: the comic book industry has made basically all of its money on this and only this until the 1990's, and still makes most of it's money on this today. We might get back to that, but that's a can of worms I don't want to open today.

Machismo, as despised as it may seem to be, sells. I'm using the word on purpose here, by the way, even though it doesn't cover much more than maybe half of what I'm actually talking about. Personally, I often love the scenes where one or a few guys take on overwhelming odds in an outstanding display of bravery and skill. Heroic last stands, lone heroes plunging into an unwinnable fray, personal sacrifices for the greater good... this list is much longer, but you get the jist.

I don't much like the character cults that rise around these kinds of things, nor do I usually like the angsty, broody heroes that get tossed into these situations. To me, it's about a choice: you see the odds, you know the tally is against you, and you do it anyway. One of the coolest moments in video games, for me, in the last few years? Gabriel Angelos, Commander of the Blood Ravens, charging alone against former Chapter Master turned Demon Lord Azariah Kyras, with one last comment to the Chapter Librarian: "Commend my service to the Emperor, Librarian. I go now, to redeem our Chapter."

Somehow, the Space Marines (and, sometimes, the Imperial Guard) of the Warhammer 40 000 universe embody the traits I prefer in this sort of machismo: they wage an unwinnable war against uncountable foes and yet they don't quit: indeed, they fight tooth and nail for every inch of ground given.

This is why games and books and movies are awesome: there are no heroic last stands to be had in our world, there is no one higher cause to fight for that surpasses all others, and thus it is left to fiction to give us those fleeting moments of utter certainty. Fiction shows us things that are not, and by showing them gives us a sense of what might be entitled in that. Fiction shows us certainty that is not present in our everyday world, fiction shows us heroes with a righteous cause that cannot be disputed. This, to me, is why machismo sells.

Of course, fiction also mirrors us the ambivalency of choices, the uncertainty of life and the fact that there are no right choices, no ultimate battle between good and evil, black and white, but only questionable shades of grey. But that is, indeed, a story for another time.

If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic

Some readers might recognize the title as a quote, whereas to some the style of the message might simply feel familiar. It's an outtake from a longer text quote, here for your viewing in full:

WARNING. If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think everything you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told you should want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned ...... Tyler.

The name at the end, for most people of my generation or around it, will ring a bell. This quote appears at the beginning of the Fight Club DVD, as a form of mockery for the corporate label warnings usually found on DVDs. Now, I know it's not very hip to say you like the Fight Club nowadays, since it has become such a huge cult item, an idea in and of itself, that simply voicing that you like it is considered, in today's cultural rush for uniqueness and originality, crass. While the movie has been analyzed piece by piece with such scrutinous detail that there is in reality nothing that I could add, I'd like to bring it out to the table for a minute anyway.

I like Fight Club. I'm not even hipster enough to claim that I liked it "before it was cool". Hell, I didn't even see it the year it came out, but only two years later, in 2001. Most people claim that cult classics are getting too much credit without ever stopping to wonder why. Fight Club, for me, is a movie that drastically changed my world views. It did not make me an anarchist, it did not make me burn down buildings, beat up people or blow up a whole banking district. Actually, I have to make a derailed argument here, but it's only a short one, so bear with me.

Intermission

I watch a lot of movies, I play a lot of games, I spend a lot of time on the internet. The movie theater Batman shooting that happened only a short while ago is still on the public wall, and with the Norway police report out at the start of this week, there's been a lot of talk about how we could prevent stuff like the horrible, horrible scenes of Norway and Colorado. Here's my two cents: we can't. I'm sorry, but that's the short of it. For a bit longer explanation, here goes. The big three things I mentioned at the start of this paragraph do a lot to define me as a person: they are my cultural backround. A lot of the stuff I watch and play is violent, some of it excessively so. Now comes the important part, so listen up: these things do not make me into a cold-blooded, crazy killer. I will not go on a killing rampage due to any of the things I've just mentioned. Get that? Good.

We live in a chaotic, uncontrollable world. That's scary, and I get that. People want control over their lives, and events like these take that away, which makes us feel insecure, and that's not a nice place to be. But entropy is a part of what life is: we can't control all the parts, we simply need to go with it. And unless we want to live in a world where there is no free will (and I'm not even going to go into the amount of violent problems something like that might cause), there is no way we can prevent all of these kinds of events. Some, we can, and those that we can we should. But there have always been people who have gone stir crazy, and for some you just couldn't tell until they snapped. Biggest difference now is that it's easier to go crazy with a bigger volume of destruction. The world is not a perfect place, and it can't be fully controlled.

/Intermission

So, Fight Club. While I don't agree with everything (or, actually much of) what is done in the movie, I appreciate it for what it's trying (and, atleast for me, partially succeeding) to do. The whole point of movies is to depict things that would be atleast partially impossible for the average viewer: to show them something from beyond their own little bubble of a world. And Fight Club is a wake-up call. Here's what I think it's trying to say.

Wake up, people! Your life is here and now, and if you don't do anything with it, it's done. The movie goes to an extreme: in today's bland, toned down world, the only way to feel alive is to start a fight: to punch the lights out of a guy, and get yours punched out too. I learn something new every time I watch Fight Club (which I do about once every two-three years), and my view of the movie has changed between each watching: as I change, my perception of the movie changes. But it is still good, and the message is still valid. Life is now, and you don't have save points. Get out there, do something that matters.

(Edit: Read that last sentence in a Christopher Walken voice, in your head. So much better.)

Music Matters

Now, this post could either be about matters that somehow affect or are affected by music, or about how music matters. Because I'm explaining the crappy pun I made in the title, some of you may have already guessed where I'm going with this: I'll be talking about both. A word of warning, this will be a collection of musings and as such, might be a bit hard to follow.

Music alters mood, and mood alters what kind of music you want to hear. This isn't really news, it's, as Terry Pratchett put it so well in his Discworld book The Times, Olds. But it's kind of hard to actually give people news nowadays, and the most I hope for most of the time is a sort of a new view of the olds.

There's been a lot of research into what the music we listen to tells about us, and some definitive answers have been given. A lot more interesting research, however, has been done in the fields of how we perceive music. For example, the research put into how we automatically label the major scale as happy and minor scale as sad is really, really interesting. As far as I'm aware, they still don't know, but the facts so far are that the perception is rather universal, discounting the people neural disabilities concerning music. Oh, and people seem to have a hardwired scale of music in their brain, this being specifically the pentatonic scale. Don't believe me? You don't have to, you can believe Bobby McFerrin:

The pentatonic scale, unlike the heptatonic (from which the major and minor scales derive) uses five notes per octave and is common all around the world. It seems to be a sort of a prototype musical scale that everyone has somewhere around the lizard brain, or something. They don't really know, or if they do, they haven't explained it so that I would understand it. But you have to admit, it's really cool. Here's to hoping they don't stop researching stuff like this.

I mentioned that music alters mood and vice versa, but I've noticed a bit of a different personal note on this as well. It might be more common, but since I don't know I won't be making assumptions. My musical taste fine tunes by the change of the seasons. Some basing for this might be in order, so: I listen to almost everything, from dance music to electronic hard core trance, hard rock to ballads, heavy to instrumental classic. I don't have a definitive music taste, and I'm actually slipping further away from anything specifically definitive more and more as time passes by. But there's something I have noticed about my musical tastes: it changes slightly with the seasons.

When summer starts rolling into autumn, with the darkening August nights, in come the moody, filled-with-feeling ballad types of music, the likes of the kind of stuff you'd hear in a Modern Western when there's a montage where the hero travels days and weeks alone, through whatever wasteland or forested mountains is the imagery of the day. Maybe a bit upbeat, maybe with a touch of energy, but kind of lonesome and moody. Lonesome ballads shifting through the fabric of songs, the balance getting darker and moodier the further into the darkening autumn we go.

When spring really arrives, I feel the urge to listen to energetic music, the kind that makes you dance and jump and run, with nothing between you and all of the open world: stuff that really gets you pumped.

This isn't to say that I listen to only this kind of stuff in a given season: actually, even changes in weather and what I've been doing fine tune my playlist. I have a song for biking fast in the rain, honestly. For some reason it just rolls around in my head whenever it's raining and I'm going somewhere, on a bike, fast. That song is this one:

More into music, I want to maybe introduce you to three artists, all of whom I first met through soundtracks. My advice, to all of you: listen to soundtracks. It's an awesome way to find new artists, if Spotify isn't really your thing. There's soundtrack veterans like Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams, who are veritable legends of the trade, but especially indie games and some new movies and games are awesome places to find new artists. Onwards, to the three I wish for you to meet.

First off, Eddie Vedder. This man's voice is like ear chocolate. He's the person behind the soundtrack of the movie Into the Wild (which you should watch as well. It's a bit different, but in a good way). Out of that movie, this is my favorite song. Eddie Vedder - Society.

Next up, Woodkid. He's a bit of a budding artist, having done one short ep and two singles so far. Him, I found through Assassin's Creed: Revelations trailer. He uses a bit different set of instruments for his songs, and this one personally I think rocks socks off kittens with claw issues. For this specific song, the video rocks as well. May I present  Woodkid - Run Boy Run.

Last, but not least, the man behind the game Bastion, which I think I've been saying good things about here before. Well, if I have, it deserves a second mention: Bastion is a storytelling and gameplay integration masterpiece, with a story and characters you learn to love throughout the story. If you don't have it, get it. If possible, get it with the soundtrack. The man behind the soundtrack, by the way, is Darren Korb. The soundtrack is a well-themed combination piece that holds as a whole while at the same time variating enough to make each song feel different. It's good on it's own, and it's awesome in Bastion. The theme song of one of the characters, however, is one of the most touching things I've listened to in years. Darren Korb - Mother, I'm Here.

This concludes today's post, so I'll just leave you with a parting thought. Listen to music, lots and lots of music. Listen to new music, because you can never know what you might like. Music is awesome. Music matters.

Spiritual Quest, the End

As the math geeks who read this blog will know, I have, with the fourth step and movie, reached the end of my four step and movie spiritual quest of skipping along the happy paths of nostalgia to take a look at the pop culture powerhouse that was the 90's Batman movies.

As some critical readers may have noticed, I was, in all my steps, overly critical. This was by means. I set out to dethrone the false ideas and misconceptions we hold about the past, mostly in my own limited little brain, but set out I did. This final step on my journey is meant to gather up what I learned, so it doesn't need to be gleaned from my ramblings throughout the week. Unless you like that sort of thing, I've heard critical criticism (sounds kind of stupid, doesn't it - see what I did here?) is all the rage right now, and I've heard I'm easy to laugh at.

The quest began here. Actually, it began two days prior to there, when a friend of mine got a total knee-jerk reaction to Batman & Robin. An otherwise enlightened, intelligent individual got totally worked up about a movie, because it was supposedly so bloody awful that it was painful to watch. My friend couldn't reason this any further, it was just awful, period. I've seen this on the internet a lot, and it clashes with my personal memory of the movie. Sure, it's not groundbreaking, it's not even very good, but it's not G.I. Joe bad. (Okay, that's unfair, because nothing, except maybe Dragonball: Evolution is that bad. Don't watch them, just trust me on this. Or do, but don't blame me.)

This set me to thinking: the first two movies were really confusing to me as a kid, and I remember being afraid of the second one. The third one, I remember kind of liking and the fourth one, to me, was a bit bland but still ok. So, I set out to find out what was going on. I watched each of the movies in rapid succession (it took me a bit over four days to watch them all), made notes of each one and rambled about all of them here. My spiritual quest, thus, had a total of four steps. 1. 2. 3. 4. To summarize: (This will contain spoilers, as do the steps. If you don't want spoilers about the movies, don't read these.)



I can see how the first movie would be groundbreaking: back in the turn of the decade, starting off the 90's, it surely was. Thanks to that movie, we probably have the Avengers today (and definitely have the Dark Knight -franchise because of it). It also launched Tim Burton's career, and you can easily see where his imagery comes from. As a movie, it's a confusing jumble of stuff that doesn't really get explained or tied together. Here's a picture to pull it all together.

The Joker, the money, the brain numbing idiocy of it all.

Not that big a deal, right? Wrong. This is a picture of the Joker, giving out money. Fun fun fun! No. This is a picture of a guy who's killed people on national tv and is on every police wanted list (or atleast should be) giving out money while half the population of Gotham is there because hey, it's not like he's a killer. The real swinger of this party: there are no cops in sight, even though he announced he'd be there a day early, again on national tv. No wonder there are so many criminals in Gotham, if the Gotham's finest are this fine. This kind of sums the movie up: it's really, really, really stupid, to such extent that it's kind of insulting. Other than that, if you like gothic imagery, it's okay.

Next in line, Batman Returns. These are kids' movies, remember? Keep that in mind, and look at the main bad guy in the movie for a second.

I would've had creepier pictures, but the whole eating raw fish thing kind of underlines my point. This is the Burton aesthetic people cry out for so often: oh, if only more movies were like this. This is a children's movie, and this is really fucking creepy. This guy caused nightmares, and then there's the part where Selina Kyle gets eaten by cats and returns as a, uh, zombie, I guess? Even if this were an adult's movie, this would be sort if disgusting and a bit more than a bit creepy. Oh, yeah, the Penguin wants to kill all the firstborn sons of Gotham that are, you know, kids. This is a kid's movie. Now, have you gotten the jist of this, as in that it's really creepy? Good, then you're prepared for the rocket pack penguins.

You got it right. Rocket. Pack. Penguins.

The movie is so inconsintently jumping from being scary to being funny that it seems like it's done by a bipolar man. And it really doesn't make much more sense than the first movie: there's a token motivation for the Penguin, but other than that, the bad guys are bad, Batman is good, punching ensues. Visually and theme-vise, it's a Tim Burton selfwank. In my opinion, it's maybe the worst movie out of the bunch.

Batman Forever. There are more pictures in the Step 3 post, but to summarize: horribly, horribly Schumacher. Suddenly, there's, instead of gothic, neon lights everywhere (and a touch of gothic, because Burton's still on the production team). There is, however, real character development and a plot that, at least kind of, makes sense. It's a kid's movie, though, and this time it actually shows. It's kind of juvenile, but in a way you can laugh at even as an adult. Two-Face isn't that good, especially since the A-list actors as bad guys thing is really kind of stupid and holding the series back as a whole, but. Oh, yeah, and the amount of vaguely veiled sex appeal that is Nicole Kidman and Drew Barrymore in this movie is a bit confusing, since it's a kid's movie, but maybe they needed an early onset of puberty for a generation or something.

Out of the bunch, Batman Forever was the best movie to me. It's a lot more consistent, it makes a lot more sense, and while the neon disco that the movie is is kind of awkward, it's better than the wet-yourself-in-horror-if-you're-younger-than-ten that's Batman Returns. Sometimes, it's really horrible (especially in the aesthetics department) but that, I guess, is life. How horrible, you ask? How's this?

Last but not least, Batman & Robin. I think this movie suffers from three problems in the public mind, as it isn't as bad as people claim it to be. Then again, nothing much ever is, but dissing something on the net is all the rage. But, the problems. The Big One: the kids who loved the first Batman films as, well, kids, were in their teens or early adulthood when B&R finally hit the theatres. By this point, they were fans, and seeing as Batman Forever kind of went for a bit more adult-ey direction, they probably figured they'd be getting more of the same, in a better package. Too bad Warner Bros wanted all the Batman movies to be kid's movies, to pump out a new toy line with them that would print them money. Yes, it was all about money. So, teens that had, at last, the internet at their fingertips, went into a movie expecting a sort of an adult take of Batman, and got the vaguely homoerotic running gag that is B&R. The infuriated teens, unable to understand or appreciate the joke, took out their rage in this newfound medium that let them rage so that everyone could see it. Extrapolate and add about ten years, and there's a whole cultural sect grown into the belief that Batman & Robin is the deed of the devil himself.

Reason number two: Joel Schumacher is openly gay. He was openly gay back then, and for a while before that. This was already common knowledge back then. All of you who were young back in the 1990's, quick, what was the biggest insult of the late part of the decade, atleast among boys? Did you answer "gay" or a variant thereof? Spot on, jolly chap! In the late 1990's teen culture, it was definitely not cool to be gay, be associated with anything gay, or anything even remotely close to thereof. And then there's this gay director, making a movie that begins with body shots of two men in skintight rubber armors, all the way to codpieces and buttshots and continues with a few (there's actually pretty few of them, really) kind of maybe homoerotic insinuations in there.

Buttshots.

You'll notice I've used the term knee-jerk reaction with B&R a lot. This one got the biggest. "This movie is maybe gay, I must hate it. This conversation is over or you're a faggot." Of course, you couldn't really say shit like this out loud, not even back then, so you ended up with "it's just complete shit, okay" type of arguments.

Did you notice the part about a joke in the first reason? That's the third reason. The movie is one big joke. I think over half of Freezes lines are crappy ice-related one liners, and the movie prods fun at the comics, the other movies, the Bat franchise, the old Adam West tv show Batman... Remember this?

Yup, it's the Bat credit card.

Now look at it, really look at it for a moment. Notice the expiration date? It's a joke. Also, I suppose everyone is familiar with the Adam West show Bat shark repellant by now. If not, here you go. Overall, the Batsuit's utility belt could and would hold anything in that show. This is a joke about that. Robin, actually, like five seconds earlier, says: "It's a utility belt, not a money belt." Schumacher actually was a Batman fan and even read the comics (this making him unique among Batman directors). He's poking fun at all the goofy aspects that have riddled Batman throughout the ages, and every one was too busy being pissed to notice. I noticed, and some of the jokes actually made me laugh. Well done, Joel.

Overall, B&R isn't that good of a movie. As I go through in Step 4, the rubber Bane and cheeky, badly typecasted Freeze don't really make good bad guys, and Thurman's Poison Ivy is kind of inconsistent. However, none of the other movies is actually too good either. As far as movies go plotwise, Batman & Robin beats the two first movies, although Forever does win in that category.

There are a few other things that trouble the whole quartet: the plots are pretty thin at best, motivations are often nonexistent, and the world's greatest detective doesn't really do any detective work. There's a bit in the last two movies, but all the detective stuff in Batman Returns is done by Alfred.

There's two characters that stay the same throughout the four movies: Michael Gough's Alfred is the most consistent character by far in the series (and I actually love the way he does Alfred). The second character to stay the same is Commissioner Gordon, played by Pat Hingle, although he is mostly consistently incompetent. Talk about a steep learning curve.

Overall, nostalgia has been proven somewhat wrong on this subject. I kind of liked the movies as a kid, but watching them now I can see how the part "kid" might have been paramount there. Okay movies, definitely part of popular culture history, have not aged very well. As a series, maybe two, two and a half stars out of five. A definite two without Forever, and even with that a bit on the hinges. Kind of worth a watch, if it's the summer, you're stuck indoors and there's nothing much to do.