joe’s Reviews > How a Game Lives: The Annotated Essays of Jacob Geller > Status Update

"This is the great trial of being alive right now. It is necessary for all of us to view ourselves, accurately, in the pre-apocalypse. And yet, because of this, it is also absolutely vital to imagine, and work, and dream, of a world that is different."

I remember watching "Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda" back when it first released, absolutely ecstatic at the idea of the essay, watching it, thinking "eh that was cool I guess" and then kind of. Not looking back on it? Ever? But now reading it I can see "oh wow that essay is actually kinda good" and it's only heightened by the extra commentary and then its afterword REALLY kicked it up a couple notches

"I could describe the entryway, with its darkened upper balcony or the basement storm drains with their water-stained pillars. I could describe the director's office and the crime scene therein. But each of those would be a denatured piece of documentation, the words taking the place of the house which is more than able to speak for itself.

As you are inside the house already, you may listen:"

"When people prescribe art to a specific set of qualities and attack everything that lies beyond those lines, we have to understand what they're doing. [...] They're not showing respect for the craft, they're not trying to 'uphold meaning.' They're enforcing a hierarchy. They're attempting to define a cultural narrative. They're not. Talking. About. Art."

"Making and reading criticism is a new life, one we can give ourselves. By thinking, we renew what was a death and if we do so with enough generosity and vigor, we might approach a kind of transcendence." Dude Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's foreword for this book is gonna be this killer I'm so excited for the extra commentary by the other authors

ITS HERE AAAAAAA THIS BOOK IS SO PRETTY