Medium Mashup

Category: The Deep End

In-depth think-pieces about Movies, TV, and Games

  • Death and American Horror Story

    american-horror-story2The below article will openly discuss spoilers from all four seasons of American Horror Story.

    When the first season of American Horror Story was airing, there was quite a bit of confusion over the series. First of all, the show introduced a shocking amount of ideas right from the start: ghosts, stitched-together Frankenstein babies, ghostly red-headed twins, a prophetic girl with down syndrome, a maid whose appearance shifts depending on who’s looking at her, a marriage-in-crisis, a school shooter, and a gimp-suited rapist entity, all in the very first episode. Even stranger, the show did not seem to have any qualms with making rather permanent narrative decisions. Major secrets (like the identity of the gimp suit entity) were revealed midway through the season, and several main characters died, or were revealed to have been ghosts the whole time. It was certainly fun to watch on a weekly basis, but it was hard to fathom how the writers would be able to sustain it as a series past the first season.

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  • Broken Video Game Launches and the New “Fix It In Post”

    Assassin's Creed Unity Face GlitchOne of my most anticipated game releases last year was the Halo: Master Chief Collection. Having all four campaigns on one disc, two of which had been remastered with new textures and soundtracks, sounded cool, but it wasn’t the main draw for me. Instead, I was thrilled to hear about the multiplayer component: all hundred-something maps from all (numbered) Halo games, all accessible from the same menu and the same matchmaking screen. The game promised the dream of being able to jump freely from game to game, map to map, running a marathon multiplayer session with unparalleled gameplay variety.

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  • My 10 Most Influential Games

    Today, I was tagged by my good friend Chris Thomas in a viral Facebook thing about people’s 10 Most Influential Games. I rarely respond to these kinds of things, but this one was obviously in my wheelhouse. I considered just throwing something up on my wall with some brief descriptions, but I don’t think that would’ve done the subject justice.

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  • Medium Reflexivity and The Nature of Choice in Gaming

    Parable02(Note before reading: This article contains examples from Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, and The Stanley Parable that may be considered spoilers. In the case of Bioshock, the example is a pivotal moment in the game and best left unspoiled if you are interested in playing it in the future. The examples from Bioshock Infinite and The Stanley Parable are less pivotal, but also reveal the main philosophies behind those games. The Bioshock Infinite segment mentions a couple rather unique locations from the end of the game, as well. If you want to remain completely unspoiled, do not read ahead.)

    When does a form of storytelling or expression become its own artistic medium? Was film a medium as soon as Edison began to showcase the May Irwin kiss (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUyTcpvTPu0), or was that just an early example of a technical achievement? When our ancient ancestors began to scribble the likenesses of men and animals on the sides of cave walls, had they created two dimensional art? Or were they just experimenting?

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  • Breaking Bad: What is Walter White’s Master?

    breaking-bad_cdcfbfThis write-up was written under the assumption that the reader has watched all of Breaking Bad. Please be aware that there are spoilers from the entire series within, and proceed with caution.

    There’s a great scene towards the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s film The Master in which the film’s title comes to light. After Joaquin Phoenix’s Freddie Quell returns to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lancaster Dodd following a long absence, Dodd explains that we’re all slaves to our “masters,” the drives and motivations that inform every decision that we make. The speech explains a lot about about Freddie, who has spent his life substituting his love for a woman with extreme alcohol abuse, followed by religion, and eventually a renewed appetite for women. Whenever he felt the need to give up one “master,” a hole was left in his being that he needed to fill with a new one.

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