Problem Machine

I made a more kinda piano type thing. I think it's pretty good. Every Scratch in the Wood

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a large enough segment of the population believes something is a nazi symbol... that basically makes it one, doesn't it? I mean that's how symbols work, right?

What I like about The Principal and the Pauper is similar to what I like about The Flying Hellfish -- they reveal a completely new side of a relatively staid character. I think TPatP does it better, though, because Armin Temzarian makes so much sense as a character: He just does whatever people expect/want him to, and always has. When people expected him to be a bum, he was a bum; when Skinner expected him to shape up and be a proper soldier, he shaped up; when Agnes expected him to be Skinner, he became Skinner; and, when he was expected to be a bum again, he quietly and dutifully went back to being a bum. This behavior is so entirely like what we've come to expect from 'Skinner' that I never really understood why people regarded it as a radical departure.

Something interesting that occurred to me during the conversation about Thimbleweed Park's classic approach and how unusual it is right now is that that's kind of what the original pitch for the Double Fine Adventure was, it just ended up being such a successful kickstarter that they couldn't go with a restrained project like that any more. It's strange to think about a game's early success warping it so far out of the original concept.

Yes! Another person who likes the Principal and the Pauper! Take that prevailing opinions!

Even if a 6 point lead is commanding in terms of electoral results, those numbers being anywhere NEAR each other has me very worried. That 40-odd percent won't disappear when this election is over

Personally I was struck by the sorrow of the piece. I find it weird seeing it framed as a take down or hit piece or whatever. Is it character assassination to say that Trump probably doesn't actually want to be president? Is it negative to say that his campaign draws more energy from resentment rather than aspiration? These seem like a very narrow way to interpret a piece of writing but, okay, whatever. I think it's worthwhile to understand that people don't always want things for the reasons they say they want them, and we often end up pursuing things we don't really want at all.

It's a lousy way to talk about art and thought. The point of thinking is that we don't know where it will lead, don't know how it will be useful. Unless you can make an argument for it being actually detrimental, this seems like a really shitty response to something that many people seem to find meaningful and insightful.

I think evaluating any and all writing on the subject of Trump solely by how many trump voters it's likely to convert is not very useful or respectful, especially since that number will generally hover pretty close to zero. Things that help us understand and express the phenomenon, things that arm us rhetorically to deal with him and his ilk in the future, and things which help relieve the massive anxiety around this election and find a future to believe in have a place in our lives. No one's going to write the magic bullet, but I have a hard time believing that having all this reasoned thought and discourse about what's going wrong is worse than not having it.

I got Sean and Jake pretty quickly, but still have a hard time distinguishing between Nick and Steve when they're both on

Yeah I was just talking to someone today about how often I'd get halfway through a piece arguing for something or other, then realize I didn't actually believe what I was arguing for and have to go back and figure out what I was actually talking about. I think creation is always a journey of self-discovery, and sometimes that can be really inconvenient.

Yay Seancast! Also, even if a campaign-cast is beyond what Sean wants to do, I'd love it if he at least came back and talked about the game he's running, since I'm sure a lot of really interesting discussion could come out of that.

I think I addressed this. In TBG, the narrator is also playing the role of the author of the game. You can go another layer down and think about an author writing the author character... who is also 'Davey', and also played by the narrator, so that kinda ends up being a turtles all the way down situation. I'd say that's a feature rather than a bug, but I suppose that's a matter of taste.

Yeah, or any story written from the PoV of a dead character. The only thing that makes TBG unusual in this regard is that the game tacitly acknowledges the existence of the commentary apparatus, equivalent to a character talking directly to the camera in juv3nal's example. And it'd be totally fair to find that jarring, I suppose, but it would be difficult to untangle from the core concept of the game in this case.

I dunno what you mean? I definitely think of the narrator as being distinct from the author, though within the context of the piece the narrator plays the role of the author.

It's one of those things where that makes no sense, I know it makes no sense, and I give zero shits that it makes no sense. If you really want to justify it, it's easy to headcanon that Davey wanted to share this epiphany he had while recording his commentary and so he packaged it in. Generally, though, I think this is one of those things where a work asks for a small buy-in so that it can pull you deeper into the narrative -- also, the premise would be hard to execute on without that, unless he made the game episodic or something.

Wouldn't that be... true of like every art ever basically?

Man I want to see that. That's the sort of thing you could actually base an entire show idea around I think, though you'd have to have the scope all planned out which isn't generally how American TV is done.

I think for a lot of us the similarity to Mr Burns is a feature rather than a bug. The whole episode is kind of a fun-house mirror version of Springfield, where everything is nicer to an absurd degree that does a great job of underlining the ridiculousness of Springfield's everyday happenings by inverting them. Scorpio isn't just a nice boss, he's THE NICEST boss, absurdly nice to the point where instead of giving bonuses he adds a story to someone's house. Cypress Creek is so ridiculously accommodating that it has an entire hammock district. But the fact is that the Simpsons can't live in a nice world, they reject it like humans rejected the too-nice version of The Matrix. It does a great job of highlighting what's great about the characters on the show by contrasting them against opposites. It's kind of a variation on the themes introduced by the Shelbyville episode, but with Albert Brooks being great to back it up. (as an aside, I'm currently living in Eugene, OR, most likely the town Shelbyville was based on)

I wrote a bit about why the humble estus flask is the unsung hero of the Dark Souls "tough but fair" style of game design, and the surprising precedent for that design (hint: it rhymes with 'Cars Fly Too')

I was actually just talking in the Slack a bit ago about how much I like the idea of a seemingly mundane person having some kind of crazy story in their past, so that setup really works for me even if it seems contradictory -- hell, maybe even BECAUSE it seems contradictory, that this incredibly heroic figure just kind of receded into his life and became utterly unremarkable, even kind of contemptible, to the point where no one would ever believe they were the same person, actually feels really powerful to me. As a character that has a history of making incredible claims that we kind of assume are complete bullshit, it calls all those assumptions into question and adds a sense of mystery to the character. Then again, I also like Armond Temzarian, so obviously I'm not in the majority when it comes to character developments like that. The burlesque song isn't especially strong, and I didn't like that episode's characterization of Marge, but there's a lot of gags I really like in that one still, most notably the one with Abe walking through the front door.

It feels like you're coming down really harshly on these episodes for violating the 'spirit' of the show in some really difficult to quantify way. I guess the thing about a show like this is that it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, so the same thing that feels like it breaks form for one person can feel like a definitive part of what makes the show work for someone else.

I think if you like Jaques Brunswick but not Hank Scorpio then that makes no sense, since they're both Albert Brooks doing crazy improv. The combination of him being super nice, borderline nonsensically visionary, and a supervillain makes him a prescient send-up of tech celebrity CEOs. And what makes the Ox joke great isn't just the apparently dumb guy saying something smart, but the building on that with the reveal of what Ox is short for -- what makes a great joke often isn't the gag itself, but the structure around it that makes it fit into the world. You can make the stupidest joke brilliant with careful timing and a good setup. My favorite gag in the show is a man stepping on a rake, one of the most hackneyed physical comedy bits in the world, but it builds on it in such a way that it becomes transcendent.

The actual character of Hank Scorpio is one of the most hilarious inventions in the history of the show and the Ox joke is great. Also that episode came out a year before Austin Powers.

Amazing. This is like the main thing that makes me want to tweet more, since like 50% of my tweets are just automated announcements for blog posts it kinda fucks up the flow.