Hi all, this is going to be a pretty quick. I was trying to ignore the very clear signs that I wasn’t going to be able to write the piece I wanted, but there is no denying them any longer. I had been outlining a piece mapping the decline of the Looney Tunes as a cultural institution to the decline of American institutions generally, but with everything that’s going on in the world, it was just putting me in too negative a headspace. That led to avoiding working on writing anything. So rather than trying to brute force my way through the mental miasma that piece puts me in, I’m going to put those thoughts on ice for now, and maybe come back to the idea when it doesn’t force me to consider all the various ways that society is falling apart.

Instead, I’ll write about some various media I’ve come across recently, and then next week will be the roundup for March. I’ll go back to the drawing board on a larger piece, and you should be seeing that in a couple weeks. But for now:

Don’t Let the Forest In

I’ve been mostly unlucky with the books I’ve read this year read this year. It’s both been a slow year when it comes to reading in terms of the pace that I try to set for myself, and I haven’t enjoyed many if any of the books that I’ve read.

So it was a bit of a relief to read Don’t Let the Forest In. This is a very tropey book, and I wouldn’t say that it had a particularly strong plot, but I’m nothing if not a sucker for poetic prose, which this book has in spades. This story follows an affluent but socially awkward boy Andrew at his senior year in boarding school. His best friend and roommate Thomas is clearly having a hard time with something, and his sister Dove is seemingly ignoring him. Eventually Andrew learns that the twisted fairy tales that he writes and Thomas draws are coming to life and threatening the school, so he and Thomas take responsibility to fix things. But Andrew is unstable, Thomas is hiding things, and it’s clear to the reader that not everything is as it seems.

While I personally find the “Dark Academia” trope somewhat dull, the author managed to write a pretty enjoyable twisted romance, and I enjoyed how the teen romance was described as this twisting, growing sensation inside the protagonist that threatens to consume him. Because who hasn’t felt that way as a teen? The books also played on the visual elements of the book’s formatting to really emphasize the instability of the protagonist. I always love when books play up being a visual medium.

The Game that Was Made for You

I’ve talked a decent amount about the YouTuber NorthernLion in my monthly roundups, but someone I haven’t talked about is his friend and colleague Baertaffy. While I still watch a good amount of YouTube, I watch nowhere near the amount of let’s play style gaming content that I once did. This is the arena that Baertaffy has focused on to modest success, playing mostly indie games with infinite replayability.

So I was surprised to see this video pop up in my recommendations when I logged onto YouTube recently. The Game That was Made for You is a video essay that’s about the game Shadow of the Colossus, but it’s about why this specific game means so much to him, and trying to parse out how exactly foundational pieces of media end up making the impact in our lives that they do. It’s an extremely different type of video for Baer, but it’s very competently done and is on par if not better than most video game essays that I’ve seen. This isn’t exactly particularly glowing praise, and I’ll admit that. Baer’s writing and editing here leaves something to be desired if he’s ever going to be on par with the people who’ve turned video essays into a craft of this space. But what really stood out to me and made me happy here was how much fun and joy Baer seemed to have in making this video.

I’ve been subscribed to Baer for over 10 years at this point, and while I hope he’s able to make whatever type of content he wants, it always gives me a little thrill to see someone venture out of what they’re known for and to try something new, especially if they are having fun doing so. And let me be clear, this video essay was enjoyable. I’ve seen hundreds if not thousands of videos like this, so Baer putting out a video that can hold its own in a crowded field on his first attempt is a feat in and of itself. I don’t think Baer is going to stop making his let’s play videos anytime soon, but I hope he still finds space to experiment and put out videos that are different from time to time. This was a fun change of pace from a creator I rarely watch anymore and I’m glad I took the time to check it out.

Reacher Season 1 (again)

I’ve been talking about Reacher far too often lately, but what choice do I have when I’m having this much fun with the show? I rewatched the first season, this time with my partner, and it was a true delight to see her react to all the absurd moments and melodramatic lines that this show is absolutely chock full of. This rewatch also gave me a greater appreciation for the show after having read the source material. Even though I knew this, it was astounding to see just how much work the writing team put in to turn a fairly mediocre thriller into somewhat that is truly special. So much is changed, especially with the characters, and I cannot give enough praise to the choices the writers made. In the books, the only real character is Reacher, yet the cast here managed to bring life to the most two dimensional, lifeless beings I’ve seen from a book in a long time. It was a blast to return to, even if it had only been a couple weeks since I wrapped season 1 up the first time.

Chicken Run

This weekend I’ve been hosting some friends from out of town, and we chose to spend our Saturday watching Chicken Run. And let me tell you all, this movie holds up. Not only is the writing and acting still sharp, compared to most movies that were coming out in 2000, this movie looks just as crisp as the day I first saw it. The beauty of the stop motion is so helpful in maintaining a timeless look, and it was fun to watch the DVD extras and here about the absolutely painstaking work it took to bring this movie to life. (Every day workers would try to make 2 seconds of footage. 2 seconds!)

It was also fun to watch this movie today with the context of having seen the movies that inspired it. This is very much a POW escape movie, with the chickens portrayed as competent military operatives kept under watch, and the villains being delightfully fascistic and evil. This isn’t a perfect movie, but honestly it’s pretty close. While it’s unfortunate that Mel Gibson was involved, even now I still appreciate the ways that the movie subtly referenced Braveheart and managed to lampoon his performance there. The biggest compliment that I can give this movie is that it almost tempted me to get Netflix to see the sequel.

Most of all, watching Chicken Run made me grateful and wistful for DVD extras. There were so many fun little easter eggs (at times literally) littered throughout the DVD that made even exploring menus a delight. Seeing the behind the scenes work really helped to emphasize the Herculean task it is to bring honestly any movie, but particularly a stop motion movie, to life. There have been many downsides to how streaming has impacted the Hollywood, but I think one of the worst is that it has really allowed people to discount the amount of work that goes into creating media. Skipping credits is baked into streamers, and we’re no longer getting behind the scenes features into how projects are made unless as a super fan you reaaaallly go digging. I love physical media, and I care a lot about media preservation. For all the good of the internet, I truly despise how ephemeral and disposable it has made media and information. But that’s a topic for another day.

That’s all for this week. As always, if you have comments or recommendations, please do reach out. I’m really trying to improve week over week (although more mistakes and errors slipped through last week than I’d like to admit). Soon I’ll be reading a couple of books that were recommended to me by the audience, so if you would also like to influence me and see me talk about something, just reach out. I’m easily influenced. But until next week, take care of yourselves.

Soma