Like many people my age, I grew up playing video games. Many of those games have gone on to be considered classics, like Crash Bandicoot or Pokémon. There’s a lot of their DNA in modern games, like how Dark Souls’ cycle of learning how to counter enemy’s moves by repeatedly dying is very reminiscent of… Continue reading Playing Pretend
Author: Joshua Tong
The Speech of The Colonizer
Around the lead up to Captain America: Civil War and again when Black Panther came out, there was some discussion online about T’Challa’s accent. The big question was how would the king speak? Popular thought posits that regality sounds 'proper,' and that 'proper' would be an English-tinged accent. When we, in pop-culture, think of kings… Continue reading The Speech of The Colonizer
Unrealistic
Board games aren’t realistic. Monopoly doesn’t look like any metropolis and the geography in Settlers of Catan makes Giant’s Causeway look conventional. The diseases in Pandemic are translucent cubes instead of microscopic blobs. This all makes sense, of course. Board games are an abstraction of reality, paring down big concepts into statistics. This can be… Continue reading Unrealistic
Discussing Invasions in Committees
When you think Star Wars you don’t really think about the nitty-gritty of politics. Sure, you’ve got the admirals aboard the Death Star in A New Hope talking about dissolving the Senate and all that, but honestly, that’s about it. This is a space Western, we’re not dealing with boring politics here. Unless, of course,… Continue reading Discussing Invasions in Committees
Anti-Climatic
I’m still thinking about Pacific Rim, because, man, what a movie. The obvious awesome moment of it all comes during the Hong Kong battle. Two Kaiju attack the city, an unprecedented event. They take out two of the Jaegers defending the city and incapacitate Striker Eureka, the strongest of the lot. The task of saving… Continue reading Anti-Climatic
Pacific Rim (During an Apocalypse)
Today is a good day to rewatch Pacific Rim. But then, honestly, aren’t most days? For the past few months, I’ve been ruminating on the apocalypse in the back of my mind, owing to the whole, y’know, everything going on around us. While replaying The Last of Us, part of the game rung hollow, as… Continue reading Pacific Rim (During an Apocalypse)
One More Turn
The first time I played Civilization V on my computer I ended up pulling an all-nighter. While in college. When I didn’t have homework. It was not the best of life choices. But it was a lot of fun. I dug into Civilization VI last night, not heeding the various other games I’ve been meaning… Continue reading One More Turn
Immersion
Reading the Wikipedia summary of a book or tv show is not the same as reading or watching it. A movie’s script is an inherently unfinished product until it is produced and brought to its fullest form. It makes a certain amount of sense; you want the full experience of Ulysses? Read the book itself,… Continue reading Immersion
Theater On A Screen
I was incredibly fortunate to be able to see Hamilton back in 2015 when it first made the move to Broadway. This was well before the soundtrack was released, but after its run at the Public. I was a TA for a summer film program and part of the thing was for the students to… Continue reading Theater On A Screen
One Hundred and Ten
Hey, how’s it going? Today is, by my count, day one hundred and ten of quarantine here in New York. At least since the day that I went into lockdown, stopped going into work, and have been in relative isolation within my apartment. For those of y’all keeping track at home, that’s almost four months… Continue reading One Hundred and Ten
