cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/51532459

I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn't been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story

I didn't even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It's about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.

The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi's (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt's mentally handicapped daughter...

I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.

It's a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn't a lot of discourse online

I have just started getting into reading magazines and specifically using Libby to read bits of articles here and there. I like the current political stuff and some media coverage but on the whole it hasn't been a very interesting experience until I came across this short story

I didn't even realize The New Yorker published short stories, at first I thought it was just an excerpt. It's about an Indian girl who has to go live with her aunt for a little while while her mom and dad work through the grief of having gone through a miscarriage.

The mystery and intrigue builds up in little blocks, each paragraph showing us a little moment in Nidhi's (our protagonist) life: her life with her parents, the going away to live with her aunt, meeting her aunt's mentally handicapped daughter...

I thought it was really well-written and compelling and by the end of it it built such a well-realized cast of characters that each had shades of darkness and human qualities in them that I wanted to explore their stories more, to spend a little more time with their thoughts and personal griefs.

It's a simple coming-of-age story that read like a thriller that was brilliantly paced and I would love it if other people learned about it as there wasn't a lot of discourse online

I'm trying to think of something good to say about this series, trying to look at it as an ambitious portrayal of darkness and depravity in the Marvel universe but it's much too lightheaded and too fleeting to be taken seriously.

Essentially a "What if?" scenario featuring the protagonist Phil Sheldon, from Alex Ross's grounded Marvel comic books "Marvel's", the book shows us a world where basically everything that could have gone wrong with our heroes does go wrong.

Captain America becomes a cannibal, Iron Man incapacitated, Peter Parker never gets to be Spider-Man and is a freak with a skin disease caused by a radioactive spider. Things like these and many more often with exaggerated details of violence and ugliness are showcased page after page.

It's a really short book too, just 68 or so pages and rather than telling you a proper story it just takes you around on a tour to see the fates awaiting the different characters or groups in the Marvel universe. I really disliked it, the lack of focus and story and just the pacing of it all makes reading it have no impact which feels like it would be the opposite of what was intended.

Indeed, as you read this book it feels more absurd than horrific. Like someone was trying to be very clever and failed to be original.

The artwork on the other hand is atleast good looking. Gone are beautiful realistic portraits drawn by Alex Ross and instead we get this moody panels where everything is grey and overcast. Like you're looking at burnt paper. It does help out in accentuating and developing the horrible descriptions of these characters by drawing them in as many distorted painful positions as possible but ultimately falls short of "this looks so good I must own it and touch it" standards of Kingdom Come and Marvels. It looks best when the scenes are more brightly lit

Around the second half of the second issue, the art style changes hands to be a bit more comic book-y but I didn't mind that. I didn't care enough about it

I do like that this comic proves that just bring grimdark and "realistic" doesn't make a book good and I appreciate it for that much atleast though I still think DC's Kingdom Come is much better at reflecting that sentiment than this meaningless tale of cruelty. This is the kind of book that feels like it would be perfect for "The Boys" watching modern realistic superhero watchers of today but ends up holding nothing substantial inside, much like the later seasons of the show.

4/10 The only inspiring and worth reading part of this whole comic book is the opening poem/epigrapgh. I love how cleanly it sets up that what you're reading is just a different universe and how it name-drops the original comic book and Ruins.

PS: I wish Doctor Strange 2 had explored some of these darker multiverses instead of giving a busy and distracting cameo scene of random heroes

This game was a missed opportunity in my opinion. It's such a cool setting and I can't believe something like Far Cry with it's infinite radio towers and forests hasn't even managed to sell a forest area this well as Firewatch does in only a few hours. The map is small so you get quickly familiar with the few choice routes you like to take and the in-game map which is a real map that the character holds instead of a HUD element feels really intimate and useful.

But that's where the gameplay mechanics peak, most of the game is your average walking simulator's "I hate it when you go off path" type of deal which normally annoys me but in this game it felt especially frustrating. To see Henry do the same animation multiple times to get from one area to the next (chopping a tree to make a bridge, jumping over, jumping down, climbing down) doesn't get more immersive than it was the first time around, it actually makes the game feel monotonous in a way. Also the whole traversal thing is pretty uninspired: all of the actions that your character takes are automated and you just have to click a button for him to do it. That basically means if the game gives you an axe, sorry a PULASKI, it just stays there unable to be used by the player unless you click the button to chop a tree or clear a path and Henry automatically does it. It all kind of turns into a Spider-Man 2 on PC situation and if you have ever played that game then u know how boring it is.

The problems even seep into the storytelling department. Because Henry carries a walkie talkie to communicate to Delilah, the other main character of the game, everytime you pick up a note in the game to read these guys have a conversation. Almost everytime this pattern repeats and establishes itself and I don't know if that bothers anyone else but to my brain it tells me that the notes I'm picking up aren't worth reading because the characters are already summarizing their emotions and thoughts on it before I have even read it. Now other games do have commentary like this when you pick up an item but it's always short, not like Firewatch. This and the fact that the game keeps building up mysteries without resolving any of them and the infrequent abrupt time jumps without any clear character dynamic developing between the characters made me care even less about what was going on.

The game gives you dialogue choices, to flavour the text and I never really told Delilah in the game about what was going on with my character so maybe that lack of character development was my bad.

I'll also say that the opening of this game is the most emotionally powerful and engaging part of this game. It reminded me of old text adventure games I used to play with no voice acting and a simple wall of text where you have to pick options to basically tell Henry's backstory your way and it's done really well. I wish more games used this simple narrative device instead of making long introductory cutscenes

Overall: 6.5/10 Maybe it's my expectation that was too high or maybe I wasn't just in the mood but I'm so bored with it that even finishing this short game again with the audio commentary on feels too much. On that note, how the fuck do you make a painless and simple audio commentary experience in a game where the vast majority of storytelling drama comes from audio dialogues in your head. To have to differentiate between them is just too much; it's not like an action game where the audio talks about the game as you fight the bad guys.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/50316606

I can't talk about this comic book without stressing the important fact that much of the joy and wonder and amazement that I got out of this book was due to the fact that I was already familiar with a lot of the stories in this comic book.

That's one of the strengths and weaknesses of this book, it relies on you as a fan of these stories and much of the themes of this book depend upon you knowing these characters beforehand. Now, I have never read more than a handful of comic books but I have seen a lot of the movies which helped a lot.

Marvels is about our main character Phil Sheldon, a photographer in New York as he lives through the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and witnesses the stories of many of the major characters from Marvel Comics. We see Captain America fighting the Nazis, the rise of Fantastic Four and the arrival of Galactus, we see Avengers forming and taking on new members and of course the X-Men and how they differ from other heroes.

I have no idea how it would feel to read these stories if you were unfamiliar with most of the stories because one of the reasons why this book works is that it reflects our own childhood wonder and amazement of these characters onto us. We see people marveling at them just as we used to, just as I did when I was a kid watching Spider-Man on an old CRT. Without that reflection, I think much of the appeal would be lost.

Of course, Alex Ross's drawing is amazing and it feels even more cinematic somehow than Kingdom Come. In that story the amount of busy action sequences left me disoriented at times but here even though there are some really cool battles against foes, much of the focus is on everyday people. I like how these scenes have a momentum to them, the sense of pace as Phil walks the streets or runs toward his house feels impactful even though there's nothing grand going on action-wise.

What I love about also is how people are hostile towards these heroes, especially the mutant X-Men who are treated like commies and hunted down at every turn. The scenes of human brutality hit a lot harder than any large scale action sequences could. The book also manges to be consistently grounded, this is not one of those stories where an average guy gets in a team-up with superheroes and forms a relationship with them. Instead, ::: spoiler spoiler the only time he comes too close them, he ends up losing his right eye. :::

::: spoiler spoiler It's not a criticism per say but I find it very strange and interesting how this book forms it's own version of superhero fatigue within the story. Phil Sheldon towards the end gets so sick and tired of people admiring these heroes whenever they get saved and accuse them of villainy when things are peaceful that he doesn't want to be a part of it and retires, leaving the story at an inconclusive end for him and the reader. :::

I can't talk about this comic book without stressing the important fact that much of the joy and wonder and amazement that I got out of this book was due to the fact that I was already familiar with a lot of the stories in this comic book.

That's one of the strengths and weaknesses of this book, it relies on you as a fan of these stories and much of the themes of this book depend upon you knowing these characters beforehand. Now, I have never read more than a handful of comic books but I have seen a lot of the movies which helped a lot.

Marvels is about our main character Phil Sheldon, a photographer in New York as he lives through the 40s and 50s and 60s and 70s and witnesses the stories of many of the major characters from Marvel Comics. We see Captain America fighting the Nazis, the rise of Fantastic Four and the arrival of Galactus, we see Avengers forming and taking on new members and of course the X-Men and how they differ from other heroes.

I have no idea how it would feel to read these stories if you were unfamiliar with most of the stories because one of the reasons why this book works is that it reflects our own childhood wonder and amazement of these characters onto us. We see people marveling at them just as we used to, just as I did when I was a kid watching Spider-Man on an old CRT. Without that reflection, I think much of the appeal would be lost.

Of course, Alex Ross's drawing is amazing and it feels even more cinematic somehow than Kingdom Come. In that story the amount of busy action sequences left me disoriented at times but here even though there are some really cool battles against foes, much of the focus is on everyday people. I like how these scenes have a momentum to them, the sense of pace as Phil walks the streets or runs toward his house feels impactful even though there's nothing grand going on action-wise.

What I love about also is how people are hostile towards these heroes, especially the mutant X-Men who are treated like commies and hunted down at every turn. The scenes of human brutality hit a lot harder than any large scale action sequences could. The book also manges to be consistently grounded, this is not one of those stories where an average guy gets in a team-up with superheroes and forms a relationship with them. Instead, ::: spoiler spoiler the only time he comes too close them, he ends up losing his right eye. :::

::: spoiler spoiler It's not a criticism per say but I find it very strange and interesting how this book forms it's own version of superhero fatigue within the story. Phil Sheldon towards the end gets so sick and tired of people admiring these heroes whenever they get saved and accuse them of villainy when things are peaceful that he doesn't want to be a part of it and retires, leaving the story at an inconclusive end for him and the reader. :::

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49791809

The only other comic book I have read and finished is Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite and that was years ago so I don't really know how to go about this but I'll try my best.

I freaking loved Kingdom Come. This is an Elseworlds DC comic set in a distant futuristic scenario where superheroes have been so absorbed by the general masses that people have forgotten the value of their own achievements. The things our main character, Norman MaClay, reminisces about include Nobel Prizes, sports competitions. We see modern world absorb superheroes into their culture and as a result we have justice league themed restaurants (a prominent one in the story is called Planet Krypto).

Superheroes too have changed, apparently people got bored of "truth, justice and the American way", of Superman being a symbol of hope and peace that doesn't kill and after a tragedy, he is rejected by people who used to brother in him- in favor of more brutal and savage superheroes.

What follows is a story of moral responsibility written in a way that doesn't answer "must there be a Superman" as much as it feels like a more realistic evolution of Spider-Man's motto "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility."

In a way it reminds me of the modern trend of superhero media's shift towards more adult deconstructions of the genre with shows like Invincible and The Boys and the superhero fatigue. In following them we somehow forgot what it really meant to be a superhero until Superman (2025) came and reminded us that kindness and helping others is what superheroes should be teaching

I also think this is one of the best visual feasts I have ever experienced in comic books. The art style, I don't know what it's called but it feels so realistic yet very aesthetic at the same time. This is one of those comics where if you had to adapt it you would have to just make it in live-action because I don't think this art style can be done justice in animation. It already looks and feels so real

It's very cinematic too, I loved the Wonder Woman in this comic and every scene with her especially her scenes with Superman look so damn good.

My minor complaint and this maybe because I'm not used to this stuff, is the amount of other side heroes that fight in these huge scale full panels that I did not recognize and feel connected to. That's a part of the story, the newer generation of superheroes are cool but I don't feel anything towards them and that makes the action sequences just beautiful eye-candy.

Also I thought the ending especially the epilogue could have been more impactful.

The only other comic book I have read and finished is Umbrella Academy: Apocalypse Suite and that was years ago so I don't really know how to go about this but I'll try my best.

I freaking loved Kingdom Come. This is an Elseworlds DC comic set in a distant futuristic scenario where superheroes have been so absorbed by the general masses that people have forgotten the value of their own achievements. The things our main character, Norman MaClay, reminisces about include Nobel Prizes, sports competitions. We see modern world absorb superheroes into their culture and as a result we have justice league themed restaurants (a prominent one in the story is called Planet Krypto).

Superheroes too have changed, apparently people got bored of "truth, justice and the American way", of Superman being a symbol of hope and peace that doesn't kill and after a tragedy, he is rejected by people who used to believe in him- in favor of more brutal and savage superheroes.

What follows is a story of moral responsibility written in a way that doesn't answer "must there be a Superman" as much as it feels like a more realistic evolution of Spider-Man's motto "With Great Power comes Great Responsibility."

In a way it reminds me of the modern trend of superhero media's shift towards more adult deconstructions of the genre with shows like Invincible and The Boys and the superhero fatigue. In following them we somehow forgot what it really meant to be a superhero until Superman (2025) came and reminded us that kindness and helping others is what superheroes should be teaching

I also think this is one of the best visual feasts I have ever experienced in comic books. The art style, I don't know what it's called but it feels so realistic yet very aesthetic at the same time. This is one of those comics where if you had to adapt it you would have to just make it in live-action because I don't think this art style can be done justice in animation. It already looks and feels so real

It's very cinematic too, I loved the Wonder Woman in this comic and every scene with her especially her scenes with Superman look so damn good.

My minor complaint and this maybe because I'm not used to this stuff, is the amount of other side heroes that fight in these huge scale full panels that I did not recognize and feel connected to. That's a part of the story, the newer generation of superheroes are cool but I don't feel anything towards them and that makes the action sequences just beautiful eye-candy.

Also I thought the ending especially the epilogue could have been more impactful.

Lots of emotion with this one.

Right off the bat, I love Stephen King and IT is my fav book of all time. I prefer his stories to go as batshit crazy as they can and this has been delivered with books like IT and Misery and Pet Sematary but then there are his other works, like 11/22/63 and Hearts in Atlantis which seem to be much more grounded and calm because their main focus is just normal people.

So can Stephen King tell a good story when there's no undead pets or clown monsters? Absolutely. Hearts in Atlantis is a solution of five stories taking place from the 60s to '99 that are interconnected to some degree.

It would be worth it to talk about those different stories in detail but I don't wanna give away the discovery aspect of this book though I will say that I probably liked the first story most since it had that little children dealing with magic sort of charm which was very reminiscent of IT. Even had an old man wanting to give a suckjob to a kid so it was very similiar (Poor Eddie)

Other stories are more focused on Vietnam and the American war there. I'll admit, I don't know much about that part of history, I'm not from any western country and you just don't read about stuff like that in schools. I think I picked it up casually through years of just reading books

Anyways, that whole Vietnam experience is here. We get to be there, running away from the heat of fire, camping and being drunk, and then back home trying to adjust to a normal life and trying somehow to forget and be forgiven for all the bad things we did there while trying to live a normal life. It's presented very well though I will say some of the stories do get a little too smart-ass sometimes. It's not something I would take out of the book but it is a little immersion breaking when you feel a character making a pointed speech about something that reads like a statement by the author.

Overral, I gave this book a solid 4 out of 5 and I think it has honestly helped me come to terms with King's more "normal people" books. I had tried to read 11/22/63 but gave up because I was sort of expecting something more edgy but I think I'm ready to make peace with it after Hearts in Atlantis

It's too sweet a game to write anything bad about.

If I had to nitpick, I would say the material is there for a great story but the plot meanders a bit. It's basically a quest to find a Macguffin, it's funny and chaotic and a lot of the charm is due to the characters interacting with one another but as for the plot itself... it's kind of boring. One thing leads to one thing then we're doing something else, it doesn't feel as tightly knit as the character dialogue in the game

Aside from a few QTE annoyances, I did enjoy a lot of the action scenes. They're very well choreographed and provide a fun and engaging experience

I don't hate any of the main characters, they're like a family and even the worst people of them have a GOTG-type vibe to them that makes it fun to keep following their stories.

Obviously it's a Telltale game so most of your choices don't impact the plot much but it was still nice to experience this game as a narrative where you can choose what to say, the added customization options were really fun too as was the last action sequence that gives you a lot of choice on how things play out

Overall, it's some of the best comedic games I have played and a great Telltale game. Definitely my fav for now as the only other one I have played is that disappointing Expanse one.

8/10 ⭐

Listened to the audiobook version narrated beautifully by Michael C. Hall, this is the first Stephen King book I have listened to and the first by this narrator.

I don't even know where I'm going to rank this book in the Stephen King canon but I know that the trademark touch of horror that leaps out of the page and whispers and settles into you is in this book. More scary and human than Misery, it does not compare to the freak of IT but somehow the rising tension of its last act reminded me of IT's similar final act.

The best thing about Pet Sematary is how how it's paced so openly, the Creed family gets to live and breath and be happy in many of its pages even when narratively it seems tiresome and boring, even when the promise of horror keeping it's eye on the family begins to dull. When the shadow of death finally falls on this family, it almost seems unlike Stephen King, it feels accidental and natural too at some point. Like the characters in the book who think at various points that these things were meant to happen, we as a reader think these events were meant to happen to these characters in exactly this slow, tragic, sad and insane way. There are no big fireworks, yes a house burns down but nothing "spectacular" happens, Louis Creed our protagonist simply pays the price for what he bought.

And the narration is amazing, the way Michael C. Hall voices not only so many diverse characters from old people to kids but what's amazing is how he consistently voices the elements of the book as well. One of my favorite examples of this is the scene where a dog is howling and the narrator doesn't just say he barks but we get the actual sound. Of course now that I think about it it might just be the sound effect or recording of a dog but either way the sounds of this audiobook are beautiful and fitting. I think part of the way the novel felt so suspenseful and dreadful is helped by the sound production

Brilliant, scary, sad and altogether humane, Pet Sematary is a very very good Stephen King novel.

The Martian Chronicles is a roughly connected collection of short stories written at various times by Ray Bradbury that were about humans going to Mars. They don't really have a coherent story but some of the characters and events cross over and it beats having to read 50 stories separately but is it worth reading them at all?

Where Fahrenheit 451 showed the sci-fi side of Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles shows his poetic side.

In many ways it is more ambitious than 451, indeed many of the themes that Ray had to connect with the thread of storytelling show themselves off beautifully here with short stories exploring colonialism, religion, need of belonging, blowing ourselves to bits (something that doesn't sound as far-fetched considering the events we are all going through) and he creates a wonderful mythology about Mars one that is more fantastical than realistic for sure but feels lived in.

Although even when talking about hardcore science-fiction books this little collection of stories manages to achieve something that I have seen very few stories do right, namely that it shows how weird and magical and utterly incomprehensible that other lifeform (be it Martians or otherwise) can be.

Ultimately this is a book about people and their stories, experiencing it brought out a lot of emotions and I was ultimately left amazed by how well the whole was written.

Highly highly recommended if you're into short stories

Strange Pictures was published by YouTuber Uketsu in 2022 and translated into English in 2025. The book is about multiple drawings connected to different murders and the interlinked story connecting them together, told through simple writing and hand drawings.

One way to take this book into perspective would be to call it "telegraphic horror", I suppose. The first chapter starts with an epistolary form and it's obvious to see that it's meant to be simple enough to engage readers and hook them in without any purple prose or complex sentences.

The diary entries and minimal storytelling reminded me of those exciting times as a kid when I used to read creepypastas and every mystery seemed like a larger than life puzzle that felt like it could be solved and which kept me interested even when I took a break from reading them.

That's the kind of charm Strange Pictures started with and moving forward it does demand more from it's readers in terms of attention to sustain the allure of its mystery, it felt earned because I wanted to figure out what the drawings meant and why the second chapter started out in such an unrelated fashion.

One minor criticism would be that it's marketed as a horror book for Jungi Ito fans but I never found that abyss like horror of human nature and I wouldn't say the book goes that far in it's character's mind, therefore to me it's still a better mystery and suspense novel with pictures then a new horror addition to Japanese canon but I guess it comes close.

Anyway, if you're going through a reading slump and would like to read something fast and exciting and mysterious and have had any interactions with reading creepypastas as a kid then I would wholeheartedly recommend this unique experience. I loved it

4/5***

Although (or perhaps because) I came to "administration" late in my academic career, I am constantly amazed at how obediently people accept explanations that begin with the words "The computer shows..." or "The computer has determined..." It is Technopoly's equivalent of the sentence "It is God's will," and the effect is roughly the same.-Technopoly: The Submission of Culture to Technology by Neil Postman, pg. 115

Technopoly as a word is entirely Postman's creation, he describes it as a "state of culture" and "state of mind" which consists in the "deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology." As among the symptoms of this state of mind, he includes a conscious focus on more efficient machines without considering the cost of that efficiency, relying on statistics alone as the sole truth and the trivialization of old traditions and symbols of our past.

It is a obvious thing to see that in today's tech-driven world, the more technologies we develop to communicate better, the more isolated and alienated we have become. This is slowly giving rise to a society where we are more comfortable with not thinking critically, of not having the power to make our own decisions and telling our concerns to AI rather than people we are close. This has not happened overnight, and according to Neil Postman, these visible differences in our psyche and daily lives have a long history that starts when we started letting technology take more prestige and power in our culture. This book is his hope that we become more aware of Technopoly's effects in our lives and do something to resist them.

Neil Postman presents a number of evidence and arguments backed by his keen observation and thorough research about the dangers of letting technological innovation and the drive of progress consume our lives. He explains and shows circumstances that we have all seen and felt, especially more rigorous forms of advertising and consumerism than was present in his own times.

What he presents as a solution is less than enough however, his solution I might add is one he gives timidly but with a full sense of hope. It is one where education is the cause of our collective salvation and the only way to overcome this need to progress more efficiently. I however think that it cannot be so simple as that, because as capitalism and our own markets have proven again and again, a message designed to be a cautionary tale can be sold perhaps to even the same people that participate in the cultural submission to technology.

These points withstanding, Technopoly: The Submission of Culture to Technology is a great book to warm yourself to these thoughts that we are ingrained in the grid of consumerism and technology that we don't even realize it.

Played for 40 hours and completed the main quest on the base version that's available on PC Game Pass. Didn't try any mods

I was excited to play Fallout 4, it's one of the few games that made me want to upgrade from my Xbox 360 back in the day when I didn't have a PC.

Sadly tho, I ended up being disappointing and mostly annoyed with this game mostly because of two main things: how Bethesda Softworks has curated quests in this game and how the story just ends abruptly.

I like the promise of a journey to find your missing son but as soon as that plot twist in the Institute comes, the game just sort of...dies. Not a lot of story after that point as I did like only two more quests after that in the Minutemen faction. All of that felt very abrupt and anti-climatic and I hate that I saved the robot version of my son only for him to disappear?!

But what really ruined my experience were the quests...the infinite quests. You see, I had finish the Next-Gen update quests at the start of the game without knowing anything and was very over-powered and that coupled with the extremely insulting way those quests just kept sending me to the same locations again again just made the game feel so mechanical and soulless and then you had to do them a bunch more times for the Minutemen to unlock the final quest?! why and not to mention that near the end my quest log was half full of these fake quests

I enjoyed how fluid the shooting is, it's easily the best improvement over the previous games but hate that the dialogue wheel is just now a dialogue flavor wheel. You get four options to choose from and most of the time they just say stuff like "Go on. or "Okay" which is needless and lazy

Overall: 6/10 I did have some fun with it and I liked the premise of the story at first but for someone who doesn't do mods a lot and is interested in experiencing the story and hand-crafted quests.....this game just feels shallow. I'm ready to be over this game and go back to playing something indie and much more compelling

This is a classic now, so I expected it to be the prototype of all time-traveling stories that are so much more common to us now. What I didn't expect was how serious Wells was about writing the book. The year 80K AD is a unique living breathing world which is built on the gradual conditioning of the two divisions of society: lower class and upper class. This makes the novel much more grounded and a commentary to the present times as all classic science-fiction does and indeed what is basically H.G. Wells' flavour.

Another surprising thing was the fact that this is also a very imaginative and creative novel. It seems like H.G. Wells is giving voice to the way time-lapse videos work when his protagonist gets on the machine for the first time and he experiences this:

The laboratory got hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. Tomorrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still.

I mean, this is before television, cameras, montages and yet HG Wells' proves himself as the classic visionary writer. The novel is always beautiful and imaginative with it's setting and the visual language gives the more serious commentary an adventurous thrill and excitement that makes you intrigued in the story.

To me the novel has less merit as a commentary though because it is much more speculative even in it's own narrative, the chains that keep the two classes in constant struggles are visible clearly at first to the time traveler but he soon realizes that even that simple explanation though it may explain how the beings of 80K AD got it, what is happening to them now is different. The novel also talks about evolution and time and all of that has a more compelling story-telling intrigue than anything that is real.

I have watched the movie "Things to Come" which was based on one of his stories and it felt like the writing and message was very heavy-handed and dry in it and that gave me the impression of Wells' as a very "old" writer so it was a pleasant surprise to find thrills, danger, beauty and genuine questions of humanity's future and about the Earth.

8/10 Wonderful read, surprisingly good

"It wasn't fear anymore, it was madness. And when you're mad, you cease to exist."

The Last of Us, Limbo, Inside, Bioshock: take all these games with amazing stories and you'll find that video game storytelling works hand in hand with superb gameplay design. From Inside's simple 2D platforming forcing you to act like a puppet to Bioshock's main power-up gameplay system showing you memories of residents of Rapture, all of these games have a story that feels satisfying because it ties back to gameplay. I think that sort of storytelling is why some narratives can only be experienced in video games and why those games and more like them are so good. But they're not the only games with a good story.

The Town of Light is a first-person walking simulator game about a mentally unstable girl named Reneé and the journey we go on with her, exploring her past and present through her memories and experiences at a mental asylum. From the beginning it reminded me of Benoit Sokal's Syberia and this "other type" of games with a good story. I mean games that are so focused on their presentation that either their gameplay is too simple (like Syberia) or genuinely simple gameplay designs are not present in them and this makes the whole experience suffer.

Case in point, The Town of Light is a beautiful game and it's one of the best depictions of the on-goings and effects of being held up in a mental asylum in any media I have ever experienced. The game really manages to create an authentic immersive mental asylum in Italy through the various hospital documents, posters of fascist Italy, pictures of Mussolini and through it's dialogues and story accompanied in each of the game's fifteen chapters by an animated sequence of what is going on with Renee. What I adored even more is how the developers actually went to a real life mental asylum and recreated it in-game, highly recommend to check out the live-action trailer after finishing the game.

It seems to be that the whole purpose of this game's existence is to make you realize how fucked up these asylums were in real life and it really commits to that which is awesome. There are even branching chapters that you can get based on multiple choices you can make during the game which seems to really unlock different parts of the story. Unfortunately, while the presentation really gets fully realized, the gameplay and feel of the "game" aspect of it is actually annoying. I don't know how common it is for games like these but having unskippable cutscenes is always lame, the fact that my character can't run is stupid. The game was also very fond of crashing on my system even though it's built on Unity and I expected that would mean it would be pretty stable.

Overrall: The Town of Light is absolutely worth one playthrough atleast if you can look past the gameplay issues I mentioned and it's really a very unique and one of a kind presentation in gaming because of the themes it deals with. 7.5/10

(Read through CloudLibrary)

“Are you happy here?” I said at last.

I felt a little spoiled when I was reading this book, primarily because thrillers are some of my favorite types of books and I have read some that have twists on every page and then here was The Secret History, starting with the death of a main character, telling you who did it and then rewinding the clock and through the whole book showing us why it happened the way it did.

In that context, it seems fairly understandable to think that I should not be comparing this book to the fast and forgotten triumphs of Dan Brown but more meditative, characteristic journey of people who are friends. Normal teenage people just living life really, attending college, falling in love, studying haha

To me that feels like Harry Potter, Tolstoy, it feels like warmth and love. Don't get me wrong there is a lot of tension in this book and the characters are for the most part not likeable because they are rich assholes but compelling because of how truly Donna Tartt embraces her characters and lets them be as they are, she lets them run around in circles doing their own little things and because the writing is so good, you engage with their actions and want to follow them wherever they go.

This is a book built on great pacing and rigid structure, there are only eight chapters and they are really big ones. The shortest is like 19 pages and the big ones are 82. What it allows the book to present to the reader is a story told in stages where each stage is a mood, a haze, a drunken splendor of amazing writing and aesthetics that put shame to anything Instagram can create; each stage being able to stand out distinctly meanwhile living cohesive with the others.

That can sometimes backfire and it does, sometimes you have no idea what happened just twenty pages before, only because most of the text feels like you're in a trance, drunk and moving through the motions of life. That's probably my only complaint about the book aside from Donna Tartt showcasing large sections that read as Islamophobic but not having the gall to use the word Islam instead using the fiction term isram which is just confusing, especially when one of her principle character's whole mythology is built around meeting people that actually existed in real life, like George Orwell!

Overall: I really adored the book, the vibe it brings and just how beautiful the writing is. While I understand it feels like not much happens in the story itself, that does not take away much from the book because it was never going to play that card anyway, from the moment we see Bunny falling down that cliff to it's last sci-fi/afterlife reunion.

I have always thought that graphics don't do as much at making a game beautiful as it's art style. The visual medium that video games employ allow them to show us anything literally so why stick with a realistic render of everyday people when it's so easily forgettable?

Games that have a more realized, distinctive look to them always have more staying power in our hearts, particularly older games.

The game Gris is one such example, it rendered me speechless when I started playing it, made me laugh with amazement at how it's world moved, looked and breathe as though something like a different reality.

There is so much construction in Gris, so many meticulous careful design choices that it's amazing it even plays as smoothly as it does. This is a video game about the exploration of grief, every level and scenario and cutscene is speaking in a intriguing metaphor of death, life and utterness of destruction and loss.

However, Gris never forgets it's video game roots and this is what impresses me the most about it. From the first button you press to the last walk-off moment, every level and puzzle is designed with an expert knowledge of how metroidvania games execute exploration. What I mean by that is that the developers very clearly have thought of how the camera angle affects what path we take, the sound cues to inform you of an action without telling you outright, the visual cues and then the level design itself that is so nonlinear in it layout but still ends up to the exact point from where you continue forward. It never feels like you're going along a straight line, it feels like you're discovering your own path forward, as if the game world is opening itself up to you and maintaining that illusion showcases the thought and effort put into each of Gris's amazing looking levels.

I don't want to talk about the story a whole lot because of how abstract it is, there are no dialogues, not even screen texts beyond explaining the button prompts and new powers. There is a lot to think about and a lot of visuals and music that you experience as you play through it that talking about it feels like diminishing the effects of it.

What I can talk about is that, it is short and of course I really liked the gameplay specially the later stages because of the amount of control you get as you unlock more powers in the game. The puzzles become really alive and though they are never difficult to figure out they still have that satisfying "a-ha!" feeling to them when you figure out what to do. Exploration is always rewarded with collectables and there is an in-game achievements section as well to encourage replayability and a chapter select after the game ends.

Overall, 8.5/10 Gris is a short but memorable experience about death, loss and ultimately acceptance and while it never gets to be dark and harrowing in terms of visuals, it still makes you feel plenty of sadness. Highly highly recommended and it's on Game Pass.

Wow, such a great game and such a different genre too. Essentially an interactive computer interface. I did not really expected to engage with it as much as I did because of how the narrative is about an impartial investigator destroying people's privacy and reading everything about their lives.

But Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You (2016) managed to surprise me, not only was it well written and beautifully playing with Orwellian themes, it also was an engaging gameplay experience. I completed the game in about 8h 25m so it is a short game but the control that I felt I had in my hands to make the story go where I wanted by deciding what piece of information I wanted to submit felt just the right amount of narrative tightness and player freedom.

I can already tell it has so many little variations in it's ending that you could come and play it again after you have moved on and get something completed differently. Also, it manages to talk about privacy and information and data that is perhaps even more relevant than it was back in 2016.

Very similar to Hypnospace Outlaw another game where you are an "online enforcer" but with of course very different themes, this one is a lot serious than Hypnospace Outlaw.

I do have some complaints about the game, the major being that the computer interface and it's very aspects didn't feel as interactive and engaging as to compliment an increasingly complex story. They sort of remain the same static mechanics (you click something, it does the same thing that has happened before regardless of it's thematic value) that they were introduced as. This removes a sense of compelling intrigue in the gameplay itself and really starts to wear down on you if you try to finish it in one sitting.

Overrall, a recommended 7.5/10

Do give this game a try if you're looking at your library for something different and as it requires a lot of reading, be a little patient with it in the beginning. This was given free on epic games before so I assume most gamers already have it