So we've just begun reading Frankenstein after a long month of reading Wuthering Heights.
It's like a breath of fresh air since Wuthering Heights occupied most of every English class. The first reading of Frankenstein was decent. I was hoping for something more interesting, but it's been much better than Wuthering Heights so far. The first few chapters helped establish some characteristics and back story to Frankenstein and I'll admit. I always thought that Frankenstein was the name of the creature and not the creator. But anyways, I wasn't really going to relate this to a game because I haven't finished the book nor is there any obvious game reference that came to mind. At first I was going to try and relate this to Wuthering Heights because...you know, there's an obsession and whatever, but there wasn't really anything else to go off of other than that. So instead, i'll try to provide some of my thoughts on the book. so Frankenstein named his creature Adam, and the first thing i thought of was that this was a religious symbol. Frankenstein represented the creator of man(Adam) and the beginning quote also helped establish this, stating that man was molded out of clay. Frankenstein basically spent years his of his life trying to create a creature, kind of like the creation of man, however all the work was for naught since it all ended in disappointment. I don't know if Shelly was naming the creature Adam on purpose, but i wouldn't be surprised if it was. If i remember correctly, Frankenstein later makes a wife for Adam, which may have represented eve because they were both made of the same material. Although the comparisons are a bit strange, they're there, and it was the first thing i thought of when i read the passage.
Well, it's been a while since I've last talked about a retro game, so i'll start it up again. So right now, we're watching Freedom Writers.
I've actually never watched this movie before and the movie so far has been really good. It's about this teacher that tries to change the hearts of the kids in her class by being a good teacher and one that will listen and get things straightened out. Tying this into a game was rather hard, but the one thing that came to mind was Space Invaders.
At first this sounds really stupid and I agree, it does. However, Space Invaders could be taken out of context and be related to this serious movie. In Space Invaders, you play as this ship that shoots a bunch of alien looking things and basically has no story or plot. The objective is to just not die. Well, if we take out the ship and replace it with the teacher, we can see some correspondence. The teacher is fighting off the worries and problems that are plaguing her students. The aliens could represent all the hate that her students feel. And the weapons that the ship uses would be like the lessons and teachings that she does. in order to progress to the next 'level' the teacher must first defeat all the worries in the current level and the boss could represent the lessons in a real life situation. Basically, I guess it would be how the children take what they learned inside and apply it to the outside world. The teacher must avoid the obstacles as well as destroy the bad environment( the invaders). From what I saw in the movie, the moral was that people can always change and a lot of the times, it starts with something small, but affects many people. We could apply this to real life and say that no matter how small of an action that we perform in our everyday life, someone will be impacted by it. Thus all the things we say and do are important and we should always keep that in mind.
Sadly, this will be yet another post that does not include an 8-bit game. Finding a retro game for everything is rather hard, but I'll try my best to accommodate for this later. So we've recently finished a book called Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
It was a rather interesting read to say the least. It wasn't necessarily the best book I've read nor is it the worst. However, many of the things in the book had deep messages that could be applicable to the world that we see today. One of the main events of Wuthering Heights is the change in personality in Heathcliff. Heathcliff was bullied and abused by the adults around him as a child and the environment that he lived in most likely traumatized him. As he grew up, those events were embedded into his mind and he could never forgive the adults, thus causing an urge for revenge on the adults themselves or their children. I feel as though throughout the book, Heathcliff's undying revenge clouded his judgement and in turn damaged the people around him. Heathcliff's personality as well as thought-process reminded me of Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed 2.
Not only were they alike in character such as their aggressive nature, short temper, and jealous characteristics, they were affected the same by revenge. Although Ezio's revenge didn't stem from a poor childhood, his actions after the change were parallel with those of Heathcliff. Ezio's revenge was planted into his mind when his father and brothers were betrayed and convicted of a coup d'état. This left him without much a family and he later discovered his family's secret-their allegiance with the Assassins. The death of Ezio's family could be compared to the loss of Heathcliff's childhood innocence, where the family represents the innocence. Ezio's revenge clouded his judgement as an assassin and thus injured the people around him. When Heathcliff changed, his personality repelled those around him and his aggressive nature caused mental and physical wounds to the the environment surround him. They both strived to execute this revenge, however, they realized in the end that the feeling at the end was not worth the journey. This could be a message that is geared toward the human population in that we shouldn't let revenge be the sole purpose of our goals because if it does, it won't be worth it.
