X-Files Episodes 18-20

Episode 18: Miracle Man
This would have been a perfect choice for a hoax episode, and it wouldn't have even needed that many changes for it. I mean, "faith healing." It's right there in the name. They just need to provide plausible deniability and let the viewers draw their own conclusions, and they come so close to doing that. There are locusts in the courtroom, and it turns out that they were in cages near the ventilation system. The (targets? beneficiaries? victims?) of the faith healing die, but they were poisoned with cyanide! And then they throw in the visions of Mulder's sister to reassure the viewer that it's okay. He really does have superpowers.

I did like the character of Samuel. I liked the way he was having a crisis of faith and didn't turn out to be some kind of evil serial killer, but I think that the visions undermined the ambiguity of the story to its detriment. They were trying to tie it into the mythology, sure, but. Ugh. I just wish that they'd at least have one hoax episode. I'm going to keep banging this drum until it breaks.

I do appreciate that you never see the "resurrected" Samuel, though. I'm kind of surprised he didn't show up Children of the Corn-style to punish the sheriff with G-d's wrath. And the identity of the killer was a good twist, as compared to how "Shapes" worked. But most what stuck with me was that it was too neat and should have been less clear. I don't have that much else to say on it.

Episode 19: Shapes
This was the werewolf episode. It wasn't a bad episode, necessarily, but it was the werewolf episode and it did all the things that always happen in the werewolf episode. They kill the werewolf early, but gasp, the murders continue! Why? Could it be that the person who was injured by the werewolf is, himself, now a werewolf? Well, now that you mention it...

And Mulder can tell it's the werewolf episode, too. You can almost see him ticking off the boxes as he looks for evidence.

I didn't realize that Native American werewolves was an older trope, though I suppose it's something that's often applied to marginalized groups--see also the whole Romani werewolf thing. I was glad that they actually cast Native actors for the parts, and then a little annoyed that the mythology was basically window dressing. Sure, manitou and so on, except it was a werewolf. It wasn't passed down in family lines, it may or may not have been spirit possession, but it was definitely "I got attacked and now I'm a werewolf too," which is your standard Wolf Man-style werewolf. That goes back to what I was saying about it being the werewolf episode.

The wiki tells me that "Shapes" came about because the suits wanted to include more standard monster scenarios, so I can see where they tried to spin it into being a bit more exciting within the bonds of keeping it standard, but it didn't stray far enough from the tree for me.

Episode 20: Darkness Falls
With the revelation that radiation turns wood mites into man-eating deathbug swarms, it is now my headcanon that X-Files is a prequel to Fallout. And a sequel to all those 50s B movies. All of them. That's why there's all those x-files out there.

This episode had a good premise--killer bugs that are maddened by darkness and eat people--but I thought it was hampered a bit by the other characters. The ecoterrorist and logger were both thinly sketched caricatures, so I didn't care when they got eaten. The bottle episode aspect, where they were all stuck in the cabin with a limited supply of gasoline powering the light, wasn't as good as in "Ice" just because there were fewer characters, though the revelation that they couldn't keep the bugs out at all and it was only the light that kept them safe was pretty well done.

The wiki points out that the weather during the shooting was terrible, and I kind of wish they had done a bit more with that. Maybe if the rain also kept the bugs from swarming, adding tension based on the uncontrollable weather? I suppose they wouldn't have been able to time that as effectively as the generator running out of gas, though it might have added another element on the side of nature being terrible and unpredictable.

Also, I liked this exchange at the end:

MULDER: "How you going to contain it to the forest? What if the swarm migrates?"
MAN: "The government has initiated eradication procedures. They're quite certain that by using a combination of controlled burns and pesticides, they will be successful."
MULDER: "And if they're not?"
*pause*
MAN: "That is not an option, Mr. Mulder."

The MAN's dialogue was really odd and wooden, but it was just ambiguous enough that it could have been creepy foreshadowing instead. It was a "Top. Men." kind of moment, and a great way to end the episode.

Music is pretty cool

I'm sure that comes as news to none of you.

I was going to write about this in my New Year's Retrospective, but since I forgot it gets its own post. One of the other changes I made in 2015 is that I started listening to new music again. I only listened to the radio for about two years during the 90s when I was mowing my parents' lawn and needed something to listen to, so that's the sum total of my exposure to pop music. Once I went away to university and found Napster, I developed a taste of goth and industrial spurred by buying a copy of "Music from the Succubus Club," probably after seeing an ad for it in a Vampire: the Masquerade supplement, and that's what I listened to for a while. That fell away over time, though, and by the time I was living in Japan I didn't really listen to any music at all other than the ambient zone music when we'd play World of Warcraft. Even on my two hour each-way commute, I mostly slept.

That changed when I started working at the AMA and learned I could use headphones. Not too long after that, I found 8bit Peoples, an online repository of free chiptunes albums, and that got me into chiptunes. And then I developed a podcast addiction, and a few of the podcasts I added were music ones. I currently listen to:

• The Irish and Celtic Music Podcast: I used to listen to a lot of Celtic music, but it fell almost completely out of favor in the last decade. This is still probably my least favorite of the music podcasts I listen to, but I've found quite a few gems.


• This Week in Chiptune: When I found this, I went back over the course of a couple months of commutes and listened to every single back episode. Love those bleeps and boops.


• Group Therapy with Above and Beyond: I think this showed up in the top podcasts category and I subscribed to it on a whim. There's a lot of stuff that's obvious way better to dance to than to listen to on the L, but I've found some surprisingly (to me) good songs, like this one or this one or this one. I skip past the four-on-the-floor stuff and don't miss it.


• Space Radio: This updates only irregularly and has a bit of a variable quality, but I like it when it comes out. However, it did inspire me to find:


• Communion After Dark: This one is amazing, and is probably another one that I'll go through the entire archives of. It's like being back at Dracula's Ball, and this podcast reminded me that bands like Diary of Dreams, Beborn Beton, Neuroticfish, Suicide Commando, et al still exist and are still making music. They have a relatively wide reach, though--this song showed up on the podcast and ended up being launched straight on to my cyberpunk playlist.


• Steampunk Radio: I have no idea how this is "streampunk" or if it's ever going to continue after the first few episodes, but what I found is pretty neat. Like, this song--how is that "steampunk"? I mean, it's really good, but does it fit the advertising? Not sure about that.

That gives me plenty of weekly new music exposure.

Also, Bandcamp. It's not actually any different than poking around any other digitial music service, but for some reason I've taken to it more. I've found great stuff like Halfont 2 by William Kage (guy composes music using the soundfonts of 16-bit games, so they sound like lost tracks), I Am the Night by Perturbator (another for the cyberpunk playlist), The Spoony Bards by The Spoony Bards (shoutout to stephen_poon!), Transmission Lost by Sjellos (I have a whole selection of albums that are basically low hums, groaning metal, and space noises set to music), Tome I by Erang (Bandcamp introduced me to Dungeon Synth as a genre)...I could go on. You can see everything I've bought here if you want an example of my modern musical taste.

I've also gotten heavily into Overclocked ReMix (edit:and its podcast) again now that they're posting more. They're a big chunk of what I listen to on my commute if I don't have any podcast updates, and I jumped on their Patreon as soon as they set it up--which also introduces me to new music, since one of the perks is that I get a free album every month from the selection on Overclocked Records, not all of which are video game related. Of what I've gotten, I can recommend the Tale of the Rat King OST by Tom Miller and Quixotica by .mpegasus. I admit, I haven't listened to as many of these as I should, but I just recently sorted them into their own playlist and once I put them on my phone, I can go through them.

This turned out longer than I thought. I guess it's a good thing I gave it its own post?

Game Review: Secret of Mana

Secret of Mana is one of the games that I mentioned in my Jill of the Jungle review that I missed due to not owning any 16-bit consoles. I remember playing it at friends' houses, and at the time I thought it was fascinating. A multiplayer RPG? A RPG that's not turn-based? Charging up weapons? What is this sorcery?!

I didn't actually play much of it, though--I remember friends grinding spells in the Pure Land, and I remember the witch's castle in the haunted forest, but that's about it. Much later, schoolpsychnerd and I tried to get through the game, but we missed a Sword Orb somewhere and couldn't find it, so we gave up. Over a year ago--November of 2014, according to the date on the first screenshot I have--we tried again, and this time we finally got all the way through.

And finally, I can say that I think Secret of Mana is stupid bullshit.

This would set the trend.

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