5- Khiem D. : Shining a Light On Horror’s Overrated Tool

Shining a Light On Horror’s Overrated Tool

Imagine, you are dropped in a strange abandoned hospital, claustrophobic halls, eerie creeks of the decaying interior (you hope), your only aid, a flashlight. In many situations like this your only way to escape from the creeping void is light.  From Amnesia’s lantern, Phasmophobia’s headlamp, or Outlast’s flashlight, they’ve become synonymous with horror to the point you would be dumbfounded to even consider finding a game that doesn’t have your beacon of hope. Question is why? Why is it so overused in horror games, despite being something that gives hope and guidance?

Overall it’s inclusion is by far a great service in many situations as it offers a deceptive glimmer of hope for the player involved. Simply put it is mostly placed for gameplay purposes as you can’t play a game you can’t see so it serves that purpose just fine. On the other hand though it allows for developers to have a wider array of environments to toy with as now they can place you in pitch black halls, wondering if the next step will reveal a horror or another second of life. We see this environment in many shapes as well making the medium ever expansive from foggy towns to “abandoned” insane asylums.

Like the metaphor, “a double edge sword”, the flashlight does the same as while it helps you play the game it stokes your very psychology. The fear of extinction in Albrecht’s 5 types of primordial fears includes the fear of the dark as our minds have always wandered towards the idea that some unknown force will wipe us out. It has been a fear that lingered with us for a long time to which games like the excellent Silent Hill franchise exploits. As you wander the hills of the warped foggy town you enter a building and yet while being in the comforts of third person, separated from your avatar you still feel claustrophobic. The void surrounding the halls around you as distorted hums of abominations scurry around like rats. It’s that fear that any moment your light will flash onto them, observe them, and then being back in the dark again, wandering, wondering.

That’s why it’s used so much, as much of a gameplay element as it is a horror element, the humble flashlight is one used to amplify that creeping feeling of uneasiness. That feeling that somewhere in the dark is something, hiding, stalking you, just oozes the ambiance of it all. All of that wouldn’t be possible without the flashlight. As overused as it is, it has ingrained itself as a staple of horror videogames and has left us with a path to follow down those pitch black halls, echoing with activity unseen.

 Word Count: 451

5 - Antonio L.: Music: Just Putting Random Notes Together?

 Music: Just Putting Random Notes Together?

The thing most people enjoy about music is the emotions that can be heard or mentally felt from them. It’s like scratching all the right parts of your brain, in between the wrinkles of the mind.

But why is it so satisfying? Personally, I don’t know. I don’t have the musical experience to make anything people enjoy listening to. I don’t invest so many of my years into learning music theory or how to play an instrument. 

What if the things we make best are by accident, just randomly hitting keys on a keyboard until you hit them in the right order to evoke some deep emotion in your mind?

Beethoven was practically deaf. He almost couldn’t hear what he composed. Yet it’s believed his best compositions came from him without his hearing. To have skill all the way to that matter must mean that Beethoven was very devoted to his work.

The process of turning a mess into a masterpiece is a process a lot of people have to go through. Not everyone has things displayed out for them already, change had to be made using one’s mind to clean up and polish a seemingly hopeless vision. 

“But” and “the” have been repeated a lot in this blog, and I’m addressing this self-awareness to bring up the fact of repetition. In music nowadays, everyone repeats everyone’s styles, so they can hop the trend of what’ll get them recognition. Years ago, this wasn’t the issue as people instead searched for their own style of music, and to create something that made them stick out compared to others, ultimately creating their own trend. 

I’m leaving a lot of open questions, so I’ll answer them now. Are our best creations made by accident? Yes. by deviating from what you normally do, you can create new ideas and do things more naturally, without sticking to a script or template. 

The other question I’ve asked was, “Is everyone copying each other now, and as a result not being very original?” I say yes to that as well. Everyone’s styles are so identical that it’s hard to distinguish who they really are. And if they’re gone, will anyone really notice? Someone will, but not everyone.

I’m not calling everyone unoriginal, I’m just saying that the majority is, because the majority focuses on popularity over style. They refuse to change for themselves, but instead they change because it’s popular. 

My message from all of this? Don’t stick to what you normally do. Go out on a limb. Do something different besides agreeing with what everyone else says just because you want to be like everyone else. Do something that’ll make you stick out from the crowd (in a positive way of course, not in a way that’ll get you roasted by the entire school).

Word Count: 468

4. Tyler B. Glasses: A Boost in Confidence

           

          While many TV shows and movies have told us that everyone looks worse with glasses, I could not disagree more. As someone who has both glasses and self-image issues, glasses were a gift sent from Heaven. Before I had glasses I didn’t realize the impact they would have on me, I got them in middle school when it became hard to see the whiteboard from where I sat.I first only used them in class, but after putting them away and taking them out over and over again, that got tiring so I just started wearing them all the time, which turned out to benefit me more than I thought. I believe my face looks better with glasses and I have now gotten to the point where looking at myself without glasses makes me look weird to myself.

Though I have gone through multiple different styles of glasses, all of them seem to make me look better, which made me feel better. Though it has opened opportunities for people to mess with me, like when someone stole my glasses in 8th grade and the day after I got a new pair they gave me my old pair back. Or when my uncle would compare me to Harry Potter non-stop when I swapped to a thinner, more circular frame. Glasses has also made life slightly harder in other ways, especially now with my glasses fogging up constantly and then taking ages to go away. I have also accidentally sat on my glasses many time after putting them on my bed and then forgetting they were there, which was a real problem when I had wire frames (they would bend a lot). Even more recently when one leg of my glasses broke in Hawaii and I was stuck using my sunglasses for the whole trip, which wasn’t bad, until I had to read menus from far away inside restaurants. But while having glasses comes with it’s cons, personally for me, they help me feel better about my face and help me see, which is really the main goal of glasses in the end.

Word Count: 351

3. Tyler B. - Boba Fett and proof that people can change.

Making his return to the series in season 2 of the Mandalorian, Boba Fett started out as a bounty hunter, who was tasked with finding Luke and his gang and bringing them into Darth Vader alive. Compare that what we see in his return, making a deal and promising to honor it by helping Mando save the child from the hands of Moff Gideon in exchange for his old armor, the old Boba would have gotten his armor back and then ran off, instead he stays and honors his word. In the new series focusing on him we see Boba’s story after we see him “die” in Return of the Jedi, he is later captured and enslaved by the Tusken Raiders, or sand people. During a scene where he and another prisoner are sent out with a Tusken child and his hound to dig for “black melons” (little balls and contain water and are found by digging around in the sand) they other prisoner wakes up a huge monster that eats him. Before having a chance to eat the child, Boba kills it and returns to the Tusken camp a hero and is welcomed into their group as one of them. Now if this was the Boba from before he would have left the child for dead and headed straight for the closest town, but instead he protects his enslaver, which is the start of a new life for Boba. He is then taught the ways and culture of the Tuskens and by the end of his time with them, he becomes one, being dressed in their robes and more importantly, is trusted enough to create his own Gaffi stick, which are signs of great respect in their culture and is specific to each Tusken. 

Moving on to the “present day” of the show, Boba has become the resident crime lord, taking over Jaba’s palace after killing Bib Fortuna, who took over Jaba’s place after he died in The Return of The Jedi. But Boba wants to be different from the lords before him, where Jaba ruled with fear, he intends to rule with respect, visiting businesses in Mos Espa and fighting to make the streets safe again, free of corruption and exploitation. He earns this respect in many ways, such as walking side by side with his guards, as opposed to being carried the way Jaba was, and hiring outcasts and rejects of Mos Espa like The Mods, a gang of people who replaced parts of their bodies with robotic parts, or Black Krrsantan who tried to kill him after being hired by Jabas cousins who wanted the throne. He also shows the compassion he has learned when he is gifted a Rancor for the pit below his throne room, and as opposed to treating it like a mindless animal created only for slaughter and entertainment, he treats it like a dog, with kindness and care, by doing things like petting it and talking to it softly and calmly. 

I believe that the writers of this show are trying to tell us that everyone can change like Boba Fett, who went from heartless bounty hunter to a simple man making his way throught the galaxy to a respected lord of Mos Espa. Showing us that a character originally seen as base and 2D can become a complex and intriguing enough to become a main character. They want to show us that every person is capable of change, they just have to be willing to.

Word Count: 585

4. Kaiyue L. - “No Longer Human” - Individuality in a Collective Society

"No Longer Human" is a semi-autobiography revolving Osamu Dazai's tragic life, in this book he introduces himself as a man named Yōzō. The novel is separated into three portions in the form of "journals", Yōzō's youth, his college years, and his adult years. 

 These are my absolute favorite lines from the book, ‘All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? – I Don’t know.‘ The more I think about this book and Yōzō, the more I find myself resonating with him. Of course, my life is not nearly as bad as his, but there have been times I’ve questioned the true nature of humans, why some people are the way they are, and felt like I have to put on a mask and “clown” in order to fit into a mini-society I call school. I relate how he feels when he says that he can’t reveal his genuine self to others, his fear of being alone, and him trying to justify other people’s wrongdoing by blaming it on himself. 

 Dazai's work exhibits the dark aspect of modernizing and its effects on our society. His feelings that he is a disqualified human being, or that he is no longer human, is driven by his sensitivity to the frailness of human bonds in the urban cities. I think Dazai wanted people to understand how debilitating depression is. You’re sucked into this vortex where nothing makes sense and nothing is meant to make sense. You deeply understand that life has no meaning but without the optimism that you can generate a meaning yourself, as cliche as it sounds. And this feeling is compounded by loneliness because no one wants to be associated with someone who’s in a state of negativity every minute of the day. 

 Even though it is unspoken, Dazai's greatest desire is to make a genuine human connection. But, even if Dazai does unearth such relationships, his own insecurities and the lack of social experience caused by a history of betrayal and abuse, makes him destroy the intimacy he desperately craves for. Hence, he turns towards the pleasures of drugs, sex, and temporary relationships, for those are the only things that provides him with the certainty of pleasure and happiness. 

 I think a major influence of this whole story is that it takes place in Japan, a collectivist society. These societies are less self-centered and have social values that revolve around what is best for a community. Yozo is a product of such a environment, having to put on a mask and value other’s needs over his own individual, this pushes him closer to his despair and downfall. 

 Word Count: 473

4- Grace B. A Change Of Pace

A Change of Pace

Life is meant to be transitional and nothing is ever meant to stay the same forever. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Most people around me would find me very energetic, outgoing, and compassionate, but once you get close, you understand the depth in my life and why I always need to adapt and move on.

I had this group of friends that were picture perfect. We would hang out, take pictures, make funny videos, call every night, but I was never happy. Now, I didn’t up and leave them, but there was a moment when I was ready to change and be happy. As I distanced myself I saw the major benefits in my life. I was able to be the person I always wanted to be without others holding me back because it didn’t fit the “vibe.” I was me again. 

Softball has always been the place where I could leave all the problems and worries I had in the real world behind. I got used to always being with the same people. Always telling the same jokes. Hanging at the same places. Eating the same food. Playing the same game. Don’t get me wrong I was happy with where I was and the people I was with, but I had an understanding that there were different people out there that I never had an opportunity to experience these fun times with, so I left. And I met different people and we all hung out at different places, sharing new laughs, and new memories. I would do it all again.

It's okay to change and be different sometimes. At the end of the day, you’re still you. 

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3- Grace B. "Remember Where You Came From"

“Remember Where You Came From”

Growing up I was always told these vivid stories about my family. About how they moved mountain ranges and rivers to give me the life I have now. And I never truly understood the significance of their sacrifices, until now.

“Remember where you came from.” A saying that echoed in my home every moment there was an opportunity. To remind me daily, that I had something to live for.

My grandparents came from the lowest class in Mexico. Selling all of their belongings to provide for their children. Working at the hard labored factories and leaving school before ever reaching the 8th grade, thinking of me, yet I still wasn’t a thought. Smuggling their lives across the river, picking the produce that sits in your kitchen, and struggling to fit in with society's standards was all for me.

For me to wake up every morning without a worry in the world. For me to slip on my clean clothing and eat well every meal. For me to go to school and get the education that they never did. For me to one day be successful and pave the way for those after me. 

I selfishly live my life, but I will never forget where I came from. 

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