Jake

Idle Thumbs 153: Blondie, Freckles, and Glasses

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No, I care about what they're trying to say, I just think they're wrong. Additionally, "fucking cunt" is a toothless insult, especially when said over the internet. At worst, they're just calling me an asshole, which is true to some degree. It means even less when it's sole purpose is to offend.

 

The idea that offense can be given is flawed when someone attempts to give it to me and I do not receive it. It is also flawed in the fact offense is an entirely subjective feeling and not a physical object. While things can be said with the intent to cause offense, it is not something that you can give to another person, no more than you can give happiness, sadness or anger.

 

If offense were truly given, then it would be entirely up to the speaker whether or not the listener was offended. This is not the case.

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I mean it's entirely possible there's some give AND some take.

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I don't think that it's possible for there to be more than intent to give/cause offense. It's possible that I'm wrong.

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In which case you're just arguing semantics, in my opinion.

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Offense

Feeling offended is like feeling anything else. There's a degree to which you can cultivate a personality such that you can manage to avoid feeling certain feelings, and a degree to which these things are out of your control. Some people feel angry when they are stuck in a traffic jam, some people are calm and collected in the same situation, and both kinds of people are sometimes like this because of conscious choices and other times like this because that's just how they were raised and how society influenced them as they grew up and so on. It's impossible to never be offended by anything solely as a result of choices you have made unless you are a Buddhist monk who has reached enlightenment or a Stoic sage or something like this.

Mostly, being immune to offense is a result of having certain privileges in life and not being exposed to the sorts of systemic disadvantages and constant microaggression that, for better or for worse, shape people into being defensive when they encounter setbacks like perceived racism, sexism, etc. That you don't feel this defensiveness is more often a sign that nobody is attacking you and that society wouldn't countenance hurting you than it is a a sign that your psyche is particularly resilient.

This is not to say that all offense taken is a sign that an injustice is being perpetrated - perhaps your perception is simply off. But it's not the case that taking offense at something is never warranted. If someone calls me a faggot or a kike or whatever else, I typically don't take offense, simply because I'm a pretty mellow and resilient dude, but if I did, it wouldn't be my fault for having a weak will.

But that's not really an interesting conversation to have in this thread. I'm hear to talk about my difficulties understanding the Thumbs' comments on Kentucky Route 0.

Kentucky Route Zero and the Thumbs

It sounded to me like the conversation was something like "if you have a thing to say, come out and fucking say it. Your art is already so stylized and restrained that pairing this with a story that also holds back is just too much. Shadow of the Colossus can hold back because it has a realistic looking boy and a realistic looking horse. LIMBO can hold back because there's not much there - it can tell you everything without just being a text dump. But Kentucky Route Zero and Sword and Sworcery" (and some other games I'm forgetting?) "are too coy. Say your piece, video games."

That just seems sooooooooo weird to me and not like what I would've expected out of the mouths of anyone on the cast. I feel like I must have misinterpreted what is being said. To me, Kentucky Route Zero is a fucking masterpiece, and as has been pointed out in this thread a few times, it fucking nails a sort of feeling, a feeling that the developers KNEW they wanted to nail and which it nails precisely BECAUSE it doesn't just come out and fucking say it. Great art is so often about what is held back - subtlety in a novel or a film or something can make a big difference, in a good way. Obviously there's a range, there - you can be super obscure, or you can just out and out say everything, and striking the balance in the right place is tremendously hard and if you fuck it up one way or another the results are bad.

Maybe it's just that, for the Thumbs (or just for Sean and Jake, it seemed?) KR0 fucks it up, in a way it doesn't for others in this thread, because S&J aren't as familiar with the sort of feeling and aesthetic being invoked? That's the suggestion I've seen a few times earlier in the thread, and that sort of makes sense to me, but if that's the case then I feel like I have to disagree quite a bit with the sentiment expressed in the podcast. The sentiment there seems to be "KR0, just tell me your thing, stop holding back," but it's the holding back (among all the other brilliant stuff the game does) that makes it work for people, so it's the fault of S&J for not realizing they're missing some of the context just like someone who didn't know what the fuck the Cold War was wouldn't really get much out of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

To me a good litmus test would maybe be Limits & Demonstrations, the standalone KR0 accompaniment that hasn't been mentioned in this thread (the other one, which has been mentioned, is The Entertainment, and that is one of my favorite pieces of media in the entire world, I think - it 'blew me away,' so to speak). Limits & Demonstrations is less about what KR0 is about (at least not directly) and more about art, museums, and creation. So maybe if the Thumbs played L&D and said "holy shit, this is amazing" they could realize why holding back is important, even at the cost of losing some people who think you're being obscure for the sake of obscurity.

But everything I've said here just sounds so harsh towards the Thumbs (at least in my ears). Am I missing something? Is there a way of making their criticism more sensible? The way I would make the criticism is much simpler. I'd say "if you do it right, it works. If you don't, it's too obscure. And KR0 does it right, although of course someone can always find it too obscure." But the way the Thumbs made the criticism, it sounded more like "if you have a story, fucking tell it, don't beat around the bush. Unless you're Shadow of the Colossus, which can beat around the bush, and in fact the opening cutscene, which is direct and which fails to beat around the bush, is the worst part of that game's narrative."

What does everyone else think?

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No, I care about what they're trying to say, I just think they're wrong. Additionally, "fucking cunt" is a toothless insult, especially when said over the internet. At worst, they're just calling me an asshole, which is true to some degree. It means even less when it's sole purpose is to offend.

 

I think Tycho nailed all this down pretty well above, but just regarding it being a toothless insult: Certainly, in this context, divorced from actual invective, it doesn't offend. In fact, most things which are intended to be offensive are toothless. Nevertheless, I'm SURE you can think of something you could say to someone you know, or that someone you know could say to you, that would be completely out of line and obviously an offense to say. The idea of anyone saying that it's entirely the listener's domain to regard or disregard anything that is said to them is so obviously disingenuous I find it hard to believe anyone who espouses the idea has really thought it through. That's probably why I responded with a one-line quote, even if it perhaps wasn't the best approach -- it still clearly shows where the idea breaks down.

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The idea of anyone saying that it's entirely the listener's domain to regard or disregard anything that is said to them is so obviously disingenuous I find it hard to believe anyone who espouses the idea has really thought it through.

I implied nothing of the sort. My point is that that idea that offense is created by the speaker and given to the listener is falsehood and does not hold up even under cursory scrutiny. Tycho's post has no baring on that and has little to do with me.

 

This does not imply however, that I believe that taking offense is unwarranted or a weakness of some kind. People should be offended by things that cause a great grievance to them, that's important.

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I implied nothing of the sort. My point is that that idea that offense is created by the speaker and given to the listener is falsehood and does not hold up even under cursory scrutiny. Tycho's post has no baring on that and has little to do with me.

I certainly didn't mean to imply that this is how offense is always or even often created, just that the fact that it's possible to intentionally offend someone because you know that something you can say would be hurtful means that the presumption that it's their choice whether or not to be offended is self-serving.

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I certainly didn't mean to imply that this is how offense is always or even often created, just that the fact that it's possible to intentionally offend someone because you know that something you can say would be hurtful means that the presumption that it's their choice whether or not to be offended is self-serving.

 

Of course, and I think in that case it would serve the listener well if they did have the ability to disreguard things whose sole purpose is to incite offence. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with not being able to do so.

Regardless, that doesn't change the fact that offense is not something that is transmitted from one person to another.

 

I'm not advising that we don't take into account what people find offensive. At least not if you want to remain on good terms with them.

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Okay, this is getting semantically specific enough that I'm not actually sure whether we disagree with each other or not any more. I guess that's a good place to wrap it up.

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I can't get down with that last sentence. I think all it says about the creators is that they're willing to divorce the aesthetics of the Nazi party from their actions, and I don't really have a problem with that. Like I said, the Nazis aren't evil because of their uniforms, and there's nothing inherently evil about that particular style of design. Sure, a lot of people are going to immediately associate that look with the Nazis and their actions, but I think maybe it's unfair to hold a creator accountable for the things your brain is free-associating with their imagery.

 

The idea is that, by presenting only the aspects of Nazism commonly perceived as cool (that is, the uniforms, the machismo, the efficiency, and everything else that made it successful in the first place) without its ultimate outcome or any other kind of moral censure, the game could spread the ideology (or at least sympathy towards it) among those already impressed by those aspects. It happened before, it could happen again, they say. I myself have no right to decide one way or the other, but I still say it's good material for a Stephen King novella, not so much for a point of criticism. If we really believe, even a little bit, that playing a Nazi who doesn't do anything evil and doesn't get his comeuppance could make anyone want to be Nazis, how can we tolerate video games full of mass-murderers who are celebrated as heroes in and outside of their fictional context?

 

I understand and support with all my head and heart any degree of personal or cultural discomfort from someone whose family, friends, and people suffered under the Nazis, for there were and are many, but as a general critique of the game, I still find it slightly off-base. Even among indie games, there are many more presenting a more deceptively seductive and morally reprehensible worldview than the whitewashed quasi-Nazis of Luftrausers. Often that is intentional, to cause alienation and discomfort, but I don't know if I'm equipped to argue whether or not that makes it okay.

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What does everyone else think?

 

Not really speaking to KR0 or any other games the thumbs may have mentioned specifically, but, in general, I am very sympathetic to art not "coming out and fucking saying it". For one, I think a lot of times art is about asking questions rather than providing answers. For another, the notion that "If I could come out and say it, I would have written an essay or short story" is something I strongly agree with as a creator. I approach things obliquely, often by intuition; if you were to ask me to articulate a justification for my aesthetic choices, oftentimes I couldn't, but that inability to do so doesn't weaken my conviction that those were the correct choices for me to make. The work either works for you or it doesn't, but it's kind of presumptious to assume I knew of another, better way of articulating it that I chose to withhold.

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One thing I forgot to mention: I appreciate that Sean also dislikes The Avengers, for the same reasons I do. One of the things I hate most about superhero comics is that everything is a goddamned crossover, and the idea of having to watch a half-dozen other movies in order to make sense of it is not an appealing factor for me. It's particularly annoying that it ties so heavily into Thor, which was an outright terrible film.

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Mysteriousness
 
The whole 'just say your story' idea does seem a counter-intuitive thing to level at media that is or evokes mystery. Monument Valley could of been just a puzzle game about Esheresc geometry but instead it adds a glaze of the unknown, a dash of world-building. I don't think the game would have been 'better' if it had simply explained the premise. Through the use of mystery and vagaries games in this category tug at my guts, evoking a unique concoction of emotion. Kentucky Route 0, Monument Valley et al produce a powerful longing to know more, tempered sadly with the knowledge that real answers rarely live up to the power of the mystery.
 
I can completely understand if someone doesn't like this style of storytelling, just like anything people will have opinions. But calling it 'lazy' implies the authors have chosen this method simply for its lessened word-count rather than the feelings it can conjure. The realities and limitations of indie game development are sure to have a hand in this choice, but in a similar vein I would not call Gone Home 'lazy' for not having character animation. An example to the contrary would be Dust: An Elysian Tale, which I thought had far too much explanation despite being from a one man studio. 
 
I was (perhaps mistakenly) under the impression that Firewatch was to be a mystery of a similar breed, but after this episode, I am less hopeful.
 
On Retconnery
 
I really enjoyed Burial At Sea and found the stealth added a interesting twist to the world. The fact that Elizabeth can use the same weapons as Booker but is just less proficient was cleverly used.The guns becomes much less powerful when she has to manually pull back the hammer before each revolver shot or is slower at loading each cartridge into the shotgun. This method of power variation is much more pleasing and narratively consistent that say, if her bullets just did less damage.
 
Many people are quick to dismiss the 'retcon' as terrible but I think like all things it is down to execution. On the whole I found the narrative bug-fixing and world entanglement in BI:BAS-E2 to be well done. I was especially surprised / impressed that they tried to address some of the more "social justice"(†) complaints about the narrative. Retcons can be dicey when they change narratives for the worse, e.g. the moral of The Force in Star Wars seemed to go from 'work hard to succeed' to 'be born chosen' over the subsequent revisions. The changes in Bioshock, while far reaching don't truly change anything about the original story other than certain new people helping the events along. This makes absorbing them into your head-cannon optional and at worst irrelevant to the enjoyment of the original game.  

 

† I don't like using this phrase but am doing so in an attempt to avoid spoilers. p.s. dagger

 

On a side note did anyone notice the 'sick burn' that none of the Bioshock 2 locations were found on the map of Rapture? I did however notice a radio advert that mentions Dionysus Park but seems to erroneously indicate that the Farmers Market was to be found there.

 

Retcon and Thumbs


To say something on topic but largely ridiculous, part of the reason I enjoy Thumbs so much is their 'Lore'. The Thumbs metaverse is constructed of intertwined and deep reaching in-jokes, back-stories and references. Tales of the Cabal and the precognition of robot dominion are weaved live to tape each week. Sly Jeff Goldblum vocalisations hint at legends long told. Narrative threads dangle like Samuel L Jacksons arm, awaiting retconned connections, improvised simultaneously reaching between the latest news and near forgotten legend. All the while under the painterly gaze of cool uncle and rich uncle.

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One thing I forgot to mention: I appreciate that Sean also dislikes The Avengers, for the same reasons I do. One of the things I hate most about superhero comics is that everything is a goddamned crossover, and the idea of having to watch a half-dozen other movies in order to make sense of it is not an appealing factor for me. It's particularly annoying that it ties so heavily into Thor, which was an outright terrible film.

 

For what it's worth, the only Marvel Movie Universe Movies I had seen prior to The Avengers were Iron Men 1 & 2 and I really loved The Avengers. I have a fairly decent knowledge of Marvel superheroes already, but I feel that the movie did a really good job of contextualizing everybody.

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Reducing our discussion to some sort of "come out and fucking say it" blanket rule is a little bit of a bummer to me. I like plenty of art that doesn't wear its intentions on its sleeve, but I think most games that try for that, as specific works, have been bad at it. In the specific case of Monument Valley, I wish it had said *less.* Am I returning stolen artifacts from these people? Am I an interloper? Am I helping them or helping myself? All vague questions that te game would have presented fine without any text coming up.

That said, this thread's made me want to go and give KR0 another look. It will admittedly take some self-forcing. People told me "The Entertainment" was sublime and then compared it to Waiting for Godot straight-faced which is a fucking tall order so maybe my bar is just set too high?

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Reducing our discussion to some sort of "come out and fucking say it" blanket rule is a little bit of a bummer to me. I like plenty of art that doesn't wear its intentions on its sleeve, but I think most games that try for that, as specific works, have been bad at it. In the specific case of Monument Valley, I wish it had said *less.* Am I returning stolen artifacts from these people? Am I an interloper? Am I helping them or helping myself? All vague questions that te game would have presented fine without any text coming up.

I haven't played Monument Valley so I can't speak to that, but like I said before, it seems to me that if I played a game that fucked this up, I would say something like what you've said in this post, which is that if you do it, don't be bad at doing it. The stuff you said about Shadow of the Colossus, though, made it sound as if you think a pared down, obscure narrative typically only works if matched up with more detailed, evocative graphics, or something, because you can get away with not saying anything if you've got very expressive characters. Basically my issue with the podcast was that it sounded like you were saying stuff like "stop beating around the bush and straight up tell me your story." If what you actually meant was "be as obscure as you want, but just do a good job with it," then that makes sense to me, but it's also pretty obvious (it applies also to non-obscure stories) and it's hard to square with all the discussion of the art and so on.

That said, this thread's made me want to go and give KR0 another look. It will admittedly take some self-forcing. People told me "The Entertainment" was sublime and then compared it to Waiting for Godot straight-faced which is a fucking tall order so maybe my bar is just set too high?

Well, some people like some stuff and some people don't - I can say that I liked The Entertainment as much as any other play I've seen in a while (although I liked it as a game, not as a play, and I think they're two very different things and The Entertainment would work as a play as well as Waiting for Godot would work as a video game). You might try Limits & Demonstrations instead, which is mostly/largely divorced from a lot of the real life context that The Entertainment and KR0 evoke because it's more focused on art than those other two games are.

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I think Sean and I were saying different things whose meanings might both have lost something by being muddled together into one "let's untangle our thoughts" conversation.

I'm just going to play through KR0 in the order released. I really didn't like the writing in Sword & Sworcery and KR0 felt very similar in its distanced/affected/earnest combination, which I find off putting more than enticing (a reaction which is out of my control; I can't make myself like something), but enough people are beating me over the head that maybe I can play it long enough to make it click.

(for instance I was really put off by Jazzpunk because I was seeing it through a Blendo lens, but then people said "no it's like a Zucker bros movie" and it changed my whole read and appreciation of the game -- even though I don't think Zucker is 100% on either, it let me widen my read on what I was looking at.)

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One thing I forgot to mention: I appreciate that Sean also dislikes The Avengers, for the same reasons I do. One of the things I hate most about superhero comics is that everything is a goddamned crossover, and the idea of having to watch a half-dozen other movies in order to make sense of it is not an appealing factor for me. It's particularly annoying that it ties so heavily into Thor, which was an outright terrible film.

I saw The Avengers before I saw any of the previous movies (except Captain America, I think) and I thought it was awesome and I hate superhero comics a lot! I knew virtually nothing about any of the superheroes involved, except the most basic understanding of their various superpowers. I definitely knew absolutely nothing about Loki. I'm 100% positive that watching Captain America first had no bearing on my enjoyment of The Avengers.

 

I eventually went back and watched some of the previous movies. Thor was okay. It wasn't outright terrible, but it definitely wasn't outright good. It was a mediocre superhero movie. And I honestly forgot that it had much to do with The Avengers, although I guess now that you mention it, it's pretty obvious. I forgot about the little cube thing or whatever it was. I don't think it was all that important to what made The Avengers good.

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Based on box office numbers I think for most audience members, the avengers success was as you described: people saw the movie without seeing most of the other Marvel movies, devoid of any other context, other than cultural mind share of who the characters are, and that got them to go back and see the other movies after the fact. I had seen Iron Man 1 and 2 but saw Thor and Captain America afterwards (and liked them less than the avengers).

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One thing I forgot to mention: I appreciate that Sean also dislikes The Avengers, for the same reasons I do. One of the things I hate most about superhero comics is that everything is a goddamned crossover, and the idea of having to watch a half-dozen other movies in order to make sense of it is not an appealing factor for me. It's particularly annoying that it ties so heavily into Thor, which was an outright terrible film.

 

Oh! I was so tied up in being serious that I forgot to weigh in on the Avengers. I was shocked he exhibited so much displeasure. I think The Avengers is the only superhero movie I've ever seen that I'd give 4 stars (for superhero movies). I had only seen Iron Man and was able to keep up fine. I didn't feel lost or somehow brought down because I hadn't seen the other movies, and on the flip side it didn't compel me to watch the others that are tied in like a cash grab. It was a complete story, it was funny, the acting was good, the characterizations were well done, and I had a bunch of popcorn and got to see stuff blow up and Robert Downey Jr made fun of the movie during the movie. I MAY be inspired to watch Hulk movies in the future, because Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk was fucking fantastic.

 

I actually liked it enough that when it was free on Amazon Prime (e: still free on prime for me) I bought the Rifftrax for it because I was really curious what a movie that I already thought was funny and good would be like given the MST3K treatment. The movie was still good, and even funnier (surprise).

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I'm just going to play through KR0 in the order released. I really didn't like the writing in Sword & Sworcery and KR0 felt very similar in its distanced/affected/earnest combination, which I find off putting more than enticing (a reaction which is out of my control; I can't make myself like something), but enough people are beating me over the head that maybe I can play it long enough to make it click.

I've only played Sword & Sworcery for ten minutes, so I can't really speak in depth about it, but it felt completely different than KR0 feels - to me, the two games share about as much in common as any other two point and click adventure games (say, The Shivah and Full Throttle). KR0 didn't feel distanced at all to me, nor did it feel affected. KR0's first act opens on a laconic main character, so I guess that might contribute to a feeling of distance, but eventually you meet other people (and control another person) and those others don't feel distanced to me at all.

As for affectation, I never really know what that word means until someone gives me a specific example. It's the sort of thing people say when they want to say "pretentious" but they realize that saying pretentious will make them look like an asshole because that word's just used to dismiss something that tries something that could be interesting but (in their mind) fails. I can totally imagine how someone might see KR0's tone as affected but that's only because I can think of a thousand ways for someone to find any great work of art that actually speaks to people to be affected.

The earnestness I don't feel at all. KR0 strikes me as sublimely muted and reserved (which is very different from distanced!). It tells you exactly as much as it wants to tell you and shows you exactly as much as it wants to show you at precisely the pace it wants these things to happen. Sometimes it holds back, sometimes it surprises, sometimes it steadily builds, and other times it satisfies. I definitely didn't feel any sense of overeagerness or a lack of fit between how earnest it was and how it tried to achieve distance or disaffection. To me it's only as earnest as it needs to be when it wants to be.

But this is all really abstract. Talking about a game absent specific instances never really means much. What about KR0 struck you as distanced, as affected, and as earnest?

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I totally understand the complaint or concern over "Indie Gaming" pigeon holing itself in a type of twee narrative, and as much as I enjoy the work of Wes Anderson, I also see the drawback of the cutesyness when it becomes the sole form. Or more to the point, when there really isn't anything being said beyond a stylistic abstraction. 

 

On the other hand I agree with Pigeon that KR0 nails it as a sophisticated and literate narrative, avoiding that trap. (If only because their thing isn't about an innocent kid)

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