Jake

ep 2 spoilers as well: We should probably be talking about this in the episode 2 thread. biiinnngeeee tttvvvvv

Id be genuinely curious to see someone try and take the season one/two/FWWM incidental music and apply it to episode one and two. I bet it wouldn't work but I'd love to see it all the same.

All the stuff in the red room has hit me hard so far, with a couple exceptions I'll talk about in ep 2. It felt like Lynch was instantly at home with those scenes, to me, and the actors all came to life in just the right way. Seeing the Log Lady again and the casual familiarity she and Hawk have on the phone was the most emotionally impactful though. Knowing Catherine Coulson passed away between filming her scenes and the premiere made it so sad to watch. (Thst she seemed to be playing the Log Lady as emotionally overwhelmed didn't make it easier!)

I added discussion threads in the Twin Peaks Rewatch forum for the first two episodes if anyone's interested. I'm hoping that the ep 1 thread can also be a place for general impressions of the beginning of the season, since a lot of things don't really get cooking until episode 2 (and that stuff can be talked about in the ep 2 thread). I will say that I'm looking forward to this show collapsing down to a simple weekly format in a couple weeks, so that discussion is easier to separate out logically haha. It's a weird place right now where some people have seen two episodes and some have seen four (and some have probably only seen one or three because of when they had to stop). But whatever! Here are threads if you're interested:

Pretty sure it's only in the video version.

Hopefully it's Michael Cera who has a smartphone so that I can doubly tune out the people who are already going to complain he's in the show no matter what he does (I'm assuming they're also the people who will be annoyed if a cell phone shows up no matter what its purpose). I mean, this photo makes me think there's going to be smartphones and people are just going to use them like they do normally. Who knows what the tone of things will be like once music and pacing and editing and of course acting come into play, but the blatant modern cars in this shot implies pretty heavily that they're not making any bones about the show taking place in present day. They didn't make an effort to mix in some old ones in the foreground to help push the tone to feel more "classic-feel-but-still-justifiably-modern-setting" or anything. (Of course, there's a difference between someone calling or even receiving a text on a smartphone, and Bobby deciding to open google maps to give him a driving route to Hungry Horse Montana or something).

I would be very happy if Invitation to Love is still on the air 25 years later. Soap operas aren't relevant now but that doesn't mean they aren't still on daytime TV at least a little bit. That said, your pointing out that it was commenting on something a lot more prevalent in the culture at the time made me imagine "what would the modern equivalent be? would they all be binging the rebooted "Invitation to Love: RSVP" on Netflix and I got really sad. If Invitation to Love doesn't appear I hope that it is not replaced by something else to serve the same role. At least not something literal. I don't expect then to go there - or if they do it, for it to be very weird or backgrounded - but so many revival shows can't resist that kind of catnip.

Idle Thumbs !!: With Bagblast It's Reader Mail! Episode 300 is looming big on the horizon, but we pushed it back a ways so we can live in this moment together and enjoy what we have. Join us in delaying the inevitable, with an all-reader-mail, all-video-games podblast. Discussed: Spyro the Dragon, Minecraft, Myst, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Donkey Kong Country Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Idle Weekend May 8, 2017: Good Old Games This weekend, we're talking about games that are old... but despite our approaching them with the trepidation befitting older, jankier software, they hold up like a dream. Elsewhere, we talk about difficult media (again, with a content warning for the mention of movies that depict sexual assault), and really, REALLY enjoy our weekend projects. Discussed: Alpha Centauri, The Last Express, Brutal Legend, System Shock, Tex Murphy, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Assassin's Creed, LA Noire, Persona 5, sexism at E3, Dawn of War 3, Cloud Atlas, Jessica Jones, GNOG Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Thank you for writing in! It was hugely helpful.

Important If True 11: The Purity of a Child's Boredom Learning something new can feel like someone flipped on a lightswitch in your mind. If that person in your mind could flip the switch off and on whenever they wanted, controlling which things you remember and which you forget, we hope you’d hold onto these thoughts: Why is the Genie from Aladdin afraid of commitment? Did a fourth grader create the world of Banjo-Kazooie, and what grade did he get for it? And, did I just get here, or is that guy with the lightswitch controlling my brain again? We’ll get to the bottom of it, assuming we can remember to. Send us email at questions@importantiftrue.com. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon. Dicsussed: The return of NyQuil dreams, appearing on the local news, Disney’s Aladdin, co-dependent relationships, artificial memory augmentation in rats, Alien: Covenant, The Dempster Family (of products, and people), Banjo-Kazooie, stealing Banjo-Kazooie lore to cheat on Creative Writing homework Endorsements from three old people: Nick: Equator Coffee Chris: Travel packing cubes Jake: The British version of the Great British Bake-Off Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

Idle Thumbs 307: What Remains of Idle Thumbs As the old saying goes, "When the Chris is away, Jake and Nick will play... the demo to Prey." "Specifically," the saying goes on, "the demo of the 2017 version of Prey, not the previous Prey or its demo, or the other two demos for unreleased Prey games." The saying is unpopular and fails to convey how good the Prey 2017 demo is. We're joined by James Spafford to talk about exploring creepy old houses, the experience of skiing down a hill with no one else around, and, yeah, some more Zelda. Discussed: What Remains of Edith Finch, Prey (2017) Demo, Steep, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

If anything the new season will be justified by the new handful of minutes of footage of David Lynch doing press we get.

This is likely.

So much b-roll in there tacitly attributed to Lynch that was directed by others! That's a nice featurette though. This is reminds me: I highly recommend the Reflections oral history of Twin Peaks book. It's a very quick but satisfying read especially if you enjoyed the thoughts we had on the podcast on all the different directors and what they brought to the show over its run. A ton of them are interviewed about their time on Peaks and they have a lot to offer.

It's been 26 years, it's going to be different. That said, it looks more like the world of Twin Peaks than I was worried it might! There's a good showtime "catch up on Twin Peaks" ad campaign going inside Google right now. They bought google ads that link to unlisted YouTube videos if you search for Twin Peaks related questions. Eg: "Where is Twin Peaks?" "Who is Agent Cooper?" etc. I think the "Who Killed Laura Palmer" ad actually includes spoilers? But I didnt watch that one with sound so I'm not sure.

The parking garage boss fight early in resident evil 7 is maybe another example of a scenario like this that bridges the gap by not expressly outlining the possible outcomes but supporting basically any systemically-reachable junction point with a little narrative twist that sets the scene for the next systems-based encounter. I don't know what to make of it because it still does end up feeling sort of like a pachinko machine to me where there are only so many bespoke exits to land in*, but you're right that scenarios like that are powerful because of how well they weave systemic input and narrragive output. * realistically that is true with most systemic-but-linear games anyway - you're going to reach your objective, you're going to get past or kill the guys etc etc, so it's smart to take all the possible ends , and all the possible turning points between, that you're allowing the player to hit, and putting little story buttons there. Still doesn't feel pure or clean to me all the same, even though I really like those sorts of scenarios, and I understand why when they can easily rankle.

Yeah, same. I'm excited to see what the heck this will feel like as a whole.

Yeah that's a totally iconic composition from Lost Highway really, but I think some similar shots show up surrounding Laura going out in the woods and goes disappearing off the road? Man I should somehow cram and rewatch all of Peaks in the next couple weeks somehow because my memory of specifics like that is hazier than I'd like. Welcome!

The marketing feels very "this is what comes after Fire Walk With Me" to me. It's all very ambiently creepy and intense. That doesn't feel "devoid of what Twin Peaks is" to me exactly, but it feels like its focused in on a very small pinprick of what Twin Peaks is. I'm finding it a little bit refreshing personally, that its just showing us moody shots of locations and faces, focusing on the place and the people, after reading Mark Frost's book which was a goofy goofy goofy pan-continental conspiracy that echoed some of the overreaching silliness of season two. I'm hoping the show has a wider tonal breadth than these trailers are showing, but I also hope the show has more focus, and is about something more grounded in a simple place and in real people's issues than the book is.

I don't think anyone was arguing that there are interactive systems that don't generate player stories to some degree. I do think that more often than not, the foundational reason someone creates a game pretty cleanly lands on one side or the other of wanting to tell people about something versus wanting to give people a set of rules to play with... I just don't think that's a bad thing and get tired out when it becomes some sort of battle.

Idle Weekend May 1, 2017: Your Thorax Sure Is Supportive This weekend, we are exploring our other selves. Our gaming selves, silly, not some Jungian archetype business. When is role-playing not even really role-playing, but... something else entirely? Discussed:Expedition: Viking, Bloodborne, Dishonored, Mass Effect, BioShock, Fallout, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Eagle's Heir, The Witcher 3, Firewatch, Gone Home, Sunless Sea, Agents of Shield, The Dialogue Box Podcast Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes

I think we forgot to post it but we will.

I believe this is correct. "There's something about the green ones..." or something to that effect, was used as an ad slogan for a while, playing into that. I almost got into it on the podcast but the talk about them peeling their skin off and stuff was well on it's way and very good (and I legit dislike and am grossed out by the M&M mascots so I was admittedly failing to fully engage in that conversation ).

Its a me, I'm behind on this.