things I looked at this week
last modified 2 months ago
I wanted to get a post out soonish for silly reasons, so this is a bit of a low-effort post talking about, well... things I stared at this week! I don't think this post format will be returning too much, this is just kinda brain-dumping thoughts I've been having, that's what a blog is for... hopefully it's fun to read tho lol
tuesday: Grotto (2021), Brainwash Gang
I have this like, massive steam library of unplayed games I've bought over the years because I'm very slow to play videogames, and a ton of them are just random indies that looked cool and were cheap a bit ago, so I snagged 'em
but the fact I haven't gotten around to playing most of them yet doesn't mean I'm not excited to play them - quite the opposite, I really like looking at all the stuff I'm yet to play that looks so cool, and then every so often, I download one and decide it'll be my next little treat
Grotto was one such case, and it absolutely, 100% delivered!
it's a videogame, essentially, about being a seer trapped in a cave, and having a little collection of stars you can see through a hole in the mountainside, which you can connect into religiously-meaningful constellations. outside of the cave, there's a tribe of people who occasionally visit you one on one, seeking the stars' counsel
and holy shit do you get attached to these fucking guys. just, so horribly emotionally attached. there's a point where a character from outside the tribe comes to visit you and talks badly about the tribe, and when it happened I literally flipped the bird at my screen. don't badmouth my funny little nonbinary furries, they're literally doing their best!
Grotto is about doing your best to help this group of people through extremely limited communication, which is very very often misinterpreted. you wield your constellations in a constant battle to make everything better. it is extremely easy to big-time fuck up, of course
personally, I felt like I screwed things up huge-style twice - once with the Teacher character, then again with a character whose name itself is a spoiler, but it ends with "Pet". (technically, I fucked up thrice - I over-relied on something that betrayed me - but while I haven't replayed the game, I have an inkling that the story goes down that path regardless of if you do so, lol)
the Rock Paper Shotgun review has better words for this game than I do - my takeaways all feel really superficial in comparison. I do agree with a lot of the article - though I didn't actually interpret the game through the lens of translation, ironically enough given I'm very bilingual (se habla spanglish!) - but I think it's because I interpreted it a lot more through the lens of communication at large
I struggle a lot with getting what I want to say across to other people, constantly, all the time - neuro-atypicality aside, my rhetorical skills are extremely poor - and, yeah, it's like this whenever I talk. I never quite know how I'll be interpreted or what people's reactions will be - I mean, no, I know, but only through a ton of trial and error, which is something I kind of suffer through more than I enjoy lol. and even then, I can only kind of vaguely guesstimate - I constantly need loved ones to proofread and test my speech and words so I don't accidentally say something completely bizarre
this, combined with some additional difficulties with comprehending my own speech (which I'd add, but they feel a bit personal to just throw out into the void...) ... all together, it means that I already feel like I'm communicating through smoke signals on the regular. which made playing this game... immersive in a really interesting way! (lmao)
yeah, it was a very fun game. if you've got a spare five hours, picking it up won't hurt
also I think Grotto would be awesome for a variety streamer/youtuber, btw. I think about this because I watch a bunch of streamers but it's true. you'd have to find someone who likes to delve into one-shot story games and fully immerse themselves in the story and take it very seriously, but I don't think this is necessarily a huge ask - Markiplier is capable of taking stories seriously - honestly, he might've played it and I just didn't know bc I don't watch him, lol (I cba to check...)
oh and in the credits they put a :3 three-mouth face. huge fan of this
wednesday: Nosferatu (2024), Robert Eggers
I went to the cinema by myself (which I've never done) to watch this movie and honestly I'm very happy I went by myself - I don't really mind sex and gore in movies by themselves, but I get a little embarrassed if it happens while I'm watching them with e.g. family... (I think that's normal)
I liked this movie! I don't really watch many movies at all - if you quiz me on any famous movies, it's more likely I haven't seen them than I have, and I don't even mean "old classics" type famous movies, I mean I've never seen any Indiana Jones movies ever lol. I did see people talk about not liking this movie as much as others from the same director, which makes sense to me, since this is a remake of an adaptation and such - it's less his, no?
& I hadn't ever seen the original Nosferatu, so it surprised me how much it was, straight-up, just Dracula lol. it really was a bootleg!
and actually, while I personally prefer Dracula, I think Nosferatu is a better story - at least, again, if the changes to Dracula's story in the 2024 Nosferatu are the same in the original Nosferatu (geez this is getting confusing)
I feel like... the original Dracula often gets really, really distracted. like, most of its cast gets a happy ending, and also there's a cowboy (why is there a cowboy??). there's just like, a bunch of unnecessary stuff in the original Dracula - and that extraneous stuff makes me personally prefer it to Nosferatu - but I think the cast economy in Nosferatu makes the story better, if this makes sense. more goth if nothing else. every character in this movie served a specific purpose, and fulfilled it pretty elegantly!
I really liked Ellen's inner complexity. I've seen interpretations that she hates Orlok and theirs is a purely coerced relationship, and I've seen interpretations where she's fully into it, and I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle, in a kind of fun gothic horror way: Ellen simultaneously wants Orlok and doesn't, and neither of those emotions detract from each other. which is an extremely common thing to happen to people, to want something - or someone - and at the same time furiously not want it - and both of those emotions are very real and very solid, independent of each other, and not as a zero-sum game. I have a ton of thoughts on the subject, but I'm bad at expressing them properly, so I'll save those for a future post, maybe
Nosferatu was really successful at getting across how it feels to endure seemingly contradictory emotions, especially really turbulent or disturbing ones. I've seen people rationalize Ellen saying contradictory things - e.g. her comparisons of Thomas as a lover vs. Orlok - as, for example, goading Thomas on (which is an interpretation I do agree with lol - I just think there's more to it), or by saying she's "not being herself" when she's elsewhere - I mean, maybe I'm missing something (probably) but I'm genuinely confused on who else could she have been? bc I never felt like she was literally possessed by Orlok, in the sense of him dictating her words and actions
I personally interpreted a lot of her deal as just... struggling to reconcile very strong contradictions within her, which is a really difficult thing to portray in fiction generally (for a bunch of reasons). gothic horror, which isn't a genre I'm super familiar with necessarily, does seem really good at expressing this kind of anguish, this "being of two minds". maybe I should look at more gothic horror, honestly - I have a low personal tolerance for the sorts of taboos it often deals with, but if I go at my own pace and space things out, I'll probably be alright
so, yeah, W movie I guess. my favourite review of it on letterboxd was the person who said "realistically what are you supposed to do in this situation"
Nosferatu did take its bounty though, bc on my way out of the cinema I lost my dearly beloved sunglasses - which were graded, feel my pain - in the peak of summer, and I won't be able to get a replacement until, most likely, early-mid february. and I'm gonna spend this peak of summer somewhere extremely sunny, when my eyes hate the sun! literally one of the worst things I could've lost, short of my phone and maybe wallet. it's been two days and I'm still smarting from it, sucks so bad. fingers crossed I can get an identical replacement pair...
but yeah, that's about it for stuff I've been staring at recently. I mean, I've been reading books and such, but I don't wanna talk about them quite yet - I'll dedicate them a post once I have a couple under my belt. I've got in the pipeline a post about the books I read last year, so look forward to that at some point in the future - a lot of them were really cool, so I'm excited to talk about them
thank you for reading!