I Dream in Pixels: Playing the fool
It’s finals week—or near enough to count. The papers are piling up, exams are looming like the Angel of Death and I’m beginning to shake from all the coffee I’ve ingested. Tensions are, to put it mildly, high, and any notion of taking a moment to relax is akin to an invitation from the devil to accept an F and live out your life as a bum. So why is it, then, that tonight I’m eating time with an impromptu round of karaoke with at least one too many Journey songs? There seems to often exist within academia—especially undergrad—the belief that there are two groups of people: the bookworms and the party animals. The former relinquishes their health, their friends and their happiness for the sake of their grades and usually sees that hard work pay off. The latter...
Read MoreI Dream in Pixels: Mario Kart is for lovers
“I will see you hanged!” I shouted in a fit of laughter as she ran me off the road. Let me set the scene for you. The weather is gorgeous—or at least what we can see of it from my dorm room. We are sitting close on a worn out couch, each clutching our controller of choice: hers a Wii remote fashioned into a faux steering wheel, mine a beloved Gamecube controller that has survived since my 13th birthday. We are staring intensely at the TV, hurling insults back and forth like a game of expletive hot potato. “Mario Kart” might be on the screen, but the real game is taking place between us, arising like a dust cloud as we fill the air with obscenities yet find ourselves moving closer. The tension increases with each shell thrown and banana...
Read MoreThe representation of racism and slavery is questionable in modern film
It is a cruel joke noticeable in Hollywood productions that the only roles for black actors seem to be that of the slave. Period pieces like “12 Years A Slave” AND “Django Unchained” present a reimagining of history in which cinema harbors a continual fascination with re-enslaving black bodies. It is not that movies exploring slavery are not important and necessary, but the fact that their ubiquity within a Hollywood landscape is still overwhelmingly white sets an unsavory precedent. Though many of these movies may stem from a progressive mindset and a desire for social change, slavery biopics are, in many ways, the “safe choice” in regards to examinations of racism. Few would attempt to argue that slavery did not exist or was not among the most exceedingly cruel and evil events in American history. Slavery is a known...
Read MoreI Dream in Pixels: The Lost Magic of Couch Co-Op
When I was 12, my brother came home from a garbage dump with my father after they discovered a Nintendo Entertainment System and a box full of games sitting neatly inside the dumpster. Already prone to dumpster diving, my brother hadn’t hesitated to take the lot. Together we went out to our addition, a boat-shaped building in our backyard that served as our playhouse of sorts, to try to set up the system. What followed were weeks spent discovering some of gaming’s earliest treasures, from the original “Super Mario Bros.” to “Double Dragon” and “Super Contra.” It didn’t matter that these games were decades old by the time we got to them. To this day, I have an intense nostalgia for games I don’t think I even liked at the time that are now wrapped up in warm memories...
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I Dream In Pixels: I’m tired of killing
It was a few days before leaving for Thanksgiving break that I found myself lying in bed with my heartbeat thumping in my ear. Nothing was happening. I was alone, staring blankly at my roommate’s bed. But as has begun to happen with increased frequency, my anxiety had taken over my body, and it was all I could do to refrain from hyperventilating and potentially passing out. I wouldn’t pretend that the 2016 presidential election is solely responsible for the recent collapse of my mental health, but it has certainly done me no favors. Prior to Nov. 8, my anxieties were precariously stacked like some sort of cerebral “Jenga” game. I was in no way “fine,” but I was coping to the best of my ability. In some ways, I had begun to crawl out of the abyss, but...
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