Running Commentary 1/6/2024
Happy New Year,
I hope you all had a nice time over the holidays. I did, up until New Year's Eve when I came down with a cold. A couple days in bed did have one upside: I finally had the time to make a Krita palette with the colors from Robert Ridgway's Color Standards and Color Nomenclature, a pre-Pantone system of standard colors made by a Smithsonian ornithologist for use in bird description. You can read more about Ridgway's work in one of this newsletter's curation links. If you use Krita for drawing, you can download the palette.
Anyway...
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Watching...
Skeleton Crew
- Over the past three episodes the show has developed in some surprising ways. After episode 4 I was convinced the show would involve going from "At" world to "At" world hoping to find the coordinates to At Attin recorded on one of them, but that's not what happened.
- Episodes 5 and 6 go closely together, telling the story of Jod turning on the kids and realigning with his pirate crew. This isn't entirely a villainous turn; Jod is no hero here but he does seem motivated to keep the kids safe by removing them from the situation, which turns potentially deadly when a bounty hunter shows up.
- The idea of a dreaded pirate stronghold having been converted into a luxury spa, where a treasure lies under the guard not of brigands but of front-desk managers intent on keeping out anyone besides their paying clientele was a very funny, very creative idea.
- Episode 4 got us some good scenes with Neel, and Episode 6 got some good scenes with KB, which were really needed as KB hadn't gotten much chance to shine up until that point. It's nice to see that they're trying to give each of the kids their own episodes rather than making Wim the main character as he was in the start.
- We keep cutting back to At Attin to see that the kids' parents seem concerned that those in power (who, again, all seem to be droids) aren't going to find their kids and are trying to do so themselves. In the latest episode we learn that the adults of the world seem to know that At Attin is hidden from the rest of the Galaxy, as they express concern that trying to get their kids back will reveal At Attin's presence. This seems quite odd if At Attin is merely the Old Republic's mint; mints are guarded but generally not hidden.
Playing...
Warframe
Last time I gave my thoughts on the new quest; now, after a few weeks of playing, I'll give my thoughts on the rest of the "Warframe: 1999" update.
Finished Quest
- I'm glad to learn that you don't have to rank up with the Hex syndicate fully to unlock the finale of the quest; you really only need about a week's worth of consistent play.
- The quest finale itself was roughly what I expected it to be, and was quite well done. Saving Quincy by guiding him to use his powers was the coolest moment, followed by giving Amire a parazon. The whole quest experience – the main quest, the interstitial gameplay of 1999 missions, and the finale – is the Warframe experience in miniature; you have a quest that establishes a status quo, you play in that status quo, and then you get another chapter of the story that pays off your developed interest in the world. And you do get to know this world, not just from the quest and gameplay but from...
Chat with the Hex
- When I first heard that this was coming I must admit I thought it was the dweebiest thing DE has ever added to their game. I really like Warframe, as should be evident at this point, but it's had some odd things tossed in over the years; I'll remind you that they added Flappy Bird at one point. This addition of a friendship/dating sim seemed even odder. But the amount of writing work that's gone into this really sold me on the whole thing. KIM chat is, at its core, a system of dialog trees, common to a lot of RPGs, but putting it in its own, all-text world instead of doing what, say, KOTOR did and having conversations pop up in gameplay make it a lot less annoying than such things usually are. And the conversations are really well-written.
- I'm no dating sim aficionado, but these KIM chats do not seem like what I thought they'd be, and I don't think probably are a dating sim, as the point of them is not primarily to endear oneself to a bunch of fictional characters. Warframe's player character(s) are not player self-inserts; while you play as the Tenno and the Drifter, you don't really identify with them and their situations. I thus take the KIM chats mainly as a storytelling method, letting us get to know the members of the Hex as well as the Drifter by playing through the chats. The romance aspect still seems a bit odd (although not unprecedented, when compared to games like KOTOR); I'm actually avoiding it, at least for this first cycle, just to see what the game does with that come New Year's Eve.
- After running through the KIM chats (you get new ones each day up to a point at which the game declares you "best friends" with the Hex member, at which point you presumably just start meeting up to talk in person, I dunno), I will say that I no longer hate Amir. His terrible comedy from the quest cutscenes is absent from the chat comms, replaced with a much less punchable fellow with an understandable worry about dying. I've more than once had to talk him out of pursing becoming a Cephalon, which was an interesting place to take the character.
- I do rather hate Quincy. They gave him this weird transactional mindset that mainly manifests as him constantly trying to sell me information about the other protoframes.
- The one I find most interesting is Eleanor. Out of all of them, she seems the most like the Tenno. Not the Drifter, the Tenno. She's the only one who asks after the other, child version that the Drifter has left back in the future. Eleanor is an ordinary person forced to become a soldier largely against her will, just like the Tenno. She's feared even by some of her allies, like the Tenno. She's a sort of a frustrated pacifist, which certainly is an interesting figure to try to pair the Drifter, who's an indomitable warrior, up with. Her brother Arthur is much more like the Drifter, with much of his deal being resisting the tendency to just go numb in response to his suffering.
- I hope the KIM chats get added to in the future. There's relatively little work to be done to add to them, and they're among the most effective forms of storytelling DE's put in the game.
New Gameplay
- 1999 comes with a new tileset which is pretty conventional as far as video game maps go, but which is still rather strange to be playing Warframe in. But that novelty rather fades into the background as you play. So, besides a map full of brickwork buildings and abandoned cars, how's 1999 play?
- The missions are variations on the missions Warframe players like: Exterminate, Survival, Capture, and Assassination. No mobile defense here! (Or is there?)
- The Exterminate missions have a side objective to find keys to open a treasure chest, but otherwise they're the same as ever; the side objective is, I think, a bit more difficult to accomplish than it's meant to, but whatever, it's optional.
- The Survival missions have a little twist meant to discourage just camping out on a convenient tile: you have to tend to all the life support towers or else a mini-boss will spawn in. Granted, anyone who's played Warframe up to this point ought to have no trouble killing said mini-boss, so this mechanic can be ignored.
- The "Endless Capture" I don't much care for. If it's meant to save us time not having to restart the mission over and over, it doesn't, since before each capture, you have to defend Kalymos from a bunch of techrot first (ah, there's our Mobile Defense).
- The Assassination mission is, like the one in Entrati's basement, a bit protracted. The boss fight itself is fine but getting there is a drawn-out chore. I'm not liking this trend.
- My favorite thing in 1999 is the squad-v-squad competition missions. These are probably the only way most people will earn Conclave points, and it also awards vosfor, in the only direct farm for that so far. I think the three-stage missions are pretty fun, though the minibosses in one possible stage have an issue that's becoming more prevalent in Warframe: they have damage attenuation and spawn as eximi, meaning they have a chance to spawn as leech eximi and heal themselves, which renders them functionally immortal if you don't have just the perfect weapon to take them down. The same is true of some of the rogue necramechs in the tough basement missions. I'm not liking this trend either.
- The motorcycles work a lot better in the actual update than they did when I played the demo. They aren't critical, but can be handy for getting through the big levels quickly, so long as you're up in the streets and not down in the subway tunnels with the techrot and the constant impediments.
- 1999 has sort of its own version of Nightwave. It's not as much work, but each week comes with a todo list that, when completed, awards things like arcanes and archon shards. This hopefully will be enough to keep people playing 1999 once they've finished the quest and the main farms.
Cyte-09
We have our sniper 'frame, but how does he do in what really isn't a sniper's game? He does alright. I will say that, coming off of Koumei, Cyte-09 is refreshingly straightforward. He's got a sniper rifle, and his abilities all help with his rifle.
- His passive boosts damage with every weakpoint hit he makes. This builds persistantly over the course of the mission. The boost is only 1% per hit, up to 300%, though you'll need a decently long run to build it anywhere near that far. Still, this isn't a useless passive and it plays well into his kit.
- His 4 I'll mention first, since that's just the summon for his sniper rifle, which is an exalted weapon. It costs energy per shot, deals good damage, and can freeze enemies in place with its alt-fire. If you hit an enemy weakpoint your shot will ricochet to the weakpoints of other nearby enemies, so a well-placed shot can clear a small crowd.
- His 1 deploys a scanner that highlights enemies and their weakpoints in a wide, far-reaching cone in front of him. 3 can be deployed at once. This power is the key thing that makes sniping viable. Not only are enemies in the open highlighted, but so are those behind cover, and highlit enemies can be shot with 10m of punch-through, so that cover won't stop your shots in most cases. Keep aiming for lit-up weakpoints, and you'll have a room cleared in a few shots, with his exalted rifle or with another good weapon.
- His 2 reloads his and allies weapons and gives them the elemental damage of the player's choice. This is really handy if you're fighting the Profit-Taker Orb, or running Sanctuary Onslaught, but otherwise being able to switch up elemental damage isn't all that useful. Still, you get ammo and whatever elemental damage makes sense for your mission.
- His 3 is an invisibility power, but not one meant for sneaking through a spy vault. It's for keeping you hidden on the field while you're sniping, so that enemies can't outflank you. It doesn't last very long, and there's a cooldown on casting it again once it is cast, but its duration is extended with every weakpoint hit, so if you're sniping well, you'll stay hidden until the area is clear and the cooldown has run out. If you mess up, though, you'd better relocate.
Overall, Cyte-09 is a really good execution of his concept. He isn't complicated, but he can't be played passively. If you're good at making headshots regularly, he's decently powerful as a damage dealer. If you aren't, he's not gonna do much for you otherwise. If you like the Knell, you'll like Cyte-09. He's a demanding 'frame, but not unreasonably so, and he's well worth getting and trying out.
Bird of the Week
When I first came across this week's bird, the Collared Trogon, it went immediately on the list of birds to draw for Christmas. It's not only red-and-green, like all my Christmas birds; it's the specific red-and-green used in Christmas decor. The green became something of a meme recently for its use in Home Alone which was noted online, and for its supposed mental soothing effect.1 The shade, generally called phthalo green after the phthalocyanine pigment used to produce it in paint, is a synthetic color first produced in the 1930s, replacing earlier colors made from much more hazardous chemicals, such as arsenic, which was used to make something called Scheele's green which was popular throughout the 19th century despite being quite toxic.2,3 Of course, trogons aren't really green with phthalocyanine; as is the case with most green feathers, theirs are pigmented yellow and structured to reflect blue, producing a green effect.4
Trogons are a family of birds, along with the quetzals. They are found throughout the topics: in South/Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South/Southeast Asia. Many are red- or yellow-bellied; the collared trogon comes in two color phases, actually, either being red and festive like the one I've drawn or else orange-bellied; these orange-bellied trogons were once thought to be a separate species. Female Trogons tend to be shades of brown rather than green, though they ofted retain bright colors otherwise. The namesake collar of the collared trogon is actually shared by many of its cousins; the collared, maksed, mountain, blue-crowned, Ecuadorian, and elegant trogons are all generally similar-looking, best distinguished by where they live and by the subtle differences between the barred patterns of the undersides of their tails. Those tails – long, squared-off, and held straight-down while perched to show off the bold pattern of black-and-white underneath – are the signature feature of trogons.
Alexander Skutch – the field ornithologist you may remember from my account of the long-tailed silky-flycatcher, which was much based on his – had written accounts of four other types of trogons already when he wrote, in 1955, about the single pair of collared trogons that he had been able to observe in Costa Rica. He told of the nest cavity chewed into a stump by the birds; Skutch worried hat the stump might come crashing down if he climbed it, so he used a mirror on a stick to look inside.5 As previously, his whole account is worth reading for yourself.
To science, the collared trogon is Trogon collaris, which I'll trust you to be able to translate into English yourself. The term "trogon", meaning "gnawer" in Greek, was first used by Pliny the Elder to name a bird, likely a woodpecker, before later being applied to these tropical non-woodpeckers which also peck holes in trees to nest in.
- Rainer, Joshua. “Home Alone Is Such a Cozy Movie in Large Part Because of the Most Incredible Shade of Green Used Heavily Throughout That Is Both Natural and Mystical: Phthalo Green https://t.co/L0oegRuJae’ / X,” 12/21/2024. https://x.com/JoshRainerGold/status/1870549906022351070.
- Lewis, Charlene. “Phthalo Green – All About the Greenish-Blue Pigment.” Art in Context, November 19, 2023. https://artincontext.org/phthalo-green/.
- Kelleher, Katy. “Scheele’s Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death.” The Paris Review, May 2, 2018. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/02/scheeles-green-the-color-of-fake-foliage-and-death/.
- Thompson, Mya. “How Birds Make Colorful Feathers.” Bird Academy | the Cornell Lab, March 6, 2023. https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/how-birds-make-colorful-feathers/.
- Skutch, Alexander F. (1956) "A Nesting of the Collared Trogon," The Auk: Vol. 73: Iss. 3, Article 2.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/auk/vol73/iss3/2 - Jobling, J. A. (editor). The Key to Scientific Names in Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman et al. editors), Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Ithaca.
Curation Links
Long Before Pantone, This Bird-Based System for Describing Color Was a Hit | Alice Sun, Audubon Magazine
“In the early 20th century, ornithologist Robert Ridgway published a massive dictionary to categorize birds’ hues, from Peacock Blue to Duck Green. His work still resonates for artists and designers today.”
why you were forced to learn the recorder in school | Answer in Progress
[VIDEO] I’ve long tried to let people know that the recorder, when played by someone who knows what they’re doing and not a first grader, can make quite lovely music. This video demonstrates that, while also looking at why so many first graders wind up playing this obscure little pipe in the first place. (20 minutes)
Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars | Nate Rogers, The Ringer
“There appear to be two types of drivers in North America these days: those who think about headlights only when one of theirs goes out, and those who fixate on them every time they drive at night. If you’re in the first camp, consider yourself lucky. Those in the second camp—aggravated by the excess glare produced in this new era of light-emitting diode headlights—are riled up enough that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any other topic”
Today I Am Paul | Martin L. Shoemaker, Clarkesworld
[FICTION] A shapeshifting robot cares for an old woman with dementia.
See the full archive of curations on Notion