Interview with Soft Blue Shimmer, Softcult at Mahall’s

WRITTEN BY Amanda Cook DESIGNED BY Jakob Roberts

Canadian band Softcult brought their “music for mall goths” to Mahall’s in Lakewood, Ohio on Friday, March 10 as a part of their first North American headlining tour. Along with them came fellow softies Soft Blue Shimmer from Los Angeles.

Before Softcult took the stage, Soft Blue Shimmer started the night off right with their alternative music that’s “here to make you think about stuff. Or forget about stuff.” The three-piece is made up of Charlie Crowley, Kenzo Cardenas and Meredith Ramond. They all had been part of other projects when they bonded over their shared interest in UK and Japanese shoegaze and dream pop bands. As a result, Soft Blue Shimmer was formed in 2018.

The name came from their love of cinema, where Crowley combined movie titles “Blue is the Warmest Color” and “Heat Shimmer Theatre” with a touch of softness. “It needed to evoke a specific enough emotion that still felt abstract and undefinable,” explains Crowley.

Soft Blue Shimmer’s music is all about the ideas of connection, loss and love. They also use their platform to write about what it’s like to struggle with mental health. “Music is such a good vehicle for these themes and conversations,” says Crowley.

Currently the band is working on new music, with hopes of touring more throughout the year.

The headliner of the night, Softcult, is described as a mix of grunge, shoegaze, dreampop and indie. Their music will easily take you from jumping to swaying to maybe even shedding a tear over their emotional lyrics. Between songs, lead singer Mercedes Arn-Horn took the opportunity to speak out about various social justice issues. As she put it, they’re “a band that wants to leave the world a better place than they found it.”

After the show, Arn-Horn stuck around to take pictures with loyal fans. Both the fans’ and the band’s dedication to each other shows that Softcult is accomplishing their mission to make the world a better place. They’re raising awareness about important issues through their music in a way that connects with people. The ability to create a community through music is a beautiful thing, and anyone who can do that is certainly improving our existence.

Softcult was formed in 2020 by twin sisters Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn. Their third EP, “See You in the Dark,” is set to release later this year.

If you’re looking for new music, check out Softcult’s latest song, “Love Song.” It’s perfect for setting a chill vibe. After that, listen to Soft Blue Shimmer’s “Chihiro,” which will bring the energy back up while keeping the mood going.

is Adaptation at its Finest

I wrote this article so I could convince myself playing the game is actually productive

The age of “The Walking Dead”’s nihilism is finally over, and a newer, far more disturbing yet hopeful faux-zombie tale has rightfully taken its place — “The Last of Us”. The pop culture collective image of a stereotypical shambling, rotting corpse has been replaced by the horrifying (and believable) concept of the crazed climate-induced fungal brain infection. With the first season of the hit HBO show coming to a close, fans old and new have been raving over how the series deftly handled the transition from video game to screen, with many saying that it has finally broken the video game adaption curse.

The charm of “The Last of Us” boils down to the fact that it simply knows how to adapt the original content well. The art of adaptation requires a deep and tasteful understanding of a story’s original medium as well as the medium that it is being transferred to, and the creators of “The Last of Us” certainly deliver.

The Art of Video Games

As a medium for storytelling, video games allow for in-depth, immersive experiences. Utilizing the art form of video games is about exploiting this immersion – specifically the fact that the audience will be able to identify with the protagonist far more than in other mediums. Many games, such as “The Witcher III: Wild Hunt”, “Life is Strange”, and “Detroit: Become Human” use this to their advantage by emphasizing the importance of choice. These games consistently push the player between a rock and hard wall, forcing them to make difficult and engaging choices in order to explore thematic consequences and tensions.

WRITTEN BY Cara Robbins

DESIGNED BY Jakob Roberts

The Last of Us doesn’t utilize choice-based structure to build themes in the same way as some other games. It follows a strictly linear narrative path, and the choices that the player makes in Joel and Ellie’s shoes doesn’t affect the outcome of the story at all. But that doesn’t mean the player isn’t forced to make choices— take for example the early-game choice Joel must make to either kill a recently Infected (but not yet turned) man begging to die, or save his precious ammunition. There is a constant moral and psychological pressure on Joel (and the player) to choose who to kill and who to spare. The emotional and thematic impact this creates is palpable– Joel has the autonomy to feel the moral consequences of his choices, but all the while he and Ellie are dragged deeper and deeper into unavoidable peril in the future. Nothing they do can stop what is to come, no matter how hard they try. This stark game mechanism reflects beautifully the cruel dog-eatdog philosophy in The Last of Us— when you have to do horrible things to save the people you love, you feel that you have no other choice left on the table. This backbone to the gameplay also provides a stable foundation for a series adaptation to take place, avoiding the multiple plotline pitfalls that series like “The Witcher” have to deal with.

What Changes

Long-form narrative structure in film and television, on the other hand, is not granted the same automatic immersion in the world. In video games empathy is an automatic given because you have no choice but to see the world through the protagonist’s eyes. A television series has to fight for it— constantly giving the audience a reason to feel strong emotions about the fictional world created and to care about the struggles and goals of the protagonist. “The Last of Us” handles this challenge by heightening the visuals and worldbuilding. Each location featured in the video game is brought to life with more charming and cinematic scenery.

In order to garner more involved empathy for the protagonist, Pedro Pascal (awooga) as Joel is slightly softer than the game’s version. We see him cry, express his fears, and bond with Ellie far more and far earlier than in the game— take a look at the difference between the conversation that Joel has with his brother Tom about taking Ellie without him, featured in episode six, “Kin”. Pascal’s softness doesn’t mean that he can’t encapsulate the cold resolve that makes Joel such a stellar antihero— he can more than deliver on Joel’s worst, most controversial moments.

In addition, the television series format allows for the narrative to wander and follow other stories for a bit. Characters who in the game serve as little more than plot functions and antagonists are far more developed, with ripe personalities, cultures, goals, and ambitions— emblematic in Kathleen, the leader of the Kansas City resistance group featured in episode five, “Endure and Survive”, who was barely more than a killable NPC in the game. Audiences can watch Tess’s gut-wrenching and bittersweet last moments, they can see the first woman to study cordyceps in the early days of the pandemic, and they can learn about Ellie’s birth story and the tragedy that befell her mother.

And of course, any analysis of “The Last of Us” wouldn’t be complete without dedicating some time to the stand-out episode of the series, “Long, Long Time”. Not only are some praising it as what could be the best television writing to come out of the year (an achievement, considering it debuted in February), it also marks the biggest deviation from the original plotline. In the game, Bill’s character serves as little more than a stereotypical mentor plot device— helping Joel and Ellie in his own sardonic way and offering advice on their path forward. In the series, he is dead before Joel and Ellie ever arrive on site. Instead, we get to see the entire post-pandemic lives of Bill and his partner Frank, who in the game was nothing more than a corpse, a note, and a few bitter remarks from Bill.

Nick Offerman embodies the paranoid survivalist Bill perfectly — and his tenderness and intimacy with co-actor Murray Bartlett is absolutely electric. Instead of watching Bill fight hoards of Infected in a demolished town, we see the slice of heaven Bill created for Frank. Their love is sweet, pure, and innocent. In a brutal and demolished world, they achieve the impossible of dying on their own terms: old, peaceful, and next to the person they love most. Audiences know why the Bill of the series chooses to continue every day — in the game, however, he becomes the antithesis of the theme. He has nothing and no one to keep him going. Comparatively, Bill’s character in the game feels weak, disjointed, and only there to serve as a plot necessity. He lacks the human touch that makes Joel and Ellie so easy to love.

What Stays the Same

When it comes to discussing adaptation, it is certainly easier to notice what changes — but the creators choose to keep the same is infinitely more important. At the core of it, what is absolutely essential to any good adaptation is that the heart of the story is not only preserved, but enhanced. “The Last of Us” delivers on this front. It shows what lengths people will go for the people they love, it explores what we cling to when the world goes dark. It asks the terrifying questions of what defines humanity, what grounds our identity, and if that identity is still intact when we lose control.

The scenes in the series that are closely recreated from the game are done so because they so perfectly encapsulate the heart of the series. The creators certainly knew that any attempt to change these specific sequences, like the fight between Joel and Ellie and the audience-favorite giraffe scene would disrespect the factors that make “The Last of Us” such a moving game in the first place.

In Conclusion…

At its heart, the reason why this adaptation works so well is because every single change made is done to heighten the ideological core of the story. Sam is deaf because it escalates how dependent he is on Henry. Ellie tries to heal Sam because it reflects her need to save the people she cares about. Riley’s story is expanded upon because it amplifies Ellie’s fear of abandonment. Joel admits to his suicide attempt because it shows what he has to lose without a daughter figure in his life.

Essentially, the main reason “The Last of Us” is such a phenomenal adaptation is because the creators clearly had so much love and respect for the original story. It has hopefully become a model in the industry for future adapted series, as expectations on quality have certainly reached an all-time high from audiences following the series’ success. Here’s to hoping that season two will do the same justice to the series with “The Last of Us: Part II”.