TV: GLOW

I started watching Netflix's GLOW the other day - a show about a women's wrestling troupe set in 1985. We may be over-saturated with TV shows set in the '80s, but this one is, to me, one of the better options.

I decided to watch this after seeing some of the in-Netflix promo for the recently released second season, and after hearing that Kate Nash was in it. Her inclusion intrigued me, and the show's concept seemed really interesting. I'm also very here for more unflattering portrayals of the '80s, and I feel like this show has a pleasing level of grim and ugly to it without being an off-putting misery fest (but your mileage may vary on this). It's not afraid to show us the ugly fashions sometimes.

The show is really well shot and really shines through its characters and some of the comedy elements. Our main character is Ruth, a jittery screw-up who is perhaps a bit too earnest about her acting passions at the wrong times, and I think she walks such a perfect tightrope between sympathetic and deeply embarrassing. I love her, but I also really want her to stop.

The cast is excellent overall, and while I think Kate Nash's character, Rhonda, could benefit from being less exaggeratedly ditsy, she does do well when she's given lines of any actual feeling that a real person might ever say instead of an unfunny quip to solidify her supreme idiocy.

One thing I really like about the show is that way it approaches and makes jokes about race and sex. There are some perfect little moments where characters discuss and sometimes laugh about this stuff, and I think it's done nicely, despite the fact that for a lot of people I'm sure watching this show will be a slog because the "isms" are simply a part of the setting and environment. I get that, but for some reason I don't find it as frustrating in GLOW as I have done in other shows (such as Mad Men, as an example I've seen this show compared to quite a lot).

There's a level of soap opera to GLOW that I think is well-crafted, the comedic pacing works well, and the narrative is fascinating to watch unfold. Like many Netflix productions, this one also utilises expert cliffhangers that are cruelly forcing me to watch an entire season in one day. Please have mercy. I love this thing.

More Final Fantasy IX Fun: Boosters & Burmecia

It has been some time since I continued with my new playthrough of Final Fantasy IX featuring Rihanna, Corbyn, and the gang, so I thought I'd write a little post to update you on the situation. The big thing is that I have discovered all the boosters, so now I can speed up the game and essentially not have to grind, which is nice. To be honest, I know a lot of people consider this game the ultimate Final Fantasy, and I completely see why, but for me I find a big portion of the beginning of the game a bit tedious and oddly paced, so it's nice to be able to use the boosters just to streamline those parts that I don't find pull me in so much.

It's a wonderful game with a beautiful setting, but on PC it also has quite lengthy battle waiting/loading times, so being able to speed that up is a real help to make the game feel smoother and just as exciting as the first time I played it on the PlayStation.

In this part of the playthrough I got to Burmecia, the crumbling city of constant rain. This was the location in the game that probably captured my interest and imagination more than any other. The rain and the music there is incredibly atmospheric, and that combined with the catastrophic decimation of the place when you arrive there left a huge impression on me. Freya (Beyoncé) is my favourite character too, so I love the mystery of the place she came from.

I also really like the sections where you get to play as Dagger (Corbyn). She just feels nice to control somehow, and I wonder what the game would be like if she was the player character overall. Something about able to play as a woman in a Final Fantasy game is always a nice moment for me, and really I just like her character design a lot, and her nonchalance in the face of danger and instruction.

Steiner (Rihanna) I love for his bouts of banter and rage, especially with the theatre troupe, and I like the whole feel of Treno, where he and Dagger head after being separated from Zidane (brexit). It's a place existing in the evening. There's a dog chasing a moogle in perpetuity outside the knight's house (what a sentence). There's crime, and the princess throws caution to the wind regardless. I kinda like that. She's alright.

Seriously though, look at this dog chasing a moogle. Beautiful. Please let this dog be happy and get whatever it wants. That's my only wish.

Blue

Nothing's easy, is it. Everything's smooth like you're riding down a slide at a fancy swimming pool, and then you're under the froth in a blue kaleidoscope. That's where you've gone. To hide in miniature sun-dappled waves. Blue-purple dunes on the back of your hand. Tumbling, always.

But that's where we're supposed to be, isn't it? I buried a smiling face in the sand once, and forgot where I'd left it. Maybe someone else found it, held it in their arms, threw it in the sea. Fate is a separate star, twinkling out of sight while I sleep.

You gave me seven dreams, like gifts. All wrapped up and grinning. There you were first, a fuzzy-headed mischief maker. A guide somewhere that was unfamiliar to both of us. It was in a different time, I think. A strange place filled with wonders. You laughed and I sifted through artefacts.

We arrange puzzle pieces and burn them. Something's made in the blue. And nestled somewhere inside is the pulsing red. Those things that move your eyes back and forth, up and around. The pull that keeps you awake, whirling slow. A staccato wave. A pulse, soft.

Journal: Hands & Bunnies

Here are some bright red and blue journal pages. The angry yet soft colours. Does that make sense? I don't think that makes sense. Well, I don't need to make sense. I refute sense.

I think I've been kinda scribbly lately with my paintings and journal pages. It's just one of those times. The scribbly times. It's nice to step back and look at your scribbly-ness and enjoy it, perhaps whilst taking a delicious and leisurely sip of banana milk. That's what I'd recommend.

I also was compelled to paint around my hand. Is there any higher art form than this? No, there isn't.

Final Fantasy Character Models: How I Love Thee

I was talking to someone recently about the different feeling of gravity or weight in different Final Fantasy games, and of course this is a great excuse for me to write a blog about about my favourite game again, and to go and play it a bit for the screenshots to illustrate the post. Excellent.

Final Fantasy VIII - The party is about to get run over by a bus.

So what do I mean here? Well, it's no secret that Final Fantasy VIII is my favourite one. I love the junction system, I love the world and its politics, and I love the more realistically proportioned character models compared to the games immediately following and preceding this one.

Final Fantasy VII - Fart has the last word.

Now, don't get me wrong, I also love the polygonal beauty that is Cloud in Final Fantasy VII, and the way your party of pals walks directly into your body and disappears after dialogue is done. I know a lot of people have various difficulties with these weird quirks of the graphics of the time, but I adore the ways the game demonstrates abstraction this way. Your party members aren't literally walking inside Cloud, nor are they adorable chibi versions of people. Cloud's hands, astonishingly, aren't really blocks! I love their in-game character models, and it's interesting to me how much this intrinsically affects the feel of gameplay.

Final Fantasy VIII - Selphie phases through a car. Normal.

In Final Fantasy VIII, we suddenly had realistically proportioned character models, as well as party members who merrily run behind protagonist Squall as he moves. They may somewhat creepily echo his exact movements, but these changes in how characters look and move do so much to create an entirely different feel to this game. Later, we'd go back to some older design elements for Final Fantasy IX for an alternatively satisfying experience (and I think the most pleasing aspect of character control in that game was the clunky footstep sounds - great stuff), but the unique weight of character control in Final Fantasy VIII makes me wonder - how much did that contribute to my enjoyment of the game?

Final Fantasy IX - Lindblum Dragon's Gate.

It's interesting. It's such a major element of a game - the way you control and see your player character - but it's also something so unconscious. I barely think about it, but it impacts everything. I think Squall clomping his long legs around across rusty train tracks, destroyed schools, and spooky castles is such a big part of what I love about this game. And I love the way Rinoa's long vest-cardigan-cape thing flaps behind her as she runs. Beautiful.

Why Does Hannah Baker Wear So Many Hats?

I've been watching 13 Reasons Why for reasons I can't explain to you, but the main thing I'm enjoying about it, aside from its bizarrely perfect form of cringe (expert cringe), is the parade of beanies Hannah Baker wears. She has so many of them. She is the queen of squishy, bean-like hats in various colours. She is a beanie master.

Perhaps they're a metaphor for all of her malleable and cycling thoughts, trapped in her head, trapped under the beanies. To be honest, beanies make me feel angry sometimes because I know that if I wear a beanie, I'm going to look like the aliens have arrived on Earth and immediately probed someone who used Myspace for too long. I don't know what this means, but I know it is The Look. Hannah, however, looks like she was engineered specifically to wear beanies. The beanies rest on her head like sleeping kittens, secure in themselves and their perfect crumpliness and pleasant autumnal colouring.

If I was a weak man I would be influenced here to attempt to wear beanies the same way Hannah does, unapologetically and nonchalantly, but no, this is not the way. I must wear beanies with fear and caution. I must wear beanies with the appropriate reverence, and possibly when I suspect rain.

The beanie is a formidable foe, and I salute it.

Paradoxes

So many of the things I think about and believe most are paradoxes in some way. It's funny, but it works. Those things are the things I feel most sure of precisely because I accept two opposite things at once in some way.

Like how our appearances are so malleable and constantly in flux because we're always moving, always in different light, always getting dirty and cleaning ourselves and stuff, but at the same time we fundamentally look the way we look and will have that same structure forever, more or less. And somehow both of those things can be comforting. There's an endlessness. A sense of being forever in motion, and a constant, unwavering self.

I like letting go. It doesn't matter what you do, what you change or make an effort with, in many ways, because you're fundamentally you. And all the things you'd consider flaws are also the things that are sorta perfect. The weird things, the very "you" things. Aren't they the only things?

Is this post just my justifications for spending alarmingly large portions of my life in pyjamas? Yes. And what's more important than that? Isn't everyone truly at their most beautiful and honest in their pyjamas? Maybe.