Category Archives: Nihilism

Fashion Prize Finals

The six finalist fashion designers compete at the Fashion Prize Finals Friday, September 24, at SciPort Discovery Center.

Henrietta Wildsmith, Shreveport Times

Sci-port's second floor recently transformed into a fashion runway surrounded by little bistro tables for the 'Fashion Prize 2021: Back on the Runway!' event. With colorful spotlights andenticing music, the models strutted across the stagestopping in front of the three judges,Carmen Ortiz, Alison Parker, and Taryn Rose.

That night, thetop 6 designers,Sara Kluss, Catalina RamirezVarela, Jules Ecklekamp, Brittani Shabazz, Jessica Hall, and Donna Strebeckeach showcased their final collection of 5 looks on the runway.

This was Jessica Hall's first year to compete and when she heard her name being called as the winner andthe $2,500 check being put into her hands she was shocked. "It was a surreal moment when I heard my name called, a wave of gratitude washed over me," she said.

Hall had started her collection in 2020 but COVID-19 delayed her plans to join Fashion Prize. Hall intended her collection to be more 'Glam' but as 2020progressed she found it leaning towards a different direction, "The almost Dystopian feel of the global climate pushed me towards a more edgy and punk feeling. The disenfranchisement of the youth in England in the '70s felt relatable in a new way with the parallels of nihilism in 2020".

It was not a total stretch for the designer to go to punk. After all, when she was eight years old sheturned her Barbie dolls into punks with mohawks. She remembers always enjoying playing with the vintage fabrics found around her aunts' house.

Anothersource of inspiration for Hall is her models. Seeing them walk the runway that night gave her a feeling of "pure joy".

Emily Hamann loves to model on runways but oftenfeels that she is not the right shape or size. She knew so many people working on the Fashion Prize and had knownHall for years, which made her feel comfortable saying yes when asked to model for thisshow. "I loved being her model, she worshipped everything Curve, respected my comfort and constantly gassed me up. Shes very good about making me feel beautiful," Hamann said.

Fashion Prize founder Katy Larsenfeels this year'swin is well deserved, "Jessica Hall has been working in fashion and sewing for quite some time now. She has done everything from Mardi Gras, wedding, costuming, film attire, to historical dresses."

As the owner of Agora Borealis, a local artist marketplace, Larsen wanted to exposelocal talent, "Istarted fashion shows here in Shreveport because people were not buying handmade wares from local designers. I wanted to give exposure to that nitch in the art world... and it just grew and grew and now sits under the umbrella of the Prize family."

Forthose hoping for achance tosee their designs in the 2022 Fashion Prize, they can contact Larsen atKaty@prize.foundation.

Read this article:

Curves and punk, Fashion Prize, winner Jessica Hall talks about her journey to the runway - Shreveport Times

The internet is a living ecosystem that sometimes swallows us whole. Its an active, contradicting quandary. Gone are the days of slow, dial-up collections that could get severed by answering the house phone. We are connected with our phones, tablets, smart devices, and everywhere in between. This wild west abundance of digital space and information can serve as a great unifierfor example, TikTok and teens creating dances to the latest catchy pop song. Theres also a dark underbelly, where things like the Momo challenge and Slenderman Creepypasta can morph into something inauspicious. We are more in tune with peoples emotions and options than ever before, but in a cruel stroke of irony, we are less united in a physical sense. That detachment isnt exactly healthy.

Director/writer Jane Schoenbruns Were All Going To The Worlds Fair begins with an opening shot of a girl named Casey (Anna Cobb). Shes in her attic alone with her laptop, projecting a glassy stare into the webcam. In a script-like fashion, Casey declares she will partake in the Worlds Fair challenge. What does a Worlds Fair challenge comprise exactly? State a declaration of going to the Worlds Fair three times, prick your finger, and show it to the computer screen. After which, a bright strobe light consumes her and the room like a site of pseudo-transportation. In this world, various young people embrace the challenge, but with varying degrees of afflictions. One person says that they can no longer feel their body. Another person claims they are turning into a plastic mold. One more is convinced their body is rotting. With the spirit of community considered, all are displaying their transformations through videos.

The little that Schoenbrun shows us about Caseys home life notes that its not in the most fantastic shape. Her relationship with her father is almost nonexistent, and shes often left alone to her own devices hanging out in graveyards and recalls her tendency to sleepwalk. The only comfort we see her have is when she sleeps in a garage to an ASMR video. So, the horror that Schoenbrun artistically displays is weighted loneliness. Is it possible that The Worlds Fair challenge has some sinister, metaphysical undertone to it? It could be possible, but it is most likely a figment of the imagination of young teens who dont have many strands of societal fraternity around. As this game goes on, Caseys behavior becomes more cryptic and somewhat frightening. She often alludes to her fathers gun and indulges herself in infinite nihilism.

Schoenbrun introduces another character with the username JLB (Michael J. Rogers) with an urgent message that urges Casey to the possibility that she might be in danger. On the other side of that keyboard is an older man with a beautiful living arrangement. There, the story turns to an even darker tone. When he urges Casey to keep making videos for him to know shes safe, its when Casey ultimately lets go of the bits of sanity she has left. Whatever The Worlds Fair mystique is, its thoroughly washed over her like a tidal wave. Theres a bit of muck to know that a substantially aged man is keeping tabs on an adolescent girl, further muddying the waters of what this game is. Worlds Fair tragedy lies in searching for something tangible and the many fashions that can rip you apart like metaphorical shark teeth.

So, we are with the deadpan frigidness that entangled Caseys expression at the films conclusion. Schoenbruns narrative shines a light on people who crave togetherness, but notes that the easiest way to find this feeling might also be the riskiest. Corporeality is reality indeed, but is a portal untamed when it has nothing to anchor itself to.

Original post:

Nightstream Review: 'We're All Going To The World's Fair' Illustrates the Dark Coccoon of the Internet's Rabbit Hole - Substream Magazine

Well, it didnt until the arms race of 1970s when some evil genius thought: I know, why dont we wet the ball first.

Not only did this make the ball go faster but, for reasons known only to science, it made the ball leave welts that lasted for weeks.

I repeat the name. It wasnt called, Lets happily tag each other with a gently thrown tennis ball in order to improve our throwing skills. The game was called brandings, presumably inspired by a Texan cattleman trying to prove ownership of an ox.

In one version, you were at least allowed to run around. In another, the group would stand against a brick wall, lined up like the victims of an execution squad, while whoever was it took aim.

Once branded, you would then become it and have the chance to wreak revenge, as if in celebration of the notion of a perpetual blood feud.

Not all our games were physically violent. Some were more emotionally gruelling.

Loading

Like the competitors in Squid Game, we played the odd round of marbles. Youd take a shoebox which had contained your Bata Scouts (with built-in compass!), and cut out a series of arches, each arch marked with the reward which would be given should a fellow student manage to power their marble through the hole.

Impossibly tight doorways were marked with big rewards, the figure written in Texta above the hole. More forgiving entry points might see a return of the original marble, plus one extra.

If a tycoon had been trying to create a gateway drug for gambling addiction, schoolyard marbles was it. We all had our stalls lined up, in what felt like a crowded marketplace, Please, try your luck here, my odds are very good, the arches are very large.

Some days, youd win. Often, youd lose badly. Normally, youd blame yourself for miscalculating the size of the arches. It certainly made Year 5 more gruelling than it needed to be.

Who is writing this stuff? Jean-Paul Sartre in a fit of nihilism? Extinction Rebellion trying to make a point about global warming?

My games tended to be with the boys, but the girls had it worse. Whether it was hopscotch or jump rope, each contest came with a built-in rhyme:

My bonnet is blue/ My heart it is true/ And I dare not be seen with such rubbish as you.

Or: Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ Smelly socks/ Remind me of you.

Not all rhymes involved personal attacks; others were merely bleak. Here, for instance, is one quoted by June Factor in her book Real Keen Baked Bean!, a compendium of Australian schoolyard rhymes:

Ladybird, ladybird/ Fly away home/ Your house in on fire/ Your children all gone.

Who is writing this stuff? Jean-Paul Sartre in a fit of nihilism? Extinction Rebellion trying to make a point about global warming?

But back to Squid Game. Its true that some viewers find the South Korean series hard to watch, due to its scenes of hardcore violence, designed to illustrate the bleak horror at the heart of human existence.

But its different for those of us who grew up in an earlier Australia. For us, Squid Game is just a rather jolly trip back to our childhood.

See the rest here:

Squid Game: violent madness or a trip back to the old schoolyard? - Sydney Morning Herald

Hello! How was your day? Oh, me? Well, I spent the morning scheduling a crank wheel delivery to Updaam. Had lunch. Went back in the afternoon, disabled a few turrets, then hid behind a bin for a bit. All solely to turn off an oxygen pump and asphyxiate a bubble-encased band that I could have easily shot in a few seconds. Tomorrow, I may climb to the top of a three story building just to plummet, machete first, on the face of a guard that killed me once a few loops back. Hello. My name is Colt, and I am the pettiest videogame protagonist in existence.

In his Deathloop review, Brendy described Colt as playing it by ass. I liked that line, but I didnt yet understand its true gravitas. I am now enlightened. I have beheld the true ass of Colt, and I have grasped its magnitude: Colts ass is the antithesis to Dishonoreds heart. Blam. Boot. Blam. None of you are free of sin.

Absent the spectral whispers of a murdered empress for guidance, or the crushing burden of a city teetering between ruin and hope, Colt allows his glute-instincts to scribble his itinerary through Murderparty Island. While my Emily Kaldwin peers at the souls of militia trapped by poverty and circumstance and opts for the sleep darts, my Colt is stifling laughter as he sticks four proximity mines to a firework and launches it at a happy drunk.

Deathloop encourages this by not only scrapping Dishonoreds wagging narrative finger, but actively lopping it off with a machete. Then it sews on a new finger, perpetually pointing out an array of blissful idiots who simply cannot get enough of the very edge of roofs. Were left with a Colt who I can happily accept thinks nothing of spending a day planning an elaborate murder with the same casual annoyance and gleeful spite as a driver splashing grotty puddle water over the tosser who cut in front of them earlier at the post office.

Colt is the rare videogame shootyman who isnt Doom Guy and just straight up enjoys his job as much as the player does. Both he and Julliana are Arkane protagonists cut from the cloth that the studio usually reserves for its much more interesting fringe oddballs while the leading parts go to stoics and mutes. I have some gripes with Deathloop, but Ill take Colt and Jullianas worst one liners over Corvo lamenting Dishonoreds much more interesting world while he perches on a roof like a grim, guilt-ridden, gravel-throated gargoyle. Homicidal glee is, it turns out, incredibly infectious.

Lighthearted time loop stories usually feature a sort of seven stages of grief arc. Confusion. Despair. Acceptance. Then playful nihilism, like Bill Murray eating facefuls of cake for breakfast. This is always the best part. Deathloop knows this. Personal growth and altruism are for suckers who dont recognise a good thing when they see it. Revenge is best served in perpetuity, in the pettiest ways imaginable. Bill Murray never had to floss again, and Colt never has to wash the face fragments off his best kicking boots.

Read the rest here:

The Joy of playing Deathloop as the pettiest man in existence - Rock Paper Shotgun

Updated, 2:20 p.m.

All hail _()_/.

In its 11 strokes, the symbol encapsulates what its like to be an individual on the Internet. With raised arms and a half-turned smile, it exudes the melancholia, the malaise, the acceptance, and (finally) the embrace of knowing that somethings wrong on the Internet and you cant do anything about it.

As Kyle Chayka writes in a new history of the symbol at The Awl, the meaning of the the shruggie is always two-, if not three- or four-, fold. _()_/ represents nihilism, bemused resignation, and a Zen-like tool to accept the chaos of universe. It is Sisyphus in unicode. I use it at least 10 times a day.

For a long time, however, I used it with some difficulty. Unlike better-known emoticons like 🙂 or ;), _()_/ borrows characters from the Japanese syllabary called katakana. That makes it a kaomoji, a Japanese emoticon; it also makes it, on Western alphabetical keyboards at least, very hard to type. But then I found a solution, and it saves me having to google smiley sideways shrug every time I want to quickly rail at the worlds inherent lack of meaning.

My solution is also only possible on a Mac and/or iPhone. (Im sure there is a Windows fix, but I dont know what it is. Let me know if you do. On Twitter, Justin Jacoby Smith recommends Auspex, a free utility for Windows that mimics the Mac and iPhones system-wide text-replacement function. And the best app like this for Android seems to be Textspansion. Both apps should allow for easy shrugging.)

On a Mac

1. Open System Preferences, then go to the Keyboard preference pane.

2. Using the menu at the top of the pane, go to the Text pane.

3. Okay, so youre going to add one of those text replacements. Click the little plus at the bottom of the menu, and a new field will appear in the Replace column.

4. This is when you make the most important decision of all: What do you want to type to invoke the shrug? Myself, I type these characters: &shrug;. Ampersand-shrug-semicolon. The syntax recalls HTML escape characters, and, more important, its never something I type in the course of my daily life. Ampersand-word-semicolon doesnt appear elsewhere in standard English.

6. Ta-da! Youre done. Whenever you type your abbreviated-shrug, the full _()_/ should appear, anywhere on your system. If youre like me, youll _()_/ in Gchat over and over again, until the symbol ceases to have any meaning, and, like lololol, means merely, I had a reaction of some sort to that stimulus.

On an iPhone

0. First of all, if you sync keyboard preferences between your Mac and your iPhone, youre done! The shruggie will seamlessly sync and you shant need to stress. But if youre flying solo with an iPhone, heres how it works:

1. Open the phones Settings app. Then youll follow a set of menus: General > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

2. Theres a little plus sign in the top right corner of the screen. Tap it.

3. Okay, its the same as on a Mac! In the phrase textfield, type the shruggy dude: _()_/.

4. In the shortcut field, enter a set of characters youre never going to need to type otherwise. (I like &shrug;, ampersand-shrug-semicolon.)

5. Save it, and youre done! Now you too can mourn the worlds meaninglessness on-the-go.

See original here:

What's the best way to type _()_/ - The Atlantic

Its funny to think its been 20 years since the release of the first film in the Fast & Furious franchise then just called The Fast and the Furious (Amazon), free of numerals, though embellished with now-quaint definite articles. Back then it seemed about as disposable a pleasure as any: a dumb, flashy, fluorescently shot update of the hot rod B-films of the 1950s, more a faintly retro novelty than anything else.

The films have since swollen pretty much beyond recognition, taking on ever bigger stars, ever loopier high concepts and ever more souped-up vehicles. Sometimes, as in 2011s sleek, snazzy Fast Five (Amazon), the engine fires on all cylinders. Last time, in the overlong, overpumped The Fate of the Furious (2017; Apple TV), you could sense the series spinning its wheels. Now out on DVD/Blu-ray and non-premium VOD, F9 falls somewhere in the middle. Its not as streamlined as its title might suggest; running to two-and-a-half hours, and departing so far from the franchises original turf as to send cars into space, its a big, silly flexing exercise, but executed with just enough tacky panache to be fun.

I prefer the genre leaner, meaner and more grounded, however. You can scarcely tell any more beneath all the brawn and gloss, but the blockbusters DNA can be traced back to such cheap and cheerful junk as 1958s Gene Vincent-starring Hot Rod Gang (streamable only in dicey bootleg form) and any number of similarly titled films just like it, where the stories are as anaemic as the boy racers quiffs are voluminous.

Want a classier, harder-boiled version? From the same year, Thunder Road (Amazon) fused the hot rod craze with the style of film noir, with a steely Robert Mitchum as a moonshine delivery driver whose jacked-up Ford keeps running afoul of gangsters. Meanwhile, illustrating the difference between US and UK driving cultures, the great British race car film of the era was the comparatively genteel, puttering, London-to-Brighton romp Genevieve (1953; BritBox).

By the 1970s, hot rod culture was already the stuff of nostalgia, as rosily reflected in the likes of American Graffiti (Netflix) and Grease (Apple TV). The 1960s had taken fast-car cinema up to a sleeker, sharper level with the breakneck car chases of Steve McQueens hypercool cop thriller Bullitt (Apple TV) and the quirkier British hijinks of The Italian Job (Now TV), which retained some of Genevieves cuteness on a more high-octane scale.

The sprawling widescreen spectacle of Grand Prix (1966; Apple TV) merged the recklessness of racing cinema with the romanticism of the sports movie. Le Mans (Amazon), made in 1970 with McQueen and a hint of docu-style authenticity to it, was better. Twenty years later, Tony Scott and Tom Cruises noisy, exhausting but fleetingly beautiful Days of Thunder (Chili) was a bit worse. Recently, Le Mans 66 (Virgin Go) a beautifully crafted, minimally inspired, rock-solid dad movie proved the genre has gas left in the tank.

These days, practically every fast-car movie is a callback to something else. Edgar Wrights lickety-split Baby Driver (2017; Netflix) is nothing if not a hot rod film for the 21st century. Its clever, but not half as cool as Nicolas Winding Refns gorgeous, grisly Drive (2011; BFI Player), which took the brooding minimalism of Walter Hills 1970s gem The Driver (Amazon) and added a whole heap of neon nihilism to it. Finally, the greatest, maddest car movie of our time (of all time?) is itself a franchise entry. George Millers exhilarating Mad Max: Fury Road (2015; Apple TV) all the grimy, apocalyptic spectacle of the 80s films, amped up to the power of 10, minus Mel Gibson remains faster and more furious than anything else in its lane.

New Order (Mubi) Now coming out on DVD/Blu-ray alongside its availability on Mubi, this class-war provocation from Mexican auteur Michel Franco won the Grand Prix at Venice last year and has many keen admirers. Im less convinced. Exceedingly well made but politically hollow, its portrayal of a darker-skinned working class taking violent revenge on the elite feigns a both-sides stance, but theres exploitative colourism at play.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World (Dogwoof) In 1970, Luchino Visconti cast 15-year-old Swede Bjrn Andrsen as Tadzio in Death in Venice, after a Europe-wide search for the ultimate emblem of youthful male beauty. That claim, for a role that doubles as queer desire object and angel of death, was a heavy burden to place on a child. Kristina Lindstrm and Kristian Petris moving, upsetting documentary probes how it haunted Andrsens life across five decades.

Moving On (Mubi) Kicking off a mini-season of South Korean films previously undistributed in the UK, Yoon Dan-bis delicately wistful but unsentimental family drama is a most promising debut. Tracing the fine cross-generational tensions that ensue when a hard-up divorced dad moves his children into his own fathers house, its indebted to the likes of Edward Yang and Yasujir Ozu, but has its own airy modernity.

The rest is here:

Streaming: Fast & Furious and other great car movies - The Guardian

Becky Chambers is one of the few authors whose every book I gobble up greedily.

The sci-fi writer launched her career in 2012 by raising money on Kickstarter, meant to buy herself the time to focus on finishing her first novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. which she eventually self-published in 2014.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is defined by grounded hopefulness and top-notch space opera pastiche it captures so many of the reasons I love Star Trek without actually having anything to do with Star Trek and it soon found a cult fan base. That fan base has grown considerably as Chambers has published three novels set in the same universe as Planet, as well as two unrelated novellas. (The republished edition of Planet and her subsequent books have been published by major sci-fi publishing houses.)

The Wayfarers series is Chamberss most famous work to date. It even won the Hugo Award, one of the most prestigious sci-fi prizes, for best series in 2019. It centers on a future version of humanity that has found its way into something called the Galactic Commons, a sort of United Nations for the galaxy.

Humans are one of the newer species in the GC, and were not particularly beloved. For one thing, other species apparently think we smell bad, a tiny joke Chambers uses to needle the arbitrariness of prejudice. (We smell how we smell, other alien species!) Each of the four novels centers on a different location and set of characters, though some characters with starring roles in one book recur as supporting characters in another.

One major quality that sets Chamberss work apart is her skill with creating alien species. Theyre just alien enough to be unfamiliar but just familiar enough to be approachable. And though Chambers doesnt have formal science training, both her mother (an astrobiologist) and her wife (an anthropologist) do. The scientific stew that Chambers has been steeped in heavily influences how she thinks about alien cultures and planets.

Perhaps the most compelling quality of Chamberss books, though, is that they are hopeful without being saccharine. They take place in a future where humanity figured its shit out eventually, but we still destroyed the Earth via climate change. That blend of sorrowful past and more optimistic present is intentional, Chambers says. Hope cannot exist without pain, without trauma, without scary stuff, she told me. Its the act of believing theres something better on the other side of this.

Chambers took some time out of a busy 2021 both the final Wayfarers book (The Galaxy, and the Ground Within) and her new novella A Psalm for the Wild-Built, which kicks off a new series about a monk and a robot, came out this summer to talk to me about creating aliens who are just human enough and imagining a hopeful future where utopia nonetheless remains just out of reach.

Youre really good at designing non-human species. Theyre just recognizable enough for us to be like, Oh, I understand the emotions and the intellect going on here, but also just alien enough for us to be like, Thats really different.

One of my favorite things to do on any project is invent aliens. I always start with the caveat of: We have to have a point of entry. We have to be able to relate to them on some human level. Do the aliens in Wayfarers resemble anything like what I think actual extraterrestrial life is like? No, of course not. But you have to be able to emotionally connect with them. And I dont know that we could [immediately do that] with other species out there in the universe that exists.

But from there, were gonna get weird. I start with biology first. I look at the physicality. I look at how they are different from us. I always start with a particular trait. For example, the Aeluons, one of the big alien species in Wayfarers, communicate through the chromatophore patches on their cheeks. That starts with a real-world inspiration squid and octopus.

I take that and blow it up to a civilization level. If color is your primary mode of communication, how does that affect your art? How does that affect your architecture, the way you dress, the sorts of technology you have? And how do you relate to other species, especially if they have different ideas about what color means or just use it as a decoration? Theres a million questions you can ask with just that one element. Everything else comes from there.

The intersections of those cultures are so important to your books. On our planet, we all come from different sets of shared assumptions. Even within a single country, there are many different ideas about how the world functions. How do you go about expanding that diversity of culture and the interactions between those cultures to a galactic scale?

I switch between point-of-view characters so often. None of the books have a single voice. So I spend a lot of time thinking about a characters biases, what things about other species are weird to them. The things that are obvious to one species are not obvious to another.

My wife and I are an international couple. Shes from Iceland. We go back and forth all the time. And so much of dealing with that is navigating those differences. As a society, we tend to focus on big, political differences, but in my personal life, its these very small things. What do you have for breakfast? Do we find the same things funny? An argument might start where no one was actually mad. There was just a misunderstanding that was lost in communication. Those things are such an intrinsic part of my experience that it feels very natural to me to code them as alien interactions instead.

Your mom is an astrobiology educator, and your wife is an anthropologist. What have you picked up from them that has leached its way into your work? I realize I am basically asking you, What have you picked up from being alive?

Do we have six hours?

From my mom, it would be seeing the beauty in the infinite diversity of evolution, of being able to look at things that are slimy and squeaky and weird. I have a deep affinity for creepy-crawlies, and that comes from my mom. She taught me to see the beauty in things that are different from us. Scientific literacy was a big thing in my upbringing. Even if I wasnt going to be a scientist, she wanted me to be able to understand it and approach the world that way.

My wifes background is in historical linguistics, the study of figuring out how people moved around and interacted with each other through analyzing how words changed. She made me think about language in a way I never really considered. Language as a concept holds a reflection of our own values in society and the ways that we perceive the world. Our interactions change the way we speak. That has bled into my work, because so much about what I write about is those sorts of exchanges and the ways that we change by just being around each other, even for a very short time.

On the astrobiology front, theres this Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet Im annoyed by myself for bringing this up already that calls out Hollywood for having aliens that arent different enough from species here on Earth. I feel like, by definition, if we cant imagine it, we cant imagine it.

But in your books and in, say, the movie Arrival, it can be a truly alien species, but humans comprehend it through a lens were familiar with a reptile or a cephalopod or a crustacean. We see that in the world, too. We constantly try to relate to people who arent like us through the terms and customs were used to, which sometimes causes offense and sometimes builds bridges. How do you think about defining something truly alien?

Trying to imagine the unimaginable completely ignores the needs of storytelling. The type of aliens you create hugely depends on what the point of the story is. A story centers a particular feeling and experience. Its not there to paint the universe as it exists. Its impressionism. Its there to elicit an emotional response. At the end of the day, while Im trying to paint worlds that feel real, Im telling a story. The needs of that come first.

I was very careful about what sorts of bodies I give to particular characters. In the first Wayfarers book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first alien we meet isnt that different in a lot of ways. Shes bipedal. She has hands and a face. She can talk to you. Her cultural customs are very different, but we can look at her and compare her to a reptile, something thats instantly relatable. That was very intentional, because the minute you walked on the ship and met her, she would give the reader a sense of safety and comfort.

Whereas in the last book, [The Galaxy, and the Ground Within], theres a character whos a giant lobster centaur man. Hes a lovely person, but his species does elicit a feeling of, What the hell is that?! Theres a barrier to entry there.

A lot of choice goes into what I need a character to be and how far Im going to push the alienness of them. How uncomfortable do I want this experience to be for the reader, and why? But in my novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate [which focuses on a scientific expedition from Earth visiting planets teeming with unintelligent life], there arent civilization-level species. Everything is weird and animal and not well understood. Were just taking pictures of it and trying to figure out what it is. Thats a very different type of story.

Okay, extend that to artificial intelligences, to robots, which in your books grew out of humanity but also need to be different from us.

They are a different category, because they spring from us. I often have the same set of core ideas, which is that if theyre something we made, they would follow a logic we would understand because we wrote the code. Regardless of whether we understand why they gained sentience, we built them for a purpose, and they evolved out of that purpose.

We dont understand what intelligence or consciousness is. We have it, but we cant define what it is or why it exists. There are a bazillion books and theories on the topic, but were just barely beginning to scratch the surface, and Im not sure we have the capability to understand those things. I think if a machine wakes up, were not going to understand why any more than we understand why we woke up and can perceive the world as we do. I take the human baseline and expand upon it. They do think in ways we dont understand, because we dont know how they got there.

I really dont like the assumption that emotion and logic are opposing forces that are incompatible with each other, where you have androids that cannot do emotions and have a binary code approach to the universe. You often get stories about how a robot begins to feel things and theyre not able to handle it. I feel like thats so wrong. We have both. We have logic and emotion, and they serve different purposes. Theyre both important. Emotion does not taint logic, and logic does not cut you off to the ability to feel things. Theyre two sides of the same coin, an intrinsic part of being aware.

Your work so often uses alien species to examine other ways of being human. Theres a species in the Wayfarers series, for instance, where child-rearing is a specific job, and once you have your child, you turn the baby over to the child-rearers. How do you use aliens to illuminate different ways we could think about being human?

One of the great strengths of science fiction is were never actually talking about the alien or the other. Were never talking about the future, either. Were talking about ourselves, and were talking about right now. Going into a science fiction story is a radically vulnerable act because youre opening yourself up to whatever it is that the writer thinks about how the world works. Im going to leave everything else behind. Show me a world that works differently. You cant help but bring along baggage, but you do turn yourself into a bit of a blank slate when you walk into sci-fi.

Its somewhat like traveling to a different country or learning a different language. Any sort of cultural exchange in the real world shifts your perspective on your self. If you start reading about families with different structures and different notions of parenthood in a sci-fi story, it inevitably makes you think about your own ideas about what those things are, your own template of how the world works. And thats true regardless of whether you look at it and go, Ooh, thats cool, or if you go, That makes me really uncomfortable.

In fact, those moments of discomfort can be really valuable! I personally like to look at those moments where I go, Yuck! Then I look at where that is coming from. Is that coming from a cultural taboo or a physical difference? Is that knee-jerk thing Im feeling good or not? There is something very reflective about engaging with things outside of yourself. That makes sci-fi an incredibly valuable tool for being able to pick apart your own biases.

Theres a real trend lately toward escapism and positive stories. I dont want to judge people for that, but darker stuff tends to scratch my itch. You write really positive stories, though, and I love your work. And I think the thing you do is you write positive stories in worlds where reality is still full of darkness and hard things. And yet the beings in your books are kind to each other, and that feels beautiful amid the darkness and hardship. How do you think about balancing those two tones?

I always preface this by saying: I think that dark is important. Sad stories, tragedies its important that we tell those, both because its a matter of personal choice what sort of story you feel like engaging with on a particular day but also because we need cautionary tales. We need to be able to work through our own trauma and our own pain, and sometimes, the best way to do that is just to confront it head-on.

But if the only sorts of futures you tell stories about are dark or scary or dystopian, it can start to breed nihilism after a while. It makes you afraid of the future. Hopeful futures need to exist as a counterpoint. So a big part of why I write is to be the other side of the scale.

In terms of how to balance it within a story itself, its important to note that hope doesnt mean that theres a happy ending, necessarily, or that everything works out fine. Hope is something you foster in your darkest moments. Hope cannot exist without pain, without trauma, without scary stuff. Its the act of believing there is something better on the other side of this. Even though I embrace kindness and compassion and cooperation in my stories, bad stuff still happens, because bad stuff happens in the world. The only way you can really talk about hope is to show the bad stuff happening. But then you show what comes after: people healing, people helping each other.

To me, that is more comforting than when everything is sugar-coated, when everything works and everythings great. We do need escapist comfort food from time to time. But the most comforting stories for me are ones in which something went wrong, but things got better. People got through it not just through their own strength but because of the people propping them up.

Yeah, early in the pandemic last year, this study got passed around that said, contrary to so much post-apocalyptic storytelling, in a crisis, humans help each other. In the wasteland, there would be terrible sociopaths, but the people who survived would most likely band together in small communities. In most of your books, humans made the planet uninhabitable for themselves, but then they figured out a way to keep going. Then the people who kept going built these new social mores around cooperation.

So tell me, Becky Chambers: Do you think the world is doomed, but humanity might be able to pull through?

I dont think the world is doomed, but were in a precarious place right now. We are a social, cooperative species. In 2020, we all had to be alone, yet we found ways to help each other anyway. We need each other. There is no survival for us if we dont lean on each other.

If were going to survive and make sure were living in an ecosystem that can support us, the only way forward is to get past the idea that were all in it alone. The only way we are going to overcome the challenges we face on a global scale is if we swallow some humble pie and say, Im not the main character of this story. I am one of billions of side characters, and there is no main character. All we can do is help each other. I do not see a future for humanity where we havent learned that lesson.

See original here:

Becky Chambers on why the best aliens are just a little bit human - Vox.com

What is this?

Protagonist Mirai Kakehashi is a boy unable to find the hope to live. On the day of his junior high graduation ceremony, while his classmates are taking part in the festivities, he's alone. But his battle is just beginning when he receives some salvation from above in the form of an angel. Now Mirai is pitted against 12 other chosen humans in a battle in which the winner becomes the next god of the world. Mirai has an angel in his corner, but he may need to become a devil to survive.

Platinum End is based on Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba's manga and streams on Crunchyroll and Funimation on Thursdays.

How was the first episode?

Caitlin MooreRating:

As I watched Platinum End, I couldn't help but think of Bakuman., the second manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, the writer/artist team behind the hit manga Death Note. There was a profound anxiety in it about being a one-hit wonder, creating a single hit series and then failing to create a single thing audiences wanted to read ever again. While Ohba/Obata have clearly managed to avoid being one-hit wonders, it still seems that they only ever had one idea, because Platinum End looks to be a pointlessly edgy rehash of Death Note, with a few inverted elements. Instead of the arrogant Light Yagami being approached by a shinigami, Mirai is rescued by an angel when he jumps off a building. Both are offered absurdly powerful divine abilities, and end up pulled into murder games of cat-and-mouse.

Here's the thing: I've never liked Ohba/Obata. I wasn't pulled into the Death Note mania in high school (oh dear, I've dated myself), and I consider Bakuman. a dreary slog full of walls of text, self-congratulatory back-patting, and raging misogyny. And so, it is utterly hilarious to me that Platinum End is a creatively stagnant, 4-edgy-5-u piece of ephemera showing that those two never outgrew the 00's emo sensibilities. It's bad.

There are actually some decent moments. Wait, no. There's one decent moment: when Nasse grants Mirai the power of flight, calling it freedom. It's sentimental, but I felt a twinge as Mirai, who has been abused for much of his life, soars over the clouds and his eyes widen at the sight of the sunset from so high up. Able to travel faster than the human eye can detect, he flies to Ireland and South America, taking a break atop an Aztec pyramid. I admit I'm pretty easily taken in by these things, but what can I say? It worked for me.

But then the episode keeps going, leaning straight into bullshit philosophy about how if devils exist, it is only in the heart of man and other varieties of edgy nihilism. It's weird that his second power is to make people fall obsessively in love with him; straight-up mind control would be easier to implement and carry way less baggage. He makes his aunt fall in love with him to learn the truth of what happened to his family and little brother, and then she kills herself out of guilt with a knife. Blood sprays all over the room, and the camera luridly zooms in first on her barely-clad butt and then her corpse's agony-contorted face. Which it goes back to several more times. I didn't count but it was at least five. Oh, and Mirai implies that stealing a 150-yen melon bread is comparable to blowing up a family for the sake of murder. It's ridiculous.

I willingly and gleefully spoiled myself on the ending of Platinum End ages ago, so I know that it's only downhill from here. It's pointless, edgy nihilism all the way down, and its only redeeming feature is how ludicrous it is

Richard EisenbeisRating:

Platinum End leans hard into the tragedy that is Mirai's life in this opening episode. It startswith his attempted suicide and has numerous flashbacks to the terrible treatment he has received growingup. While this can seem a bit heavy-handed, it's important to get us on Mirai's side asquickly as possibleideally while making us despise his aunt and uncle in the process. Ifwe're not by the time he inadvertently makes his aunt kill herself, he comes off as amonster instead of a victim.

It helps that, despite being beaten down, Mirai has retained a moral codesomething heclings to even after getting his own personal angel. He is never really tempted by his newfound power; all hereally wants for his future is a normal lifeand he isn't willing to kill orsteal to get it. A normal life is also Mirai's answer to Platinum End's big philosophicalquestion: What is happiness?

Of course, his is far from the only possible answer to the question. By the time the creditsroll, we see glimpses of two other answers. For one, happiness is extreme self-indulgence.For the other, happiness means dishing out justice as a superhero. I suspect that we'll get a total of 13 answers overthe course of this series, and I look forward toseeing how these ideals conflict with one anotherlikely with lethal results.

But more than Mirai's tragic past and the anime's philosophical musings, the thing I enjoyedmost about this first episode of Platinum End' is our guardian angel, Nasse. WhileNasse seems bright, cheerful, and innocent on the surface and has a humanoid shape, she is a beingfundamentally different from humans. She doesn't seem to be driven by human morality, nor does she have any empathy for humans in general; mind-controlling them or watching them die in horrible ways doesn't even faze her.

In fact, I doubt she experiences or understands human emotions as we understand them in the first place. She has little idea on how to help Mirai attain happiness because she doesn't feelhappiness as he does. She can only guess at what might make a human happy from acomplete outsider's perspective, such as money or the deaths of those that bring unhappiness. Heralien nature makes her a terrifying creatureand one I can't wait to see more of as theseries continues.

James BeckettRating:

A part of me can't help but appreciate shows like Platinum End, which are completely unwilling tocompromise their commitment to a deeply stupid and silly artistic vision. Not only is it chock-full ofneedlessly convoluted mythology and steeped in a deeply cynical worldview, it's also unbelievably,embarrassingly earnest. Despite having roughly the same understanding of genuine human sufferingthat you'd find in the fanfiction of any teenaged edgelord that just got his parents' permission to watchTarantino movies without adult supervision, Platinum End seems confident that it actually hassomething meaningful to say about the nature of good and evil, and what it means to seek happiness inthe world.

This, by the way, is a show that centers around Mirai, a suicidal guy who is rescued from self-annihilation by a naked, sociopathic angel named Nasse, who grants him a bunch of stupid, angel-themedsuperpowers that give him the ability to fly, control peoples' minds, and kill people instantly. Not onlydoes Nasse want Mirai to exploit these powers for his own personal gain as an act of vengeance on thepeople who enabled his suffering for so long, she also presumably expects him to survive the upcomingwar between all of the other weirdos with angel powers. There's a contest to see who gets to becomeGod, you see, and it will doubtless be settled with gallons upon gallons of weird, kinky bloodshed.

That's right, folks: For all of Platinum End's attempts to flail vaguely in the general direction of humanemotions, it's really just a reskinned Future Diary. Also, for all of the criticisms you could easily throw atFuture Diary's, I at least recall that show making an attempt at being stylish. Takeshi Obata has neverbeen my favorite artist, but even a casual Googling of the Platinum End manga gives me the impressionthat the source material might have something going for it, visually speaking. This? This is just theanimated equivalent of plain, room-temperature mashed potatoes. Nasse is the most underwhelmingangelic figure I can recall from recent memory, since her janky-looking ass-cheeks are maybe the singlenotable thing about her design.

The scenes of Mirai flying with his goofy wings are the closest the episode comes to demonstratinggenuine effortand then it all devolves into clich bursts of juvenile ultraviolence, and it's all just sotiring. In worse moods, I might have found Platinum End to be off-putting and crass, but right now theonly response I can muster up is boredom. If something truly, truly outrageous happens that's worthy ofa check-in, feel free to let me know on Twitter. Otherwise, I'll be glad to sit this particular death gameout.

Nicholas DupreeRating:

This one's a show I'd been anticipating for all the wrong reasons. While I've not read all of the original manga, what I have read assured me that whatever entertaining story or character ideas Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Ohba utilized in Death Note and Bakuman. had completely dried up. So when it was announced that their latest series was getting a full anime adaptation, I was ready to break out the popcorn and watch this awkward, flaming wreck of exposition and edge (edgeposition?) flop on the ground for six months. And so far my expectations have been met with flying colors.

Make no mistake, Platinum End is a mess, almost from the word go. This first episode is a five-car pileup of exposition, racing through our jaded, miserable hero's suicide, rescue, bloody epiphany, and drafting into the battle for godhood in the span of a single half-hour. There's no time for anything like character building, or giving our lead and his angel sidekick discernible personalities or goals. Not when we have to clumsily introduce all our supernatural concepts in one go, before diving into a schlock-tastic attempt at shock violence, all interspersed with incredibly rote philosophizing about how maybe...the real devils are humans. Death Note ended up having a lot less to say about the concept of justice than it first insisted, but it at least had strongly characterized leads and an engaging cat-and-mouse game to play with. But here all the robotic musing about the nature of humanity as good or evil is so aimless it almost feels like parody, being delivered apropos of nothing in many places that turn statements about our collective capacity for good or evil into non-sequiturs. Which is just about perfect for irony watching.

If there's any issue with that idea though, it's in the direction and overall production of this adaptation. While this episode does more or less fine in approximating Obata's character designs in close-up, any distance shots quickly leave them as formless mannequins. More distressingly, the direction just doesn't feel like it has a grasp of the material's tone. That's understandable the actual writing for Platinum End is a mess of ideas being delivered with blunt force impact via info dumps, and its attempts at character drama are incredibly clich. But I can't help imagining a version of this in line with the infamous potato chip line from Death Note, cranking up the already ludicrous drama into a nearly biblical level of cheese in a way that's nearly transcendent. Sadly that's not the case, and if the show can't make the source material's bone-dry exposition any more engaging, then even watching to laugh at this show will likely lose its appeal quickly.

For now though, this is looking like just the kind of dumpster fire I like to watch burn. Though if you're looking for an actually interesting or compelling death game? Look elsewhere. You're honestly more likely to get something worthwhile out of The Future Diary than you are here.

More:

Platinum End - The Fall 2021 Preview Guide - Anime News Network

Fans of Gang of Youths and Bruce Springsteen will find plenty to love about how this young Geordie bridges chest-beating bravado with bleak subject matter on his second album, Seventeen Going Under.

Content Warning: This article discusses suicide.

Sam Fenders debut album Hypersonic Missiles introduced him as a songwriter with skill, honesty, and a great love for anthemic rock. It impressed listeners and critics alike, debuting atop the UK charts and winning the Critics Choice Brit Award for its refreshingly meaningful slant on guitar music.

Not bad for a teen from the working-class coastal town of North Shields who admits he spent his youth getting stoned or into fights as he bounced between the lives of his separated mother and father.

The 27-year-old never shies away from chronicling his tough upbringing in his music, but his gift is in fusing grim truths into rousing, bombastic songs. His voice and presence stitch the intensity of his lyrics and music into fist-pumping anthems built for big crowds to sing along to, yet still hit you square in the heart.

Its all there in the opening title track to Seventeen Going Under, Fenders second album that does everything his debut did bigger and better.

FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

The track sweeps you up in its momentum as chiming guitars and propulsive rhythms build to an arena-sized wooah-oh-ohhhh sing-along. But that triumphant mood is built upon incisive lyrics about how anger is a sickness that Makes you hurt the ones you love you like theyre nothin.

What begins as a picture of teenage frustration blossoms into a detailed portrait of violence, toxic masculinity, nihilism, and the heart-breaking image of Sams mother weeping on the floor after an unsuccessful application for welfare.

Fender specialises in triumph-outta-tragedy and steadily-escalating songs that start with a flicker and roar into a flame, building to sustained climaxes in arrangements that grow outwards and upwards.

Its impossible to miss that Bruce Springsteen is still his biggest influence wailing sax solos, E Street Band revelry and all along with acolytes like The Killers and The War on Drugs. But Fender deserves to be every bit as big as those artists, and Seventeen Going Under could well propel him to be The Boss of his generation.

He sounds less like an imitator on this album because he pours so much of himself into his songs, digging even deeper into serious subject matter and surfacing with epic, emotive material.

No wonder Gang Of Youths have become close mates, even warming up arenas for Fender on what will be his biggest tour of the UK yet.

Over there, the native Northerner is already on a trajectory to superstar status. Just look at the way young festival crowds sing his songs like dearly-held classics - belting along to every word with the committed performer.

FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

Its been abject euphoria, Fender tells triple js Richard Kingsmill of his recent shows. Some of the biggest weve ever played Leeds Festival in front of 50,000 plus people? The most ridiculous thing Ive ever seen. Six different moshpits at one time!

Its a sight he sorely missed while trapped in the house last year due to COVID, eating chicken burgers and playing video games for a year, solid. And binge-drinking alone; But Im from Newcastle, so Im just a normal weekday drinker, he deadpans.

Being cooped up also meant he couldnt wander down the pub for inspiration from the local riff raff.

In Newcastle youve got the most unsubtle drug dealers kicking around, shouting about what theyve been up to, he explains. I used to get all of my stories from the illicit characters hanging around my hometown. But I havent had any of that.

An undisclosed health condition meant the musician spent three months pretty much alone, apart from the Zoom calls. So, to prevent going insane from lockdown, he started going to therapy.

That conjured up a lot of material, he reflects. It definitely helped. But they dont put a disclaimer on therapy: its not easy.

Its like the Spanish inquisition in your psyche, and youre sat there trying to figure out why youre being such a tit all the time. It takes honesty to get the most out of it.

The first record, a lot of it was pointing outwards and writing about people I knew. I found it a lot easier to be honest about strangers or friends because I could be honest about them and be completely critical as well. Whereas its quite hard to be honest and critical about yourself, because lets face it, we can all be a bit of a twat sometimes.

That sincerity fuels the albums defining moments. Get You Down does not paint a flattering picture of Fender, taking out his anger and self-esteem issues on an undeserving partner and realising too late that hes projecting his own feelings of contempt. I catch myself in the mirror/See a pathetic little boy he sings over and over.

[Its] that moment where youre becoming aware that youre letting insecurity get the better of you, he explains. Youre aware but you dont know how to fix it yet that transitional period.

FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

Spit Of You poignantly captures a father-son dynamic; how Fender is the spitting image of his old man, inherited flaws and all: the knotted up baggage and anger (smashing cups off the floor/And kicking walls through/ Thats me and you) and an inability to communicate any of it: I can talk to anyone / I cant talk to you.

It concludes with the moving image of Sam seeing his father breaking down at the funeral of his grandmother, planting a kiss on her body and realising with stark compassion: One day thatll be your forehead Im kissing.

These moments hit so hard because Fender manages to express something universal through these deeply personal experiences. You dont have to have specifically suffered what he has in order to recognise yourself and those you love in these songs.

Its a skill hes sharpened further on Seventeen Going Under, his writing becoming more detailed and economical just as his sound and production has grown more dynamic, his playbook expanding beyond just the surging Born To Run dynamics he does so damn well.

FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

The easy-going Mantra is content to float along breezy melodies as Sam offers sage advice to himself, Last To Make It Home slows things down and beautifully serves its role as the albums bittersweet widescreen ballad.

Long Way Off is a stomping state-of-the-nation address with cinematic strings and horns, while Aye picks up where the first albums White Privilege left off as an embittered everything is awful protest against class warfare. The woke kids are just dickheads, the 1% encourage us to hate the poor and any political allegiance is ultimately pointless.

In this grand scope, hearing Fender rise to the occasion to embrace the voice-of-a-generation mantle thrust upon him is encouraging, but hes far more effective at speaking to topics bigger than himself when hes tackling the more intimate and delicate subject of mental health.

Coloured by exotic strings and another huge chorus, The Leveller makes poetry out of the isolating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, lives and minds stung by the stillness of lockdown, Waitin in vain for the almighty crash/As little England rips itself to pieces, Sam sings. And the fear is the closest thing to fun that I have.

Its kind of a war cry against depression, he explains. Its me trying to rail against it; rail against falling under because so many of my close friends have fallen victim to their mental health.

Similarly, Paradigms reaches a touching coda of No one should feel like this, elevated by a choir of people from Fenders hometown who lost another friend to suicide last year.

The North East region the songwriter calls home has been dubbed the suicide capital of England, and its a grim fact hes been facing down ever since breakout 2018 single Dead Boys. Nobody ever could explain/All the dead boys in our hometown goes the chorus.

Those same fallen souls still haunt Sam on Seventeen Going Under, theres an unspoken understanding that the same all-too-common patterns of his rough upbringing - a youth spent aimlessly fucking, fighting and drinking - could have just as easily led him to be just another statistic.

FireFox NVDA users - To access the following content, press 'M' to enter the iFrame.

And those dead boys are always there/Theres more every year Sams sings explicitly on The Dying Light, the albums show-stopping closing track and spiritual sequel.

Sam admits the song was written when he was at his lowest, from the perspective of somebody whos considering taking their own life. But instead, they triumph over the darkness and decide instead to keep fighting - if not for themselves than for those they care most about.

The song rises from lonely evocative piano into a hopeful climax of thundering musical heroics as Sam declares:

Its a breath-taking finale that perfectly draws the curtain on why Seventeen Going Under is such a significant statement for its author, but also why Sam Fender himself is so important.

Hes the small town lad made good. Hes one of us, the kid with big dreams of being a guitar hero but he actually did it.

However reluctant he may be as some kind of generational spokesperson for disillusioned youth, Fender is not about to waste the opportunity afforded by slipping free from a system thats chewed up and broken so many like him. He wants to use his platform to make a difference the best way he knows now - with songs big enough to unite heaving crowds of kids. Capturing the sorrows we all sometimes struggle to articulate in soaring sing-alongs.

Musically, Seventeen Going Under doesnt make you work too hard for its rewards but like the best music does, it will most certainly make you think a little deeper about the world.

Sam doesnt have all the answers, nor does he pretend to. But what matters is he wants to be better, and hes damn well not afraid to try, no matter how many hurdles he has to overcome.

I wouldnt ever say that Im sorted but Im definitely better than I was, he tells tripe j.

We all have insecurities, doesnt matter how much work you do. But Im definitely, definitely further on than I was at the start of my twenties. I dont rip me cupboard doors off anymore, he laughs, so thats a good start.

Seventeen Going Under is out now via Dew Process. Hear Sam Fender chat with triple j's Richard Kignsmill about how therapy helped his songwriting and his relationship with his parents on 2021 here.

Original post:

Depression and Dad rock: Sam Fender makes heroic anthems from hopeless situations - ABC News

2017 was a magical season for Georgia fans. The return of team leaders and fan favorites Nick Chubb and Sony Michel for one last run helped fuel a narrative of revenge as the Dawgs tore through their schedule, avenging the losses suffered in the Kirby Smart's first year as Georgia's head coach. Every week fans got more confident, and the team got better and better and better. It was a glorious time to be a Dawg.

Four years later, fond memories of a red and black wave swamping Notre Dame's stadium, stomping Florida 42-7, and a wild overtime win in the Rose Bowl provide a veneer that almost displaces thoughts of the 2nd and 26-yard play that ended the season in an abrupt tragedy. Almost. For as illustrious as the 2017 season was and the place it holds in the hearts of the Bulldog faithful, Georgie still couldn't win a national title, the one accolade that has eluded the Dawgs for four decades.

The sudden end of the national championship game left many Georgia fans feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under them, but there was one other game that the Dawgs dropped that year. In late November of that year, the Dawgs traveled to the Plains as the top-ranked team in the country to face an Auburn team that was fighting to stay alive. Instead, they left with a black eye after losing 40-17.

Outside of the opening drive, the hostile environment in Jordan-Hare that evening overwhelmed a Georgia team that just wasn't ready for the moment. Kirby Smart was able to rally his team and close out the season, even avenging the loss in the SEC Championship game, but in hindsight, it looks like a foreshadowing of what was to come.

This year the Bulldogs find themselves in an eerily similar position to the one they found themselves in that year. The Dawgs are undefeated, a top-ranked team in the country, with a tough win over an overrated perennial playoff contender early in the year and a blowout win over an SEC West team having the most success it has had in years. They'll face an Auburn team that has rallied after suffering an early loss in non-conference play, led by an embattled coach and quarterback looking to change his legacy as a Tiger. They're headed into a raucous environment in the same stadium for a 3:30 CBS kick. It's a potent brew for an upset. It is also Georgia's opportunity to prove that this team's story has a different ending than the ones that came before.

A win on Saturday would be historic for Georgia. It would mean that the Dawgs would beat every SEC West team it plays in the regular season for the second time under Kirby Smart. It would prove that Georgia can go on the road and win in front of a hostile crowd. Finally, it would bring them one step closer to their ultimate goal, the one the team and fans are desperate to hoist.

The heartbreaking end to the 2017 season left a lasting impression on the psyche of Georgia fans. A sense of nihilism has crept into the fanbase, and honestly, it's hard to blame them. That magical year was followed by three seasons of being good, even great at times, but still just short of being the best, and none of these seasons could recapture the feel of the 2017 season. This season, however, there is a spark that is on the verge of rekindling that magical feeling, and a win this Saturday should stoke the fires of hope in even the most cynical of Dawg fans.

Go here to read the rest:

Georgia Has a Chance to Prove It Isn't 2017 - Yardbarker