ihavefivehat

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Everything posted by ihavefivehat

  1. Oh and my first reaction to the Diane thing was to assume that Cooper killed her and replaced her with a tulpa to do his bidding, body snatchers style. I'm not sure I believe that Diane is Naido since the other tulpa, Dougie, looked exactly like his original. But who knows. It was pretty horrible to watch someone remember that they've been raped and killed and then realize they're not a real person.
  2. I feel like the roadhouse is a place where the lodge bleeds into reality. I don't know why Audrey woke up screaming in a white room but it doesn't seem exactly like a coma, because she 'woke up' staring directly into a mirror. It feels more like a hallucination, but I don't know what that means. Maybe she's gone insane? But I have a feeling it's something less easy to pin down. I'm so happy that the roadhouse scenes got weird and conspicuously artificial and then imploded because they bothered me when I thought it was just David Lynch showing us some bands he liked. (Although it still is partially that.)
  3. That scene being part of a soap opera would actually fit perfectly with its tone, but they did mention the road house.
  4. The Audrey scene was so nerve-racking. They bring her in with no fanfare, and throw us straight into an dense, hard to follow conversation that felt like clumsily executed exposition from a completely different TV show. Just incredibly alienating and confusing. And I'm sure they knew what they were doing when they had that scene come soon after a scene where two other characters discussed something which would directly affect Audrey, and had Audrey not even mention it. Likewise, the Audrey scene ended with she and her husband agreeing to go the roadhouse, which led to a roadhouse scene where two completely new characters had a similarly alienating conversation. I feel like the theme of this episode was momentum refusing to be carried over. I know Frost and Lynch have a thing for stilted, artificial dialogue and awkward pacing, and I feel like this entire episode was a study in that, with the episode itself also feeling awkwardly placed in the series as a whole. In a way, it felt more formally experimental than anything from episode 8.
  5. It's hard for me to believe that Diane would be willingly working with Cooper given her reaction when she met him and when Gordon and Albert were first trying to convince her to come with them. It really felt like Diane had spent the last 25 years trying to forget about Cooper, I can't see how she could have been interacting with him. Even the idea that she was working with Jeffries directly against Cooper in the intervening time seems weird to me. I think whatever Diane is doing is something that started after her meeting with Cooper in prison. And if she's working with Cooper she must be doing it unwillingly.
  6. I don't think it was played as a fun goof by Lynch, but it is the type of scene that might be played as a fun goof in other movies, and I think Lynch is aware of that. I think we are meant to be aware that Janey E is not acting like a real person, but like a character in a sitcom. Normally TV shows have some sort of built-in audience reaction, whether it's from a laugh track, music, sound cues, or reaction shots from other characters in the scene. But the way she's filmed in the scene where she's 'seducing' Dougie, with long stationary shots, and the lack of built-in audience reaction (or reaction from Dougie) is supposed to highlight how artificial her character, her situation and her actions are. These scenes, and most others in this show, feel to me more like watching a TV show being filmed than watching a finished, edited TV show. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but intentionally so. I think with Lynch you have to keep in mind that he's not using film as a way to give us a window into a seamlessly crafted, internally consistent illusory world, he's also using the medium itself to transmit meaning. You can't take the actions of the characters at face value without also considering the way that they're filmed, and the way the filmed footage is presented to you.
  7. But Janey E is married to Dougie, not Cooper. And in this scenario, Cooper is essentially a mentally disabled adult. Love? How do we know he's even capable of romantic love in his current state? How do we know he even understands that he's 'married' or even knows what marriage is? I think what's unsettling about the scene to me is that, like many other Dougie/Cooper scenes, it plays out as if the other characters don't recognize that he's a complete vegetable. Janey-E is acting like a loving wife who is making consensual love to her husband, but Dougie is essentially a vacant husk who doesn't know what sex is, and is completely incapable of giving consent. For what it's worth, I don't think it's meant to be a lighthearted interlude, and I think Lynch and Frost are completely aware of how uncomfortable it is.
  8. After watching this episode and the new episode of Game of Thrones back to back, I've realized that plot progression is the probably lowest form of entertainment. The most profound sensations it can instill are the momentary pleasure gained by seeing what happens and the compulsive desire to know what's next. Essentially, a show like Game of Thrones is no more emotionally or philosophically complex than a game of peek-a-boo, except it's worse because it's drenched in bombastic sound cues and reaction shots which feel like they're designed to prod the viewer into feeling a certain way: aren't you so shocked about what just happened? Wasn't that such a clever twist? Just leave me alone and let me watch your stupid show! I'm glad that Twin Peaks is so ambivalent about moving the plot forwards and unraveling its own mystery, instead choosing to bask in the moment and establish an emotional tone of dull terror and low key dread. I hope Cooper never wakes up and I hope we never learn the truth about anything. This episode was great, it gave me nightmares. By the way, can we all agree that Janey E raped Cooper?
  9. I'm so glad that we live in a media landscape where a relatively well-known TV show can have an episode like this! I know it's a huge exception to the rule, but this simply could not have existed if it wasn't for digital streaming. I don't care very much about what this does to the mythology of Twin Peaks and I definitely don't care about the lack of plot progression. What I'm here for is the incredible imagery, and the feeling of each scene, and the fact that this imagery is wrapped up in a coherent mythos only makes me pay more attention to the details. When I watched this, I was wondering at the meaning and symbolism more than I would if I was just experiencing this as a 45 minute long art-film. I think the collaboration between Frost's lore-dense mythology and Lynch's audio-visual tone making has really made something special.
  10. Or wealthiest woman! Considering his age, he's probably Audrey's son.
  11. I love that you mention Amanita Design, Nappi. There's a part in Episode 3 (you'll know it when you see it) that distinctly reminded me of Samorost.
  12. I think Lynch just doesn't mind exposing the artificiality of visual effects. When he uses effects I think he's more concerned about the image itself and what it's meant to convey rather than making it blend seamlessly with the filmed parts of the frame. I appreciate it. It feels connected with the tendency in 20th century art of letting the process by which a piece of art is made become a part of the piece (and Lynch does have a fine art background).
  13. Thinking about it, the tone of the first episode reminds me of The Missing Pieces more than anything else. It's a sequence of scenes featuring seemingly unrelated characters and events presented without context, and usually without music. Although, having watched further episodes, it does seem like all of these events are being slowly woven into an interrelated plot, which is a very cool feeling. It's refreshing to see a show that is not afraid to leave things unexplained, to let it's characters know or talk about things that the viewer doesn't understand, and at the same time does not flaunt the mystery to the audience with cartoonish cliffhangers or loud musical cues.
  14. just watched episode 4... and no spoilers but... what? there were some odd moments in that one. excited to hear chris and jake talk about it.
  15. Yeah, that was the earliest thread I could find, but it was created in 2007 which is around the time that people started using the word indie. So it has a lot of the older things in it like... Toribash! What a bizarre game! It looks like there's a spruced up version on Steam now, but the original game was a simple 2 player fighting game where you would control characters by contracting or expanding their individual muscles. If you were good you could punch or rip your opponent's limbs off, but more often than not matches would result in players flailing around and falling to the floor. I think you could also do things like rip your own arm off and use it as a cudgel to beat your opponent. Fun times(?) Edit: That thread also has some of Ikiki's games. They were a ridiculously prolific but mysterious Japanese developer that seems to have been forgotten recently. There's a good write-up on them here: https://theludoffin.wordpress.com/2014/07/24/check-out-time-ikiki/
  16. This thread looks like a gold mine for this sort of thing: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/42182/indie-games-thread/p1 There must be something similar on NeoGAF also.
  17. Wow, I haven't thought about A Blurred Line in such a long time...!
  18. Congrats Danielle! And even more congrats to Vice for hiring you!
  19. Life

    Thanks for posting this. It's interesting. The further that I get from my high school years, the more obvious it is that I was suffering from a extremely severe depressive episode. I isolated myself to the point where I had no friends and my own family felt like strangers, I stopped enjoying most activities, I lost an incredible amount of weight, I slept for 12 or more hours almost every day, I felt helplessly fatigued in almost every situation, and it was very hard to concentrate, and I frequently contemplated suicide. Because I would sleep through most of my classes and never did homework, I was held back for a grade and then eventually expelled from school. At the time, I remember reading descriptions of depression on the internet and thinking "no, that's not me." I was convinced that I was lazy, lacked ambition, or was just not very smart. I think I almost preferred to blame myself for what was going on in my life. Maybe it was easier for me to think that I was just bad at being a person than to admit that I had no control. Maybe I didn't want to admit that I needed help. I think I was afraid that the help I sought wouldn't work, and then I'd be completely without hope. I've gotten somewhat better since then. My most recent 'bad period' was about a year and a half ago. It was really bad, though. Maybe my worst period of depression ever, though not the longest. However, that was the first time that I really admitted to myself that I have depression. It seems so obvious from the other side. I wonder how I could have been so blind at the time? Admitting that I have a problem, and coming to see it as a disease rather than a personal failing is probably the first thing that has really let me fight it. Now I think of depression as a handicap, not a defining feature of my persona. If I feel the 'twinge' of a coming depressive episode, I now have a name for it, and I can try to deal with it before it gets out of control. Some people have physical handicaps, like a missing limb, and they still manage to get by even though life is hard. Compared to that, I don't think I have it very bad. But reading articles like this, from people whose experiences match mine so closely, makes me sad and happy at the same time. Sad because I know that a lot of people are out there suffering, and that we probably won't ever 'get better'. But happy because I know that I'm not alone. Anyway, sorry for the long and somewhat unprovoked post. These are thoughts that I've been having for a long time, and I think they were ready to be verbalized. Maybe I should just start a diary.
  20. Recently completed video games

    I've been playing Beeswing by Jack King-Spooner. This is a game mostly about walking around and listening to NPCs. There are a few 'quests' in the game, but they're small and optional. The visual art is almost completely non-digital and hand-drawn. A lot of the drawings are very good. They're sloppy in an off the cuff, sketchy way but still interesting to look at, and you can tell the developer is a talented artist. You begin to feel like you're wandering around in a stranger's sketchbook, and I liked the way different visual styles & media were used, often on the same screen together. The music is similar, it seems like it was all recorded with real instruments in somebody's bedroom. It works well, and there's a lot of it. It seems like many screens have their own musical tracks. The problem with the game is the writing. It's incredibly on the nose and self satisfied. I feel like I can imagine the developer patting himself on the back after every sentence. The game is about meeting and listening to different characters, but very few of the different characters in the game feel like they were given a genuine sense of personality. Instead, they just serve as a mouthpieces for the developer to shoot philosophy at you. It's a shame, because if the developer had allowed his music, art, and dialogue to communicate his ideas rather than dumping them over your head with a steam shovel, it might have been a beautiful experience. Instead, I've noticed myself physically cringing every time I encounter a new character because I feel like I'm about to be punched in the face with Wisdom again. I don't think I'm going to finish this one, but I'm glad that I played it if only because it makes me more aware of how not to write dialogue in my own games.
  21. Huh, I didn't realize it was so easy to roll back. Guess I will give it a shot!
  22. I'm mainly worried about the pre-Steam version of RPG Maker 2003, since I have a big project going in it right now (as you know). I think I'll stick with Windows 7 for now just to be safe.
  23. I brought this machine to an apple store, and the guy unplugged the battery and 'reset the power system', and that seemed to fix all the problems. Kind of wish I had a PC so I could have done that myself, but it was free so I'm not complaining too much. Now I'm installing 203810254 updates to Windows 7. I noticed that it's currently free to upgrade to Windows 10. Is that worth it? I have no problems at all with Windows 7, but if it's free maybe I should take the plunge. I'm just nervous that there will be a lot of junk that I never use, a cluttered interface, links to the Windows store which I will never use and that it will constantly bug me to make a Microsoft account and to play all my games through their store. Is that stuff real or just in my imagination. Also, I play a lot of old games, will they still run?
  24. Man, I was really surprised to hear that he was leaving so soon, but after seeing the Vice thing I can definitely understand why he did it. I was really enjoying the beastcast, though, and I'm not sure it'll be good without him. I like the other guys, but I feel like Austin's presence was what usually brought the conversation to places besides making silly jokes and complaining about games. I'm excited to see who they hire to take his place, though.
  25. No, but that's an idea. Once I have everything backed up I'll give it a shot.