all I can think about is Chainsaw Man
More of my writing, plus a playlist~
Hi all,
I wrote a few more things! I reviewed Dwarf Fortress for the Washington Post! It’s simply one of the most important games of all time (my editor wouldn’t let me say it’s the most important game of all time but I believe that).
I feel like if I played this game for an entire lifetime, I still wouldn’t be able to put together the hows and whys of dwarf psychology. It’s a level of character detail I’ve never seen so acutely in other games that simulate a world. If you mug a character in Grand Theft Auto, they won’t experience that as trauma and change their behaviors. In “Dwarf Fortress,” your dwarves will remember the loss of their friends and the birth of their children, and their understanding of the world will change because of those experiences.
If you’re interested, I also wrote some tips on how to get started. While the game is a lot easier to parse now, it’s still hard to get a handle on all its mechanics.
Now, for the fun stuff. I have a tendency to cycle through different hyperfixations when I’m bored or sad, and I’ve been bored and sad a lot lately. Luckily, Chainsaw Man is the best show on television right now and I can basically live my life waiting for Tuesdays, when the manga updates and there’s a new episode of the anime.
I’ve written about Chainsaw Man a couple of times at Motherboard, once about the manga and once about the anime. If you still need an introduction to what the series is about, I recommend either reading one of those posts or just watching the anime. I have a strong feeling that the show is just on the cusp of oversaturation if it’s not there already. The thing is, it’s actually that good. At the end of the day, it’s one of the best ongoing pieces of fiction I’m reading right now, it’s wildly creative, and it has a strong and political point of view I find fascinating.
What I have on offer today is a playlist. A Chainsaw Man playlist on Tidal, of songs that I think about between episodes of Chainsaw Man and new chapters of the manga. Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of punk and hardcore in there. I thought I’d break down some of the song choices. A few of them are, I feel, self explanatory (“Baby” by Charli XCX is just a song about Makima, I’m so surprised that there hasn’t been a fan animation of her doing the dance from the video yet). But Chainsaw Man’s aesthetic is so finely tuned and something I fuck with so much that I want to break it down a little.
I’m not going to explain every song because there are like 22 songs on it, but here’s a selection of Chainsaw Man vibes.
Turnstile — Underwater Boi
Simply put, Chainsaw Man’s main character Denji is that boy underwater. And he really does have a long way to go to understand himself, to be a better person, and to recover from the trauma he’s experienced. Chainsaw Man reminds me so much of Turnstile, not just because the manga and anime are generally grungy and deal with dirtbags and the dregs of society. Turnstile is a band that generates some extreme devotion, even from me. I saw them recently, completely waterlogged at an early October outdoor venue where it rained all night. It was incredible, I felt so close to everyone there, the mosh pit just a writhing mass of human beings. There’s an honesty and a melancholy even in their hardest tracks that makes me think about how Chainsaw Man puncuates it’s ultraviolence with quiet moments of its characters just living their lives.
Pissed Jeans — Bathroom Laughter
Someone on Twitter described this song as like, the entire vibe of the Denji/Aki/Power friendship trio, and I completely agree. When Denji finally gets friends and comrades, he gets so excited that it leads to him acting like a total buffoon—and eventually throwing up. Like the song says, bathroom laughter leads to kitchen crying, don’t make me say I told you so.
Wu-Tang Clan — Protect Ya Neck
Part of it is just that I can so strongly imagine Denji listening to this song. I bet he loves The 36 Chambers, and knows all the skits by heart (and then I just keep feeding him, and feeding him!). It’s also that Denji has a lot in common with these young men. It struck me how young they are watching this video last night, how wildly creative they are, how much talent they have pooled together, partially just because they were bored kids without much else to do. Denji also schemes and scams and hustles to survive. He also just wants to do hoodrat things with his friends!
Fear — I Love Livin In The City
Denji relates to every lyric of this song, but unironically. Also—this live version is kind of incredible. Pretend it’s this one on the playlist and that it opens up with telling any A&R reps present to die and also that “it’s great to be gay and be here.” It is great to be gay and be here!
T.S.O.L. — Abolish Government/Silent Majority
The thing that makes Chainsaw Man more interesting to me than most shonen manga and anime is the Gun Devil. In the world of Chainsaw Man, humanity’s fears are anthropormorphized as devils, and the greater the fear, the more powerful the devil is. The Gun Devil is the most powerful devil in the world, and it came from America. If you’ve caught up with the anime so far, you know that Denji’s mission is to find and kill the gun devil as a tool of the state. If you’re nervous, having read the manga, I feel like Chainsaw Man does pay off on the ideas that it’s playing with, and it does have a point of view on the role of the state, state sanctioned violence, and how that affects regular, average people who are caught in its wake.
IDLES — Danny Nedelko
One thing that I also really love about Chainsaw Man is that while it’s very dark, it’s not nihilistic. Despite everything that happens to Denji, he still wants to live. He wants to experience life, even the hard parts, because friendship and solidarity have given him so much.
Raekwan — Ice Cream
Denji also loves beautiful women.
Amyl and the Sniffers — Guided By Angels
Amyl and the Sniffers a rowdy pub rock band from Australia, and their songs are meant to be played with a lot of energy, as loud as possible. This song is just so wild and ferocious, but also so weird and almost alienating. The frontwoman, Amy Taylor, does seem like she’s being taken over by something when she sings, like there’s something inside her, under her skin, that she’s trying to either contain or let out.
Ethel Cain — A House In Nebraska
Denji is a teenager who feels his teenage feelings so intensley. Remember feeling like if the person you liked in high school didn’t like you back, you’d die? Or your first heartbreak, which felt so hard that you thought it might kill you? This song is just so beautiful, and Ethel Cain has such a beautiful voice, and the intense melodrama of the song reminds me of the deep well of sadness that’s just under the surface with Denji.
The playlist lives here, on Tidal, beacuse I don’t use Spotify. I am extremely happy that Tidal now allows playlist sharing because it’s something I just love to do!
Now for some house cleaning. I’m thinking about introducing a paid tier of this newsletter, at or around $5 a month, for one additional post a week. I’m loathe to promise too much of my time because I know myself, but I miss blogging and want to write. I’m not exactly sure what the structure of this would be, but the paid posts would also be more consistent than the free ones. I truly am just treating this newsletter like a blog, which it basically is.
If you have ideas or suggestions, I’m open to feedback. I can’t say that I’ll do any and everything—I have zero interest in managing a discord, for instance—but I do wonder what kinds of things people would like to see here.
All the best,
Gita