The thing about the Christmas season that I enjoy the most is that out of any other time of the year it is the most backwards looking. There is no other time of the year (at least for Americans) outside of extremely regional cultural heritage festivals and perhaps Easter that things from yesteryear are brought back into the public consciousness and it actually be paid attention to in such a big mainstream manner. Classic film, swing jazz and big band, Old Hollywood glamor, ballet and all things “antique” or vintage and Victorian frilled are suddenly very important for 5 or so weeks and onto New Years. Suburban homogeneity is punctured with yesterday or even the ghosts of suburbia past come to visit just the same.
The sheer paganism of the traditional customs, decorations and foods of the season is enough to send my heart a flutter but the season’s various “styles” of nostalgia; Colonial, Victorian, 1920’s and 30’s Christmas and 50’s-60’s Christmas and now 80’s and 90’s era “Age of Nintendo” type nostalgia provide a “pick your yesteryear” type of holiday.
One of my favorite types of Christmas, which is common in Britain and the UK but not so prevalent in the warm and fuzzy “Santa Claused” (since the 1930s) USA, is the “Gothic” side of Victorian Christmas traditions. A Christmas Carol ring a bell? Unlike the US where Halloween is the season for ghosts and spirits and telling spooky tales; Christmas is actually the “time to scare” and Victorian Christmasases with their obsession with the supernatural often had lots of fortune telling parties (pouring hot lead into kettles of water to tell fortunes) and ghost stories among other little things amidst their Christmas party frivolity.
In the spirit of all things “sort of” creepy and the macabre and charming I will be offering three great “antique” reads still published by NYRB in case you have some hankering for things a bit less sweet;
A Schoolboy’s Diary by Robert Walser
That quirky, aloof and contemplative charm and degree of weaves in and out through most of the works; particularly the opening pieces “Fritz Kocher’s Essays”; a collected handful of essays written by a fictional and unfortunately deceased school-boy named Fritz Kocher. A personal favorite from Fritz; “From The Imagination” hits all of my personal buttons when it comes to good fiction. A very unique writer and while not “scary” his prose is beautiful quirky and contemplative enough to warrant a reading by the Christmas tree with a cup of tea.
The Black Spider by Jeremias Gotthelf
His story delves into a tale of the area where long ago poor and desperate villagers, tormented and tortured by their local baron, a former Teutonic Knight, are tempted by the Devil to help complete the impossible tasks the baron has ordered of them. There is, of course, a catch; a unbaptized baby (what else?). The villagers; including all the men flee and run from the offer. All but one, a farmer’s wife named Christine stands up to the Devil and considers the offer if only to save them all. She makes the deal with a kiss upon her cheek; but as the villagers have babies and instantly baptize them; a a mark in the shape of a spider starts to appear where the kiss was planted upon her cheek. Then come the spiders. Forewarning; heavy Christian symbolism and it’s not terribly feminist though I do think this story and the actions of the main character, Christine could again with a bit of a revisionist feminist stance and re-write could really transform this old parable. But it’s still worth reading if you enjoy some creepy crawly action.
Autobiography of A Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Russian short stories. If that doesn’t prepare you in knowing it’s going to be strange then I’m not sure I can adequately prepare you. Magical realism meets surrealism dunked in the special Eastern European sensibility and aesthetic and a heavy dollop of “SCIENCE! PHILOSOPHY! MATH!” sour cream; the fingers of an acclaimed pianist’s hand decides to bolt and spend the night roaming the city, a story about a man whose lifelong dream is to bite his own elbow, stories about eccentric mathematicians and fairytales about cracks, The Land of Nots. The whole kitchen sink (well not really but that’s what it feels like)
What makes these gleefully macabre and matter-of-fact is the precise delivery of Sigizmund’s prose. It’s eccentricity and sense of self really shines through. I can’t say recommend it enough for a fun, but in a very literate manner.
Short, sweet, wonderful prose for stockings that like a little bit of bite. Check them out!
Have a GREAT holiday!
Will the latest entry in the Battlefield series be the best, or has it finally shriveled in quality?
Please enter the url to a YouTube video.So, Variety announced today that Gal Gadot has been cast as Wonder Woman in the upcoming “Man of Steel” sequel, that will also feature Ben Affleck’s debut as Batman.
This has been confirmed by director Zack Snyder, who said “Not only is Gal an amazing actress, but she also has that magical quality that makes her perfect for the role.”
Look, I’m just gonna jump right into my reactions, if you don’t mind.
THE GOOD:
Well, obviously, WONDER WOMAN IS GOING TO APPEAR ON THE BIG SCREEN, FINALLY. And, the casting of an Israeli actress is pretty awesome, it’s great to see a non-white woman get to show some Wonder.
I know a lot of people were reacting with “WHO?” when Gal’s name came up, but I think that’s a plus. Even Lynda Carter herself once advised Hollywood to “cast an unknown.” I like having an actress without anything iconic to compare her role as Wonder Woman to.
THE BAD:
Wonder Woman is making it on screen, yes, but as a supporting role in a movie primarily focused on Superman and Batman. She’s not even being mentioned in the tentative title while the two boys are. It reeks of sticking her in the movie to appease audiences without having to do the “risky” thing and give her a solo origin movie because, everyone knows, female-fronted action movies with well-established characters are doomed to fail.
Oh, by the way, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” has made $297 million in two weeks and broke a Thanksgiving weekend record previously held by “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
Also, there’s the big question of Zack Snyder being at the helm again. Snyder’s record with female characters isn’t necessarily great. The man made “Sucker Punch” for crying out loud and defended it as “empowering,” proving that he has the most tenuous, superficial, male-gaze friendly grasp on the concept of female empowerment possible.
THE EH, MAYBE:
While I’m all about Gadot’s casting, I’m seriously hoping she plans to put on some muscle before filming begins. I don’t think it’s impossible, look at the transformations of Seth Rogen and Chris Pratt for roles in action movies. Wonder Woman is first and foremost a warrior, and I don’t care what nationality or color your actress for the role is, if she doesn’t have notable muscle tone, I can’t buy her as an Amazon.
Really, this is just all knee-jerk reactions to the news. We won’t know anything for awhile, and I’m waiting until we see the first leaked set pictures, promo images and trailers before I really decide on anything. And the truth is, I’m probably not going to flock to theaters for this, no matter how much I want my Wonder Woman fix. I still want her in a solo film, giving her the spotlight and letting her show the world the wonder that she truly is.
Ashly is an IHO Geek writer and is trying to be rational about this casting news. You can try to ruffle her feathers on Twitter @newageamazon.
At one time, you couldn’t get a better handheld series port than Zelda. Link’s Awakening, the Oracle games, and Minish Cap were masterpieces in their own right, distinctly different from their console brethren, but equally as challenging and entertaining.
Then the DS came along and screwed it all up for everyone.
Phantom Hourglass is the second worst handheld Zelda ever created. Though it had the visual charm of Wind Waker, it captured none of the exploration and adventure, instead replacing a vast world with a central dungeon which needed to be beaten nigh-endlessly to get to its ending. This frustrating repetition on top of a less than stellar game made for an experience I care to not repeat. The only game worse than this was its successor Spirit Tracks, which decided if it made us go on set paths to get to areas to explore, it would somehow be better than a free roaming boat. Though the central dungeon idea was improved by removing its time limit and allowing you to skip previously played parts, the developers stuck to their guns of extending gameplay time at the expense of monotony. Bleh. The age of handheld Zelda darkness was upon us.
But hark, like the sun peering through a dark cloud break, a new game was announced. One that featured top-down adventuring ala the previous handhelds and was a sequel to one of my personal favorites, A Link To The Past. A Link Between Worlds promised to take us back to a familiar Hyrule and bring the series back to its roots. As wary as I was, I bought it on the hopes that just maybe the developers realized that exploration is a crucial part of gameplay and it’s a bad idea to have half your game consist of playing the same level ad nauseam. I popped it in the 3DS and braced myself for disappointment.
I’ve never been so happy to have my fears unfounded.
Okay maybe I have, but you get the picture.
Link to the Past Nostalgia, But Better
First off, just to hear the classic Link to the Past tune to start off the game brought a stupid grin to my face. And it didn’t stop as I started the game. This version of Link is the blacksmith’s apprentice, which makes you wonder how far it is in the future if the fame and deeds of his ancestor didn’t keep him from working, but I digress. You start off in the same house from Link to the Past, you have an almost identical world map to Link to the Past, and all the music is revamped versions of, you guessed it, Link to the Past. This game just screams nostalgia in the absolute best way possible.
Another feature that struck me almost immediately was the smoothness of gameplay. Not only do you have full range of motion instead of just 8, you can break pots with your sword, and the complete pause of gameplay when going upstairs has been removed. The sword swings also seem to be faster and produce such a crisp sound and fast effect, it feels noticeably quicker and more satisfying to cut down a bush. I know that sounds stupid, but when you try it you’ll know and be like “Man, AristoGamer, you were right.” And I’ll pull down my aviators while I power up my helicopter to fly over the ocean and say “I know, kid.”
The story is also quite interesting. An evil entity named Yuga is turning sages into paintings and it’s up to Link, who suddenly gets the power to merge into walls, to foil his plot and save Hyrule and another place whose name is too hilarious to spoil. The second half of the game (there’s always a second half to a Zelda game) features a compelling plotline and one of the best endings to a handheld Zelda game in some time.
Breaking New Ground By Reexamining Old Ground
For the first time in franchise history, you can complete the dungeons in any order you want! When I first heard that, my mind was blown. “A non-linear Zelda should not be possible”, my psyche screamed. It was quickly silenced by the logical addition of Ravio, an item salesman who runs a store out of your house to rent you weapons. That’s right, from the beginning of the game you can rent every single quest-critical item for a price. The only catch is when you die, the items get returned and you must pay for them again. You also don’t need to worry about ammo or magic for specific items, as their use takes away from one unified bar that refills. Though it doesn’t make much sense for arrows to use the same system as the fire rod, it’s much simpler and more streamlined. I definitely don’t miss running out of ammo halfway through a dungeon and having to scrounge for more. This novel system singlehandedly loosened up a series which didn’t need loosening, but benefited from it greatly. The resulting game is radically fun, figuring out what items you need and want for each place and placing emphasis on gaining rupees.
That’s another cool thing, not only do start with a rupee limit of 9999, but because they’re so important, you find yourself caring about getting them far more. Gone was the exasperating feeling of needing to purchase something—anything—to lighten your coin purse. With this system, I don’t think I ever had over 4000 rupees. It seems so simple to place more importance on something so ubiquitous between games, but it’s a smart choice that made even cutting down bushes more rewarding.
In fact, the only negative thing I have to say about this game is I don’t really like the way Link looks from the top down view. Look at his front coif and tell me they couldn’t scale that back just a smidge so we could better see his face. Just compare Link to the Past and Link Between Worlds and tell me one doesn’t look more limiting.
Also, the art style reminds me of what they did with the new Donkey Kong, Kirby, and Mario Brothers games—they all look kind of similar and shiny. Though it’s not as pronounced a problem in this title and it harkens back to Link to the Past, it still has that same plasticky feel that the New Super Mario Brothers has where I feel like Nintendo got a bit lazy on the art. But again, it’s not nearly as noticeable in Link Between Worlds as it is in the aforementioned series.
Verdict:
Even if you’re not a Zelda fan or just haven’t played Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds is an excellent game that has one of the smoothest engines, best soundtracks, and most creative dungeons of the series. The nonlinearity of the game allows the player more freedom while smart design choices remove the small annoyances and increase fun just running around. If you have a 3DS and like Zelda games or adventure titles, this should absolutely be the next game you buy.