[Warning there are some tiny graphs here, you might want to read this article on a computer]

Recap

Quick recap for those who don't want to read/reread my previous article:

Humble Bundle was a subscription service that would give you a ton of games every month. I was subscribed for 26 months and acquired a lot of games through it. I would usually play a couple and then leave the rest to rot. In my steam library, comprising 435 games, I had 172 games I had never played. There was only one way I could get rid of those unplayed games; by playing them. At first, on a joint youtube channel with a bunch of friends — The Raddest Channel — I posted videos of me playing those games. But it just took too much effort, and I only played 15 games in the span of a year, not even giving some of them a fair chance. This was the Humble Purge: Act I.

Last year, after seeing two videos from Daryl Talks Games, where he details how he conquered his backlog, I set out to play all those games sitting untouched in my library. I gave myself a year to play 110 of them, the rest just being too poorly rated or of too little interest to me. I would give each game a fair chance, and play them for at least an hour before I could call quits. If I didn't enjoy the game after that, I wouldn't force myself and just let it go. I began, on December 3rd 2023. I would report my progress in a google sheet, with reviews for the games I played, how hyped I was to play them, and some other info. This was Humble Purge Act II.

In this article, I am to report my findings. Did I succeed? What was it like? Were there hardships? Am I fed up with video games forever? All will be answered below.

Setbacks

Let's first talk about the major setbacks that hindered this project. Can't have a good project without some setbacks. Since this project is extremely time intensive, and not much else, all the setbacks below just took some time away from playing the games in my backlog. In no particular order:

1: Marco

Ever since I moved away from Kingston, my best friend Marco and I took the habit of playing video games together a couple of times a week, sometimes every day of the week. It could be coop, multiplayer, it didn't really matter. We either played the games seriously, or used it as an excuse to catch up or hang out. I was not gonna stop playing video games with my best friend just for this project, even if they weren't the ones in my backlog. Sometimes we replayed games, spent 50h on a new game... I decided to add the new games I played with him, all from after Dec 2023, in my backlog — more about that in “My experience”.

_{Marco and me at my wedding (I am the one being carried)}

2: Trackmania

None of you will remember the Trackmania videos I uploaded to the Raddest Channel, but in those, I went through the campaign maps and got all the gold medals. For those unaware, Trackmania is a sorta arcady racing game, in the way that it is like you are controlling hot wheels. Everything is deterministic and the races can be quite spectacular, which makes the game particularly well suited for e-sport. This is how I originally discovered the franchise, through ZeratoR, a french streamer hosting often the biggest Trackmania events in Europe/the world. The newest instalment of the game made a resurgence on the intrawebs this summer and I got sucked into it. I just love this game, it is so addictive. I can easily play the same track for half an hour just to improve my time by 0.1s. I got really into it for the first three months, devoting almost 70h during that span. Fair to say it did impact this backlog a bit.

3: Got too busy at work

They had the audacity to make me work at work. I still can't believe it. I girlbossed a bit too close to the sun and I am now mostly responsible for a whole section of my department. This means that while at the beginning of the year I had time to play some games at work, it soon became impossible to do so, unless during periods of intense downtime, which became non-existent for me. Baring August, from April to the end of November, I could not play anything at work.

My experience:

The very beginning of the crusade against my backlog is described in the first article. I was very confident and eager to take on this project. I also didn't put too much pressure on myself, but since I was motivated and had so many games to choose from, I made great progress nonetheless. I mean, look at that commitment: 111h in December alone, I was on fire! To be fair, towards the middle of December it gets super, super slow at work, and I literally have nothing to do. Since I was only beginning to touch the backlog, I had so many games that were suitable for work that I just spent an hour or two a day playing while at the office. The same was true until about the last third of January, when work started to pick back up a bit. February is also a pretty quiet month, so the trend of me being able to play a lot continues. March is when it gets busy at work, and it shows. The graph is not 100% accurate, as I didn't log my playtime per game per month — I'm not a maniac. I just counted the playtime for a game for the month I started it. This generally works since I only played most games for a couple of days to around a week, but some I played over months/they overlap months, causing inaccuracies. I wanted to make the data analysis simple, so the only two games I've actually divided up per month are: Slay the Spire (the second time I played it, for an extra 34h, was between Aug/Sept) and Trackmania, that I've played for now 88h from June to November — counting it in one month would create a huge outlier. Anyways, as I was saying, my busyness at work is shown in the graph, with intensity ramping up from March to July, leading to August when I finally got a reprieve from work, followed by a vacation.

Before going any further, let's talk about the process, which was pretty straightforward. From my list, I would choose any game that catches my eye. Sometimes I would also check how long it was, and some other times I didn't care. Choosing games was more vibes-based rather than calculated. Usually, before the game had even started, I would have an idea of whether I would see it to the end, give up, or quit it after the required hour. Even if I wanted to play certain games initially, I had an intrinsic understanding of what I liked, and despite the vibes directing me to a specific game, if the gameplay didn't look like something I would enjoy, I would abandon them without remorse. I was wrong a couple of times, and the games that I misjudged were the source of my biggest disappointment — or the very opposite. In any case, there were still some games that required me to play them to be able to sort them in a category. Now apart from a couple of exceptions, after the first hour, it was clear which games I was gonna drop right away and which ones I would play until the end. When I got it wrong this time, it was usually because the games became ass nearing the end, and I therefore dropped them since I wasn't having fun anymore, when I thought I would finish the game for sure. There might be an article in the future about the biggest surprises, good and bad, of this Humble Purge (you best believe I'll milk this project for as many articles as I can). No matter my opinion of them, I would play the games seriously for an hour, without distraction, and just try to have fun. I wanted to maximise fun, so I didn't bother playing on the hardest difficulties or giving myself real challenges. Unless the game was more fun on higher difficulties — which happens — I was usually cruising on normal. Some games would enthrall me and I would play them for hours on end, others were more of a slow burner. A few even, despite my will to play them, could only be stomached for a half hour at a time. And then some were just complete ass, and I couldn't wait for that mandatory hour to be over. When I was done with a game, I would immediately write the review “à chaud” as we say in french (meaning off the cuff/in the heat of the moment). I had some trouble writing really meaningful reviews at first, but I got better as time went on. I think having written the reviews without having had the time to digest games was the right call, as they were more genuine this way. Because of this, we get some interesting quotes like:

“[...]Although kinda funny the first time I listened to it [the background music], pair an already overused lick with the repetitiveness of the music and you will want to kill yourself.[...]“

from my review of Wizards of Legend, which you will be surprised to learn was rated 8/10 despite the previous comment. Since I find it hard to be verbose about something good and am very eloquent about things I find bad, my style of review is usually “[one or two positive things followed by a very lengthy paragraph about everything wrong about the game] 9/10”

Let's come back to our chronological retelling of the project. I had just gotten some time off in August after an intense period of work, and I had put much energy into playing some games during this break. Around the beginning of September, I grew a tad tired and gave myself a break: two weeks or so of minimal gaming. That's where it started to go downhill. Coming back from my break, mid-September, I realised how many games I still had to play, and how little time I had left. My deadline was not the end of the year, but December 3rd. I basically had only two months to finish everything, and I still had about 25 games to go through. I had to start hustling. In the last two weeks of September, I played 8 games, for a total of 25.5h. And those were also not the games I was the most excited about, which I had already completed at the beginning of the backlog. And since my backlog was 110 games, finishing a game amounted to less than 1% of progress. This amount of time spent on those games, with this lack of meaningful progress, on top of a full-time job, the gym, other responsibilities... I got a mini burn-out from this and I was slowly losing hope in the project and myself. I even started to question the feasibility of it, or if I should just quit now; I had played about 85 games after all.

So I went back to the source, the videos that had inspired me to begin this project. Surely they would give me the strength to push through... They didn't. That's because those videos are a cautionary tale. It is impossible to finish your backlog, and putting a time limit on it is stupid. This is the message of Daryl Talks Games' second video. Although his backlog and mine are a bit different, the lesson should have stuck, but it just flew right over my head. I must have been blinded by confidence and enthusiasm when I first watched them. Watching those videos now after experiencing a backlog purge hits completely differently. I had misunderstood his videos completely, but no more. Taking in this lesson, I decided to start axing some games, and adding others. The games I know I would enjoy and want to 100% did not need to be on this list. Also added the games I played with Marco, because I did discover and play those games this year.

_{Thumbnail from Daryl Talks Games' videos, which inspired this project}

At first, the backlog allowed me to give up on games I didn't enjoy guilt free. But at about 85% completion of the project, the approaching deadline had the opposite effect, where I would feel guilty for spending too much time on a game, which is absolutely not the point of this Humble Purge. The point of this Humble Purge was to give the games I had in my library a chance and play cool games I didn't think I would like. Maybe also feel less guilty about the state of my gaming library.

With this new goal in mind, I continued my quest with renewed enthusiasm. If I didn't finish, it didn't matter. I could extend it to the end of the year; no one would hold me accountable anyways. I could also just remove some extra games, again, no one would hold me accountable. After my little reorganisation, the final number of games in the purge was still 110, the one I added from Marco balancing perfectly the ones I had removed. We were now in the middle of the first week of October. I only had to play 11 games over a bit less than 8 weeks (12 weeks if I extended it to the end of the year). Still challenging, but nothing too hard.

_{backlog spreadsheet around October}

The next week of October went fine, and I got through a couple of games. I then got the busiest and most stressful three weeks of the year and couldn't really play anything. It was a really fun cocktail of personal issues, travel, work, bank issues... Well, at least I can say I'm glad I sorted the whole “existential crisis over the backlog” out before that period. I would have 100% called it quits otherwise. In any case, just like any intense period, it came to pass. We were now in November, and I only had 6 games remaining. Granted, they were almost all 12h+ games, but even with only 3 weeks or so left in the project, I felt good. Again, I could add all the weeks of December to it anyways. I was so confident (and impatient) that I even started writing this and coding up the graphs (love you matplotlib <3). I was just enjoying my time with the project, which is exactly what I wanted.

After so much infortune, my luck finally turned and I got sick, right before the Remembrance Day weekend, giving me me a 5-day weekend to finish some games. This was a blessing (apart from the being sick part) and I managed to reduce my backlog to 2 games. And we were barely halfway through November. A couple of days later I crossed off the penultimate game, actually finishing it. I took a few days off to start working on this article, play other stuff, read, touch grass, live life... I then embarked on my last game, which was supposed to be 30h, 52h with side content. That last game was Assassin's Creed Origins, which was ass. After valiantly suffering through it for 5h30, I abandoned it and was done with the backlog. This was kind of anti-climactic, I would have loved to finish the backlog on a banger, where I sit in front of the credits after beating the game thinking “damn...”. But no, the last game was just boring slop, and I ended the backlog on a random Sunday afternoon. It reminded me of finishing my degree during covid.

Final tally: 110 games played, 758h devoted to the project, starting on December 3rd 2023 and ending Nov 17th 2024, after exactly 350 days.

_{Red line is games to play to stay on track. I replayed Sekiro (I blame Spencer and Vivian) and played a ton of Trackmania (I blame myself) in July hence the little drop}

The Data

The Games

First, let's get to know the data. I'm not sure why I didn't write this part in my first article, but it is a blessing in hindsight, as I swapped out some games and added others in the end. I won't bore you with too many stats, but still, prepare to be bored. I hope you like graphs.

Let's start with game genre; there were many different genres in this backlog, and even trying to make the categories as broad as possible, a fifth of all games were not able to fit in any major categories. Genres such as: investigation, tower defence, fighting games, racing games, dating sim, city builder... each represented at most <4% of the backlog. We can look at the spread of categories below:

If I was to concoct the most average game out of all the ones I have played, it would be a game starting with an S, that came out in 2017, is an action game, has a steam note of 89% and a metacritic score of 79. It would take someone 12.5h to finish the main story and 22h to finish it with all the side content. Believe it or not — out of all the games that came out in 2017 — this matches Sniper Elite 4 the best, which I played, so I guess it wins the “most average game of this backlog” award. In general, I played games from 2002-2024, with a steam rating from 64-99%, and a metacritic score from 60-97. To finish their main stories, the games took between 30min-60h and if I wanted to do the side content on top, it could go from 30min-114h. While most game's side content only added a couple of hours, some doubled or even septupled the duration of a game, which is insane. We can see such examples in the graph below, which shows the time to completion in orange, and the time to also do the side content in blue for each game. One bar is one game:

In total, if I had actually played all these games to completion, it would have taken me 1445h (or two months and 5h nonstop) and 2511h (or 3 months 14 days and 5h nonstop) if I had done the side content too! We've talked about how much time I devoted to the project above, but we'll talk about the time devoted to each game later. The time needed to finish a game — according to HowLongToBeat — did vary a lot, and we can see the distribution below.

As we can see, thankfully, most of the games I had to play were less than 10h long, and even with side content barely made it past 15h. I'm not gonna dwell on this graph for too long; it is not that relevant, as this is not the time it took for me to play the games, only the time they were supposed to take. Other than this, the hype and initial ratings of games were already discussed in the first article; whether or not a game was in the backlog depended on them. Let's jump to the results to see how many games I actually finished, and how much time I spent on games in general.

The Results

Since it would have taken me 1445h to finish every game, and I completed the backlog after 758h, it is reasonable to assume that I did not finish every game. The states of games' completion were:

• Finished which means I finished the campaign, and maybe played the side content too
• Abandoned, which means I played for a couple of hours, maybe did some side content, and stopped playing
• 1h-ed, which means I only played the game for the minimum 1h before abandoning it. This also counts games that were played for 1.5h granted this represented less than 50% of the campaign's duration. Games which campaign could and were completed in an hour are of course counted in the Finished category.
• NA (Not Applicable) means that there is no campaign or story to be completed

As we can see, I still finished almost 44% of the games in this backlog, which amounts to 48 games and is no small feat if I do say so myself (and I do). This is the largest category here, by almost 15%. On the other side of the spectrum, there is only 23 games — or about 21% of the backlog — that I played only for the minimum required duration. It is to be noted that the NA games that I only played for 1h are only counted here, and therefore the NA slice of the pie should be counted as either abandoned or finished (whatever the definition of finished might be). Speaking of Abandoned, they only represent the second-largest part of the pie, 29% or 32 games. Those games could have too frustrating to finish, maybe the story became bad, maybe a new mechanic breaks the gameplay... In any case, they were good enough for me to play more than the required amount, but not good enough for me to see them through the end. I am especially proud of those first two stats, since having a backlog where I only play 1 hour of each game and then go on to the next would have been a shame. I was serious about this and finished almost half of all the games — if we discount the ones that were NA. I took the time to enjoy the games in this backlog, and we will see below how much time games took me:

Look at those graphs, the first being so detailed it's almost useless, and the second one so broad it also almost useless, yet both are saying the same thing. The worst of both worlds — true perfection. The top graph shows how many games were played for each playtime, in increments of 30min. For instance, we can see that 8 games had a total playtime of 6h. There is a major peak at 1h and some minor ones at 6h, 10h and 18h. The second graph shows percentage of games per playtime ranges. Almost all games — 95.5%— were played for 1h to 19h. As one might expect, the majority of the games were played between 1-3.5h. Still, almost half of all games were played for more than 4h and a quarter for 7h or more. Those graph show that I did take my time on the games that deserved it, as I had planned for this project. I will say it again: at the end of the day, the goal was just to play through the game I already own, and have fun with it. If only there was a way to quantify how much I enjoyed myself... oh yeah, more graphs baby:

After so many graphs, finally a nice Gaussian distribution. Here, we are shown how many games I rated a specific grade. As we can see, the games in this backlog were rated pretty highly. Again, that is to be expected as this backlog is composed of 110 games picked out from the cream of the crop of the 172 games I own and have never played. Now, this means nothing if I don't explain what my rating consists in.

• 0/10 would be a game that I could not derive any fun from
• 2/10 there is very little interesting and very little fun
• 5/10 is slop and adequate but no more in any category/has one category really holding it back
• 10/10 fulfills all of my expectation for various criteria, and also is a ton of fun
• 11/10 exceeds all expectation, messiah of the backlog

The ratings were only integers, with a couple of exceptions for games that were better than a 10, but not quite an 11. Also, Prey got a non-round rating. These are of course not objective ratings, but *my* ratings, which are heavily influenced by my tastes. If you are somehow deluding yourself into thinking those ratings might actually hold some weight other than the ranking of my taste, and need convincing that my rating scale is bad, please consider that I gave Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space 2 a 4/10 and Batman Arkham City a 5/10 while the Frog Detective Trilogy gets 10/10s across the board. The ratings are also not really internally consistent. Deal with it.

I was not a harsh critique in general, and my ratings are globally generous. While I might have gone off on some games in their review section, I'm sure they deserved it. Maybe I was set off by how wrong my expectations were. We'll see that right now with the next graph, comparing my “hype” to play the games, which I recorded before playing the games, with the ratings I gave after playing them:

Those graphs are the result of doing a simple subtraction between the hype and the rating. Any positive value means that I found the game to be better than I though, a negative value is the opposite. We see that a difference of 0, i.e. the hype being the same as the rating, is prevalent here by quite a huge margin. This is probably due to the anchoring effect — when it was time to grade the games, I probably looked at the hype and thought the number I previously gave the game made sense. The first graph shows that there is a skew towards the positive, which is great as this indicates that in general, I enjoyed the games better than I thought I would. This was a reoccurring theme during this backlog, and I originally thought I was a bit picky when it came to video games, but no. There are just some bangers out there that I just hadn't tried out.

Can't really tell a lot from the second graph, but I made it because it looks cool; each bar, either blue or red, represents a game. The average hype was a 6.53/10 and the average rating a 6.92/10. To recap, 31 games were below expectations, 29 met them, and 51 surpassed them. Of the games that exceeded expectation, some have cracked the top 3. We will take a look at them next.

Top 3 Best Games :

I've played so many games, it would be a shame not to talk about any here; this project was about them, after all. I will keep it to a short list, and only include good games, as I want to bring some positivity into this article. I also remember good games way better than the bad ones; those have been erased from my memory. In this article, which is already long enough, we'll only take a look at the top 5% of games.

Honourable Mentions

First, let's start with some honorable mentions, which are at the top end of my 10/10, in no particular order:

MOLEK-SYNTEZ a great puzzle game about fabricating molecules. It's not only about succeeding, but also efficiency and economy of movement.

SLAY THE SPIRE hands down the best rogue-like I've played. The card system works so well and there is just the right amount of content and challenge.

SUNDERED soft metroidvania that took me by surprise. It is peaceful and claustrophobic, beautiful and depressing. Visuals are incredible (and hand drawn!) and the atmosphere is truly unique.

STILL THERE not exactly a point and click (thank god) and not exactly a puzzle game. The story and twist are what caught me off-guard, because they're so great. Just the right length.

The Top 3

Those games are not at the top end of my 10/10 scale — they have exceeded it. They are the 11/10.

3 – Celeste

Celeste, developed by Maddy Makes Games, is a game that has been heavily hyped on the internets, and I was worried it would not live up to its name. I shouldn't have been, because despite my high expectations this game still managed to surprise me with how good it is. I am not an avid enjoyed of platformers, I don't dislike them either, but this one hits just right. The controls are very responsive, and the gameplay mechanics dialed in. It was a true pleasure to navigate the levels, and it was impossible to get frustrated — especially since the game autosaves each panel and the respawn is fast — and that's coming from the guy who died about 1530 times in his playthrough. The level design compliments the controls and game mechanics perfectly. I really liked how there was a new gameplay mechanic for each chapter, but that didn't carry on to the others. There was no need to remember many things at once, just the basics and the specific gameplay gimmick of the chapter. It also kept things fresh. The design theme changed with each chapter, adding to the novelty. But these are not just disjointed chapters, there is a global story which is intertwined in the platforming and progresses with each chapter. The story is great — with some originality and gravitas — the characters are endearing and the progression of the protagonist is interesting.

Coming back to the design, the graphics are great and all the little effects, particle effects... are a welcome addition that only made the experience better. But honestly what steals the show here is the music, it is just incredible, I loved it. Moving through the panels, with this ambience, the music, it was just awesome, the vibes were always immaculate. The game is also the perfect length, and with it being divided up in distinct chapters, I never got tired of playing.

Would I recommend this game to anyone? Pretty much. Unless your hand/eye coordination is atrocious, you should be able to enjoy this game. It is the most accessible one of this top 3, despite its difficulty being the second highest here. I'm not saying it is not challenging, it definitely is, but it is a challenge you can surely overcome.

2- Disco Elysium

Speaking of video games not being accessible, we have Disco Elysium from the now infamous ZA/UM. If you really don't like politics, sociology, philosophy and big-words in general, this game is not for you. If you don't like reading, this game is not for you. If you don't like classic RPGs without combat, this game is not for you. Otherwise, it's awesome. Liem strongly recommended this game to me, so I waited until I was on vacation to play it, to have time to be fully immersed.

While the gameplay is good, it is really the writing and the visuals that upstage everything. I already spoke about the visuals in my September Readings when I talked about the artbook of this game. I will expand about the writing and story here, if you want to read about and see the visuals, checkout the reading report. The world and story go hand in hand, and it's great. The world and universe are truly unique, and it sucks in a realistic way. Its inhabitants react to you in a believable manner, and you can actually influence things. There are many choices to be made here, and even the most inconsequential ones will have a dialog option associated to them down the line. While your character is a bit coo-coo and it makes sense for player to choose his opinions, the NPCs have their own dialog, consistent with their character experiences and beliefs. The characters are all great, especially your partner Kim Kitsuragi. Each one of the facets of your identity is also a character, and they are all unique and have very “colourful” personalities to say the least. The way you interact with the world is also through them, which makes the gameplay really interesting. That's the part that I like the most, the interaction between our character and himself and our character and Kim. While you as the player have no idea of what's going on most of the time, Kim is there to provide useful info and feedback, but he never holds your hand (if only...). Kim is the best sidekick I have ever seen in a video game, and actually feels like a companion rather than an NPC. Your identities are also here to give you feedback, that is tainted by what they are — for instance drama's observation might be a little more exciting than reality — and whether you can trust them or not (which is kinda trusting yourself) is for you to decide. Other than the writing, the voice acting, which was mostly added in the free final cut version, is phenomenal. Everything adds to the atmosphere, which is superb.

​

Finally, the writing for your character, your thoughts, your own dialog is so well done, and there was more than one occasion where I was laughing like and idiot at my screen. The story is half an investigation, and half a personal journey, and is coherent and original. I try to keep all of my reviews as spoiler free as I can, so there is not much more that I can say, other than: play it for yourself.

1- Darkwood

With Darkwood, from indie studio Acid Wizard, being my number one pick out of all 110 games I played this year, I didn't know how to approach its review. There is absolutely nothing I can say that would even approach giving you an idea of how incredible this game is. I played it all the way at the beginning of the backlog, in January, but it is still to this day always on my mind. It just stuck to me and is that memorable. This was the 11.5/10 game of the backlog, meaning I didn't know games could be that good.

It originally didn't dawn on me how good this game is, because I abandoned it after 2h. The game is divided into a night and day cycle, you forage and progress the story during the day, and at night, you try to survive. Those nights are the most stressful things I have ever experienced in a video game, and I've played a bunch of horror games. No cheap tricks here, due to intentional gameplay limitations — it's top down, you cannot see outside your cone of vision and your vision is only focused on where your cursor is — you'll be tensed up the whole night from being so on guard. You are confined to your hideout during the night, a dilapidated house full of unfixable holes which can be plugged with furniture, but enemies will push it out of the way to get in. You cannot survive without light and of course light attract enemies; they will get in or at least try to. When? Who knows, but you better be on high alert for all 5min of the night because you have very little health, and your weapon will break at some point. There are random events making the whole thing even more difficult and stressful because it wouldn't be fun otherwise. You also have limited lives before game over, except on the easiest difficulty. The sound design and ambience in general is so well done; before getting desensitised I felt like I was on the verge of an aneurysm every night. This is the reason I initially abandoned it — it was good, but it was so tense I forgot to breathe, waiting for the morning light. Yet despite this, after sleeping on it, I decided to push on. And I'm glad I did.

I loved the ambience, from the game design, the story, characters, the graphics, the music, sound design... everything is so alien but coherent. It is just a different experience. The gameplay loop is well oiled, but it is the story and atmosphere that really bring this game together. The setting is so simple in a way but original. I love that it doesn't hold your hand, so at some points in the very disjointed story you just stumble by accident on some stuff, and the progression just feels so organic. I will not speak anymore about this game, the only true way to really experience how great it is is to play it.

Aparte

This last part, the Top 3, used to lead straight to the conclusion. I had finished writing all of this article. I had done the graphs, inserted them, created the gifs that needed to be created... The first draft was 100% complete, and apart from checking for spelling mistakes or grammar errors, I could have published it. I was about to get a final word count and do some advertising on the café before releasing it. Someone had other plans for me, and the article could not be finished, not before I touched on what someone had released:

MOTHERFU-

Unbeknownst to me, Daryl Talks Games was also secretly doing a backlog this year and released a video about it. My project came about as a direct inspiration from his first two videos, I therefore cannot end this article without mentioning his third backlog one. Let's preface this conversation by saying that his video is great, as usual, and I would encourage you to check his work out. I'm actually not mad he put out his video, and it was really fun seeing the parallels between our projects. I was trying to complete my backlog learning from his mistakes, but then he was also playing though his backlog, learning from his mistakes! I especially liked that his video was really focused on games rather than his progress this time, it was a nice change. It is also interesting to see that we have reached the same conclusion in the end (see my conclusion); the “backlog” needs to be a dynamic list of games you play, and not just a list of games you are planning on playing. _{he's just like me fr fr}

Conclusion

What did I get out of it

First, having a year-long project is sick. I can't remember the last time I had a project like that, or if I ever had one. Devoting hours to it and progressing despite the hurdles, actually sticking to it, feels great. I am proud of myself for completing this project, especially since it was completely autonomous. Now, completing the project brought me pride, but did completing this backlog bring me anything? Not really. Playing the games brought me much joy, but at the end of the day, actually finishing this backlog didn't feel like anything. There are more games that didn't make the cut to this backlog, would finishing them bring me the joy completing this backlog was supposed to bring me? Probably not. Putting my steam library in order is nice, but I did that all the way at the beginning of the project. It will sound corny as shit, but it was about the journey, not the destination.

In the end, this backlog was not the backlog; there will always be more games to be added to a fabled backlog, that can't ever kept up with, as it is ever growing.

But what I did get out of this backlog is a rekindled love for video games. There is genuinely so much good stuff out there. You often hear takes about how today's games are ass, and gaming has gone to the shitter, but this is simply not true. Just of the games that came out this year, there is a plethora of amazing games or DLCs. And you don't need to play games from this year, you are allowed to pick a game from previous years and enjoy it in the year of our lord 2024. And you can also play games that are not AAAs; the overwhelming majority of games that I rated 9 or higher were indie games. For every decent triple AAA, there are at least 2 indie bangers that came out the same year. My point is: do not limit yourself in what you're allowing yourself to play, and you'll see that maybe gaming is still fun.

I've played more games, and also have spent more time playing games, than I ever have this year and I love video games more than ever.

What's left? What's next?

Will I ever have time to do something like that again? Will there ever be a “Nail in the coffin: Humble Purge Act III”? I am now at a relatively chill time in my life: I have a decently paying regular full-time job, and am married. I'm not a dad, building a business, performing in a band, studying... I have more time on my hands now than I will probably have in the coming years. I would love to do the Humble Purge Act III in a couple of years, where I go through the games that didn't make the cut for this year's backlog, but will I have time?

I want to enjoy being done backlog, and am not ready to go head first into a big project like that again. I want to take some time for myself, I want to read more, I want to cook more, I want to go to the gym and start playing bass again. No big project for next year, I will just be writing articles about this project, to better digest it. There is so much I've only barely touched on here that would deserve its own articles.

In any case, I will start journaling all the games I play next year. In substance, it will have just the same info that I recorded in the backlog — hype, time to beat, rating, review etc — but for games I pick up on the fly rather than for a list of games set in stone. This might actually be the better alternative to having a backlog. I will probably release some articles for it, maybe monthly in addition to my Monthly Readings or just do a quarterly article; I have time to figure it out. In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my project, and as always:

Thanks for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Went to a concert yesterday. It was the first concert I had ever been to by my own volition (if you discount the frosh week concert). Tetyana and I went to see Океан Ельзи (Okean Elsy) a ukrainian band that is touring the US and Canada before going back to perform in Ukraine. When I was working at Tetyana's family restaurant, their songs were cycling the playlist quite often, and I liked them.

After driving for 45min, we arrived at the venue early, probably at around 7h30 when their set was only starting at 8. There were no opening bands, it was just them. We found a spot at the first elevated platform, avoiding the pit, but despite our early arrival, we weren't at the first row of that mini balcony. It was not an issue for me, despite my petite stature (I'm only 180cm after all [5'11'' for you weirdos]), and we managed to find a triangle opening for Tetyana to see the stage. Shortly after we arrived, the pre-show entertainment started: an auction of some band items and other memorabilia, which profit would go to the defence of Ukraine. If you have been living under a rock, Ukraine has been actively at war for 2 years, defending itself against the full scale invasion from russia. The band even had a flag from the famous Azov's third separate assault brigade (3-тя окрема штурмова бригада) on the auction. The auction ended at around 7h50. I was starting to shift on my feet, uncomfortable, as I had spent the whole day running around to set up the second-biggest event of the year at work.

Unfortunately, while the show was supposed to start at 8pm, the band only showed up at 8h30. During my wait, I was checking out the stage. It was pretty bare bone, with a couple of light on top of the rigging. On the stage, on the guitarist side, a plethora of guitars were exhibited: a fender telecaster, gibson sg, some acoustic guitars, more electric ones.... On the bassist side only two: a hofner violin bass and another identical hofner violin bass that he didn't touch for the entire set — based (prepared) minimalist. I, too, enjoy short scale bases. I know nothing about pianos or drums, so I will just say that there was an acoustic drum set and an electric piano on stage. Despite the distractions, I was still uncomfortable.

Without introductions, the band came out and started with their first and second songs. God damn, the lead singer sounds as good if not better live than in recordings. I had put in my ear plugs at that point — I already have tinnitus — but they still sounded great. The welcome speech followed, and to my surprise, the lead singer is speaking quite good english to the crowd which, you won't be shocked to learn, was 90% ukrainian. Then they did the unthinkable; they sang songs in english. They have released two albums recently, one in ukrainian, and one in english. It was the first time they did one in english, and the reasoning they gave was that they wanted ukraine and ukrainian culture to be heard of around the world by its own merit, and not as a side mention when talking about the war. I was a bit apprehensive, as in France, whenever an artist starts to sing in english from french, or starts to mix both, it's usually quite shit. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about french bands that sing in english from the get-go, like my beloved Gojira, but the ones that see money and fame in singing in english and decide to transition. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised, as their english stuff was quite good. They sang Might Have Been a Dream, which I really liked, and is Tetyana's favorite song of their english album, which I haven't had the chance to listen to yet. I have listened to that song's studio counterpart in the car, and the live one was better. The studio version sounded too clean and the lead singer's english was better too — I liked his stronger accent and the more scuffed production of the live one more.

A quick transition later talking candidly about the war in Ukraine, and the band went back to ukrainian songs, with some of the audience singing — although timidly — the refrain of some. I, alas, could not take part in that as I do not really speak ukrainian and do not know the band's discography as well as I should. I could only clap and nod to the beat. The songs were good and their performance was solid. The lead singer performance is again really to be commended, he sounded incredibly good.

They sang some of their classics like я так хочу... (I do want it), не йди (Don't go), Tetyana's favorite без тебе мене нема (Without you there is no I). They were all great, but despite that the crowd and me were tired and there was not much engagement from our part. Which bring us to one of the other classics that they played, which I think they fumbled. It's без бою (Without a Fight), which starts slow and builds up to the refrain where the singer yells in a powerful voice — contrasting with the almost whisper of the start — “я не здамся без бою” (I will not give up without a fight). For their performance everything was the same as the recording if a bit modernised, and energised, adding to the build-up. Except when it was time for the cathartic yelling of the “я не здамся без бою”; the lead singer, instead of singing, turned his mic to the now very tired and lukewarm crowd which was probably not expecting it and kinda flunked it. And instead of learning his lesson, he did the same for the other two refrains. To the crowd's credit, they did wake up a bit after the second refrain, which they might have expected this time. But man, I would have loved to experience the song the way it is usually sung by the singer.

The show was great otherwise, and the song selection was a nice mix of classics, new stuff, english stuff, with a good balance of mellow to energetic stuff. The instrument performers were also good, the guitar was shredding an appropriate amount, the bass was playing in the pocket, and the drums were keeping time good (my lack of music expertise is showing). The mixing was very good, no issue of overpowering bass, too loud drums or too forward guitars. The voice was perfect and I have nothing but praise for their performance.

I would have loved if they also had played на небі (In the sky) and Обійми (Embrace) but I understand why they weren't in the setlist as — while they are beautiful songs — they might have put the crowd to sleep. Overall, it was a great concert, that could only have been made better if the band had started on time. It was a successful first concert, and I am looking forward to my second concert experience, coming up pretty soon in November, seeing Jaeger (go pre-save his album now).

An update to my previous article about starting going to the gym again after COVID. Below are disclosed the results of my bulk, my new training program, the start of my cut and the other things.

How the bulk went

The bulk is now over and I'm bigger (no way). I had to change my whole pants wardrobe not once, but twice. I also had to donate a bunch of my clothes away, but my lovely wife Tetyana is delighted to be able to buy me clothes, I'm sure. I gained some size here and there, Tetyana recorded some measurements — from when I started gaining weight, to a couple weeks after the start of my cut.

Body Part	June 2023	March 2024	Change
Neck	13.5”	14”	+0.5”
Chest	36”	40”	+4”
Waist	28.5”	32”	+3.5”
Hips	34”	34.5”	+0.5”
Butt	35.5”	40”	+4.5”
Thigh	20”	25”	+5”
Biceps	NA	14”	NA

That's some pretty decent growth, and the legs and butt saw the most of it. My chest also grew reasonably, but the figure here doesn't paint the full picture. Chest measurement also include all the upper back development, therefore any increase is to be taken with a grain of salt. Physique-wise, my chest looks more 3D and less flat. My back is alright, and I will probably have a back focus after I'm done growing my chest. My arms did see some pretty one sided development – my triceps grew the most. My side triceps now looks pretty dope. I wish I had recorded their size in June though.

As for the bulk, its details are accurately described in my previous article; I ate a lot, and also not that clean. Honestly for me it was more about proving to myself that I could grow after having so much trouble all these years. I succeeded, but the last three weeks of the bulk were the hardest: I was so tired of eating. Those three weeks saw no gain of mass, I just stagnated at 81-82kg.

Let's take a closer look at my weight gain, with something that everybody loves: graphs!

stonks

imperial measurement for you degenerates

As you can see, in that 22 weeks bulk, which started on October 28th 2023, I put on a whopping 13kg or ~28.7lb. But I didn't start recording my weight conscientiously until after a couple month, and my actual weight gain journey started in June of last year, when I was only about 62.5kg. Therefore this entire weight gain took me from 62.5kg to 81.5kg, a solid 19kg or ~42lb in about 9 months.

Aside on weight measurements

The methodology was simple: I weighed myself after coming home from work everyday at around 5pm. For missed days, I've just took the average of the adjacent values. The most important metric — and the one I paid the most attention to — was my weekly average. As you can see, my daily values kinda yoyoed all over the place, and the weekly ones give a better picture. This method of tracking weight is the one that I would recommend, whether you are trying to gain or lose weight.

I will now relate in excruciating details what this weight gain did to me, including the gross parts, readers beware (highlight to reveal):

I shapeshifted into a shitting mutant,

my system ceaselessly processing so many a nutriment,

I once went to the washroom once at work while on shift,

to now every two hours needing to shit.

I eschewed diarrhea, the stools were solid,

but the volume excreted gargantuan and the smell horrid.

The fating was incessant, intempestive, unrelenting, unremitting,

even, I was told, as I was slumbering.

My body had transformed into a perpetual fart mill,

my stomach and bowels churning through their infill,

and then producing the most nefarious of gas strike,

all from carbs, fats and proteins alike.

I did also gain some fat, as it is unavoidable as a natural lifter (i.e. steroids free). This gain is usually manageable, unless you do something stupid like gaining 19kg in 9 months 🙃. It was the first time in my life that I had not been skin and bones. The experience of even a small amount of fat is surprisingly pretty noticeable: Sitting down, I never had even the tiniest fold in my belly and I find them discomforting. However, it was also the first time my ass was comfortable to sit on, the added muscle and fat made it nice and cushiony. Bending over to pick something up, and feeling my skin clump up on itself was a peculiar feeling at first. What was also a first for me was that I could feel some part of me jiggling as I was moving about; very unsettling. Looks wise — it's ok. I do miss my abs, who were gone only a short few month after the start of the bulk. I am also not really in love with my love handles, as it breaks the shape of my silhouette, but I still look decent otherwise. Some pretty significant stretch marks have also appeared, but I don't really care for them, it is the price to pay to get a bigger booter.

It is customary amongst gym enthusiasts to follow a bulk with a cut: a weight loss phase trying to keep as much muscle as possible, and losing as much fat as possible. I also did start that.

How the cut is going

I am currently 6 weeks into my cut, and as hard as it is for me to gain weight, losing it is no issue. I've already lost six and a half pounds. You however don't want to lose weight too fast during a cut, because you could then loose some of you hard earned muscle. After some thorough research on the intrawebs, those seems to be the core tenets of a successful cut:

• Don't lose weight too fast; 1% per week at most seems to be conducive to proper muscle retention
• Try to eat ~0.8g of protein per pound of body weight (literature unclear on the specific number; lower values still yield good results)
• Stimulate your muscles more often per week; it should aid to prevent muscle break down
• Have a balanced diet; you still need fat for you body to function normally, as well as carbs.

There are a thousand more tricks, but those seems to be the main ones to get you where you wanna be. My goal was to lose 4kg in 8 weeks, but seeing how I've lost 3 in 4 weeks — and I still have love handles and obscured abs — I will try to get down to 74-75kg. That is a revised goal from losing 6-7kg. At first as a former very skinny guy, I was very reluctant to letting go of any weight I had managed to gain. But I am getting over my fear; if I have gained that weight, I can do it again. Furthermore, I don't really want to hang weight that happens to be purely fat. I might reassess the goal as I am getting closer to 74kg, but I don't want to get too shredded anyways; it is way too much effort. Speaking of effort, I changed my training a bit.

New program

Instead of going to the gym three times a week, and have four sessions workout plan, I now train four times a week still with four sessions. I do about the same amount of work, so my gym sessions are a bit shorter, with about 5 exercises each, comes down to ~1h10 usually. I've also cut down on the number of sets for each muscle group each session, as research suggest there is diminishing returns for anything past 6 sets. I've shifted my focus away from powerlifting, we will discuss of this later. I put a bigger emphasize on chest, and added some core work. Finally, I focused on exercises that were, according to the scientific literature, more effective, and simplified my training.

Training Session	Exercise	Sets x Reps	Weight (lb)	Rest	Notes
#1 Back, Chest, Shoulders, Triceps	Chest supported rows	3x8	40	1:45
1	Close grip bench	3x12	65	2:00
1	Lat Raise	3x8	60	1:30
1	Lat Pulldown	3x12	80	1:45
1	Incline Bench Press	3x10	95	1:45
#2 Back, Legs, Chest	Bulgarian Split Squats	4x10	15 kettle	1:45
2	Incline Bench	3x5	135	2:00
2	Leg Raise	4x10		1:30	Roman chair
2	Leg Curl	3x15	75	1:45
2	Bench	4x5	135	1:45
#3 Legs, Back, Shoulders	Military Press	4x5	90	2:00	Switch to push press after failure
3	Leg Press	3x12	140	2:00
3	Back extension	4x9		1:30	Unilateral
3	Lat Raise	3x8	60	1:30
3	Lunge	3x20 (10 each leg)	30 kettle uni	2:00
#4 Arms, Chest, Back	Cable Curl	4x13	140	SS	Superset with triceps
4	Triceps extension	4x15	180	1:30
4	Pullups	3-4x8	-70	1:30	Neutral grip
4	Bench (Strength)	5x3	155	2:30
4	Preacher Curls	3x8-10	bar+25	2:00	Myo-rep match, Ez bar
4	Leg Raise	4x10		1:30	Roman chair

This is what my training roughly looks like. This is not set in stones, and usually I will feel free to swap any exercise with another, or even swap muscle groups if I'm still too sore. That freedom does come at a cost though, I have been slacking on some exercises. The exercises I have been avoiding are bench press and pullups. Both have been moved aside to favour incline bench and chest supported rows. Once my cut is done, I will commence Operation Boobies: getting a 225lb bench, and solid arms. Chest, biceps and triceps will be my focus. I will maintain my back, and put legs on the back burner.

How training going

Telling you what I've been doing is fine, but how have I been doing? Well, going back the first training article, I followed the plan I laid out in it, and I made quick progress. A bit too quick. My 5x5 for deadlift went from 225 to 300lb, 155 to 195lb for squats and 115 to 135 for bench. But this last workout plan had way too many exercises and sets per sessions, and I didn't really do proper deloads (taking some time off off heavy work). Fatigue, not only in my muscles, but also in my connective tissues accumulated. Let me tell you this story...

[click play below before reading the rest] :

If I recall correctly it was right around Christmas week, the streets were quiet, more so than usual. Got to the gym tired, exhausted even, the usual you might say. The place is packed like an Irish bar on St Patty's. I still managed to find some spot in between some rough looking guys, probably the goons of some organisation or another. To save some time I though I could cut some corners on the warmup. I was toying with the idea like a fidget-spinner and I finally decided a bad warmup was better than none. As you can guess, this story doesn't have a happy ending. Happy endings are for children's book and shady massage parlours. I was supposed to do a 5x5 at 295lbs, but come on 300lbs is just one little 2.5lb one each side extra. And I felt like I deserved something extra. Took position and started lifting — or more like flying through — my warmups. 135, 225, 275 and voilà I was at my working weight; 300. But they didn't feel right. It was like handling a “stuffed carpet” — awkward, tiring and and although you expect it, still surprisingly heavy. I disregarded that, after all, I wasn't done with the workout until the workout was done with me. Started my first set at 300lb, it was heavy as hell, but I kept my back as tight as loyal henchman keeps his lips, and it went well. Had two minutes until my next set, just sipping on my flask, wishing it was scotch instead of water . Time came around to get back to work. Did one rep, then two, then three... Right as I was about to lower the fifth one, POP POP POP — SHRAK; I was shot in the back. I felt it, heard it too, but I didn't hear the shooter come or go. Damn, three times, whoever it was it wanted me dead. Too bad it takes more than that to put me down.

THE END

[you can stop the song now]

Nobody shot me and I instead tore something in my upper back. Could have been the rhomboid, I'm not sure and never got radios done as my doctor said to just rest. It didn't hurt at first, but I still felt something. When the next day came around, I tried to sit up from the bed and felt a sharp pain in my right upper back. Tried to breath in deep: Yaouch. Tried to round my upper back: Yaouch. This lasted one week, and then there was only pain if I did some work at the gym. So anything loading my upper back had to be removed. In the end, even after I was healed, I haven't reintroduced deadlift into my routine. Or squats. That's when I moved away from powerlifting to only bodybuilding. I have deadlifted since, light weights, but it feels meh. I'll keep strenghtening my upper back before going back to it. Heavy squats are fine, and will be reintroduced during Operation Boobies. Will probably wait on Operation Bootie to start deadlifting again.

I started training heavy again, in March, and apart from a sort of phantom tightness, my upper back feels fine.

Conclusion

I've had a pretty successful bulk I would say, and the cut is on it's way to be successful too. There is much I have learned about the two processes, but I still have many more things to discover. I now have also learned to properly deload, and with this valuable lesson in mind, I am sure Operation Boobies will be successful. I'll change my training plan, workout smarter and avoid injuries at all cost. All hinges on the result of my first cut though, as I don't want to start bulking again if I'm still too fat. Nevertheless, I am most excited about bulking again, and changing up my training, from my cut training, which is pretty boring. As promised in the last training article, here is the link, and the password is JuicyBooty576&(()$^$@).

We are continuing on our mission with another three-letter group: NTM. This time we trade the heat of the south of France to the heat from the part of Paris with the worst reputation, Seine-St-Dennis or le 93 (9-3). Formed by Kool Shen and JoeyStarr, this group is with IAM, one of the first to bring french rap to international light. Today, we will be looking at their fourth and last album:

Suprême NTM -1998

Same thing here, we will look at a couple of song, and I'll break the flow by introducing some french tidbits here and there. Let's start with the first song after the intro.

Back dans les bacs

Here we are introduced to Kool Shen and JoeyStarr's rapping. They are wildly different from one another, where Kool Shen is clear and calm, JoeyStarr is a bit more raw and aggressive. The latter sounds like he always has a ton of phlegm in his throat and play on that during the album. This song is basically them just hyping themselves up, and propping up the album and their rapping after being absent for 3 years. They are celebrating the release of their album which is “Back dans les bacs” (back in the “bacs”, “bacs” are containers where CDs are sold in France). They also explain why they rap and reaffirm their devotion to hip hop rather than money. As for the music, for the rhythm it's your usual big bass, snare, high hats and some kind of synth for the melody. It is as expected, repetitive, but they play with the layers to keep it interesting. We're off to a good start: it's energetic, fun, and the rapping, if less technical than IAM, still flows well.

Laisse pas traîner ton fils

As for “Petit Frère” from IAM, this song is about the banlieues in France. Where “Petit Frère” was addressed to the elder siblings of the little bros, this song is addressed to their parents. The tittle roughly translates to “Don't let your son down”, but the phrasing “laisser trainer” in french is something we would use for dirty laundry, in the sense “don't leave your dirty laundry on the ground”. They start by explaining that with the year 2000 coming, the youth of this generation wasn't given the same deal as their elders, and the world is more hostile towards them. There is no work available, the system is broken and not working in their favour. The young folks coming up in this climate are silenced and ignored. The only possible way out for them, in their own eyes, is the streets, which are dangerous for multiple reasons, explains Kool Shen. He exhorts parents to listen to their kids, and give them the love and attention they deserve. JoeyStarr has a more personal relationship to this topic, as he explains, with his father being abusive and pushing him away, onto the streets. His father was always saying horrible things to him, assaulting him, leading JoeyStarr to seek validation in the streets. But to stay in the good grace of the family you make on the streets, you need to prove yourself, and — as Kool Shen relates — you have to be ready to do anything to retain their approval. The rest of the song continues in this fashion, warning about the dangers of pushing your kids away while the streets welcomes them. As far as rapping is concerned, Kool Shen gets a bit more technical and poetic here, aligning alliterations, metaphors, comparisons... It flows well and is contrasted by JoeyStarr's style, which is definitely more raw — some would say sloppy —, and maybe more expressive. It is surely less technical and melodic, but works as a “pouring my heart out”. On the beat: the bass is tight, and although the progression is simple, it works. For the melody, this is also repetitive, but works well as it doesn't step on the toes of the voices. Speaking of voices, there are some welcomed female vocals during the refrain, which bring some refreshing notes of melancholy/despair. There isn't much else I can say about the instrumentals in this style of hip hop anyway; the voices are at the forefront and the music serves the voices. The music can't do anything too crazy.

Aparte: JoeyStarr – a piece of shit

You can't really sing about being raised on the streets and having a terrible father, leading to needing to be violent and kinda fucked up, and not be violent and kinda fucked up. But we mustn't forget that JoeyStarr's upbringing and the abuse from his father are an explanations for his behaviour; not an exoneration. His condemnation with Kool Shen was the first one he had (see in the next song), but from 1999 and onward, he kept backsliding into actual crimes: he beat up his girlfriend, an air hostess, a random bystander, his ex, he owned a non-sterilised pitbull which almost ate someone else's dog, dealt cocaine, weed and possessed multiple firearms (firearms are almost completely forbidden in France), beat up another girlfriend, owned a protected animal — a tiny monkey which he beat up too... To a certain extent I can understand the will to separate the art from the artist, but nah. If the crimes had just been getting into fights with the police, dealing drugs and idk robbery... sure. But assaulting his girlfriends, women in general, abusing animals and endangering other people's animals is absolutely unforgivable. He unfortunately has somehow acquired a semblance of forgiveness in France; he is invited to talk shows, awards ceremony, does movies, voice acting for major roles... And every time some journalist asks him about his crimes, especially the domestic violence, he spews some bullshit like “sure, I hit her, but you have to be two to dance the tango”, implying that whatever girlfriend was asking for it/deserved it. This shows that he is absolutely not apologetic for what he has done, and deserves no forgiveness nor sympathy.

On est encore là, Pt 1 & On est encore là, Pt 2 (We're still here)

In this song, which is sorta in two parts, we will talk about a then, and now, relevant and fun topic in french hip hop: censorship! A song in one of NTM's previous albums, had ruffled a couple of feathers in the police (there is a joke here that I need you to understand; in France, the police is referred to as chickens instead of pigs. Police->Chicken->Feather, get it?) and they had been trialed and convicted of “outrage à la police” or in english “offense to the police”. Six month of prison time (three unsuspended), 50 000 francs fine — old french money before the euro — or 17 000CAD today AND prohibition from performing for six months was their sentence. This is crazy for such a mild song. In “Police”, they say that cops are often racists, violent, drunk and mentally challenged. The gist of the song is about how prejudiced the police is, how officers don't suffer consequences for any wrongdoing, and how they are actually just working for anyone high enough in the socio/political hierarchy. Good things that's not the case today :) In any case, let's move away from NTM and look at France in general

Hip Hop and censorship in France

In the homeland, for audio/visual media, the censorship regulatory body is the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (The Higher Audiovisual Council) or CSA. For as long as I can remember growing up, I always used to hear on the radio/TV about some artists getting in trouble with the CSA ever other week. To be entirely fair to the CSA, it is not complete censorship, stuff just can't be shown on TV or listened to on the radio (public or private). They also don't have any right to look at the content before it hits the TV or radio, they just act after the fact, based on reports. However, whether they ban something or not from the radio or TV is pretty arbitrary to say the least. In general, the enforcement of the laws is more than biased. Hip Hop artists get tackled all the time for what they say in songs, but racists saying shit on TV or the radio don't get flack. At the same time that NTM was convicted, the leader of the far right party in France said that “races were not all equal” (it is to note that using the word race for humans in France has a far stronger racist undertone than in english). The same person had also said that the Holocaust and gas chambers were just a minor detail in History and didn't get in trouble with the CSA or justice. The group we looked at in part one, IAM, also complained about this hypocrisy in “Dangereux” (also in the album I reviewed), where they said that everything that the journals, the TV and the radio were allowed to do and say was prohibited for them. One of the singer of IAM, Akhenaton was also summoned by a judge at one point for his lyrics.

Back to the song: after a really short intro, we are greeted with some hype. Big but non-intrusive bass, some nice strings, some piano in the background. Rhythmically cool and melodically interesting. Kool Shen starts rapping with communicative conviction. Obviously, he starts addressing the censorship of their song, and explains that if you're not already part of the established media, they will try to sink you. Nevertheless, he thanks those who listen, and those who despite the possible censorship continue to rap. After the refrain, JoeyStarr laments that they (the establishment) try to silence them, when him and Kool Shen are speaking for the people who can't. He wants to be allowed to speak, as it is the only thing he knows how to do to make things better. Kool Shen takes over and speaks about their condemnation, and the general hypocrisy, with other people saying much worse yet not getting in trouble. He also touches on the — then — recent surge in support for the far right across France, and says that it also affects the left, which becomes more and more right wing. To illustrate this, he points out one new law passed by the then “left wing” government, a law that restricts immigration further.

Let's judge the album as a whole: Length is good in this one, there are technically 16 songs, but there is an intro, outro an intermission and a song in two parts. This brings this album to 12 songs, which is more reasonable. Those make the album about 50 min long which is a good length, long enough to be able to get in the groove, but not too long that you wish the album ended already. It's a whole 20 min shorter than the previous album we looked at. Although I almost like this album on average more than the last one, it doesn't reach the heights of “L'école du micro d'argent” when it's good. One thing setting it back in my opinion is the mixing/mastering; the voices of JoeyStarr and Kool Shen do not cut well through the mix. It's not that they are drowned by the instrumentals, everything is clear and intelligible, but they just don't cut clearly above it. “C'est arrivé près d'chez toi” is a prime example of that, with the trebles spikes just way too loud compared to the voices. JoeyStarr's voice is also deeper than Kool Shen, but is mixed at the same level, and sometimes gets a bit drowned out by the bass. Speaking of JoeyStarr, he really is not on par with Kool Shen. His texts aren't as good, his rapping isn't as good, to top it off, he's an asshole. Despite those flaw, this album stills gets the second-highest seal of approval from me. I will however not buy it, not to support what I discussed in the aparte on JoeyStarr. I skip nothing here, every song is good, and when the album ends, I almost still want more. 17/20 Note: for those of you that find the french language off-putting but still want to experience NTM, they collaborated with Nas on a version of “Affirmative Action”.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

435

   that's the number of games I have in my steam library, and I haven't played a single second of 172 of those. About 40% of all the games I own. An unacceptable situation. How did it come to this?
Well, I didn't buy most of them, the vast majority comes from Humble Bundle. Now a shadow of itself, Humble Bundle was a subscription based service where you would receive anywhere from 9 to 12 games per month, for 15$. All those games combined usually had an MSRP well above 100$, and there was always a AAA or two in each bundle, alongside older/indie titles. The best part was that the proceeds went to charity, and each month they partnered up with a different one. For a “late” gamer like myself – I had no computer or game console before I was 13 – it was god sent. I was subscribed for 26 months, from 2018 to 2021 and acquired about 256 games through this subscription. While I played the ones I was interested in at the time, the others were just left to rot in my library. I would estimate the proportion of games played to games rotting to be 30/70. On top of that, FOMO lead me to not cancel my subscription, despite seeing games accumulating beyond reason. Couple that with the fact that each time you tried to cancel, you were given the option to pause your subscription for months at a time, and I let the problem grow more than I should have. So this is how I ended in this predicament. After cancelling my subscription, I tried to tackle the problem.

​ On March 24th 2021, right after cancelling my subscription for good, I released the trailer for a new series of videos I was to produce for the Raddest youtube channel. For the uninitiated, Raddest was a group of friends out of Queen's University — I was a late addition to the group, so I can't really speak to its history — that at one point during covid, created a youtube channel. People of Raddest could post on the channel, and to combat by own boredom, I made some pretty frequent contributions, releasing a couple videos a week at one point. I had multiple series going on at a time, and “Humble Purge” was to be one of them. In this series, I would choose one game from my backlog, introduce it and play it for ~20 min giving my opinions and first impressions. Thinking back, I was setting myself up for failure. I didn't have enough motivation to play all the games in my backlog for like an hour, but I thought it would be a good idea to play for at least 20 min, while doing commentary, while discovering the game, spending an hour editing and doing audio processing, an hour rendering, taking the time to come up with a title and make a thumbnail and then waiting for an hour for it to upload... Delusional. So it failed, and I only produced 15 episodes in total, in the span of about a year, because I lacked both time and motivation. And thus, the first humble purge, a noble crusade, came to an end, barely making a dent in my backlog.

This is not the end of the story; around November I came across a video from DarylTalksGames titled “A Misguided Guide to Finishing Your Gaming Backlog” and its sequel “How I Finished My Gaming Backlog”. Those videos are exactly what they sound like they are about. And they rekindled my will to slay my backlog. Those videos didn't just provide me with the will, but also the means to do so. In his first video, Daryl explains his initial methodology and goal. He catalogued all the games in his backlog in an excel sheet, with some relevant information like the genre, how long it would take to beat, and how hyped he was to play it. I did the same, but in a google sheet, cause I'm poor. Those have been useful to plan my second assault on my backlog, but to be honest, I almost learned more from his second video. In it he explains why he initially failed, and here are my main takeaways from it: 1. Only play the games you really want to play. I took this advice and cut down my backlog from 150 to 109 games. I can always come back to the rest of the list when I'm done with this first part. 2. You don't have to finish the games. This was a big one for me, I've been a bit of a completionist in the past, even if the games were tedious and it was becoming a chore to finish them. This helped be re-framed the project from: “There are games that I haven't touched in my library that I have to finish because they are in my library” to “There are games in my library that I haven't touched that I could potentially enjoy for a while”. I went from maximising productivity to maximising fun, and in the end this makes this project more sustainable. Therefore, I set the only rule for this challenge: play 1h minimum. If I still don't dig it after that, I can set the game aside without remorse.

My framework was laid out for me. The main thing I am using to keep track of my progress is this google sheet. The sheet is updated every time I start/finish a game, feel free to check it out. There, you will see four tabs, the first two are the ones we are taking into consideration for this project, the others are more for when I'm done. Namely, games I want to replay, and games I want to buy — i.e. a real backlog.

In any case, the first sheet is all the games that I own on either steam, origin, uplay, epic :vomit and other. During this challenge, this list can grow, but under one specific rule: I can't buy games. Since the beginning of this project in December 2023 I added ~6 games, that I got for free either on epic, steam or prime. With those added, I got a bunch of info from all the games, the most important being the type of game, the time to complete, rating from steam and metacritic, and my hype to play it /10. I was ready to move on to the culling. The second sheet is all the games I will actually play during this purge; the selection process was pretty simple. Of that first sheet, I would add any games that had a hype above 5/10. But it didn't end there. I would also add any games that had a hype of 5/10 and steam score above 85% or metacritic above 75. For the games at 4/10, they would have to have steam ratings above 90% or metacritic scores above 80. Lastly, no matter the rating, any game with a steam score above 95% or metacritic above 85 would instantly be retained. Regardless of what I want to play, I'm not willing to miss cult classics. I was ready to start playing. I would divide my play time into games I would play at home, and games I would be able to play at the office. The latter category had to fit some narrow criteria, namely: be able to run on a toaster, be completely SFW and not require any attention if I had to drop it to actually work. End of December/ beginning of January are periods with a lot of downtime at work, so I decided to capitalise on that and started the challenge on Dec 3rd.

I was, at first, overwhelmed with choices, but I had prepared for this eventuality, and had a randomised game selector pick something for me. Monster Prom. I started the game, played for a bit, wrote my review, gave my rating. Didn't take too long, and I grew confident in my ability to finish this project within a year. Slay the Spire was next.

Yaaaouch!!! I had played card games and rogue-likes, but this one just hit the spot. I spent two weeks on this game, I had fun and I regret nothing. Thankfully, so far this is the only game I have devoted that much time to. After this little hiccup, I was able to enjoy games at a good pace, and as I am writing these words I have completed 23 games, roughly 21% of my backlog. Provided I don't find too many Slay the Spires, I should be able to finish this by the end of the year.

This is the big project touted in my December reading, and the excuse I had for only reading one (1) small book. With the project on its way and its motivation and methodology explained, I would like to extend an invitation. Clean your backlog, whether it's games that are rotting in your library — like me —, or games you've had on a list for six years that you are definitely coming around to playing — like DarylTalksGames. You don't even need to do all the research that I did from my google sheet, I learned recently that there are websites that do it for you. To spice it up, we can set a deadline of one year. I intended to release this article in December or on January 1st at the latest, but I got lazy. In any case, you would have until February 2025 to clear your backlog. I would love to hear about the games you played, which one were pleasant surprises and which ones weren't so much. Regardless, I will make an update article in December 2024, whether I am successful or not. See you then!

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Rap/Hip Hop is a very important part of French culture, the overwhelming majority of my friends back in France were listening to it, and it is one of the few kind of music that is solid in France as well as usually always sung in french. That's not the case for all french music, we have a decently big metal scene, but most bands sing in english. We are also wonderful at electronic music, house, electro and especially synthwave, but those usually don't have lyrics apart from samples (which are mostly in english). So when I was trying to get my wife to learn french — if not by traditionally learning — by osmosis, it made sense to have her listen to french rap. I started to play it in the house while we were cleaning or just hanging out. I don't listen to rap for reasons I listed in my very first article on the Print House, the main one being that I don't care about lyrics in music. I therefore had to search for a couple of artists, but my search was short-lived because I didn't really have a genuine interest in rap. That was a couple of years ago, today I am less picky when it comes to music, more curious and open-minded, but also more receptive to the social point usually brought up in rap. But I still needed a little push to really do a deep dive into rap, which was granted to me when Spenny released his article: “Ramblings 2: An Album I Could Have Liked”. I decided to roughly use the same process that Spenny describes in the chapter Detour One: Early Covid; try to listen to one album every few weeks and rate them. But why do it alone? That's why I'm bringing you along in this new series of articles, aiming for one every couple of months, presenting an album/artist per article. I'll be choosing a couple of songs that I like, and if there is material, introduce through them a topic relevant to french culture. I will then talk about the album overall.

L'école du micro d'argent – 1997

My search had begun, and I simply looked through a couple of forums with threads titled a variation of “best french rap album/artist” (but in french obviously). This one appeared at the top of a couple, so I thought I would start strong to keep me motivated at the beginning.

IAM is a group composed of Akhenaton & Shurik'n which are the rappers, with Khéops, Imhotep, Kephren and formerly Freeman handling music prod. They are from Marseille, the group was formed in 1988 and is still going today. We will be looking at their fourth and most popular album, starting with the title track.

L'école du micro d'argent

—>Music (youtube)

This song is all about hyping themselves up and propping up the rest of the album. They describe a war between two schools, the school of the silver mic and the school of the wooden one. They are part of the former; the school of the good rap. Shit is hype, the beat contains some bells, trumpets and horns which gives it an air of solemnity, and opens with a choir that builds up. The lyrics are epic and even if I still don't know a lot about rapping, I know that here it is phenomenal. It's technical, the text is rich and they are using fairly complex french language — using formal language is a way french rappers try to set themselves apart, it also allows them to craft much more intense and mellifluous lyrics. Akhenaton has a lisp and uses that to create more alliterations, which is cool to hear. Shurik'n lingers on some syllables or rushes through them, and emphasises some consonants or vowels which — even if it could hinder comprehension (french is pretty monotone and words aren't accentuated anywhere) — matches the song perfectly and adds a layer to the rhythm. After the opening, the beats become a bit simpler, but is still as effective, it compliments the voices well, and the voices are clearly defined above the mix. A simple-ish beat and well-defined voices will be a reoccurring thing for the rest of their songs. However, this song doesn't really showcase their social involvement, unlike the one we will look at next:

Nés sous la même étoile

—>Music video what are they doing with their arms?

This track is about a very popular subject in France, equality of opportunity or in french:

L'égalité des chances

For as long as I can remember when I was a kid I was taught about the equality of opportunity. How important it was to [insert current government] and how [current government] was doing everything that is possible to make sure this was not just an ideal, but a reality. This was very ingrained in french schools, or in the education policies, as equality of opportunity “started” there according to the government. Let's first define what is “l'égalité des chances”: it's that social status of an individual cannot be founded on moral, ethnic, cultural, economical or social of a person, but on their public utility. It's basically just meritocracy; everybody is equal and the only things that matters should be what value they produce/how hard they work.

School is mandatory and free in France for every child residing on the territory, from ages 3 to 16. The state has always confused equal access to equal opportunity. So they give students roughly the same access to information, with a standardised curriculum, national exams, try to put in place “orientation” seminar to guide students to jobs and studies starting early... Therefore in the state's eyes, every student is on the same level as any other — this is l'égalité des chances. Then, what matters regarding success is the effort that each student puts in; a convenient view that removes the government responsibility regarding inequalities after school. The many french governments have always thought of school as the perfect way to squash inequalities since — after the state graciously gives you access to education — you just have to work hard, then can get into a good school and get a good job and even if you started poor you end up rich. This is obviously not how it works, and school in France is a big vector of inequalities (I would need another whole article to get into that). This song is about all the other inequalities that arise before school even starts, and how they evolve:

Here Shrik'n and Akhenaton compare their upbringing, especially in the context of school, with a bourgeois' kid. They first note the hereditary nature of access to wealth, comparing what their dads do and how they get to work. Then the difference in access to extracurricular activities, vacations, food security. They also note that they don't have enough money to buy school supplies, that they had to stop going to school to help their parents make ends meet, that they are responsible for helping raise their siblings. They contrast that with the rich's kid, who doesn't have to worry about any of this, can focus on his studies and enjoy his youth, and who will be able to get into a good and expensive school. Where he will get a good job, they will have to beg for one. Other than the content of the text, the lyricism is amazing, there is a lot of use of “calembour” which is a sort of pun where you say one thing, but it sounds exactly the same as another and both have different — but relevant — meanings. Some of them are crazy and it's just when reading the lyrics that I realised it. The rhymes are also amazing. The instrumental is as usual simple-ish but very effective, complementing the rapping without eclipsing it. One of the member, Kheops, is a disk jockey and you can hear some record's effects, like rewinds and other, uh, DJ things (please excuse my ignorance) which, while the beat is simple, makes sure that it doesn't become repetitive, especially during the refrain.

Petit Frère

—>Music video

A bit of context is needed here, it will be also valid for the majority of french rap we will look at in this articles and the ones to come.

Les cités/banlieues/grand ensembles

The word banlieues (suburbs) has a wildly different connotation in french compared to english. As you know, suburbs in North America usually designate residential areas inhabited by white middle class people, safe, heavily subsidised by the local government as they generate next to no revenue. In France, banlieues usually refers to very low income high density part of city, outside of the city centre. To understand what they are, it can be interesting to see how they came to be. In the 1960s the effect of the post-war baby boom and the repatriation of the french colonisers from Algeria generates the need for more housing in a very short amount of time, on top of that a little thing called WW2 had destroyed a lot of housing, and the ones that were still standing were for the most part in awful conditions. Add to that, the american “all car” fad had taken over France and the government thought it would be a good idea to build all that necessary housing way outside the city, away from any amenities and only linked by roads and very little public transport if at all. What were built were “grand ensemble”; giant residential towers, think soviet style housing. They were at first not destined for low income people, but due to their undesirability they were deserted by anyone who could afford to not live there. They slowly become inhabited by low to very low income people and immigrants; groups of people that the bourgeois at the head of the municipalities actively don't care about — they became abandoned by local and federal government. With no money and their usual distance to the city centre, they became isolated socially, economically and culturally. They began to act as sort of socio-cultural enclaves within french cities, with nothing to do, as they are overwhelmingly residential. Economic conditions there are worse of than in the rest of the french territory; 50% live under the poverty threshold, unemployment being thrice the national average and education being also way below the national average. Mix no money with no opportunities, no jobs, no entertainment and general abandonment, and you get crime. Crime became rampant in the banlieues and the state responded with over-policing, which results in casualties every year. Those casualties cause violent riots within the cités after which the government will pretend to care for a couple of weeks, creating task forces tasked with creating reports to create plans to solve everything; they are usually abandoned, don't reach goals, or only try to fix things in the surface without addressing the root of the issue. None of them have worked and life there is extremely tough and generally not a great place to be raised in.

This song is about the “petit frère”, the little bro and how, in part, being raised there affects him. They lament how little bro wants to grow up too fast. As young as 10 already fighting, acting tough, watching porn, and they compare to what their youth looked like. They then blame it on violent video games and the news becoming more sensationalist... They really focus on that last one being one of the main cause which is kinda of a miss imo, focusing on it for a whole verse, especially when at one point they say “back in our days, violence in schools was the norm but it wasn't reported therefore it didn't cause an increase in violence”. I'm no psychologist but this makes very little sense. Apart from that (and blaming video games lmao) they also blame themselves and the environment they created: the little bro must be imitating them too. The little bro starts smoking early, wants drink alcohol just like the grown-ups, and all of this is costing him his education and causing him to forget their roots/culture. He becomes obsessed with materialism and money turning to crime to obtain what he wants. Just like the rest of the songs we looked at, the rapping is phenomenal. So many alliterations, the flow of the text is incredible, with the rhymes keeping it interesting. The instrumental effective, if a bit more complex here, there are like three melodies calling back and responding to each other on top of the base (bass) beat. The song has even a cover art:

​ This album consists of 16 songs, no intro, outro, interludes; it's way too many in my opinion. If you read my very first article, you would know I'm one of those weirdos that listen to music an album at a time, from beginning to end — even my spotify wrap gives me flack for it. A whole hour and fifteen minutes takes me three commutes to listen to fully. Nevertheless, I find myself listening to it over and over again, I started this article around August/September and this has made its way into the rotation on a weekly basis. Even as I was listening to other albums for new articles, I kept coming back to this. The instrumentals, however simple, are very effective, the text is great, rapping is technical and clear — shit slaps. The duo (voices) also works very well together, the song “Elle donne son corps avant son nom” is a prime example. There are however, a few songs that I care little for, and one that I skip every time. When it's great it's phenomenal, when it's “bad” (literally only 10% of the album) it's just a cut above average. As a side note, anglophones (all of you) will probably enjoy the track titled “La Saga” as half of it is in english; it features Sunz of Man. Rating of the album: 18/20

Another project has begun, on top of the 5 thousand other I have. I have a list as long as my arm of goated albums that I missed out on — whether it was because I had the audacity of not having been born, or I wasn't listening to rap at the time. One good part about arriving late to the party is that time has helped sift through the garbage. But this is a double edge sword; there might have been some cool underground stuff that has been lost to time. No time to get fomo now through. I hope that the context and insight I have provided into the french culture, when it comes to rap, was useful. Feel free to ask about any other topic that came up in the songs that you had issues with or questions about, and I might add some context in subsequent articles. Or even something related to french rap that you don't understand. A side note on my choice of albums: I will most likely try to stick with the OG stuff in the beginning, to get better context and history on french rap. Later, I will probably try some more experimental stuff and some stuff that the kids these days listen to. Once I am more secure in my knowledge of french rap, I might even comment on some meme rap that existed when I was growing up. In any case, you can expect the next article around March.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

I had not done a single full gym session since Covid. Three years ago. As a student I was a low-key meathead, participating in multiple disciplines at a time and training on my own for more than 12h a week, doing the same movements again and again. (Why does that sound familiar?). What made me stop? Saying Covid had a small part to play in it would be a euphemism, but it is not the whole picture. Covid restrictions have been gone for a little while now and I've only started going back this month (June 2023). Between Covid and now I have moved twice and gone were the days of being within walking distance of a decent gym. Car-centric city planning struck again. It didn't matter that I moved to Toronto which is supposed to be one of the most walkable cities in Canada, decent gyms were out of reach. It was only when I moved to the (obviously superior) city of Mississauga that luck would start to come. A gym was going to open at a nearby plaza next to my house; just had to walk for 5min to an overpass, walk above the highway, walk two more minutes and I was there. Just had to wait a couple of months for the gym to open its doors. During those months, the overpass was destroyed to be upgraded; it will only be built back up in August (edit: we're in November now and the pillars are not even up lol). So I got a bike, and despite needing to go around the highway, it was still only a 15min bike ride to the gym. The gym opened and my wife took a look at it; a bike and treadmill farm. It goes without saying that I was not going to bike to the gym to bike on stationary bikes after that. But the bike opened up new gym possibilities, so we looked for anything within a 10-15min bike ride distance from our house and we finally found something. Shit's a bit expensive (read very) but it is an investment I am willing to make. The price is sorta justified though (i'm coping), there are a couple of floors with two in particular that are dedicated to machines and free weights, including squat racks. There is also a very full schedule of classes, each being accessible to us with our membership (edit: actually no :/). From those only boxing might be of interest to me. In any case, I started training again.

Training

Training is an undeniably important part of gaining strength or muscles. I had not kept up with the advancements in training philosophy since I stopped, but I assumed the gist of it was the same. So I took a former plan I used to have and was gonna make changes along the way. But I had kind of an existential crisis; were my goals the same? Do I want to do the same thing I wanted to do then? Using this plan, which I then crafted for past specific goals, to achieve my new goals made no sense. So I sat down with myself and considered what I did in the past and what I wanted to do now. That previous plan was made at a time when two things mattered to me; powerlifting and armwrestling. I was competing in armwrestling and was planning to compete in powerlifting once I met the requirements for my weight class. I was also partially interested in strongman. Looking at my situation now, armwrestling is out of the picture, and so is competing in powerlifting. I also do not have that strong of an interest in strongman anymore. I am still very interested in getting strong but not so much in competing, and not just in the three powerlifting movements. So what do I want? The more I mature, and the more I identify with greek philosophers, I want a cultured and astute mind in an aesthetic and powerful body. I cannot have the former so I will get the latter. It looks like I want bodybuilding.

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding has gotten a pretty bad rep in the last two-ish decades, and is now mostly associated with steroid abuse, 1000 different necessary supplements (trust me bro), influencers, fake natties (overlap with the aforementioned), being loud and obnoxious... The old heads are keeping superstitious stereotypes alive and generally giving bad info to noobies. On the other side, the newcomers, if not subjugated by the oldheads, use a “science-based” approach (spoiler it's not really science based); you need to do this exercise with super high volume and those 300 accessory lifts and those 15-step compound lifts and don't forget this 50min warmup. The fitness influencer market is saturated to the gills and the only way to carve your space in the landscape is to trow out the wildest claims and make clickbait. It is very hard to find good information out there, and you will get drowned under the 5 000 cookie cutter programs sold here and there by such and such, and the “EXERCISE EVERYONE SHOULD DO” coupled with the “[BLANK] IS KILLING YOUR GAINS !!!1!1111!“. Ironically there is usually an overlap in the exercise from those videos. The couple of curated youtube channels I used to watch either do not capture my interest anymore (armwrestling channels and such) or have devolved in purely entertainment. All? Well, not entirely... Some small channels of indomitable lifters hold out against the influencerisation. I took a look at those for portions of my new training plan. A big one was Alan Thrall from the eponymous youtube channel Alan Thrall. Coincidentally, he too decided to switch from his former discipline, strongman, to bodybuilding almost at the same time as I was going back to the gym. He was always more of an old-head follower but has wisened up a lot as of late and has lost a bit of his edginess, which is a pleasure to see. He usually combats misinformation, myths and gives some pretty solid advice, explained rationally or talks about his experience. He also has a very small ego and is always genuine and honest. I've used his channel more for the overall structure of my plan and workouts and also for some exercise selection. The second one would be Zac Telander, he mildly falls into the “mostly entertainment” category, but he has some interesting rants, and he also probably is kinda sorta maybe going insane, there is a sort of unhinged “I understand myself and I don't care if anyone can, or if I'm even intelligible” qualities from some of his rants which is appreciable. I am using his advice about the squats and it honestly has made a big difference. The last channel I looked at for my training would be Colin Murray, he does sub-10-minute videos that are very to-the-point about things that worked for him. That's pretty much it. He'll also give some exercise recommendation. I've used him for more of work area (on my body) selection as well as some exercise selection. I've also very briefly looked at Renaissance Periodization, the dude is very calm, has a PhD in exercise science and gives reasons why such and such is not optimal for hypertrophy, while this and that might yield better results. (I'm in the middle of a deep dive now — I have to talk more about it in an update article). One resource I did not have access to while I was training before covid, because I had not succumbed, was tiktok (i know, i know). There is a plethora of fitness-focused content creators on the platform/re-upload of short clips of longer youtube videos. Among those JPG and TNF are part of the science-based group (actually science-based this time) and I take in some of their advice for exercise selection and also execution. Another one out of the left field is Sam Sulek, I really enjoy his no-nonsense approach, and as a very young lifter (21 years old) he makes oldheads seethe because he is not training/bulking/cutting optimally in their opinion, but is thriving nonetheless. He has a very humble and laid-back vibe to him and is sort of a walking meme. He also has an interesting mindset about training.

What the plans came out to be

Mixing all of this I settled on the plan below:

Training Session	Exercise	Sets x Reps	Weight (lb)	Rest	Notes
Chest + Legs #2	Bench Press	5x5	115	2:30	widen grip?
1	Leg Curls	5x8	90	1:30	Seated, lean forward
1	Incline Dumbbell Press	5x7	30	1:30
1	Front Squat	5x5	135	2:30	ATG Paused add more reps —>7-8
1	Machine Incline Press	5x8	180	1:30
1	Lunges with Dumbbells	5x walking to the trash can and back	40->35	2:00	8-9 reps x2
Back #1 + Triceps	Deadlift	5x5	235	2:30	Use straps on last set
2	Close grip Bench Press	5x5	105	2:30	widen grip to be able to touch chest
2	Lat pulldown	5x8	160	1:30
2	Dips	5x8	-40	1:30
2	Unilateral Seated Machine row	5x7	?	1:30	Extra set on left arm
2	Cable Triceps Extension	5x7	225	1:30	Straight bar and last set dropset
Legs #1 + Biceps	Squats	5x5	155	2:30	ATG Paused
3	Ez bar preacher curl	5x5	bar+40	2:30
3	Hip Thrusts	5x12	90+Machine	1:30	Replace with RDL?
3	Hammer Curl	5x6	30	1:30
3	Farmer's Walk	4xWalk to the wall and back	70	1:30	Straps
3	Cable Curl	5x8	180	1:30	Rope, dropset at the end
Back #2 + Shoulders	Barbell Row	5x5	115	2:30
4	Military Press	5x5	80	2:30	Switch to push press after failure
4	Pullups	5x5	-30	1:30
4	Lateral Raises	5x10	40	1:30
4	Unilateral Lat Cable Pulldown	5x8	?	1:30	JPG style Extra set on left arm Focus on stretch
4	Face Pulls	5x10	160	1:30	Focus on eccentric part

All the above is not accurate anymore, but the vibe kinda matches still — see conclusion

I chose to divide my plan into four sessions, as it and its structure came to me in a dream. Back is really an area I want to improve on, as even at my peak in university, I looked a bit two-dimensional. I really don't need to improve on legs — it's actually one of the strong points of my physique — but I really enjoy working them so here we are. I nevertheless tried to get exercises that would also work other areas besides the legs in the leg portion (farmer's walk, hip thrusts...). Another area I need to work on to get more of a 3D body is the chest, so on top of the chest day, I have a couple of exercises that also hit the chest in my triceps workout (close grip bench, dips...). I have no “core” workout as I hate working it, and I hope it will just come by osmosis with the rest of my body. I am not used to working in high rep ranges, but this is something I will change, as higher rep ranges are more favourable for hypertrophy. I will most likely will do high rep for isolation movements and accessory lifts. Overall I have lots to learn still, but I have to time to figure shit out and experiment. I keep my rest times consistent (yes I carry a timer to the gym), that way I can adjust the weight more precisely each session. Once one weight feels too easy (i.e. I do not reach failure on the last rep or so), I'll increase the weight or number of reps for the subsequent sessions — progressive overload baby. I have a little notebook that I fill in every time I come back from the gym, with my thoughts about each exercise; did it feel too easy/hard, anything else to report... That is one side of my tracking my progress, the other one is checking myself in the mirror at the gym before a session, during a session, after a session at work in the washroom out of the washroom at home before a shower after a shower when I wake up when I have to dress when I have to undress when I'm just hanging around when I'm busy when I'm bored when I'm hyper when I'm tired when I feel like it to flex on my cat to flex on my wife to flex at my frog to flex at myself to flex at god

Eat like a big boi to become the big boi

It goes without saying that to become big, you need to eat big. This is unfortunately one of the things I've had the most trouble with over the years. There is very little help out there when it comes to gaining weight as the main weight change associated with fitness is usually loss. From advice to recipes, there is a plethora of weight loss tips, but us little boiz we are not eating good. Even resources dedicated to gaining weight, like the gainit subreddit, are an absolute joke. If someone ask for tips on how to eat more, usually the answer is “tHeRE iS no SEcrEt; YoU jUsT nEEd TO EaT mORE”. Then they also give horrendous advice, like to do GOMAD (Gallon Of Milk A Day), or circlejerk on obviously fake stories about the biggest guy in the gym bringing the noobie to the alley behind the gym and telling him to order a pizza with everything on it and dunk a litre of olive oil on it, eat all of it and do that everyday and that would prove he's serious about gaining, otherwise he's just a little whining bitch. “People having trouble gaining weight are whiny and making excuses instead of eating” is also a reoccurring theme on there.

With the ranting now over, let's begin with the basics; to gain weight you do need to eat more, i.e. increase the calories you consume. “How to gain weight?” is never the question that beginners ask, they almost always mean: “How to eat more?” Without further a-do here are Edouard's Tried and Approved Tips:

• Eat more often, for people with small appetites it's easier to eat a bunch of small meals rather than a few huge ones.
• Drink your water after a meal, you want to keep all the space in your stomach for food.
• Make it easy for yourself, try to always keep food within reach that takes little to no preparation.
• Have a couple of go-to recipes that are super easy to do and that you don't mind eating often; it will take the burden of having to decide what you eat off your shoulders.
• Piggy-backing off that last one; do some meal prep, you minimise the time cooking while maximising your food output. It also ties in to tip #3.
• Start eating earlier and finish eating later in your day; it's easier to spread out all the meals you want to have over 15h rather than 10h.
• Prioritise calorically dense food; they take less space in your stomach while maximising the calories you ingest.
• Chewing tricks your brain into making you less hungry; eating soft foods, or even drinking your food makes it easier to eat more.
• Protein shakes can be an easy way to get both proteins and calories into your system. Don't bother with mass gainers, they most often are just pure sugar and have a misleading calorie count. Just add peanut butter to your shake (100g=~600cals!).
• For the love of god, please season your food; if you enjoy what you are eating it will be infinitely easier to eat more of it.
• Don't count calories for every meal, make a meal plan that you know the calories of and stick to it. Count them once in a while for a full day to get a reality check and adjust your food intake accordingly. Also you don't have to be extremely precise; food packaging isn't.
• Don't use one weight measurement for tracking; bodyweight yoyos throughout the day/week so weighting once might not be an accurate representation of your weight gain/loss. An average over the week is more representative of your actual weight gain/loss.
• Don't wait until you're hungry to eat, just try to eat every few hours. However...
• DO NOT FORCE-FEED; this is the quickest way to either give up, develop eating disorders or both. Don't do it.
• Take your time; you're not gonna jump from eating 1500cals/day to 3200cals/day in a day, it might take months for you to get comfortable eating more. Don't worry about it, there is only so much muscle you can build in a year anyway.

This is it for the tips, I usually apply most of them, although it can be a bit tough with a 9-5 (mine is actually an 8-4) but at least it keeps my schedule consistent. I usually eat my breakfast (~9am), which is comprised of a tiny costco chocky milk and the holy grail: Big Daddy Chocolate Chip Cookie. They're easy to carry and eat, tasty. Carbs, fat, sugar and surprisingly protein, they have everything I need to start the day without mentioning they are a solid 420cals, which brings my breakfast to around 560cals. For lunch (~12-13h) I either eat what I prepared, most often Korean beef bowl (credits to Spenny), leftover whatever or some focaccia/bread that I made. I try to get at least 1000-1200cals with my lunch. If I haven't prepared anything, it's usually two Wendy's Daves' single, no onion (~1150cals). After that, I'll have some snacks if needed to survive until 4 (nuts, yogurt, Halloween candy...). When I come home at 5, I usually have one cup of uncooked rice (cooked), with a shit ton of butter and whatever seasoning I fancy, which comes about to probably close to 900-1000cals. I might have a protein shake around 9, comprised of 90g of peanut butter, 2 scoops of protein powder and about 400ml of 3.25% milk and of course 5g of creatine. That clocks in at about 1000cals. Or I might eat whatever else, if I have some leftovers, if we order food... In that latter case, before bed, I will drink the costco fairlife chocolate protein shake to which I add 5g of creatine. This brings my day to a total of 3100-3400cals, and roughly enough protein. I do not keep close track of my macros, even protein, because I can't be bothered. How to know if it's working? Well, I'm gaining weight at a satisfying pace, getting stronger and not putting on too much fat. Is it optimal? No, but it's easy.

Rest grows the muscle

Another thing that lifters often underestimate for muscle growth is rest. Muscle is not built in the gym, nor in the kitchen, but in the bedroom. Consistently getting a good night's sleep is essential to become a big boi. This is not something I struggle with; I take sleeping very seriously and always cut out at least 8h for sleep, often more. I am also able to fall asleep blazingly fast, sparking jealousy from Tetyana (my wife). I also don't really struggle with overworking my muscles. I try to go to the gym 3-4 times a week maximum (not exceeding that, i.e. not going to the gym, is really not hard) to give myself and my muscles enough rest days to recuperate. In the same optic, I try to stay at the gym for shorter amounts of time, typically 1h30. This is a big cut down from 2h30-3h in university per session, and I also went to the gym around 5 times a week in uni. But I was young, full of energy and had loads of time — not even mentioning the gym was a short 8min walk from my house — so it was never a hassle to train. Also, Tetyana would not put up with anything past 1h30 nowadays.

Motivation to go to the gym

I'm like everyone else, and after my 9-5 I sometimes have very little will to go to the gym. Maybe I had a long day, maybe I had a short night, maybe there was a shit ton of wind on the bike ride back from the station and my legs are shot. If I go to the gym, I'll have 2 fewer hours of free time at night, and I already have too little... Those are all things I used to say, but I've tried to have a mind shift on working out that boosted my motivation: Ok, I'm tired, my legs are shot or whatever, but having a sub-optimal workout is better than no workout at all. I'm not getting 2 fewer hours of free time by going to the gym, I'm just using my free time to do something I enjoy. That change in mindset has allowed me to be generally happier with my gym-going habits, and to push myself harder. Another way I keep myself motivated is just seeing the progress every day; I can lift more, I can do so while being less tired and with better technique. I also look bigger and all my jeans are getting tight. Seeing and experiencing that progress really encourages me to keep going at it. The last big motivator for me is my gym crush that I see 90% of the times I go to the gym (90% of the times I go to the gym with Tetyana).

Conclusion

This article was originally drafted in June, then abandoned, then reworked back in September, then abandoned again and finally picked back up now. A bunch of things have changed, especially for my actual training plan, but things change all the time, and if it had to be 100% accurate, this article would never see the light of day. I have learned to let go and therefore decided to release it, I'll make another article once all the changes have been consolidated.

Update article coming when I'm big (with picture — password protected and only Spenny will get the password)

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used *fictitiously*. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

Have you and your friends started a podcast? Are you lost trying to get everyone to talk louder/softer, trying to mix everything during the recording and ultimately having significant volume level disparity? Do not despair, everything can be saved with a little bit of audio processing. Just follow this quick guide and you'll be able to level out your audio in less than 5 minutes.

For this, we will use Audacity, which is free and open-source. We will work on an example that will showcase the usual pitfalls of home recording in less-than-ideal situations. That example comes from a random podcast on the internet, no need to look too closely at it.

Tiny bit of physics and a crash course for Audacity

Sounds are represented by waveforms:

The x-axis is time and the y-axis can be a number of things, but we will use decibels (dB). dB is the measure of the sound's level, i.e. how loud it is. When manipulating audio, usually we have the scale start at -infinity and end at 0, where 0 is the max dB before clipping. Here is the same drawing with the axis labeled and an example of what clipping does to a waveform:

Here is what it looks like in Audacity:

The left and right channels are stacked on top of each other, that's why there are two waveforms

This is with a different timescale, not milliseconds but seconds

Pretty similar no? (You might want to right-click on the scale on the left and select “linear (dB)”). There is a lot of extra info and other things, but worry not. Apart from the main track, there is only one other thing you should pay attention to, and that is the playback level bar at the top right-hand corner.

The green bar is your current audio level. The blue line is the max level your audio reached, the green line is the max level your audio reached in the last 3 seconds.

And that is literally all you need to know.

Unprocessed sound

Here is what we are working with:

Yikes, as you can see most of the talking portions are between the ranges of -24 to -18 dB, almost inaudible. Then you get random peaks that reach 0 dB, potentially clipping. Usually for podcasts, a small dynamic range — the sound level difference between your average quietest and average loudest sound — is preferred. Having everything and everyone between -6 to 0 dB is ideal. A listener doing something or walking somewhere does not want to have to adjust the level every 5 sec, if at all. Side note, there is no saving a clipping sound, that is honestly the only thing you you need to look out for when recording.

To improve this audio, we want to bring down the loud sounds to about the same level as the quiet ones and then bring everything up. If someone speaks very loudly, we want them to be at the same level as someone speaking softly, and then increase the gain to make everyone loud. Let's first take care of those peaks, we will have to be stern with them, therefore we will use a limiter with a hard limit. This will make sure no sound goes above the set limit. To set our limit, we'll choose the loudest sound that doesn't look like a peak; we only want to destroy those peaks, we'll be much softer on the loud voices. Here it is at around the hour mark.

Looking at the Playback level bar, it is between -6 and -12dB, let's say -9dB to be safe. So we select the whole track (Ctrl+A) go to Effect>Volume and Compression>Limiter... at the top. Here we make sure to select hard limit, set the limit to -9dB and apply makeup gain. This last option will bring up everything at the end, so that the loudest sound after limiting is 0 dB. We get this:

Much better, now we can almost hear things, but there are still big differences in level between parts of the recording; probably one person sounding quieter than another. We want to fix that too but we want to be more gentle. If we were to just use a limit, it would make the recording sound very unnatural. We will therefore use compression. With compression, you set a threshold, and every sound going above it will be reduced by a certain ratio. Those are the two parameters we really want to look at, the rest, attack release... are not very important to us as we are only dealing with voices. To find a suitable threshold, let's look for a more stable quiet part of the recording, this one looks good:

It 's around the 35min mark, and hovering a bit below -18 dB, let's say -20dB. We'll choose this as our threshold, this way, all the loud parts will come down past that lower level. Let's go to Effect>Volume and Compression> Compressor... and set it there. Usually, you want to use a threshold just below what the average level of the quiet part is, our guestimate works just fine in this case. For the ratio, it depends on how much you want to reduce your dynamic range by; 5:1 always works well for me. 2:1 barely does anything for us and 10:1 might sound a bit too artificial. For the attack and release, just set it to the lowest possible, no need to worry about those for our use case. Make sure to tick the “Make up gain for 0dB after compression”, that will make sure that, after compression, our recording's max level reaches 0dB.

Look at that beautiful waveform, thick, consistent. This will offer the most comfortable listening experience, which should be your goal, unless you hate your audience (based). If you find the result lacking in your own test, mess around with the threshold or the ratio, or be more aggressive with the limiter if you have nasty peaks. In any case, you now have the tools to either start your own podcast featuring decent audio, or even fix a podcast you started 11 episodes ago.

Part I:

For the typed version, click here: https://printhouse.codemonkey.cafe/appendices/fountain-pens-part-i-typed

Part II: My collection

When I started this article, I only had a modest collection of cheap pens — not that you need more than that — with the exception of one. However, during my travels back to my homeland, I stole two pens from my parents and bought two others.

My collection before my travels

The old pen I found was a very entry-level waterman pen, which cost less than 5 euros when I bought it for school. I do not use it much (read: at all) because it is a bit shit and I immediately went on to find another pen I would be satisfied with.

Both of my parents have “endgame” fountain pens, but due to the configuration of their office back at home, I remembered my mother's one the best. It was still a pretty blurry memory, but the one thing I remembered vividly was that it had an inlaid nib. Recently I was able to examine her pen and found that it was the gorgeous Waterman Edson Sapphire, pictured below:

So I was dead set on getting an inlaid nib, and after some research landed on the Sheaffer Targa 1007 with a medium nib, mine being pictured below:

I was and am extremely happy with my purchase even if the pen is a bit wet, forcing me to completely change the notebooks and notepads I was using. It is one of the smoothest pens I have in my collection and it made me permanently switch to fountain pens. On top of it all it is gorgeous, it has a “70's cocaine-fuelled stock broker pen” vibe to it that I love.

I then remembered an old roller pen I was gifted for uni and simply changed the end to convert it from a roller to a fountain pen. There I had my second pen: the Faber Castell E-motion with a medium nib. I really like this nib, the design and colour are impeccable, and it is very smooth. The barrel is nice and thick and the pen feels heavy in the hand without being cumbersome; it is very comfortable. The texture is also great. See for yourselves:

With those two I was set for a few more months, but I needed a pen with a bit bolder ink colour. So I got the Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib — which had the benefit of being both very cheap and well-regarded by the fountain pen community — and filled it with red ink. It's nothing to write home about, but it's a solid pen in all the areas that matter. It is pictured here:

Alas! They were all three medium nibs which isn't ideal for my writing; it is excessively small and for that, fine or extra-fine nibs are recommended. Instead of buying new nibs for the three pens I had, I just bought cheap and well-regarded pens, namely the Lamy Safari in extra-fine and the Lamy Al-Star in fine. I was not extremely satisfied with those, I found Lamy's extra-fine nib to be too fine and stiff, and the fine to be too wet. The material of both pens feels very cheap, especially the Al-Star, and I am very much not a fan of the design. At least due to the price and my general displease with those pens, I would not be saddened if I were to lose them and they became my travel pens. They are both pictured below:

Travel Additions

As some of you might know, I went on a three-week honeymoon in July, and I had to add to my collection while visiting Paris and Amsterdam. In Paris, after looking at a couple of pens in a specialised section of a mall, I settled on the Parker IM Monochrome Blue with a fine nib — being at a very reasonable price — which I decided to fill with a quicky colour. The pen is gorgeous, and very comfortable if a bit thin. The nib is very smooth all around: very forgiving of inconsistent angles. It is also very short — look at that choadie! This makes it great for drawing; being closer to the page gives you better control over your lines.

In Amsterdam, I went to a dedicated pen shop and saw a 50% off shelf; I tried all of them and bought my favourite which was the Pelikan M150 with an extra-fine nib. I am very satisfied with this pen, the thickness of the nib is exactly what I am looking for; small enough so that my writing is not messy, but thick enough to take the edge off of some lines. This is the pen I bring with me to work and write most of my notes with, when reading a book for the bookclub or a future article, or when doing some ukrainian exercises from my textbook. I also love that Pelikan pens have a cartridge converter built-in, no need to buy one, and the ink fills the whole barrel. The only complaint I would have about it is that it is ever so slightly too small. It would be my favourite pen if I had not acquired the last pen I will showcase. This was also my first pen with a “specialer” nib: it is plated gold.

Coming back to France I simply asked my parents if they had any fountain pens they had bought over the years that they did not use anymore, apart from their endgame personal ones of course. This is how I acquired the Pilot Vanishing Point Blue Carbonesque: my very first full gold nib. This one is an 18k gold nib plated in rhodium i.e. it is a “white gold” nib. The pen has a funny little quirk; the nib is retractable! The pen looks great and the retraction mechanism is very satisfying to click. The nib is a pilot medium which is not as broad as an average European medium (pilot is a japanese company). It is also not too wet which is appreciable. Not sure if here gold brings anything tangible to the table. The ergonomics are not great however, and I don't see myself writing with this pen for extended periods of time. My main gripes are that the grip is too rounded, the material too smooth, and the clip gets in the way. I do love the gimmick of the retractable nib, but I'll have to spend more time with the pen to form a definitive opinion on it.

After reviewing my travel additions I jokingly asked my father if I could add his endgame pen to them, which to my surprise he acquiesced. He hadn't used it in a long, long while, so if the pen was to be of use to me, it would have been better in my care he said. Behold, the Pelikan Souverän M1000:

After purple, green is probably my favourite colour, so I am very fond of the barrel design, and the gold accents only add to my fondness. The nib is incredible, it is 18K gold with some parts rhodium plated, which gives the two tones that you can see in the picture. I had to include a picture just of the nib, this particular one is not from my pen. Both the pen and the nib are comically large, dwarfing my E-motion which is already considered chunky, but it somehow manages to be decently comfortable to write with. And to come back to the nib, this is the smoothest writing experience that any pen in my collection can deliver, by far. It is a fine nib, but honestly, it is way closer to an average European medium. It is a vintage pen and was not really cared for properly; it has some scuffs and scratches but it's part of the charm.

I think that is enough pens for a lifetime, and I am now sated; the will to own more has left my body. I might have one or two pens too much to have a balanced collection, but overall I can give almost all of my pens enough time. I am under no delusion; my collection has to downsize a bit, now that I have figured out what I like, to a solid 4-5 pens tops. But for now, I'm just enjoying the variety.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

---

As a bonus, here is a pic of the draft of this article, and a pic of the “article station” I built myself:

I had not read a single book for my own enjoyment since 2018. Five years ago. As a kid I was a bookworm, devouring multiple books a week, re-reading book series again and again. I really enjoyed reading and it was my escape from the real world. Back in my days (imitating a disgruntled old man) I had no computer, no console and no cable TV. As I grew older, I had access to video games and youtube, however I kept reading, albeit a bit less arduously. As I grew even older, I started having mandated readings in french class that were absolutely atrocious. We were forced to read antiquated theatre pieces, books in old french, and indigestible garbage from the 1800s that are considered “classics”. This, coupled with the fact that I had access to other forms of entertainment, really took its toll on my willingness to read for my own enjoyment. The nail in the coffin was when I reached university and had to read math and physics textbooks and papers. Mix together very high-level science material, english from the late 1900s, and abysmal writing and you get your average physics paper/textbook. From that point on, my vision of reading had completely shifted from a fun activity to something unbearable but unfortunately necessary to acquire knowledge. The only non-mandated books/texts I read from this point on were purely for practical purposes; language textbooks, bass textbooks, reviews of future purchases... Those were for the most part also not enjoyable to read as the act of reading was not their primary purpose, but the conveyance of knowledge. In the year of our Lord 2023, I joined the Printhouse, and apart from being emboldened by everyone's passion for reading, I also wrote my first article here, which made me realize two things. First, even if writing had taken the same path in my mind as reading, I found it fun now. Second, my writing was shit and it took me more than a whole month to produce a passable first article. Since my goal was to write an article or more a month, I had to improve. The most obvious way of improving my writing was to write more, read good writing and try to emulate it. So I started reading again.

I did not want to go down the same path that had led me to give up on reading; I was going to KISS (Keep It Simple Shithead Silly). At first, I was going to choose small books that I had read before and that I remembered liking. I was going to keep it low-pressure by not setting deadlines for myself. I also was going to keep it easy by starting with books in my maternal language, french. Lastly, since I really can't focus on reading ebooks, I was going to stick to paper format. But I'm also filthy poor; books I already had in my possession had to fit the bill. Fortunately, since I stopped reading right during the time I was partially still living in France, the only books I have here in Canada are the ones that fit the bill. I started with a sci-fi classic that I remembered really enjoying: Roadside Picnic (aka Stalker).

Roadside Picnic

One other reason I chose this book first is that I played the first two STALKER games back last December. The games are very loosely based on the concept first introduced in Roadside Picnic. In any case, I was going to start with that novel, written by the Strougatski brothers. Before bed, I opened it up, skipped the preface and got directly to the meat of the book. Here is a very brief synopsis: Aliens have suddenly landed on Earth and left as promptly as they arrived. On their landing sites, things start to act strange: laws of physics don't seem to hold up, and enigmatic artifacts with various reality-defying properties are also left. The book begins years after, in a town where the aliens briefly stopped. Their landing area here is called the Zone. Military and science complexes have been created there to study the Zone and send in expeditions to retrieve artifacts and conduct experiments. They are not the only ones going into the Zone, Stalkers sneak into the Zone to illegally retrieve the artifacts and sell them to the highest bidder. Here we follow the life of Redrick Souhart, a Stalker. It only took me about three reading sessions to finish it, each one being about 30-45min; it is a pretty short book. I really enjoyed it and found it an easy read, especially for an older sci-fi classic. Nothing seems lost in translation in the french version; the original is in russian. I wouldn't call the writing style traditional or basic, it is very far from that, but it was still very engaging in my opinion. A couple of things that could confuse the reader, like the jumps in time and change of POV were handled fairly well, even if what happened in those time jumps is for you to fill in. The style is very authentic and honest, if that makes sense. The book is composed only of snippets of Redrick's life at a point in time; when the next chapter starts, a few years usually have gone by. All chapters but one are through Redrick's POV, which might make it a bit strange, but I think it was necessary for world-building. If that information had been there in his POV, it would have been hard to reconcile it with the character. My favorite part of the book comes during that change of POV, when we follow Richard Nounane and listen in on his conversation with an eminent physicist. It is refreshingly human instead of trying to be science-y. On the content of the novel, as said before the premise is truly original and the way we see it through Redrick's eyes is really interesting and keeps the whole mystery of the Zone intact. The dangers of the Zone are not explained fully, but it is implicit that the Zone is not the antagonist in the novel, it just exists. There is no antagonist in the story, the stalkers are on one side, the military on another, and the scientist and industrial in the middle. None of them have a clear moral high ground, and there is no one to root for. All the characters are extremely flawed and feel very human, which I really liked. The relations between the people are interesting there although they are not always super fleshed out. To come back to the Zone, the passages about it are tense and even if they are always really short, you can feel the excruciatingly slow pace of each expedition through the page. The Zone itself is surrounded by mystery and none of it gets explained, and the way it is described, extremely vaguely, reinforces that. Overall, I would recommend it, especially if you like SF.

Planet of the Apes

Monke. Continuing on my sci-fi binge, I decided to pick up the french classic “La planète des singes” (Planet of the Apes) from Pierre Boulle. I also read this one in french, since it is its original language; there would be no translation approximations here. The story goes as follows: Professor Antelle has designed a ship capable of interstellar travel, and wishes to explore the cosmos. He assembles a crew comprised of himself, Ulysse Merou and Arthur Levain, our protagonist, and they set out to the Betelgeuse star system, on a three-century-long journey in Earth time, but only two years for them (because light-speed, special relativity, time dilations and such). The journey goes without trouble and they even find a habitable planet in that star system, which they investigate. Air is breathable there, there is flora and fauna similar to Earth, and before landing they see cities! Stepping out of the ship, they meet their first humans; although they don't look primitive, they are in their birthing suits and it doesn't seem like they can speak at all. They have no time to ponder on their discovery; they are being hunted, alongside those humans, by apes. This was also a very enjoyable reading. It is also very short, I devoured it in two nights, and it's an easy read, contrary to some SF novels, even easier than Roadside Picnic. The book is divided into two parts, the first half has almost no dialogue but is yet not filled to the brim with descriptions, which I am grateful for. It is very fast-paced and there is a couple of time jumps even during events that one could have been curious about. This however doesn't take away anything from the story, which I found very consistent and coherent. Without revealing too much, I found it interesting to see humans through the eyes of a simian society, and how they flipped the script on human/apes relations, even if sometimes a bit overt, it is done well. There is an overarching mystery that develops pretty naturally, except for one part which I think the author put there for additional background; in my eyes, it could have been omitted. It also solely relies on the concept of genetic memory which has been completely disproven. Another little thing, this is a story within a story type of thing (some people found a manuscript with the main story), and there is a second end plot twist. This could also have been omitted. Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend it.

Dragon teeth

This book, and the little investigation it lead me to will get its own post.

La Passe-Mirroir: Les fiancés de l' hiver & Les Disparus du Clairedelune

Ophélie is a regular young lady in this fantastique world, whose whole routine is about to change; she is getting married to a stranger from another floating island. Upon meeting, this stranger does nothing to gain her heart, quite the contrary, almost as if he is also a victim of that forced marriage. But they have no say in it, it is a deal between the Family Spirits, immortal being that preside over the affairs of their respective floating Arches. The Arch of her future husband is very different from her own, there, the society is organized in a court which head is the Family Spirit. It is a cutthroat world where no blow is low enough to ascertain the power of your family or gain the favors of the Family Spirit. Her presence at the court has to be kept secret; many are the people that would rather see her or her husband dead, than married. Put that shit straight into my veins. It took me only two and a half days to completely annihilate those two books, which are both over 550 pages each. I was completely entranced and every waking moment I had during those two days would be spent longing for a time I could continue my reading. Those are the first two books in a series of four, and if I had the other two on hand, I would have read them too right this second. As you can tell from the title of the books, I've read them in french, but the author (Christelle Dabos) is also french and her writing style is amazing, despite this being her first book. She carefully balances action, descriptions, internal monologue and dialogue in a way that flows so well under the eyes. Content-wise, everything is also great, the characters are great; the hero, Ophélie, is great at her job, smart but has some obvious weaknesses that she will have to overcome, and some emotional growth to do. We love to see a balanced character and not an OP mess. It is interesting to discover the characters through Ophélie; they are at first depicted in a one-dimensional almost caricatural manner, but as she gets to know them, much more nuance is introduced. The dynamics between the character are also similar to that, and go through plenty of development. My favorite one is between Ophélie and her future husband (what can I say I'm a romantic), which is full of twists, turns, and questioning. The setting is really original and described in great detail without being excessive. Seeing it and the world being discovered by the hero at the same time as us really makes it digestible. I can not recommend this series enough, although I can not yet gauge the quality of the english version. Seriously, if you must only read one thing from the books presented in this article, it's those ones. I would recommend reading both at once, treating them as the same book, as they only form a satisfactory story together. Much of the character development (for most characters) only comes together in the second book. Also, don't go on Goodreads; I don't know what book they read but one of the most popular reviews, which is extremely incendiary, is completely ridden with inaccuracies and cherry-picking.

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I was not expecting to be able to go back into reading that easily; from struggling to read an entire paragraph to devouring a book in a couple of nights. It is a big relief for me, who thought I had become iliterate (yliterate?,hilliterate?); who thought he couldn't read anymore. The trick was to just keep it light and fun, only read things that I wanted to read, wouldn't provoke any thought or teach me anything. This fooled my brain into being able to focus on reading more than a sentence at a time. This activity is now an integral part of my day, away from screens and constant stimuli. The only thing I wasn't able to change is my inability to focus on reading anything on a support other than paper. But I still have a bunch of books in my library, here in Canada, to read, so that's not an issue. I actually had a specific order of books to read and talk to you about, but the third book I read, “Dragon Teeth” by Michael Crichton derailed my plan. Not only was it not what I remembered, but my adult mind could also see something that my 18-year-old self couldn't: it's not that good. This is from the guy who wrote Jurassic Park, which alongside some of his other work, has raving reviews; what could've happened? Stay tuned...

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie