Saturday linkage
Feb. 2nd, 2008 10:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyVia ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oursin, a lovely, thoughtful article on craftsmanship, by Richard Sennett. "Innocent confidence is weak," may need to join "Perfection is death" on my monitor.
The wolf book gets three positive reviews, all of which are thoughtful, and all of which are engaging with different aspects of the novel. That's just . . . nifty.
I don't even know how to explain what I love about Mateusz Skutnik's Submachine games. They're point-and-click flash games, focused on puzzle-solving--not unlike, in their different medium, the Infocom text-adventure games I loved as a teenager. It isn't the Submachine games qua games I find compelling--I inevitably resort to the walkthroughs sooner or later because I am (a.) lazy and (b.) playing Submachine when I should be, oh for instance, writing a novel--nor the story, such as it is. It's the art (I also love the visible learning curve from The Basement to, for example, The Future Loop Foundation), and the way the art builds the world. There's a sort of steampunkish, Rube Goldberg/Heath Robinson ethos to the Submachines, and yet the undertones are not of whimsy, but of fear. There is an intrinsic, pervasive creepiness to this abandoned world, and I think that's what draws me back in with each new installment.
oursin, a lovely, thoughtful article on craftsmanship, by Richard Sennett. "Innocent confidence is weak," may need to join "Perfection is death" on my monitor.The wolf book gets three positive reviews, all of which are thoughtful, and all of which are engaging with different aspects of the novel. That's just . . . nifty.
I don't even know how to explain what I love about Mateusz Skutnik's Submachine games. They're point-and-click flash games, focused on puzzle-solving--not unlike, in their different medium, the Infocom text-adventure games I loved as a teenager. It isn't the Submachine games qua games I find compelling--I inevitably resort to the walkthroughs sooner or later because I am (a.) lazy and (b.) playing Submachine when I should be, oh for instance, writing a novel--nor the story, such as it is. It's the art (I also love the visible learning curve from The Basement to, for example, The Future Loop Foundation), and the way the art builds the world. There's a sort of steampunkish, Rube Goldberg/Heath Robinson ethos to the Submachines, and yet the undertones are not of whimsy, but of fear. There is an intrinsic, pervasive creepiness to this abandoned world, and I think that's what draws me back in with each new installment.
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Hello!
Date: 2008-02-02 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-03 03:00 am (UTC)Games
Date: 2008-02-03 10:35 pm (UTC)Some the best storytelling I've experienced in ages I found in a tv series called the Wire - don't know if you've ever seen it? It's a kind of drama thing which follows a police department and the drug dealers in baltimore. They get pretty much equal screen time. It really does an excellent job of portraying *people* in all their complexity rather than cops and drug dealers, and it does it in such an involving yet delicate way. It's so... I mean, you shouldn't spell everything out for them and stuff. This series really does that, it's got a complex plot and the dialogue is so full of baltimore street slang I don't understand some of it, but in a way that kind of adds to it, know what I mean? Hmm I seem to have gone on about it a bit and I didn't mean to at all, but if you get a chance + free time you should check it out, I'm sure you'd like it.
Er, I actually just meant to make that point about games I like and the writing thing, and say I can't wait for my next installment of Felix and Mildmay!
Isolfr
Date: 2008-02-06 03:02 am (UTC)There are gay male characters (or perhaps homosexual characters, given the society they live in hasn’t constructed a ‘gay’ identity per se) in the book, but he doesn’t seem to be one of them. His strikes me as completely situational homosexuality (a la prison) rather than a strong innate characteristic - and perhaps that is what makes the book interesting. Fair take, or have I got it wrong?
Rgds
Zafar
Re: Isolfr
Date: 2008-02-06 03:05 am (UTC)Re: Isolfr
Date: 2008-02-07 06:14 am (UTC)Another good review
Date: 2008-02-06 06:17 am (UTC)http://ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com/608323.html?nc=36&style=mine
Re: Another good review
Date: 2008-02-06 01:56 pm (UTC)