Posted on April 5th, 2020 by Winston Smith
(1) A quote from In Unfamiliar England by Thos D. Murphy:
“The most impressive feature of the abbey ruin is the massive square tower of the gateway, which stands intact, its ancient state almost undiminished. The abbey has a long history, for Edmund, King of East Anglia, was slain near at hand by the Danes in 870—legend says because he refused to abjure Christianity, and it was this that won his canonization as St. Edmund. To the time of the Dissolution the abbey was by far the greatest in East Anglia, and its ruins, though fragmentary, are quite sufficient to indicate its once vast extent.”
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Posted on April 1st, 2020 by Winston Smith
(1) HANGING BY A THREAD: Surviving Globalism and Losing Factory Culture in the Embroidery Capital of the World (Breitbart)
(2) COVID-19, Circumstance, and Groundhog Day (Law and Liberty)
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Posted on March 19th, 2020 by Winston Smith
I published my own theory about the end of KH3 before I played Re:Mind. I’m going back now to some of the worlds to take screenshots for #PS4Share. I really love the posters in Twilight Town and Scala ad Caelum. The latter is maybe one of the loneliest worlds in the entire series. The honor of that distinction used to belong to Traverse Town in KH. Traverse Town always felt like a dark ride, movie set, or the city inside of the SDF-1.
(1) Kingdom Hearts May Have Just Uncovered the Mystery Around The Darkness (GAMERANT)
(2) Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMind – Data Young Xehanort No Damage (Critical Mode) (YouTube)
(3) Screenshot from Eden of the East. The detail is amazing (like the posters in Twilight Town and Scala ad Caelum)
(4) Speaking of detail…The Art of Cuphead is sitting on my desk.
The scan is from The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card by John Gall and Gary Engel.
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Posted on March 14th, 2020 by Winston Smith
“My whole journey began the day I lost her. And every time I find her…she slips away again.” — Sora
Finally. I completed Kingdom Hearts 3 at 10:54 on 3.13.2020 earning the KINGDOM HEARTS III Complete Master trophy (3.5% rarity). I haven’t been this excited since Arnold became the Space Sucker champion. Here’s my KH3 post more than 1+ year since the game was released on 1.29.2019.
Firstly, I don’t have anything negative to say about the game. I’ve played every title except Re:coded and Kingdom Hearts Union Cross and have bought platforms (PSP and 3DS) just for this series. I’m definitely a fan and have been since it was released -so- this post is a “hunny drizzle” of un-objectivity. I’ve seen the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra twice and working on The Legends of Kingdom Hearts Volume 1: Creation. Genesis of Hearts by Georges “Jay” Grouard so my credentials are better than Scallop Poêlé from the Le Grand Bistrot.
Tetsuya Nomura is a master storyteller, and whilst the story has gotten very complicated, when you break it down the series is simply about friendship, sacrifice, and the choice between good and evil (and the grayness in-between). It [the ending] was a satisfying conclusion and to see all the characters reunited was really wonderful. I also liked the cutscene at the end between Eraqus and Xehanort. I have my own theories about Sora and Kairi which I’ll end the post with.
23 Reasons to Play KH3
(1) Favorite Worlds: Caribbean / San Fransokyo / Kingdom of Corona
(2) Favorite Location: Twilight Town
(3) Most Helpful YouTube Video: Kingdom Hearts 3 – COMPLETE GUIDE: Ultima Weapon (100% Item Synthesis, 7 Orichalcum+, Minigames) by Soraalam1
(4) Best Link: 8-Bit Blast
(5) Best Attraction: Blaster Blaze
(6) Worst Attraction: Splash Run
(7) Favorite Keyblades: Starlight & Midnight Blue (PS4)
(8) Favorite Classic Kingdom Games: Building A Building, How To Play Baseball, and Giantland
(9) Best Mini Game: Flash Tracer / Verum Rex: Beat of Lead
(10) Most Difficult Mini Game: Festival Dancer (thanks Steve)
(11) Favorite Flantastic Game: Honeydew Flan
(12) Most Wished for KH3 Toy: Schwarzgeist
(13) Favorite Gummi Ship: Endymion
(14) Favorite Organization XIII Member: Luxord
(15) Favorite Shotlock: Phantom Rush / Noise Flux (Classic Tone)
(16) Most Wished for Kingdom Hearts World(s): Meet the Robinsons / Susie the Little Blue Coupe
(17) Most Wished for Kingdom Hearts Merchandise: Classic Kingdom in a Game & Watch device / The Art of Kingdom Hearts
(18) Toughest Secret Boss: Dark Inferno (Battlegate #14)
(19) Favorite Character: Aqua
(20) Favorite NPC: Yen Sid
(21) Favorite Team Attack: Mighty Avalanche
(22) Favorite Trio: Roxas, Axel, and Xion.
(23) Favorite Trophy: True Captain (Sink 200 enemy ships in The Caribbean)
Questions without answers?
(1) How did Kairi get to Destiny Islands from Radiant Garden?
(2) How BIG is Destiny Island and is it part of a chain of islands?
(3) What are Terra, Ventus, and Aqua going to do next? This answers some of that!
My own interpretation of the ending
It looks like Xigbar / Luxu is going to feature prominently in the next story arc but I think I’ve played enough. I’m satisfied with the ending, and although I’m a hopeless romantic, Sora and Kairi could never “live happily ever after.” Sora makes the ultimate sacrifice for Kairi (and his companions) and his fading away on that iconic beach is a little like Frodo passing from the Grey Havens to the Blessed Realm.
“‘Yes,’ said Gandalf; ‘for it will be better to ride back three together than one alone. Well, here at last, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-earth. Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.'” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Sora: What’s so funny?
Young Xehanort: I told you. There’s a high price to pay for all of this.
Sora: And what price would that be?
Young Xehanort: I’ll go back to my time and live out my life. But Sora, you’re done now. Your journey ends here.
Sora: What?
Young Xehanort: Good-bye, Sora. Your time… in this world is-
Young Xehanort fades away.
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Posted on February 23rd, 2020 by Winston Smith
“He [Tetsuya Nomura] gave the hero a more cartoonish appearance, inspired by Mickey Mouse, particularly in the color scheme: the baggy pants were red and the shoes were yellow. In addition, he purposely exaggerated the size of the shoes to accentuate the resemblance to Mickey. Then, he redid the last animal features, finished off the hairstyle and the accessories, including giving him a belt. He kept the giant key, which became the Keyblade. Thus, Sora was born, and with him, a defining feature of Kingdom Hearts, even though at that point the project had a different title…” — The Legends of Kingdom Hearts Volume 1: Creation. Genesis of Hearts by Georges “Jay” Grouard
“Beauty and sadness are woven together; even Frankenstein gets lonely.” — Shampoo Planet by Douglas Coupland
I’m not sure how to start this retrospective without being too personal. What’s really essential is that you understand that I’m a GenXer in the core years of the generation (a Douglas Coupland Xer). I read Shampoo Planet in my formative years and love this quote (and have shared it with those I love):
“I cry because the future has once again found its sparkle and has grown a million times larger. And I cry because I am ashamed of how badly I have treated the people I love–of how badly I behaved during my own personal Dark Ages–back before I had a future and someone who cared for me from above. It is like today the sky opened up and only now am I allowed to enter.”
It’s a theme in this long post I’ll come back to in the end and it’s linked to Kingdom Hearts. I love the beginning of The Legends of Kingdom Hearts because Grouard highlights all of these keywords that make Tetsuya Nomura who he is. I think we all do that kind of introspection at some point in our lives (or maybe at many points).
“They are two very interesting protagonists because they establish plot devices that Nomura, the writer, loves to use: solitude, tragedy, depression, individualism, freedom, escape, and blurred the lines between good and evil.”
Who are you? Who are you? I’m a walrus.
One of my favorite posts is A Gen Xers Top 20 Video Game List which I wrote in 2015. I list Ultima IV and 2400 A.D. as my favorite titles (although Kingdom Hearts is my favorite series). I’m re-reading the post and amazingly Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance didn’t break the Top 20. I also read The Art of Atari since writing that post and one factor for early gamers (Gen Xers) was HOW important the role of art and design was in those early games.
“At a time when on-screen graphics were much less sophisticated, Atari needed artwork and graphic design capable of stirring the imagination.”
Generation Z has grown up mostly digital but Gen Xers were raised in an analog world. You had to use your imagination in those early video games and culturally we were just barely removed from a world of dungeons and dragons (pen and paper). Ultima IV and 2400 A.D. rank so highly on my list because of the analog components. I still have the metal robots from 2400 A.D. and the ankh and cloth map from Ultima IV (the manuals for the latter are amazing). When Ultima IX: Ascension was released in 1999 all those analog components were included in the box. It’s funny to even type “box” because games today are downloaded via Steam or streamed via Google Stadia.
The soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window…
I don’t think Generation Y and Z understand the influence the arcade had on Xers. One of my favorite scenes in Tron: Legacy is when Sam turns on the arcade machines at Flynn’s. There’s also an arcade scene in War Games and where else does Ronald Miller find Kenneth in Can’t Buy Me Love but in an arcade.
All of this seems pretty far from Kingdom Hearts and those quotes from Shampoo Planet but I promise there’s a connection.
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Posted on February 9th, 2020 by Winston Smith
“Sometimes life has a way of moving you past things like wants and hopes.” — Kevin Flynn
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Posted on February 9th, 2020 by Winston Smith
“A station is far more than a group of buildings where the passenger catches [the] train, buys a ticket, a meal or a newspaper. It expresses the very nature of rail transport. The new stations, with their functional look, provide for a smooth flow of passengers of all times. Clear sign-posting, logical arrangement of essential services and spacious interiors match the bold, clean shapes of the external structures. There is the minimum of pretension, the maximum of practical commonsense in architectural terms.”
Source:
British Rail Architecture 1948-1997 by David Lawrence
“Disney typically appeared to be in search of new technologies to enhance story-telling, improve an attraction, or, in this case, develop the EPCOT concept.”
Source:
Walt Disney and the Quest for Community by Steve Mannheim
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Posted on February 8th, 2020 by Winston Smith
(1) A couple of quotes from Paul by N.T. Wright:
“What matters, I think, is the way in which the letters covers so many moods and situations, the way in which, like the great music of our own classical tradition, they can find you at every stage of life, in every joy and sorrow, chance and challenge. I am reminded of one of the finest British journalists of the last generation, Bernard Levin, who spoke of how the great composers had accompanied him through his life: ‘Beethoven first, for the boy who wanted to put the world to rights; Wagner next, for the man unable to put himself to rights; Mozart at last, as the shadows lengthen, to confirm the growing belief that there is a realm ‘where everything is known and yet forgiven.'”
Shades of Absolutely On Music by Haruki Murakami
(1a) “…they were discovering at the same time that Rome, after all, could not really deliver on its promises. When the new communities spoke of a different Kyrios, one whose sovereignty was gained through humility and suffering rather than wealth and conquest, many must have found that attractive, not simply for what we would call “religious” reasons, but precisely for what they might call “political” ones. This looked like something real rather than the smoke and mirrors of imperial rhetoric.”
(2) Kingdom Hearts III Re: Mind’ Is the Antidote to Bad Endings (Wired)
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Posted on February 2nd, 2020 by Winston Smith
Posted on January 25th, 2020 by Winston Smith
Posted on January 25th, 2020 by Winston Smith
Quotes from Paul by N.T. Wright:
“But the dark powers do not give up easily.”
“Ephesus was famous as the home of all kinds of magic, the dark and powerful arts that were always popular on the edge of mainstream paganism. When Acts describes converted magicians burning their secret books as evidence of the impact of Paul’s teaching, this makes sense precisely in Ephesus. But it would also make sense to imagine a backlash. And when the dark forces strike back, they do not play fair.”
“In one scene that must have shaken the world to its core, a substantial group of magicians made public confession of what they had been up to and brought their valuable magic books to be burned. The dark arts were being smoked out of hiding, almost literally. All those prayers Paul had prayed, invoking the name and the power of the crucified and risen Lord, were having their effect.”
“But in this case he had sensed that something else was going on. The forces ranged against him were not simply human. He had stirred up a hornets’ nest with his powerful ministry in Ephesus. Think of all those magic books going up in smoke. Just as Jesus warned his followers not to fear those who could merely kill the body, but rather to fear the dark power that could wreck a more terrible destruction, so Paul was learning that human authorities, though important in themselves, might sometimes be acting merely as a front for other powers that would attack through them.”
“I think that, like a plant in harsh winter, Paul in prison was forced to put his roots down even deeper than he had yet gone into the biblical tradition, and deeper again, still within that tradition, into the meaning of Jesus and his death. The roots slowly found moisture. From the depth of that dark soil, way below previous consciousness, he drew hope and new possibilities. The fruit of that labor remains to this day near the heart of Christian belief.”
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Posted on January 20th, 2020 by Winston Smith
Do not delete.
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Posted on January 12th, 2020 by Winston Smith
“It is a difficult and rare virtue to mean what we say, to love without dissimulation, to think no evil, to bear no grudge, to be free from selfishness, to be innocent and straight-forward.” — Lead, Kindly, Light
(1) The art of imitation – 19th century Islamic revivalism (The British Museum)
(2) A poem by Robert Frost:
TO THE THAWING WIND
“Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate’er you do tonight,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit’s crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o’er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.”
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Posted on January 5th, 2020 by Winston Smith
(1) A quote from Paul by N.T. Wright:
“When our words run out, we need images: the look of delight when a dear friend pays an unexpected visit, the glance of understanding between musicians as together they say something utterly beautiful, the long squeeze of a hand by a hospital bed, the contentment and gratitude that accompany shared worship and prayer—all this and more. The other Greek word for which Paul would reach is of course agapē, “love,” but once again our English term is so overused that we can easily fail to recognize it as it walks nearby, like a short-sighted lover failing to recognize the beloved; what we so often miss is that it means the world, and more than the world. ‘The son of God love me,’ Paul had written to the Galatians, ‘and gave himself for me.’ What we see as Paul makes his way around the cities of northern Greece is what that love looks like when it translates into the personal and pastoral ministry of the suffering and celebrating apostle.”
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Posted on December 30th, 2019 by Winston Smith
(1) A quote from The Power Of Silence: Against The Dictatorship Of Noise by Robert Cardinal Sarah:
“Today the danger lies in the unbridled activism of the modern world. We are always called to fight, to comb the countryside, to overthrow our adversaries, and to destroy them. Indeed, man is driven to compound one evil with another, whereas we ought to let the weeds grow with the wheat. Silence will give us the patience to wait for the moment when the useless plants will fall by themselves. Thanks to silence, we will know how to bide our time and to wait for God’s hour with perseverance so as to forge an alliance with him and to work under his guidance.”
(2) The Death of Europe, with Douglas Murray (YouTube)
(3) Virginia gun ‘sanctuary’ leaders urge resistance to gun laws, compare to American Revolution (Washington Examiner)
(4) Chuck Todd Suggests That Trump Voters ‘Wanna Be Lied to’ Because Noah’s Ark or Something (PJ Media)
(5) Wintry panorama…
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