Matt
I am always immensely grateful to people who do impossible things on my behalf and bring back the picture. It means I don't have to do it, but at least I know what it looks like.
It's always exciting to get glimpses of places you'd usually not get to see. Be it the liminal spaces in remote areas or the places certain authorities don't want the layman to enter.
Taryn Simon's photography captures those places well and makes for an engaging collection of fascinating and sometimes transgressive peeks into exclusive spaces.
As though by command, the clouds thickened and lowered and amidst a swirl of wind and matter, the dark lord appeared in his own sphere of composure, alighting beside Frank on the balcony of the apartment. Together they looked out over the landscape - the unnaturally colored skies over shadowed turbulent waterways, the traffic lights and neon signs now rendered dysfunctional, the people peeping out from behind curtains and the dogs howling. "Oh Chin Chin ga daisuki da yo," he spat in his twitching tones.
When George Miller decided to leave behind his edgy, offensive YouTube persona Filthy Frank, he wrote this novel as a final send-off of the character, stringing together loose pieces of the nonsensical lore, before moving on once and for all to a more dignified passion with his music as Joji.
Past-me was definitely into the problematic humor of the Filthy Frank videos at the time and so I bought this book back in 2017 when it came out, all hyped up for the final hoorah. But I never actually finished it.
Curiosity got me to dig it out of the shelf recently and see how it would be to read this thing way past the material's prime.
I can definitely see why I didn't get too far into it in 2017 because the first 50 pages or so are really not very interesting with its rather annoying story of Frank's origin during an alternative WWII setting. But once that's finally over and the character begins to meet more of the characters of the show, travelling through different realms of the omniverse, it became much more engaging. The story is never very convincing or effective, but there is some creativity in the worlds and situations Frank experiences. Additionally, it's neat to recognize elements from the old videos that have found a spot in the storytelling of the novel somehow.
The writing is done in a purposefully overly flowery prose to give it that tongue-in-cheek tone of an epic legend. Though it can get a bit annoying at points as that includes using unnecessarily big words and elaborate descriptions very often.
On the other hand, this had much less offensive language than I expected it to. Yeah, there are the occasional ableist and racist slurs or misogynistic language, as that was an inevitable part of the humor in the original videos as well. But it actually shows up not nearly as frequently in this book. I was bracing for worse going in. lol
In the end, this wasn't anything I'd remember in the long run or ever call a great read. But it was pretty entertaining for parts of it and reading it now, so long after Frank welcomed viewers to the rice fields the last time, was an interesting stroll down memory lane as well.
That being said, I'm glad Joji found something else that's much more worthwhile to pour his talents in.
It seems to me that our culture lacks a precise political vocabulary for understanding women as self-conscious perpetrators of sexual violence. We rely instead on moralistic language about virtue, privacy, and emotional vulnerability to define female sexuality, or on limited views that frame women's historical condition as victims.
I know the consequences of not forgiving others, and do not intend to be destroyed by them [...] .
Saward's book gives a really interesting and candid insight in the aftermath of rape.
Her experience after the actual attack - confronting the trauma in different ways, dealing with unexpected reactions from press and acquaintances, going through several stages of the legal system to eventually reach the trial of the criminals, looking for some sort of conclusion to it all - showcases so well how much more there is to a crime like this other than the act itself. Add to that Saward's occasional questioning of her own beliefs as a devout Christian, which makes for a good showing of what religion can actually mean to someone.
Saward was very open about her personal struggles in this book but she also carried a lot of strength which comes through the text right from the get-go. Her pragmatic and confident personality makes for very matter-of-fact writing that doesn't shy away from any detail if it's important.
Clearly, this book genuinely aims to be a helpful companion for anyone who might be going through a similar situation because Saward herself was wishing she could have access to someone else's experience for reference and preparation at the time, and I think this book probably accomplishes that by being both educational as well as emotionally open about the pitfalls.
Walking someone through what it might be like to wade through the ripples and waves that an impact like this can cause, which are probably seldom considered by people that haven't experienced them.
Not all men are potential rapists, and not all women are potential victims. Even concerning rape, gender isn't a fate. We are humans and we decide how we write and re-write the story of our life, with every disruption and leap and contradiction. Because they're our stories and they have to make sense to us.
Nicht alle Männer sind potenzielle Vergewaltiger, und nicht alle Frauen sind potenzielle Opfer. Geschlecht ist auch in Bezug auf Vergewaltigung nicht Schicksal. Wir sind Menschen und entscheiden selbst, wie wir die Geschichte unseres Lebens schreiben und umschreiben, mit allen Brüchen und Sprüngen und Widersprüchen, denn es sind unsere Geschichten, die für uns Sinn machen müssen.
Vergewaltigung
Rape
You didn't keep your promise and abandoned me to my fate, to carry the whole weight of shame, the wrath of my relatives, the anger of my father. Do you think I would just sit all of that out? I could sit all of this out? - Surely not! - [...] and when the sky by a miracle would receive me and the unfortunate creature, that's an orphan before it ever had a father, alive, then I would want to, as soon as it began to stutter, tell it not of father and mother but the dreadful words whore and perjury, scream them in its ear until it would start to repeat them.
Die Kindermörderin
I'm not usually one to read cook books, but this one caught my eye and it's really nicely made.
The Afghan/German author put together a whole bunch of cool national recipes from his home country of Afghanistan, giving some neat insight into their kitchen culture, and drawing some connections between Afghan and German cooking. It's all presented in a really stylish way with lots of cool photography.
Really enjoyed flipping through this book and I copies a couple of the vegetarian recipes to try myself sometime.
Fields of opium poppies surrounded the infrequent villages shining their fresh green leaves against the storm-inked sky.Purple lightning danced on the horizon. It had rained here already, and out in the desert we could smell the aromatic camel-thorn as if it was on fire. Yellow lupins mingled with big clumps of mauve and white iris. Kariz itself was pervaded by an overpowering scent, as sweet as beanflowers, but more languid, more poetic. I walked out to try and place it. The opium flowers called me, glowing in the dusk like lamps of ice.
Road to Oxiana
Road to Oxiana
England looked drab and ugly from the train, owing to the drought. At Paddington I began to feel dazed, dazed at the prospect of coming to a stop, at the impending collision between eleven months' momentum and the immobility of a beloved home. The collision happened; it was 19 1/2 days since we left Kabul. Our dogs ran up. And then mother - to whom, now it is finished, I deliver the whole record; what I have seen she taught me to see, and will tell me if I have honoured.
There was pure fear in his face and his lips kept forming the words no, no, please. Wade almost left my field of view as suddenly the girl appeared at the other end of the glass panel. Alma Wade. She walked towards Harlan, her hair covering her face and her dress soaked in blood.
(Quote translated from German.)
F.E.A.R., that dark and grimy action-shooter full of gore, horror tropes, and bullet-time from 2005 was one of my favorite games as a teenager and definitely had an impact on my developing tastes in terms of genre fiction. Even on a revisit earlier this year, the game still mostly held up as a fun over-the-top shooter, even if the scary aspects showed its age.
But when I found out that some German guy wrote a novelization of this game, I had to hunt it down and see what that was all about. For a while I thought it might have been an official piece of merch too but now that I've made my way through it, I have some hard doubts about that. This really just seems like someone decided to write this soft fanfiction and sell it without any second thoughts about grammar or copyright infringement. But it's out there. It just got “re-released” on Amazon Kindle in March of 2023 and is still available now as I'm writing this review.
Anyway, this book roughly spins a plot about the story bits of the first game. Towards the end, it also briefly throws in at least one location from the second game.
It's not like the actual story of these games was ever very strong or sensical to begin with since it's the corny horror atmosphere and blazing shooter action that actually made those games popular. So, putting it down in text doesn't really do too much. To be fair, there are enough little bits and pieces of cold, bloody tech-horror in this franchise that I could totally see a skilled writer flesh them out and put them together as a genuinely captivating and effective written story. But Dominik Kristen isn't that.
His writing, for the most part, is very flat, riddled with corny clichés and, the further you make it into the book, with grammatical errors. Honestly, if it's the boring writing, it's the frequent typos and missing punctuation that made this book a slog to get through.
But the story also takes a good while to actually get to the core elements of the franchise that one probably expects. The first half of the book reads mostly like dull literary fiction of an ex-cop with a troubled background trying to get a new job and fixing his relationship with an ex-girlfriend. That subplot with the ex-girlfriend especially takes up so much time of this otherwise rather short book and is absolutely filled to the brim with dull romance tropes. When I decided to read a book based on a horror game where you spend most time blasting enemies into pieces of gore with a shotgun in slow-motion, I didn't expect to go through cheesy romance babble and a clunky 10-page sex scene.
When it finally actually gets to the elements of the game, it becomes at least somewhat more interesting. The shootouts can be relatively fun, though that doesn't say much. I was more entertained by how the author attempted to implement some gaming elements into the story.
For example, the game is filled with optional pieces of lore by listening to answering machines in the office environments. The author stops to point out all the answering machines at several points in the book with the protagonist having the odd urge to listen to them without it ever being used for anything actually substantial. It's never an organic subject and it gave me a good chuckle when I realized what the author was referencing.
It was also an interesting experience to read the protagonist, for a while, take account of every single magazine and bullet he took from killed enemies as if one would be picking ammunition from the bodies in a shooter game.
And although the protagonist's path is quite different in this book than the player's in the game, there are some scenes here that are basically one-to-one retellings of previously existing pieces of F.E.A.R. media. For example, I immediately recognized when a chapter started to describe the scene from one of the bonus video that came with the Gold Edition of the game which scared the heck out of me when I was a kid. It was funny revisiting it this way.
All of that doesn't make up for how dull and rough the rest of the book is though. It took me a lot longer to get through this than I expected. And now that I'm done, I cannot believe the author didn't include the infamous shotgun or the iconic nail gun from these games. Two of the most essential objects in this franchise and arguably two of the most remembered weapons in the FPS genre.
This really wasn't very good and at this point, I wish I could ask the author about how this even became a thing. What drove them to write this? But I guess I'll never know.
"Impressive", says grandpa. "I wish I had tusks as nice as yours.""I'm sure Mrs. Fishchomper would make you a nice substitute tusk.", says Wilbur consolingly
(Quote translated from German.)
I read this little childrens book while sitting at the waiting room at the dentist's office for my final appointment out of 10 in two months.
I always had a heavy phobia of dentistry and avoided it for years, so now I'm paying the price. But hey, at least I got to read this book and it's pretty cute. There isn't enough walrus xenofiction in literature.
Other generations perceived a plethora of swords hanging over their heads. But generally what they feared were shadows, for neither they nor their gods could actually end the world. Fate might reap an individual, or a family, or even a whole nation, but not the entire world. Not then.We, in the mid-twenty-first century, are the first to look up at a sword we ourselves have forged, and know, with absolute certainty, it is real...
Earth
What our grandchildren inherit is entirely up to us. And frankly, I'd rather they remember us as having left them a bit of hope.- David Brin, August 1989