Cody Ray Shafer is a writer and artist with some thoughts on video games, music, comics, and Twin Peaks.
Fargo S4E4 opens with the now familiar tagline, “this is based on a true story.” I often wonder if anyone is fooled by it anymore. I certainly was when I first watched the film, completely engaged in a thrilling and dark tragedy. How many people were angry when they found out they’d been lied to […] More
Last week I broke down the first two episodes of Fargo Season 4 into its now-familiar parts, a tableau of gothic Americana weaving themes and imagery from the Coen-verse into a historically accurate depiction of Kansas City in 1950. Episode 2 left us on a cliffhanger, with Ethelrida’s father discovering the poisoned pie left by […] More
The latest season of Fargo is set in 1950 in Kansas City, Missouri, and begins with a brief history lesson from high-schooler Ethelrida Smutny, played by E’myri Crutchfield, summarizing Frederick Douglass. “From the moment our feet touched American soil,” she says, “we were criminals.” Her point is underscored through her repeated trips to the school […] More
In 1992, as many North American gamers experienced their first taste of the Japanese role-playing game Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo, economist Francis Fukuyama published The End of History and the Last Man. In his book, Fukuyama claimed the fall of the Berlin Wall signified an endpoint to the evolution of social […] More
Remember the old days of NES cartridge collecting? That golden age of gaming when the entire concept, hobby, and industry of video games was commonly just referred to as “Nintendo,” when games being cheaper to produce meant the burgeoning home console market was still fresh enough that mechanics and genres were still experimental. Fantasy and […] More
One of the most surprising video games I keep going back to this year is the charming and addictive Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Released on Nintendo Switch back in 2017, it didn’t come across my radar until the excitement of Animal Crossing: New Horizons hit my house, meaning an extra MicroSD card was in […] More
Here you'll find all collections you've created before.