Year of Critique

Vol 3. The Subliminal Verses Artist: Slipknot Review: I can remember pretty well the time in which I became aware of Slipknot's existence. I was in middle school, 6th grade to be precise, and I discovered a little website called Youtube. With this fancy website I could search and find any music my heart desired. It was the first time I had any agency in deciding what kind of music I actually wanted to listen to, and was a super exciting time for me. I was super into music back then, but up until that point I was at the mercy of whatever my parents were into. In 2006 though, I actually got to choose the music I wanted to listen to, the music that would shape my adolescence. It started with My Chemical Romance, and quickly moved to any angsty song I heard on a Naruto AMV. There was definitely a limit to what my young brain could handle though, and some music tangential to the pop-punk I was listening to definitely went a bit hard for me. One of these bands was Slip...

Theme: Horror Hello there! NieR took quite a bit longer to complete than I was expecting, so I was a bit delayed in releasing my picks for October to you all. I just finished the game though, got the review out, and now it's time to release my picks for October. The theme is a pretty broad one I know, but it's only fitting for the month of Halloween to get some spooks going. Album: Hvis lyset tar oss Artist: Burzum Why I chose this Album: When you think musical horror, black metal is definitely one of the first genres that comes to your head. Hvis lyset tar oss (or Until the Light Takes Us) is the third studio album by Norwegian black metal band Burzum, one of the most influential bands in the Black Metal scene. I was originally going to listen to their fourth studio album; however, on recommendation from a friend of mine I decided on  Hvis lyset tar oss as it is their most well received project and that which is the most horrific. Not sure what to expect goi...

NieR:Automata Platinum Games Review/Critique: Back in 2017 during finals season, something really terrifying happened. While myself and all my friends were studying for finals, a massive fire was heading our way at a terrifying pace. As we all sat in our rooms ashe falling from the bright red sky, there was only one thing I could think of. I really, really, really wanted to play NieR:Automata. It was the new hotness in 2017, and unfortunately my hunk of junk PC at the time (bless her heart) couldn't handle it. It's kind of hard to say whether my desire was in fact an attempted distraction for the events surrounding me or a genuine desire to play the game, but either way that Christmas I was determined to get a new PC and play " NieR:Automata ". The day before finals week was set to start, there was a mass power outage, during which all of us at UCSB got an alert. " Evacuate immediately ". Finals were cancelled, we all headed home as conditions were ...

I, Robot Isaac Asimov "The Three Laws of Robotics: 1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." Review/Critique: I had really high hopes going into I, Robot. It's one of the cornerstone AI novels, a must read for anyone looking to dive into the evolution of Science Fiction. Unfortunately though, unlike most everything else I've consumed that helped lay the groundwork for an entire genre, " I, Robot " feels incredibly dated and out of touch. Now I know that this shouldn't come as a surprise. The stories in  " I, Robot " were released up to seventy years ago, in the 1940s and 1950s. Keep in mind though that I am taking that fact i...

Ex-Machina Alex Garland Review/Critique: As I stated in my monthly picks for August - films about " Artificial Intelligence " are incredibly overabundant today. In fact it feels like every big budget movie nowadays is either directly about AI or finds a way to work it into the greater narrative at any cost. Whether that be a main character, side character, or villain, even when the character's identity as an AI is inconsequential to the plot. I don't know who in the film industry is asking for this, it's certainly not myself or the actors, maybe it's what old people think kids are into, I don't know. Even when a film is able to avoid tagging itself as an AI movie, if it's a fantasy story it still almost always has a foreign character dealing with the theme of what it means to be human through the lens of someone who is othered. What I'm trying to get at is that, being as the theme is so oversaturated, it's incredibly difficult to p...