Star Fox (Velan Studios / Nintendo, 2026)

    Last week, my dad was in the hospital for a few days because he had stents placed in each of his carotid arteries. Between helping my mom around the house and prepping for a friend to visit from out of town, I spent my downtime playing Velan Studios’ revision of Nintendo’s Star Fox. Silly me, forgetting that this game is all about making your dad proud of you for carrying on his legacy after his death. Maybe I should have played a game with less baggage.

    This version of Star Fox is the fifth version of the 1993 Super NES game that Nintendo has published. Even with the different title of Star Fox 64, that 1997 Nintendo 64 game functioned as a remake of the original. The souped up version of the 1997 game for the 3DS (Star Fox 64 3D) that came out in 2011 was a remake of a remake, and the Wii U’s Star Fox Zero from 2016 was also a remake of the 1997 edition of the game. (I haven’t played the 3DS or Wii U versions.) You’d think they’d include a new character, like Word Girl’s Lady Redundant Woman, to let us know they have some self awareness about the absurdity of remaking a game five times.

    Five games, five platforms, one story. Rather than a simple cash grab, this revision of the game seems more like an instance of theme and variation. There’s only so many ways to play the blues, yeah? There are five access points to this series that have been available for players over the past 33 years. This isn’t preservation (a topic that took on additional significance last week as publisher Sony announced that it was going to no longer manufacture physical discs for its consoles beginning in 2027), but revision. When you’ve got a really good idea, stick to it.

    Well, I don’t know about that. I first played 1993’s Star Fox for the Super Nintendo because Nintendo Power convinced me that the polygonal graphics were at the cutting edge of technology. Sure they were, but that doesn’t mean the game is good or that it’s pretty to look at. Even if I understand cognitively that using polygons means programmers have more options for how many things can happen on screen in a game, it doesn’t mean that I will enjoy the game they create. I didn’t then and don’t now think the graphics look good. It wasn’t until the N64 version that I really fell in love with the game. The improved graphics, actual voice acting, and decreased difficulty all certainly helped. Those are the kinds of variations on a theme that open up the paths of the game to new players.

    The N64 version is good enough that I bought it three times: soon after release, at some time in college, and around 2018 when I was getting reacquainted with video games. (Previous to that, the last console I bought during its lifespan was a refurbished PlayStation from FuncoLand in 1999.) Because Nintendo can apparently read my mind, they released Star Fox in the summer. Both this Switch 2 version and the N64 version found their way to consumers’ hands in the final week of June of their release years. It’s a summer game through and through. You are recklessly making space junk explode by hitting it with lasers and bombs. In other words, you’re making fireworks and having someone else foot the bill.

    You might be wondering (as I did) how much of my enjoyment of this game is bound up in childhood nostalgia. I don’t know. I am not in touch with the friend group that I enjoyed playing the N64 game with when Nintendo released it in 1997. I don’t have fuzzy feelings about those people. As I mentioned, the game itself was good enough that I bought it multiple times. That also means I sold it that many times, too. I would get to a point of complete satiation with it after running through all of the medals, high scores, and achievements. Just looking at the cart would repulse me. I wasn’t interested in jumping back into it like many other games. Over time, the feeling would wane and I would track it down again (and again). I felt skeptical when I saw the news of this remake a few weeks back. Would I really want to go through that cycle of emotions again? When I saw the updated graphics and added interstitial narrative scenes, I couldn’t help myself. This time I can’t sell it either, so I’m stuck with it until Nintendo decides to pull the plug on “my” digital copy of the game.

    In this latest revision, it took a few times through each level before I felt like I was competent at the game. That feeling of “how did I ever do this?” crossed my mind more than once. After I got the hang of it, I was hooked. The updated controls for the Switch 2 work well. I like having a single button to press for somersaults and U-turns. The graphics are excellent. In levels such as Meteo, Sector Y, and Area 6, you get a real sense of depth with the details in the background. I like the voice acting just fine. After a few times through the game in English, I did get tired of the same dialogue over and over again, so I’ve changed the spoken language for each successive playthrough. I’m on Brazilian Portuguese at the moment, so that’s something like at least 10 times through the game. I do wish the subtitles weren’t only in English so I could pretend like I’m learning new languages while I play.

    One reason I have kept changing the voiceovers is because I want to watch the scenes that occur between each level repeatedly to pick up on the subtle details hiding inside. In the previous games that I’m familiar with, you would get comments from your crew as you entered or exited each level. General Pepper would give maybe a line of dialogue between missions once you’d selected your path. The story itself isn’t very special but it gets the job done. In these new scenes, the relationships are fleshed out more fully with dialogue and actions. You get a third-person view of what it’s like to hang out in the Great Fox between missions. There’s a lot to be read into the body language of your crew. The way they are incorporated into the branching paths of your attack on Venom is interesting, too. A holographic avatar of General Pepper explains the situation to you and the consequences for each choice. Sometimes your crew will go rogue and offer suggestions that conflict with Pepper’s advice, but not in front of him. It’s ultimately up to you (as Fox) to decide which path you’ll take. You do so by looking at a 3D projection of the Lylat System on a holoviewer. The music that plays as you look at this scale model of the system gives a relaxing feeling to the time between missions so that you can decompress with your crew before jumping into action once again. These are also the points where you can resume your game if you don’t end up completing it in one sitting as you would have needed to in the original game.

    Between that upgrade to the gameplay experience, the vastly improved music, and the gorgeous graphics, this revision is just about the best it can be as far as I’m concerned. It’s slick and it’s smooth, which is just how it should run. There’s also the multiplayer mode that you can engage with even if you are a solo player (local and online matches exist; I played against the computer and had fun). You can also get different avatars and backgrounds for the battle mode by completing levels in the Challenge mode. There’s a lot to do besides the main storyline. I don’t think I’d call the Star Fox series one of my favorites, even though I bought the N64 cart multiple times and have since played through it via the Nintendo Classics service. It’s familiar and filling like any good comfort food should be, but I don’t get a lot of nourishment out of it. There’s no moments of genuine wonder or awe or drama in the game. It simply excels at what it is meant to do. Until Nintendo revises the game again, the Switch 2 version will stand as definitive. These Arwings’ engines are firing cleanly on all cylinders.

    As of Saturday, my dad is out of the hospital and is recovering at home. Turns out his carotid blockage was 50 percent on one side and 80-90 percent on the other. He’s got improved blood flow to his brain as a result of the stents. I imagined he would feel much different with this increased circulation. He said he did not and that the doctor told him he wouldn’t feel different as a result of the surgery. That outcome is counterintuitive to me, but I’m not that kind of doctor. I figured if you opened up a passage more widely and allowed for additional blood flow that you would feel more in tune with your body or feel like it took less energy to do the same tasks. He’d been compensating for so long under inadequate circumstances that it seems reasonable to think that restoring the previous status quo would result in a noticeable change. Once you’re habituated to an experience, a revised version of it might be difficult to discern as different. It’s easy to know in your heart that it is better even if words might escape when you try to provide reasons why.

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Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity (Samuel Woolley, Yale University Press, 2023)

    A colleague of mine usually tells me she “lives under a rock” when I’m telling her about whatever it is that has set me off in this news this week. There’s times when I speak with her or other people in my life that I feel like my views are out of synch with theirs. Somewhere, some machine has slipped a gear. There are many possible explanations for why each of us sees the world a little differently, and the nature of those misperceptions are part of what Samuel Woolley explores in Manufacturing Consensus: Understanding Propaganda in the Era of Automation and Anonymity. You may have heard the phrase manufactured consent and so you’re thinking this book is a new update on that idea, and you’d be correct. Woolley argues that the nature of what used to be known as mass media has changed significantly in the days since Herman and Chomsky gave a name to the idea of a small number of broadcasters being able to create wide support for certain ideas through one-way messaging. What’s different now is that we have devices with worldwide reach in our pockets and we can use them to remain anonymous while sharing our perspectives with each other directly. More than that, we can hide our perspective behind that of a bot that interacts with other users according to our programming instructions. As a result, Woolley contends that instead of manufacturing consent, we are instead involved in a process of manufacturing consensus; it may seem that the majority of people share the same viewpoints, even when that is not the case.

    The book’s cover communicates this idea beautifully. There are 28 dots on the cover that comprise shades from blue to red. Only the bottom three dots are completely red, and they also have shoulders attached to them that make them appear as generic social media avatars. What it seems to be saying is there is a diversity of voices available, but only the three voices that are fully red are taken as representing the whole group. It’s a biased sample. Our perception may be that three out of every three people agree with a certain perspective, but those three are from a population of 28 and they are in the minority. It’s easy to be confused in a context where those three voices dominate, even if you occasionally have evidence that the other 25 voices exist. You might feel that you live under a rock if one of those 25 voices speak to you, regardless of whether you agree with the perspective espoused by the three red voices.

    Woolley provides an operational definition for propaganda early in the text, writing that it describes “the use of politically biased information in considered attempts to manipulate or influence the opinions and actions of individuals and, more broadly, society” (p. 4). He goes on to state that the purpose of propaganda may not be to effect concrete changes in its targets’ behavior. It can be enough to seed certain emotions (anger, apathy) that result in a target taking no concrete actions or behavioral changes. Think about people who have convinced themselves that not voting is some kind of message. It’s not. Non-voters are telling candidates that their opinions can be safely ignored. Getting enough people to feel cynical about the process of elections or other social participation is the goal of some propaganda. It seems easier than ever to get people to sit home and rot these days, which is just what the propagandists want.

    Later in the first chapter, Woolley is explaining how powerful propaganda can be in the world of social media. He uses the case of Martha Coakley’s failed 2010 run for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts as an example of how social media users influenced the result of a race. Widely seen as an easy win for Coakley, the race went to her Republican opponent. Woolley explains how a small number of social media accounts were able to successfully pounce on Coakley’s gaffes and missteps, which helped to blunt her momentum and cost her the seat. More generally, Woolley uses a section of this chapter to explore the truism that “if you don’t know what the product is, the product is you” with regard to social media (p. 15). I was a little surprised to not see Shoshana Zuboff’s revision of this statement cited instead. She claims that its not “you,” but “your behavior” that is the product on social media. Her analysis dovetails nicely with Woolley’s because what is important is not just the social media user, but how propagandists can manipulate their behaviors through anonymity and automation that is important. So, what is key is not just the users on social media, but the behavior of the people that a small number of social media users manipulated to prevent Coakley from coasting to victory in her 2010 race.

    Further into the text, Woolley defines more clearly three levels of manufacturing consensus and how they interact. He describes them as “a kind of ouroboros of manipulative information” because of how they rely on each other (p. 55). Each level is based on different types of users. There are political-bot-, sockpuppet-, and partisan nanoinfluencer-based propagandists. Then there are social-media-algorithm-, recommendation-, and trend-based propagandists. Finally, there are news-media-based propagandists. Each level relies on and interacts with the others. The first type (bots and sockpuppets) give the illusion of wide support for marginal ideas. The second type (algorithms and trends) are taken as genuine public opinion polling, even though they can be manipulated or gamed. The third type (news media) gives an institutional sheen to the propaganda created by the other two and broadcasts it to wider audiences as they “reproduce, recreate, and further launder content” (p. 55). One of Woolley’s interview participants grasps these levels of manufacturing consensus with his rhetorical question, “Why would I focus on trying to change someone's mind with a bot barely capable of communication… when I could get the trending algorithm on a site to reprioritize and reshare the content I'm pushing with five thousand bots?” (p. 121). It’s clear that Woolley’s levels are grounded in the reality of social media users. This particular user (among his other interview participants) is able to articulate exactly how to move from the first to the second level of manufacturing consensus, and there is reason to believe that he could easily understand why getting the news media to cover his propaganda campaign would lend it further legitimacy.

    At this point, you yourself may be feeling there is no sense is fighting back against these interlocking systems because there is no way to undo all the damage propagandists have wrought. Woolley tells us later that “there are, sadly, no easy fixes” (p. 84). One that he proposes is based on the work of Joan Donovan and danah boyd, who argue for “strategic silence” from news media (p. 138). The attention the news media give to trends on social media amplifies, launders, and legitimizes propagandists’ campaigns, as Woolley has explained. (He uses 2016’s Pizzagate incident as an illustrative example of how this process unfolds.) So, part of the solution does rest on the shoulders of mass media. How and whether the local or national news covers certain trends has a large influence on whether it is seen as an idea with consensus.

    Woolley doesn’t let us down in the end with a despairing conclusion. One immediate change that would be helpful would be to replace the U.S.’s Section 230 with “legislation that takes account of the massive rise of social media” (p. 176). He also calls for interaction between the Federal Elections Commission, Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Communications Commission to “prevent manipulation via digital tools” (p. 176). That he cites a thirty-year-old law and three large governmental bodies that need to work together to solve this problem gives a sense of how immense the problem is. Both of these changes in regulation sound like excellent ideas. 

    Normally, about here is where I’d sign off with a comment like “well Trump won again after this book was published, so there’s no hope.” However, this past weekend’s comically mismanaged Great American State Fair shows just how little actual power these folks have. The consensus they appeared to wield is has been manufactured and their low level of support is undeniable. They’re outnumbered and we will win.

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Paper Airplane, Vol. 2 (edited by Nick Norlen, Paper Airplane Publishing, 2026)

    When I saw the notification last week that my issue of Paper Airplane, Vol. 3 was on its way to me, I realized I hadn’t looked through Vol. 2 yet. Ah, me! This oversight has more to do with the deluge of other demands on my time than it does my lack of desire to read the magazine itself. That’s right! This time, there is a physical edition to accompany the PDF version. There’s also a subscription service now, and you’d better believe I signed up for it right away. As I await the next quarterly installment of this periodical, let’s take a look at what makes its first printed edition such a joy.

    The cover illustration by Kaitlyn Brito depicts a person (the artist?) at a cafe table, sketching their view. We see that view from the artist’s perspective, complete with sketchbook and writing implements, croissant and kerchief, and cup and saucer. They are sketching a rough draft of what we would see if we were in their seat. If you look closely, there is a picture-within-a-picture element to the sketch. What’s more, we can see the artist’s reflection in the mirror across the cafe with the same accoutrements on the table as they are in her (our) view. It’s a trip.

    The contents of the issue are no less impressive. The editor’s note calls out the back cover as a consumable set of four postcards that are meant to be sent to friends just because. It’s a gentle invitation into the rest of the issue. Norlen asks us to “enjoy it with abandon,” which felt more pleasant than most imperative sentences should.

    In between the cover pages, I delighted in reading Sasha Nyary’s stories of fact-checking for Sports Illustrated and Life magazines in the time before the Internet. The stories are concise and demonstrate the cleverness and dedication it took to make sure facts were correct when only a few people in the world may have been able to make that determination. Well, that’s still true, but it is easier to get in touch with potential more knowledgeable others these days. Reading it made me appreciate how many hands a page has to go through before publication in major magazines. One gets the sense that Paper Airplane goes through a similarly robust editorial, design, and art revision process as well.

    A major feature in this issue is Jonny Teklit’s interview with Hanif Abdurraqib about his collection of vintage music shirts. I’ve read some of his books and essays, but I hadn’t heard of this passion of his before. I am also someone who has “a drawer full of band tees, like DIY band tees, and half the bands didn’t exist anymore,” so this part of the issue was right up my alley. I have much more anxiety around wearing and washing and caretaking my shirts. They are fine in their drawer. Who knows whether the next wash will be the last wash? It’s too much for me to think about. That’s why it’s refreshing to hear from someone who knows the shirts “aren’t meant to stay pristine forever. And to wear them out, eagerly, joyfully, is to—at least for me—form a relationship with the mortality of the item, so that I don’t think about any of it as too precious.” Maybe someday I’ll finally relax. Interviews such as this one might get me there.

    The set of four brief comics toward the middle of the issue are varied in their style and content but consistent in depicting small moments that connect us to family, ourselves, our animals, and each other. They’re on consecutive pages because they are the comic section of the issue, but they also seem to be addressing the same motifs from different angles. Each is lovely in its own way.

    Also lovely are the word nerd and puzzle pages that follow. I can’t bring myself to write in the actual magazine, so I’ll be printing the word spiral, escape page, and crossword pages myself. (I promise, I will get over my hang-up of not wanting to leave blemishes on the things I love.) Sadly, because I came to this issue too late, I have no current use for the Field Guide to Simple Pleasures: Winter section. In a couple months, I’ll pull this out again and enjoy checking off the list. Even though this is a periodical, I’m going to hold onto it for the long term because it’s just that much fun. Get yourself subscribed here.

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The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comic Books, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture by Robert Warshow

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The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comic Books, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture (Robert Warshow, Harvard University Press, 2001)

    There’s a first time for everything. For all the other books, albums, games, episodes, singles, shows, and movies I’ve reviewed for this blog, I have always finished them. I feel like I owe it to you and to myself to be as informed as possible about whatever it is I’m discussing. Cutting corners feels like it would be cheating. Maybe it’s OK to “cheat” once in a while.

    Truth be told, I suppose this is not the kind of book one reads from cover to cover. It’s a collection of essays from the author and it spans 1946 to 1954. He died in 1955 and the original edition of the text dates to 1962. I wish I could tell you where and when I added it to my reading list. I can at least tell you why I did so. I was excited about the idea of reading a book about pop culture commentary from well before such a practice became commonplace. My impression when I learned about the book was that Warshow was one of the first to treat pop cultural artifacts with the respect they deserved. I took that to mean he was a fellow nerd. That he would have made a fanzine about comics or movies if he could have.

    That’s not the case.

    Turns out Warshow was an accomplished writer who just happened to focus his lens on the stage and the screen as well as the panels and gutters of the Sunday funnies. Even though The Immediate Experience is not what I thought I was signing up for, I’m still glad to have engaged with it. I do plan to finish it, mind you!

    Let’s start with a searing riff on the kind of pieces Warshow sees when he reads The New Yorker. He begins a review of E.B. White’s The Wild Flag (itself a collection of essays!) by claiming, “The New Yorker at its best provides the intelligent and cultured college graduate with the most comfortable and least compromising attitude he can assume toward capitalist society without being forced into actual conflict.” He then goes on to write, “The New Yorker has always dealt with experience not by trying to understand it but by prescribing the attitude to be adopted toward it. This makes it possible to feel intelligent without thinking, and it is a way of making everything tolerable, for the assumption of a suitable attitude toward experience can give one the illusion of having dealt with it adequately.” Can you imagine writing like that? It’s a dream of mine. That must be why I closed the book and went to sleep upon reading it. After having struggled through the author’s preface and the first essay on “The Legacy of the ‘30s” in film and culture, I was not sure this book would be for me. It was like I had given myself homework and I wasn’t liking it. The scintillating brilliance of Warshow’s words on White forced me to shut my eyes lest I go blind.

    I’m in no position to evaluate the truth value of his claim about what The New Yorker was publishing at the time. All the same, I’m able to recognize an accurate diagnosis. There is value in having the “right” opinion or attitude to have about a text borne not of engagement with it, but from consulting with trusted sources who may also not have engaged with it. Warshow is recognizing the bullshit artist by calling out the tricks of his trade. The idea of feeling “intelligent without thinking” (p. 75) is exactly what generative artificial intelligence’s large language models aim to do. To have the “right” take without any insight into why it is correct.

    Reading and re-reading the opening paragraphs of that essay was enough to motivate me hundreds of pages further into the book. I have little to no background knowledge of the media environment Warshow inhabited and he does not always do a great job of giving me as a reader enough information on the topics or subjects he’s discussing. That’s where my struggle to enjoy the text came from. I simply hadn’t seen (or read) the movies or plays he was analyzing. He did not give even a cursory summary of their plot or themes. I resigned myself to not being able to fully grasp the meaning of each essay while also being on the hunt for passages that might catch my attention in other ways. I cringe to think of what Warshow would say about how I’m reading him.

    Those who have read theories of reading surely know about Rosenblatt’s (1978) aesthetic and efferent stances toward a text. To oversimplify it, you are either reading to enjoy a text or to learn from it. Hold on, that’s too simple. You are likely somewhere between those two extremes when you read. When I select books to read for fun, I can calibrate my expectations based on those two factors. I incorrectly assumed that Warshow’s collected essays would provide a helpful framework for reading comics or watching movies in a new way; I had an efferent stance. Instead, I am finding that I am enjoying the writing as writing; I have switched to an aesthetic stance. I don’t need to make a list of all of the movies, plays, and comics he’s discussing and then go to the library and chase footnotes until I go dizzy. I don’t need to know every fact about every cultural artifact that has even existed. That’s OK. My goals as a reader can be modest.

    As a result, it’s perhaps unsurprising that I am taking some of Warshow’s insights in a different direction than he could have imagined. Take this one from an essay on Westerns and gangster films. In contrast to the heroes of Westerns, Warshow writes that “The gangster is lonely and melancholy, and can give the impression of a profound worldly wisdom. He appeals most to adolescents with their impatience and their feeling of being outsiders, but more generally he appeals to that side of all of us which refuses to believe in the ‘normal’ possibilities of happiness and achievement; the gangster is the ‘no’ to that great American ‘yes’ which is stamped so big over our official culture and yet has so little to do with the way we really feel about our lives” (p. 106). The way Warshow connects “the impression of a profound worldly wisdom” to adolescent impatience rings true. It’s another way of understanding the appeal of genAI LLMs, especially for gangsters such as the U.S. president—the kind of person who takes shortcuts to success and makes the rest of us suffer for the damage he leaves in his wake.

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