Video Essay Recommendations

@“Syzygy”#p39227

@“tombo”#p39200

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I will present my own list

https://youtu.be/XejJ6PzPtEw

~

  • 1. Super Mario Bros.
  • 2. Super Mario Bros. 2 aka The Lost Levels
  • 3. Super Mario Bros. 3
  • 4. Super Mario World
  • 5. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
  • 6. Super Mario 64
  • 7. Super Mario Sunshine
  • 8. Super Mario Galaxy
  • 9. Super Mario Galaxy 2
  • 10. Super Mario Odyssey
  • @“fridgeboy”#p37218 Finished this yesterday. I don‘t know what your life experience frame of reference for this is but I’m orbiting the intersection of the venn diagram Hazel is describing—same age, similar teen friend group experiences, similar experience of mid-‘00s web culture and media (the circa 2007 Screwattack dot com footage layered in there really brought me back). The end of this video in particular made me emotional in a way I didn’t expect at all. Thanks for posting this Mr. Fridge.

    @“captain”#p39480 youre welcome! I met Hazel through the goblin bunker discord and I can report she is extremely cool and nice. She answered like a bunch of questions I had, giving free advice for producing YouTube content.

    I was in college when Elfen Lied came out. The only anime I’d ever seen was the stuff on Toonami - basically DBZ and Sailor Moon. Right around that time I watched this and the old Berserk anime and I’d never been exposed to stuff like that before. It had an outsized effect on me for sure. I really think she’s onto something with the role the series played in the US in the wake of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Frankly I wanted her to dive even more deeply into that.

    tons of great recommendations here already, love me some long winded pontification.

    **Displaced Gamers** youtube has a great series Behind the Code.
    they get into old nes game RAM watch windows and mods the actual code.
    gets pretty technical but still fun for normies.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AwA90VxgWU

    **Gaming Historian** has high quality documentary style content, a few episode are so good they might as well be on Netflix
    particularly these 3 on Tetris, Punch-Out!! ,and SMB3
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fQtxKmgJC8
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAwM-lCI4YU
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxT6IwUtLSU

    if you are into the dense History of JRPGs

    ClanOfTheGrayWolf has some incredible stuff

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sglKS-HfZMw

    as well as, Mr. Gentleman.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBnkTMqQfb0&list=PLSaYWXWGQ7U2L_qPQ4BEKeu748aq26KxZ

    @“fridgeboy”#p39498 You met Hazel??? That's awesome! Is she an extremely active Goblin Bunkerneer?

    I was specifically in the right place to see this video because around a year or so ago I decided to show a college friend of mine the first episode of Elfen Lied as like a "look what weird crap for freaks I watched in middle school" kind of exercise, and wasn't quite able to get whatever feeling that conjured up in me out of my system. As Hazel says at the end I really could have been more charitable toward my younger self.

    >

    the role the series played in the US in the wake of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq

    "American anime watchers and Bush Jr's America" is definitely a video I would watch (twice)

    @“captain”#p39636 well if by met you mean we had a relatively brief DM conversation on discord lol - not in real life unfortunately.

    Yeah I would love to see more historicized video game treatments. Not the history of how the game was made or the history of games as they relate to themselves - but the ways that games are part and parcel of history and are historical outputs of any particular cultural era. People have done this with film forever - we need more of that analysis for games.

    https://youtu.be/TRk9WTRp_3Y

    https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ


    Pretty cool 15min video from Polygon about early French gaming contre-culture and the pivotal role of Muriel Tramis on the local dev scene.

    https://youtu.be/vLKZ5lg1qK0

    >

    GAMES SHOWN IN THIS VIDEO:

    > La Femme Qui Ne Supportait Pas Les Ordinateurs

    > Paranoïak

    > Le Crime du Parking

    > Baratin Blues

    > Le Mur de Berlin va sauter

    > L‘Arche de Captain Blood / Captain Blood

    > Méwilo

    > Freedom: Warriors in the Darkness

    > Conspiration / Conspiration de l’an III

    > Le Bagnard

    > Chess Simulator

    > Meurtre à Grande Vitesse

    > Meurtres en Série

    > La Bosse des Maths (4éme)

    > Gobliins

    > Emmanuelle

    > Lost in Time

    > B.A.T.


    >
    >

    Modern French indie games referenced:

    > dont_forget_me

    > Haven

    > Dordogne

    Amusing that she jokes about an old French game being reminiscent of Undertale since I believe [OFF](https://youtu.be/qh5P9JUMIdc) (2008) was a big inspiration for Toby Fox’s game.

    rad

    New Summoning Salt dropped

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_wscUcbynk

    I haven't seen the Bo Burnham special but took a shot on this one - super glad I did. A beautiful introspection on society, capitalism, the internet, and what it means to try and live in the middle of it all.

    https://youtu.be/UvYcunuF3Eo

    Excellent investigation on the recent auction farce:

    https://youtu.be/rvLFEh7V18A

    I have family deeply involved in the world of art auctions so I cannot say I am surprised by any of this....

    I'd be real interested to hear what Frank thinks about this. He does some grading work for Wata (verifying prototype ROMs, not sure if anything else?), but also publicly stated that he thought these sales were fishy and almost certainly manipulated.

    @“fridgeboy”#p37218 Skimmed this in reference to the (not 2.5 hours) essay on Evangelion I’m trying to write. How do people make these massive bursts of thought on pop culture subjects appear to have any semblance of structure or import at all?? That’s a serious question; I usually avoid long-form writing but every once in a while I really want to try and say what I have to say without skipping anything. Structure and rhythm are the nuts I’m still trying to crack as far as writing something long that people might actually have the patience to read.

    (I guess I could try video essays, but the thought of talking to - or worse, _getting in front of_ the camera like I’m some kind of Important Person makes me barf.)

    Sorry, not a super relevant post just thinking in type

    @“2501”#p41886

    It’s not easy! I’ve written long form for my work, but scientific papers sort of come with their own preset structure, even for things in the hundreds of pages. An analysis essay is like half science half creative writing and melding those two styles and structures requires something special. I mean my own YouTube stuff tends to be in the 15-20 minute range thus far and I’ve been really losing the thread while trying to go longer than that. Obviously Tim’s work is a great example of “going long” while, I think, maintaining a thread.

    As for getting in front of a camera - you most certainly don’t have to convince yourself that you are important or whatever! It’s just a medium for your message, just like writing. If it’s the method by which you think folks would want to consume the message, why not?

    @“chazumaru”#p41424 I was watching this the other day too. It's bewildering to me, not that this sort of shit happens, but that it seems to happen so blatantly. Usually there is at least some nuance or complexity involved in how rich people get richer through a gigantic circle jerk of affirming the infinite numerical growth potential in circle jerkin it until the oceans turn to boiling acid where only flesh eating bacteria can survive.

    >

    @“2501”#p41886 How do people make these massive bursts of thought on pop culture subjects appear to have any semblance of structure or import at all??

    I think a lot of it depends on precisely what...

    ### _...The Point..._

    ...of what you're writing really is. And don't just discredit yourself by pigeonholing how the point is "faux-intellectual masturbation," clearly you have something you want to say, but maybe a structure hasn't presented itself because you're not sure exactly what it is you're proposing to tell other people about _Evangelion._ Think of how you could sum up what you wanted to say in one sentence... like, if I had to sum up Tim's gargantuan _Tokimeki Memorial_ video, I'd guess that, mayhaps, what he was potentially, probably hoping to communicate in parallel to the obvious point that _"Tokimeki Memorial_ good," was what he remarked on in this week's episode, which was, paraphrasing here, "dating sims can be just as complex and serious as any other genre, my proof is _Tokimeki Memorial._" Tim respects the audience enough to not frame the video as if he is trying to make that argument, although it's certainly at the backbone of what it was all about. So I guess for you it becomes about figuring out what your primary objective with the essay is, if the primary objective is to say _"Evangelion_ good," or perhaps _"Evangelion_ bad," the next step would be to figure out why or in what way.

    It's been a while since I wrote Academically (I was in western art music academic) but by the time I was starting to actually become good at it, or, at least, once I stopped completely waffling about at it and enjoying it, I was becoming a fan of proposing new systems or tools of analysis, which I believed at least on some level were fulfilling some sort of purpose or need I thought existed, and then sorta takin' it for a spin, thus justifying its potential adoption by anyone else who felt like it. How I came up with that depended on a lot of things but it did usually stem from "music I liked to listen to." So I guess to create my own system or tool of analysis, usually I'd start from thinking about music I liked, pinpointing features about it I liked, trying to identify what I liked about it, and then seeing if there were any links I could find from there to other pieces or moments within a specific piece. Then if I could figure out something good enough I'd start throwing more examples at it and refining it based on what sorts of deficiencies came out of throwing more examples at it. Eventually I felt it was a new draft of a tool of analysis based on the idea that it could at least sort of explain all relevant examples I could think to throw at it.

    And I guess how I went about writing papers in this style was to first propose a problem the tool meant to solve, or at least, the way in which it would reveal an at least a sort of observable phenomenon, go about the dirty work of explaining what I was looking for, how I was going to categorize everything, each category's specific criteria, bringing up easy examples for each one, and then once that was done, put it through its paces by explaining how I might go about analyzing something either more difficult for the tool to process, or just on a larger scale.

    I'm thinking of a particular paper I wrote rn about proposing a method of categorization of certain kinds of densely layered musical textures based on micro and mezzo rythmic/metrical structure and repetition. I called it stratification in reference to the geological use 'cause it was about I guess noting certain ways in which a texture could be layered in a way where all of the layers were distinct. If anyone wants to know what it had to say about the crucial differences in texture between [this ](https://youtu.be/EkwqPJZe8ms?t=828)part of this well known piece, and the intro to [this ](https://youtu.be/mzdYdk711fw)less known piece, even though they both probably sound like a whole lot of raucous noise, let me know. I had some other fun ones where I proposed a set of criteria for judging the political substance of opera based on political and artistic theories from Mao Zedong and the ideals set forth by the Eight Model Plays, and then I threw Sergei Prokofiev's adaptation of _War and Peace_ at it as well as considered it within the context of Prokofiev's life, the specific megalomania^1^ inflicted on him by Soviet art committees, and the ideals of socialist realism. That one was REALLY fun, even though it was kind of blatantly about shit what I liked and wanted to talk about at classmates.

    I dunno if that helps at all. It was a formula that worked for me quite well at least, and, you know, you can always sort of structure your writing based on something like that or in a sort of mode like that without making it too readily apparent, either. Or just do somethin' lazy like mapping it to a dramatic structure that best suits your argument. If it helps you to write it and get it organized, it doesn't really matter if barely anyone or even no one who reads it is going to pick up on the fact that you structured it based on the dramatic arc of the _Epic of Gilgamesh_ or Gong'an crime fiction or your favourite Mondrian. If it helps you lay out your story or argument in a way that keeps people engaged, they won't be engaged because the structure seems reminiscent of something else, they'll be engaged because you tried to model your piece after something in an intentional way which will give it shape.

    ^1^ - extreme antisemitism^2^

    ^2^ - [Not a joke!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikhon_Khrennikov) Prokofiev had a second wife (half his age at the time but never mind) who was Jewish and the whole "anti-formalism" thing is made up of a lot of antisemitism with extra steps.