TN2 January 19/20

2019/20 ISSUE THREE January/Febuary TN2MAGAZINE.IE

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GAMES & TECH | games@tn2magazine.ie Sean Clerkin LITERATURE | literature@tn2magazine.ie Shane Murphy MUSIC | editor@tn2magazine.ie Naoise Osborne, Sophia McDonald SEX & SEXUALITY | sex@tn2magazine.ie Chloe Mant TELEVISION | television@tn2magazine.ie Ursula Dale THEATRE | theatre@tn2magazine.ie Larissa Brigatti ILLUSTRATIONS | illustrations@tn2magazine.ie ...

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Editorial 5 Dadaism, Dali and Distortion 6 Sarah McAuliffe // Interview 8 Mythical Beauty Made Real 10 The A-Z of Fashion Trends that Defined the Decade 13 Films of the Decade 16 10 Films of 2019 19 Predictions for Cinema 2020 20 Five Meals for Under € 5 21 An Introduction to Table Top Role Playing Games 23 Pros and Many Cons of Backwards Compatibility 24 Games of the Teens 26 Six Ways to Faster Reading 27 No Authority // Review 28 Author Profil: Carrie Fisher 30 An Interview with Babylamb 32 Spotify and the Sharing of Music 34 The Five Types of People you Meet on Tinder 36 B(l)oom(ing) 38 The Witcher 40 Valtetines Viewing Recomendations 42 Rodrigo Ternevoy // Interview 44 2ooter 46

LAYOUT BY: Ursula Dale, Amyrose Forder, Sam Hayes, Connor Howlett, Sophia Mc Donald, Caroline O’Connor, Naoise Osbourne, Libby Phillips COVER ART BY: Cait Murphy TN2 is funded partly by Trinity Publications, and claims no special rights or privileges. All serious complaints may be directed towards chair@trinitypublications.ie or Chair, Trinity Publications, House 6, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Appeals may be directed to the Press Council of Ireland.

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Meet the Layout Team

Letter from the editor EDITOR Sam Hayes

editor@tn2magazine.ie

TN2 is in session and we seek to wrap up the last decade and ring in the new one, from formative films, to great games, and fashion trends, prepare for a throwback. Meanwhile, Hana Gallagher examines the relevance still enjoyed by 1920s art, Shane Murphy writes about the literary talents of the late Cathy Fischer, and Sean Clerkin looks at a huge challenge to the preservation of video games. Finally, right here and right now Larissa Brigatti talks to up and coming Trinity-graduate dramatists and Brazillian actor Rodrigo Ternevoy, Orla Brennan checks out the National Gallery’s current photography exhibition, and Niamh Muldowny has a guide to getting into the growing phenomenon of Role Playing Games. Hopefully in these trying times we can immerse you in the eternal human pacea of culture.

Sincerely,

Sam :)

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Dadaism, Dali and Distortion: 1920s art and design a century later WORDS BY Hana Gallagher

The roaring 20s have returned, and among Twitter’s cries for the comeback of elaboand Design rate parties straight out of The GreatArt Gatsby are a multitude of reactions to the new set of problems facing us in this decade. Political strife, rising sea levels and uncertainty of the future plague us all. As everybody knows, life imitates art and art imitates life, so upon the turn of the decade it is worth looking back on some of the art and design movements behind the most iconic imagery of the 1920s and their relevance to the present day. So where does the world stand a century on from the original roaring twenties? I have selected the four most noteworthy movements in visual culture during the 1920s, ranging from architectural design to political artistic movements.

1. Art Deco One of the most iconic design trends of the 1920s, the influence of the art deco movement can still be seen today, with many of the most famous art deco buildings still standing. Think of the Chrysler building in Manhattan, the Delano hotel in Miami, even Trinity’s School of Nursing and Midwifery. Rooted in modernism and featuring geometrical patterns and new metallic materials, this type of architectural design epitomises the idea of the Roaring Twenties. Art deco is associated with lavishness, splendour and modernity— a glimmer of hope from the past that now serves to remind us of former glories.

2. Bauhaus The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 with the aim of using an ideological approach to combine form and functionality in fine art. Asymmetry was favoured over symmetry, as was functionality over embellishment. Its principles of design are still followed to this day and are applied to virtually every corner of visual art— architecture, interior design, painting and sculpture. Given the success and incredible prominence of the Bauhaus over the past century, even despite the Nazi shutdown of the School in 1933, it is likely that this revolutionary approach to design is here to stay for the next century.

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3. Surrealism Derived from expressionism and with links to the Dadaist movement, surrealism is an artistic movement that pushed the boundaries of human consciousness. Surrealism is most commonly personified by artists like Salvador Dali. Surrealist imagery has a dreamlike, unbelievable quality, depicting scenes far beyond the realm of possibility. Outlined in the 1924 ‘Surrealist Manifesto’, the movement had roots in political, psychological and philosophical ideology, drawing from Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud’s theories regarding the human psyche. This seems very relevant to the new 20s. The current state Artanxiety and Design of the world, with all of its climate and growing tensions, is beginning to feel like a fever dream. Surely there is a place in this century for surrealism to make a comeback and remind us that all is not what it seems.

4. Dadaism Finally, Dadaism was a leftist movement that opposed manufacturing capitalism. In line with visual art’s role as a vehicle for political and social movements, it evolved into an artistic movement depicting things in a nonsensical and disordered fashion, drawing on elements of surrealism and, more often than not, manifesting visually through collage. Dadaist art is encapsulated by the works of those such as Max Ernst, Hannah Hölch and Hans Arp. Nowadays more than ever we are questioning our social, political and economic structures, just as the pioneers of the Dadaist movement before us.

Conclusion Tied together by the artistic world’s anxiety over the increasing industrialisation of society, the artistic trends of the 1920s share a primary aim— modernisation. From the glitzy new materials of art deco architecture to the unconventional methods and subject matters of the dadaist artists, the 1920s were a time of artistic revolution and the challenging of boundaries, exactly the type of spirit we would like to see reemerge during the 2020s.

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Sarah McAuliffe // Interview

A Moment in Time

at the National Gallery WORDS BY Orla Brennan It almost comes as a shock to hear that throughout its long history, the National Gallery of Ireland has never hosted an exhibition totally dedicated to photography. Now, more than ever, the medium of photography has proved to be an ever popular staple in gallery spaces. A Moment in time: The Legacy of Photographs is a breakthrough exhibition showcasing the modern, innovative and flexibility of the medium of photography. The exhibition is an all-encompassing overview of early American photography, showcasing a broad range of artists, subjects and themes. While the majority of the work stems from the 1950s and 1960s, there is work dating from as early as the first photographs of the 19th century. I talked to Sarah McAuliffe, a Curator behind the exhibition on her experience behind this landmark event. .

1: What was it like curating the National Gallery’s first photography exhibition - did you face any obstacles/challenges with the new medium?

It was an amazing opportunity to co-curate Moment in Time as photography and the history of the medium is a big passion of mine. As this was the first major photography exhibition at the Gallery we knew that this would be a prime occasion to underline our desire to credit photography with the status of an art form, which it so rightly deserves. Of course, an undertaking of this nature will be met with some challenges and queries. However, we have had a very positive response so far and have been pleased to see such strong support for the art of photography.

2: A big theme within the exhibition is social commentary and justice, why do you think photography is such an effective tool in capturing these themes?

While photography can be described as mode of representation like many other visual art media, it lends itself to the idea of freezing a moment in time and, in this way, it is accepted as an authentic document that, in the case of many of the works on display in Moment in Time, records a particular historic and/or socio-political event. Photography often allows us to look closely at details and to come face to face with a person, place, object or event. Thus, it is an effective method of foregrounding of theories, ideas, beliefs and issues that in a number of cases relate to socio-politics and justice. We see this in Moment in Time in the work of Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange and Lewis Wickes Hine, for example.

Robert Frank is best known for his seminal book The Americans, featuring photographs taken by the artist in the mid-1950s as he travelled across the U.S. on a Guggenheim fellowship. These photographs feature glimpses of highways, cars, parades, jukeboxes, and diners as iconic symbols of America, while simultaneously suggesting an underlying sense of alienation and hardship. Lewis Wickes Hine, a New York City schoolteacher, believed a picture could tell a powerful story. He quit his job to become an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. By 1920, the number of child labourers was reduced to almost half what it had been in 1910. Moreover, During World War II, the US government commissioned Lange, who had famously documented the effects of the Depression, to record the internment of Japanese Americans in so-called ‘Relocation Camps’. The resulting photographs from these projects bring specific episodes and moments in history to life and one can sense the emotion of the sitters and reality of the environments in which they live.

3: Many of the works presented come from a strong American viewpoint, how do you think Irish audiences will respond to this?

Moment in Time was originally curated in the United States. Deborah Klochko curated the show for the Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego in 2017. While it was on display in there, the show was divided into three parts namely, History, Chicago, A Collection of Photographs. When the exhibition came to us, we were very aware that we would need to make some changes to the San Diego layout, principally because themes, such as Chicago, would not be relevant to most Irish audiences. Thus, we decided to divide the 117 works on display into 5 themes that are interchangeable to a certain extent. These 5 themes are: Art Photography, People, Documentary, Urban and Nature. These themes come up time and time again 8

throughout the history of art and we felt that when applied to photography, audiences would be able to digest the works on display more easily. While a vast number of the works in the show relate to the United States and particular moments in American history because the collection was developed in the US for an American organisation by two American professionals, many of the themes and subjects addressed in them are universal from the development of the airplane to workers and passers-by in the city. In addition, the original curators of the Bank of America photography collection, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall, were eager to collect work by international photographers as well. Thus, you will see photographs of Spain by Henri-Cartier Bresson; motor car races in France by Jacques Henri-Lartigue; and cathedrals in France photographed by the British photographer, Henry Fox Talbot.

4: Why is the exhibition organised by theme and not by date?

When we looked at the show in San Diego and at the 117 works individually it quickly became apparent to us that this was not a survey of the history of the medium, but a unique and superb example of people who love photography and believe in its power to communicate ideas and efficiently represent people, places and events, coming together to elevate its artistic status and its identity as a collectable art form. Thus, we did not want to organise the works in a chronological order to avoid the risk of slipping into a historic survey and rather sought to celebrate each work for its particular artistic merits and think about how photographers working the early 19th and late 20th centuries were addressing similar themes and capturing related subject matter and how their work might look when placed side by side in the 21st century.

5: What was it like curating an exhibition with so many broad and varied subjects, with intimate portraits in one room to abstracted landscapes in the next?

Having the opportunity to work with a collection of photographs that is so varied in theme, subject matter and technique has allowed me to look at the medium in new ways and draw interesting comparisons between a number of works. For me, I think it is very important when introducing a medium that has not previously been looked at in great depth in the Gallery to encompass as many subjects and themes as possible, without overwhelming your audience. As this is the first time photography has been explored in a major way at the Gallery it was fortunate that the varied content of the works within the show allowed us to cater to a number of tastes and interests.

6: Do you see a modern growing interest in photography? - If so why do you think that is?

Yes, I think interest in photography is becoming ever more popular. This is due to a number of reasons, from the rise of exhibitions and museum departments devoted to the medium to the accessibility and efficiency of photography. The digital age we live in allows people to record life moments on their phones and other devices and to then post their snapshots on various public platforms from Instagram and Facebook to Twitter and Flickr. While professional and art photography is often situated at a more advanced level than this, the act of freezing a moment and thinking about angle and composition forms the basis for a growing interest in photography and how it developed as an artistic medium. It also allows people to relate to the medium on another level.

7: If you wanted audiences to walk away with one thing from this exhibition what would it be?

I hope that our audiences enjoy the wonderful content of the exhibition- it is so rare to have such an array of outstanding photographic works together in one space and I hope that when they walk away visitors will feel as though they have had an enlightening glimpse into the world and history of photography. In addition, I hope they go away having been touched by the power and beauty of the medium and can understand why we are striving to encourage its appreciation as an art form.

8: Favourite photograph from the collection?

That is a tough one as some of the most iconic photographs to date are on display in the five rooms and I really love them all. However, for many years I have admired photography’s ability to communicate aspects of society that may otherwise go unnoticed, and in particular the work of Robert Frank. I am thrilled that my favourite photograph by him, Trolley - New Orleans, is featured in the show. Shot just a few weeks before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama, Trolley—New Orleans exposes the rigid social order of post-war America.

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When putting together an outfit in the morning, it is easy to throw on a few pieces hurriedly without a second thought, but Annabel Kealy and her jewelry line aims to add an element of storytelling and magic to your everyday life.

Annabel, a Trinity student studying History of Art and Classical Civilization, creates jewelry inspired by classical art, history, and mythology, with wpieces named Vermeer, Venus, Endymion, and a collection with the names of nymphs. When talking about the design process, she says: “For me, the design of a piece and its name come hand in hand. For other collections, such as the Baroque, Gods, or Nymphs, I take a lot of inspiration from myth and art, I feel that using mythological names provides more of a narrative, and the designs are not unrelated, random bits I’ve cobbled together but have a significance and a thought process behind them.” However, not all the pieces bear the name of a mythic hero, but rather personal ones, saying that her earliest designs: “are named after my friends, the names FASHION and 1 the designs very much worked in tandem.

FASHION 2

Mythical Beauty Made Real: A Look at Annabel Kealy’s Classical Inspired Jewelry Line WORDS BY Gelsey Beavers-Damron For example, my ‘Flora’ design is a simple double disk with small rings which is sophisticated in its basic geometric shape but the five small rings hanging from it give it a little jingle. To me this worked pretty well for my smart and fashionable friend.” No matter the story behind it, each piece aims to bring a piece of history into the everyday. Focusing on gold and silver with small, but intricate details, Annabel’s jewelry tells a story that everyone can relate to. Her main designs are simple and direct, focusing on the timeless element of jewelry making, allowing the pieces to work for a wide array of outfits and events. They pair well with the most elegant of ball gowns as well as a casual pair of jeans. She says she tries her hardest: “not to make them overwrought, which I am very capable of doing. As much as I like huge and overcomplicated jewelry, what impresses me most about modern designs are the simpler and striking pieces, or something that’s ‘clever”.

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This radiates through her designs, as each element seems meticulously thought out with the average person in mind. One of her main inspirations, outside of her academic background, comes from artist Jennifer Crupi and her avant-garde jewelry collection ‘Ornamental Hands’. “She creates constructional jewelry that is designed to hold the wearer’s hand in specific positions, often in ways that mimic poses form classical artworks. These designs are completely impractical, with cuffs sprouting metal arms and chains to create suspended fingers, and is more art than fashion but I find them beautiful and fascinating.”

The A to Z of Fashion Trends that DeFIned the Decade From chunky trainers to cat-eye sunglasses, midi-skirts to crocs, style and fashion during the 2010s was defined by particular trends that took over the fashion scene. The fashion scene also became more accessible due to the rise of social media and a new, (and well deserved), appreciation for diversity and sustainability rocked the fashion world. Here, we identify the A-Zs of trends that defined the 2010s.

WORDS BY Bukola Veronica-Bolarinwa

A While she wouldn’t describe herself as fashionable, her work says otherwise. Each piece is extremely personal and thought through, since each is designed and handmade by Annabel.

Further, Annabel manages all her buying and selling and says that: “Jewelry making is one of those hobbies that I would be happy to do for the rest of my life.” Her one-woman operation sells through sites like Etsy and Depop, and she manages all her own business affairs, offering both recyclable materials for packaging and a thank you note in each package that can be replaced with a personalized note, if it is a gift for someone else. Although she says herself that: “I’m an absolutely terrible capitalist and awful at maths - so I would be very happy working as just a designer.” While she may not be the perfect CEO, her designs speak for themselves. Unlike jewelry found at large brands and fast fashion sites, Annabel’s is well made and unique, allowing everyone to feel like the god or goddess they really are, all worthy of a portrait hanging in a gallery. This personal touch makes them special.

They are not your average earrings or necklaces, but take an opportunity to blur the lines between art and fashion.

Annabel’s sums up her design philosophy best: “I think what I find most thrilling about Crupi’s designs is the way they broach the borders of art and fashion, because, really, that is what jewelry is - the line between art and fashion.” For jewelry that brings the fanciful and fabulous with a neoclassical

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thleisure

Athleisure allowed the fashion world to turn performance wear to everyday outfits. Athleisure allowed us to blur the lines between what we would wear to the gym and what is a fashion statement.

So, whether or not you were actually working out or just going to your 9am lecture, the athleisure trend allowed us to be both comfy and trend setting.

C rop Tops Everyone’s belly button was out during the 2010s because the crop top trend was one of the defining trends of the decade. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens and Zendaya were all rocking this trend. The crop top was so popular that even some men jumped on the trend.

E

-Girls

Okay, this is a trend that defined the latter half of 2019 but we can’t deny its impact, especially with the rise of TikTok. With the further rise of this platform, the ‘E-Girl’ style would definitely start to invade more of the fashion industry.

G ender Fluidity

The preconceptions regarding gender changed drastically during this decade and this is a change that’s more than welcomed.

Fashion took note of this trend and gender-fluidity regarding what to wear and how to wear it became prominent. Billy Porter and Ezra Miller were just some celebrities who were gender-fluid and bold with their fashion choices.

B

alayage

Balayage first became a thing during the 1970s but the 2010s saw a revival of this hair trend. We saw balayage all over the magazine, on the runways and every celebrity, including Chrissy Teigen, Alexa Chung and Rihanna rocked this style successfully during the decade.

D

iversity

The fashion industry and fashion in general is one of the few industries that has a part in every individual’s life, however, the fashion industry has not always reflected this. Diversity and inclusion is a ‘trend’ that’s taking the industry by force. Minorities are no longer staying quiet, but are instead speaking up during cases on exclusionand cultural appropriation. I put ‘trend’ in quotes because diversity in fashion shouldn’t be a trend, it should be a normality.

F lower Crowns

Flower crowns and festival fashion defined the mid and late 2010s and not just during festival season. The flower crown was a refreshing accessory that allowed the fashion industry to explore its more feminine side.

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H igh-Waisted Everything

Move over low-rise because high-waist basically took over the 2010s. Whether it be jeans, skirts or even shorts, the flattering high waist trend was and is a trend that defined the decade.

J eans (Mom)

Who knew that the skinny jean would quickly go out of fashion. The late 2010s saw a rise of the Mom jean.

Before this revival, mom jeans were seen as a thing of the past but with the revival of 90s fashion during this past decade, the mom jean made a comeback along with fanny packs, scrunchies and the Film ‘dad trainers’.

L eggings

Fashion was once a very closeted world. Only ‘It Girls’ and celebrities could be involved in the discussions. However, during the 2010s, we saw a rise of influencers and bloggers who basically opened up the fashion industry to the ‘girl next door’.

These everyday individuals who decided to take a seat at the fashion table made fashion more accessible, despite all controversy influencers always seem to find themselves in.

Speaking of athleisure, leggings were the defining athleisure trend of the 2010s. Leggings were a one-size-fits-all, laid-back approach to fashion but if you were looking for something more structured, the jeggings were the trend for you.

N o Fur

Fur, more like the lack of fur was another trend of the 2010s. As the ethics of the fashion became a more prominent issue in the industry, the use of fur took centre stage.

So many brand and design houses banned the use of fur and this is a definite step in the right direction.

P ink (Millennial)

I nfluencer Mania

S ustainability

T iny Sunglasses Sunglasses are supposed to protect our eyes from the sun but the 2010s saw a redefinition of sunglasses with the rise of tiny sunglasses that do absolutely nothing to protect you.

Film

Fever

U gg Boots

Ever since ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ debuted on E! in 2007, Kardashian fever literally rocked the world and we haven’t stopped hearing about the Kardashians/Jenners since then. Even the fashion industry has taken note of this since companies such as ‘Fashion Nova’ has been known to, on more than

Was it just me or did everyone and their uncles had some sort of Ugg boot in their closet during the early and mid 2010s. Well, love them or hate them, the Ugg boot made us feel cosy and warm and that’s something that’s welcomed in Ireland which is notorious for its temperamental weather.

M an Buns

Remember when ASOS came out with clip on man buns? Yes, that’s how big this trend got during the 2010s. Celebrities like Jared Leto and Avan Jogia rocked this trend and some people even went to the extent of giving their pets ‘man-buns’.

V intage Fashion The rise of sustainability in fashion also came with it a rise in second-hand shopping. Before this, vintage clothing was seen as something just for the grandparents but with concern for the environment increases, more individuals decided to shop in their local thrift shop rather than go to the high street.

W edge Sneakers

O nesies

Love them or hate them, wedge sneakers were a trend we probably all fell victim to circa 2012 to 2014.

Walk into Penneys during the mid-2010s and all you would have probably seen on the racks were adult onesies. The adult onesie was so popular that some people even decided to wear it outside of their homes, me included. There was just something about looking like an adult baby that was so popular. To be honest, I’d be happy if we brought onesies back.

Y oga Pants

X -ray (Sheer)

Sheer clothing was a trend that took over the late 2010s, especially in 2018 when the likes of Calvin Klein, Burberry and Victoria Beckham adorned sheer on their runways.

Yoga pants, another staple athleisure piece that defined the decade.

Who doesn’t like comfort?

Z Gen-Z

This isn’t a fashion trend per se but Gen Z will definitely have an influence on how fashion trends move forward for this new decade. The main priorities of a lot of Gen Z shoppers now include sustainability, diversity, inclusivity and ethical concerns. All of these themes will definitely have a strong impact on what direction the fashion industry will take during the 2020s.

Q uiffs

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I’m sure your grandparents have something to say about this trend but the 2010s saw a rise in distressed fashion.

Meghan Markle made a splash when she wore a pair of ripped jeans to her first official public outing with Prince Harry.

Not only were ripped jeans a defining trend of the decade, the distressed trend

Sustainability is one of the main trends that rocked the fashion world during the 2010s. With the fashion industry being one of the biggest contributors to the pollution epidemic, the move towards sustainability is a welcomed one and hopefully this trend continues to the 2020s.

K ardashian

Millennial pink is not just a colour, but a lifestyle. The upper half of The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Gallery at Sketch in London, Drake’s Hotline Bling cover art and almost every single piece of clothing during 2017 was adorned by millennial pink. No one knows where this colour came from but we can all appreciate how much of an impact it had Quiffs were the hair trend that during the late 2010s. defined the decade, during the early 2010s especially. Not only did men rock this trend, so did the women including Nicole Scherzinger, Diana Agron and Sienna Miller. I guess everyone just wanted to be a couple of inches taller?

R ipped Jeans

And that’s it! A decade of fashion trends! I’m sure that there are some trends we would like to forget and some we would like to revive, but despite our personal opinions regarding these trends, I’m sure that we can all agree that the 2010s was a decade worth remembering.

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Graham Kelly (Deputy Film Edit): Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017)

Films of the Decade

Personally, the films that have had the biggest impact on me have tended to be classics which retain their strength and influence across decades. One film this past decade which really stayed with me, that had this timelessness, was Wonder Woman. Whether it was seeing the success of a female director, or the formidable central character (Gal Gadot), the sublime set design and vivid visuals (which spanned decades and multiple lively settings): this picture instilled in me a hope that popular cinema might in the future be as diverse, engaging, creative, and as plainly gorgeous as this film was.

H ther Croghan (Chair of DU Film): The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012)

This is one of those rare films which improves upon the book. I cannot pinpoint which factor in this film gained it a lasting place in my cinematic memory – perhaps I watched it at a particularly transitional time in my life. It is a coming-of-age film which subverts the genre and features a show-stealing performance by Ezra Miller. This adaptation does not shy away from emotion, and it calls on its viewers to truly feel every emotion that it evokes, be it pain, love, heartbreak or happiness. One for the ages: infinitely relatable and memorable.

Cal Ó Muirí: Shoplifters/Manbiki kazoku (Hirokazu Kda, 2018)

Attempting to choose my most important film of the past decade was challenging, until it wasn’t. I watched some of my favourites, such as Phoenix (Christian Petzold, 2014), but when I returned to Shoplifters nothing else came close. It was FOOD 2 Shoplifters that introduced me to the cinema of Koreeda: his quiet style in which the camera rests and life unfolds in front of it; the marvellous actors he frequently collaborates with, and, most importantly, the incredibly human stories he tells. These are inspiring stories of imperfect people in an imperfect world. In the words of Lil Uzi Vert: sanguine paradise.

Food 1 Wds from our film edit Conn Howlett:

Peter Han: About Time (Richard Curtis, 2013)

Many of my generation went through the most significant developmental phase of our lives over the last decade, and many of us were influenced by cinema and the stories it showed to us. Maybe we fell in love (I did, persistently); perhaps we shed a tear (or several); we potentially even ran screaming from an image that had just frightened us beyond belief. Some of us also watched Cats (Tom Hooper, 2019) for some reason. Personally, this decade’s been very significant for my relationship to film: I watched my brother attend the Oscars in 2011; I began my degree in film; I accidentally heckled Nicholas Hoult at Venice for not being cast as Batman. I even saw Cats for some reason.

Centring on a young lawyer who uses his powers of time-travel to find love, About Time sounds like the kind of bargain-basement rom-com that belongs on the Hallmark Channel (its bafflingly-edited trailer does little to dispute this).

In tracking how Tim’s (Domhnall Gleeson) newly-discovered powers impact his relationships with love-interest, Mary (Rachel McAdams) and, most potently, his father (Bill Nighy), what writer-director Curtis instead delivers is a film of such irresistible warmth that any cynicism towards the premise immediately melts away. Reminding us to cherish the minutiae of the everyday, snot-level tears and generous laughs await. The cinematic equivalent of a hug.

The arrival of 2020 had me pondering over what my most influential film of the decade in which I became an adult was. This isn’t necessarily the best or my favourite film, but one that has lingered in my mind and body. Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler, 2013) is mine for the reason that, when I first watched it, I couldn’t move for 15 minutes after it had finished. This film showed me the emotional power of cinema, and I, for the first time, began to consider the techniques used by filmmakers to evoke such emotional resonance and empathy from their audience. I had never had such a physical reaction to a piece of art before.

The piece that follows is a selection of film-fanatic Tn2 Film writers’ picks, some inspired to pursue a career in film by their choices, others swept away by their emotional resonance to a film, and some a little in love with Florence Pugh and/or Richard Curtis. Thankfully nobody chose Cats. – Connor Howlett (Film Editor)

Sam Hayes (Edit in Chief): Ha y Potter and the D thly Hallows: Part 1 (David Yates, 2010)

This film has never left me. It was creepy, dark and a slow burner. My experience was visceral; I first watched it before I really started to consider media critically. I remember feeling Harry’s loss when Dobby died, Ron’s discomfort when he fought the horcrux, and wonder at the animated fable of the eponymous Deathly Hallows. The moment that stands out most to me however, was Harry and Hermione’s dance as an all important glimpse of humanity in the midst of this tough grind. The range of emotions this film induced was something I had not quite experienced before, and sitting on the cusp of adolescence, it was not insignificant. While it may not be my favourite, it was certainly formative.

Molly Don ry: Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)

I went to see Lady Bird on my 19th birthday during 6th year, and at a time in my life where everything seemed to be up in the air, it was the perfect film to bring me back down to earth.

As well as being a technically beautiful film with an amazing cast, there is something so relatable about how Gerwig presents Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) and her life in Sacramento. It was a story that I know well, but had never seen on the screen and I connected with it in a way I haven’t with other films before. It is timeless and I know that it will always be an inspiration for me as a filmmaker.

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James McCl ry: Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

Midsommar has been described by its director as both a fairytale and an allusion to The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), neither of which could ever have prepared me for the experience of watching this bizarre and brilliant film on a fateful Sunday morning six months ago. The sensation was equal parts traumatic and transcendent; this was the film that completely changed the way in which I appreciate not only horror films but the entire medium of cinema.

The novel ways in which Midsommar masterfully manipulates both its colours and characters to horrify is genuinely groundbreaking to an extent I had thought to be no longer achievable, which is one of the many reasons why it has inspired me more than any other film to pursue a career in filmmaking.

Grace Kenny: X+Y (Mgan Matthews, 2015)

This is a personal favourite film from this decade, since it is a masterpiece in portraying Autism Spectrum Disorder on screen. From subtly depicting sensory struggles through use of overwhelmingly vivid lighting, to featuring two Autistic characters, who have almost polar opposite experiences of the disability, X+Y perfectly captures many aspects of life with Autism. In 2015, this was the only love story I’d heard of between an Autistic person and a neurotypical person!

However, I do criticise the stereotypes in the film – both Autistic characters being male and being mathematical geniuses. It also boasts an impressive cast of Asa Butterfield, Sally Hawkins, and more. Even better: the film is based on a true story!

Johan s Black: Twin P ks: The Return (David Lynch and Mark Frost, 2017)

Scripted and filmed as an 18-hour movie, Twin Peaks: The Return continues 25 years after the events of the original show, re-imagining the dreamworld of Laura Palmer that I and many others had come to revere. Neither television nor cinema, co-writers Lynch and Frost deliver a unique, surrealist hybrid of the two, inviting a new reception to its content and Quixotic, open-ended visions. Twin Peaks is a constant source of inspiration to me, and The Return (which, in many ways, I consider to be greater than its original) is both a final, long goodbye and capitalisation of the decade.

Mia She y: Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Christopher Nolan’s Inception perfectly encapsulates a departure into the uniquely 2010s decade of cinema, and, or me, inspired my great passion for cinema. It balances the themes of memory and nostalgia but also forthcoming spectacle and attraction through its still sophisticated special effects on a fine line. That ultimately gives it the ability to move seamlessly through the years while still remaining a brilliant film, almost untouched by time and increasingly boastful special effects.

Joey Fanthom: Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

This was not a film I was anticipating. I had heard positive reviews from its Sundance debut, but I went into it without much expectation. The film absolutely floored me. A beautifully told story of first love and heartbreak, it features two outstanding lead performances from Timothée Chalamet andArmie Hammer against the sublime backdrop of the Tuscan countryside, all set to a cracking soundtrack including two memorable original tracks from Sufjan Stevens. However, it is not the romance that spoke to me on a personal level, but the relationship between Chalamet’s Elio and his father (Michael Stuhlbarg). A quiet observer throughout the film, this support and understanding of his son is summed up perfectly in a touching, heartfelt monologue towards the film’s end. Delivered with an understated warmth and empathy, it is one of the great moments in recent cinemaic history, bookending as my most personally-affecting film of the decade.

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FILMS of 2019 WORDS BY Johannes Black

10. 1917 (Sam Mendes) 1917 is a welcome comeback for its director, Sam Mendes, whose recent contributions to the James Bond franchise neutered any creative reach. Together with his regular cinematographer, Roger Deakins, the two craft an immersive, single-take quest in the tradition of Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) and Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972). w 9. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins) Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk resumes the visions of his 2018, sophomore feature, Moonlight, a companion study in passion and longing. Jenkins’ work is remarkable for its aural landscape, texturing Nicholas Britell’s cello-laden score with soft, whispered voiceovers. A callback to the romantic odes of Wong Kar-wai and Douglas Sirk.

8. Sunset (Lázló Nemes) László Nemes’ follow-up to his Oscar-acclaimed debut, Son of Saul (2015), traffics the incendiary events preceding WW1. It is an otherworldly picture, one that captures the final, nightmarish scenes before the toppling of a society.

7. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach) Marriage Story borrows from the Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979) crises of adults fighting a civil war over their marriage. Tuning elements of his filmography, Baumbach is again concerned with familial ties and the polished, New Yorker-esque shine of everyday people. Randy Newman’s animated soundtrack lends softness to the remains of the day.

6. High Life (Claire Denis) In a recent interview, Claire Denis recalled how on the set of Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) she endangered her life wading the Rio Grande: “I am a good swimmer but the [river] is much stronger than I am.” High Life engages with a similar, undaunted current, an elliptical space tale of convict youths and their bruising, scientific harvest.

5. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) Commenting on The Smiths song ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’, Russell Brand imagined Morrisey’s romantic ode as a tragedy of the boy staring at his bedroom ceiling, alone and uncertain. Eighth Grade continues such a narrative, adolescent struggles projected into the contemporary age of social media. One of the most soulful and endearing debuts of this year.

4. The Irishman (Martin (Martin Scorsese) Scorsese’s The Irishman completes a trilogy of epic, decade-spanning works, beginning with Goodfellas (1990) and followed by Casino (1995). Unlike the previous two, The Irishman is a richer piece of cinema, working confidently within the style and conventions that Scorsese and his crew have refined throughout a lifetime.

3. Border (Ali Abbasi) Border is a post-Edenic pastoral. Tina (Eva Melander), a border officer in the Swedish countryside, belongs to an unseen subspecies, a modern Prometheus who is forced to reconsider her existence with the appearance of a stranger. Cronenbergian body-horror is married to an intelligent study of what it means to be an outsider.

2. Monos (Alejandro Landes) William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is lifted into the remote, Colombian mountainscape as a commune of teenage guerrillas awaits their mission above the clouds. Monos is an evident successor to the pandemoniums of Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski (notably Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)), telling a story of visual and psychological complexity.

1. Burning (Chang-dong Lee) In the city of Paju, South Korea, a triangle of relations is formed – unemployed youth Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in), his schoolfriend, Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), and the wolfish, Gatsby-esque figure of Ben (Steven Yeung). One day, Ben admits a private habit of pyromania, that every two months he burns down a greenhouse for “play”. Such ambiguities lie at the core of Lee’s patient thriller, unanswered questions that surround what it means to hold yourself responsible for your own violence.

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Predictions for Cinema in 2020

Five Meals for Under €5

WORDS BY Connor Howlett The landscape of cinema is changing. With the Me Too campaign bringing about significant progress to the way that studios and film productions are being run, as well as increasing the diversity of cinematic representation, a lot of this change is positive and exciting for the industry. Here are my predictions for the year ahead, based on what I have observed both onscreen and off: The Reckoning: Harvey Weinstein, disgraced former producer powerhouse of the Weinstein Company, is finally on trial after more than 100 women reported cases of sexual misconduct, with the trial focusing on two women’s accusations, one of which is rape, and the other a criminal sex act. The allegations gained much coverage in the international press thanks to the tireless reporting of Ronan Farrow for The New Yorker and Jodie Kanton and Megan Twohey for the New York Times, so it may surprise you to hear that Weinstein is yet to be punished legally for his actions. The world is watching how this case will be handled, and the hope for its potential delivery of justice will be a landmark moment for victims of sexual assault, showing that powerful men can no longer get away with such obscene criminality, least of all by forcing their victim to sign an NDA and threatening them into silence.

Academy Shake-ups: It wasn’t that long ago that the Oscars faced the Oscars So White controversy – only five years ago – and we were promised that such unrepresentative lack of diversity would no longer be an issue for future awards. Yet, this year’s Oscars directors are all male and almost all white (if not for Bong Joon Ho). The BAFTAs also faced a similar controversy, which is a ridiculous state of affairs in a year of such strong women filmmakers as Greta Gerwig for Little Women, Alma Har’el for Honey Boy, and Jennifer Kent for The Nightingale. Bafflingly, the BAFTAs even released a statement, expressing their “disappointment” at the lack of diversity in their own awards. This seemingly never-ending cycle of snubs for excellent diverse art needs to be addressed; whether the methods of voting change, or the people allowed to vote in them, it seems inevitable that the academies are going to have to address this problem very soon - or lose respect from the audiences they are supposed to represent.

Streaming Wars: With the launches of several of Netflix and Amazon’s new competition, 2020 will be the year of streaming. Will festivals such as Cannes, who banned Netflix from competition a couple of years ago due to their strict exhibition criteria, begin to embrace them? Venice certainly has, with Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019) and The King (David Michôd, 2019) receiving big premieres at the end of summer. Toronto, London and Berlinale have also embraced these films from streamers, which gives a unique opportunity to see these cinematic films on the big screen with high-profile premieres. It is unclear as to whether Netflix intends to extend the cinematic runs of its big-hitters, but due to the success of The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019) and Marriage Story in the cinema, the audience demand is certainly there.

Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Peacock, Quibi, Apple TV+, BritBox, and more, are all joining the battle for the title of Streamer Supreme. With an already over-saturated market of content, not all will survive. It’s definitely going to be bloody (and hopefully a good watch).

The End of the MCU’s Golden Age: It seems unreasonable for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to achieve the heights of Avengers: Endgame (Anthony Russo and Joe Russo, 2019) so soon after becoming the biggest film in the world, and Spider-Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019), and the upcoming Black Widow (Cate Shortland, 2020) seem to suggest that they’re not aiming for such ambitions just yet. However, with the recent loss of Scott Derrickson from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it seems like they’re falling out of favour with creatively bold and interesting ambitions from their filmmakers. I would say I have faith in Kevin Feige, but he is, after all, under the influence of Disney, who made similar mistakes with the Star Wars franchise, and look at what they did to create the pathetic Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams, 2019). Their greedy handling of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man almost lost them one of their most beloved Avengers, and I cannot imagine that the deal between Sony and Disney is going to last much longer beyond the current appeasement deal of a couple more films. Now that Morbius (Daniel Espinosa, 2020) has pretty much been confirmed to take place in the MCU (as shown by Michael Keaton’s Vulture in the trailer, and graffiti of Spidey with

the word “murderer” sprawled across it), we also have that hot mess to look forward to. At least the next Venom is being directed by Andy Serkis. Can the Disney+ shows, Deadpool, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four save the day? Maybe, but any development of these productions is still very secretive.

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Cheap and Spicy Pasta Arabiatta

Ingredients - chillis or chilli flakes €0.60, two garlic bulbs €0.79 or garlic granules €0.60, basil leaves €1.29, chopped tomatoes €0.89, penne pasta €0.94 - €4.51 (for a super cheap recipe use 50c tomato and onion pre-made sauce and add chilli) Heat the olive (or whatever alternative you have available) oil in a frying pan. Add the chilli flakes or finely chopped chillies and the chopped garlic to the pan.

Wait for approximately a minute, then toss in a handful of basil leaves, waiting for them to wilt in the oil.

Remove the garlic / basil / chilli mix from the heat and set aside. Add the chopped tomatoes to the frying pan, then re-add the mix.

Simmer for a minimum of ten minutes, until the sauce has thickened.

While the sauce cooks, boil your pasta in salty water.

Add salt and any other seasoning to the sauce to suit your personal taste.

Drain pasta, mix in sauce and enjoy.

Mushroom Fajitas

Ingredients - wraps €0.89, mushrooms €0.79, fajita mix €1.00, natural yoghurt €0.79 - €3.47 Coat the mushrooms in the fajita mix and fry in oil until cooked (add paprika, cayenne, onion powder or chillies depending on personal spice preference and stir).

Heat the wraps in the microwave for 1 minute and serve with natural yoghurt.

(Homemade salsa - cherry tomatoes €1.29, dill €0.83, garlic €0.79, lime (juiced) €0.35, chilli €0.60, salt and pepper) - extra €3.86 Finely chop the tomatoes, coriander, chilli and two cloves of garlic, then mix with lime juice and olive oil. If you have a food processor or blender use this without chopping the ingredients first, then drain the fluid and serve with your fajitas.

Cheese, Tomato, Mushroom and Ham Tart

Ingredients - jus roll puff pastry €1.55, tomato paste €0.36, mozzarella cheese €1.00, mushrooms and ham pieces €1.19 - €4.10 Alternatives for vegetarians / extra fillings - include mushrooms, sweet potatoes for €0.69 each, cherry tomatoes or red peppers for €0.49 each.

Using a fork to create your tart edges, fill a tray with your puff pastry.

Cover your pastry base with tomato paste or puree and bake on gas mark 7 for 10-15 mins.

Then fill your tart with mozzarella and mushrooms, laying your ham on top. Replace ham with sweet potatoes or red peppers if you are making a vegetarian alternative.

Cook the tart again for 10 -12 minutes. Sprinkle with seasoning - preferably oregano - and serve.

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Pitta, Cajun Chicken (or Falafel) and Yoghurt Dressing

Ingredients - pittas €0.36, chicken €1.50 (half of a €3.00 pack) - or Middle Eastern falafel €2.00, onion powder €0.69, mixed herbs €0.35, paprika €0.60, natural yoghurt €0.55, lemon (juiced) €0.30, garlic granules €0.60 - €4.95 (falafel is 50c extra) Mix your spices in a bowl to create your seasoning: oregano, thyme, paprika, chilli flakes, onion powder, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper. Keep a small amount of spices left over for your dressing later.

Cut your chicken into thin slices and coat in the seasoning you have mixed in the bowl. If using falafel, you can chop it or leave the falafel balls whole.

Throw your seasoned product into a pan with oil, stirring to ensure an even cook.

While cooking, you can make your dressing by mixing Greek yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic granules or crushed garlic, some of the spice mix and adding salt & pepper. For a creamier option, add a tbsp of mayonnaise or sour cream.

Fast Jacket Potatoes with Filling

Ingredients - one or two large baking potatoes €0.70 each, onion €0.49, shredded cheddar cheese €1.50, paprika, two garlic cloves - €4.78 to make two potatoes (for an optional spicy natural yoghurt dressing, mix chilli flakes and natural yoghurt - €1.15) This recipe cooks the potatoes in the microwave to reduce time.

Wash your potato(es), prick them all over with a fork so holes are made for steam.

Place your potato(es) on a microwave safe plate between two pieces of kitchen roll.

Cook for four minutes, turn over, and cook for four minutes again. Keep cooking in one-two minutes bursts until they’re soft all the way through; the skin should be wrinkled.

Once cooked, slice potatoes in half and scoop out filling.

Mix the potato filling with cheddar cheese, chopped onions, finely chopped garlic, paprika, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Rub potatoes with oil and sea salt and place in oven for approx ten mins, till skins are crispy and the filling is baked.

An Introduction to Tabletop Role Playing Games Often the conversation around role playing games is dominated by digital games, with names like Bethesda, CD Projekt Red and BioWare coming up again and again, however not all gaming needs to be done on consoles and PCs. With tabletop role playing games you can play with simply a pencil, paper, some dice, and some friends.

What is a tabletop role playing game?

Similar to RPGs such as Fallout, The Witcher, and Dragon Age, tabletop RPGs have you assuming the role of a character in a fictional world, but instead of this world being made by a team of developers, a tabletop RPG is in a world of you and your friends’ creation. In a mix between creative writing, improv, and a board game, you and your friends control different characters and work together to tell one story. To add an element of randomness, whenever the outcome of an action is up to chance, you’ll roll dice to see what happens. One player takes up the role of the Games Master (GM) who is responsible for controlling the world and any character that isn’t a player’s character (PC). Any monsters that the PCs have to fight, or conflicts that need to be resolved, will be moderated by the GM. Most games last between 3 and 4 hours and oftentimes the GM will string several of these sessions together to tell one continuous story. These stories that you build together can take place over weeks or years, depending on the scale of the story you want to tell!

Dungeons and Dragons

Call of Cthulhu

Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory has introduced most of us to Dungeons and Dragons, an RPG system based off of the high fantasy world of J.R.R. Tolkien, however, swords and sorcery fantasy is far from the be all and end all of RPGs. There are a multitude of RPG systems, each lending themselves to different kinds of stories.

Call of Cthulhu, currently in its seventh edition, is perfect for anyone wanting to run a mystery game with a heavy dashing of cosmic horror. Based off of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, this system allows for you and your group to take up the roles of intrepid investigators battling against the horrors of the unknown in a 1920s adventure. With the right GM this game can be a truly horrific and unsettling experience, or equally it can be a fun pulpy mystery with only smatterings of horror.

Wherever you fall on this spectrum, Call of Cthulhu is one to try.

Monster Hearts Maybe horror and fantasy are less interesting to you and you’d prefer to play something with a bit more of a personal slant. If you watched Twilight or other supernatural romances when you were younger, Buried Without Ceremony’s MonsterHearts could be for you.

MonsterHearts gives the opportunity to tell intimate stories of growing up and coming of age. Here you take control of a teenage monsters (think a werewolf, vampire, or ghost) as they maneuver the double challenge of being a teenager in highschool along with being a supernatural creature with powers oftentimes beyond your control. With the right playgroup

MonsterHearts will make you laugh and cry, and I can guarantee it will be unlike anything you’ve ever played before.

FATE If none of these systems are sparking your interest, or you want to run something far outside any of the pre-existing game genres, fear not! Generic RPG systems help you.

Perhaps the simplest one to understand that offers the most opportunity for depth is the FATE system. Available for pay-what-you-want online, this is one of the easiest systems to run and learn, needing only four six-sideddice. I’ve seen FATE used to run a ww fan game, where one of the stats was switched out for a magic stat and the system accommodated for it with ease.

Get Rolling WORDS BY Ursula Dale WORDS BY Niamh Muldowny

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Hopefully now you’re at least a little bit interested in rolling some dice and starting your RPG adventure! So why not gather some friends around the sitting room one evening, order a pizza, have a few drinks, and make your own adventure!

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The

Pros

and

Many Cons of Backwards Compatibility WORDS BY Seán Clerkin

With the new generation of consoles fast approaching, the question of backwards compatibility has once again come to the forefront of the gaming conversation. Sony and Microsoft have both confirmed that their new machines will be capable of playing current generation games. This is a marked difference from the launch of PS4 and Xbox One in 2013, when neither new system could play games created for their predecessors. It would seem that backwards compatibility has been included by popular demand this time around. Why though, are we as fans of the medium so transfixed by the past? Why are console manufacturers so reluctant to indulge this desire? To answer these questions I’ll present some of the arguments for and against backwards compatibility from both a consumer and manufacturer’s point of view

No recent trend in games irritates me more than the slew of remasters and remakes in the last five years.

Granted, remastered, remade and re-released games are not a new idea. This generation however, has seen players pay exorbitant prices for ports of previous-generation games. Call of duty 4: Modern Warfare, The Bioshock Collection, and Skyrim are just a few examples. Backwards compatibility would have obviated the need for these re-releases and saved consumers some amount of money.

One could argue the case for high-quality total remakes such as Resident Evil 2 and the upcoming Final Fantasy VII Remake, which could better fit the “re-imagining” label. Indeed the Resident Evil 2 remake was one of the most acclaimed games of 2019. However, there’s no way around the fact that these titles are re-treading old ideas. Tetsuya Nomura is one of my favourite game directors, and whas been hard at work on Final Fantasy VII Remake for the last four years. As much as I’m looking forward to playing the game, I would much rather have seen what new and original ideas he could have come up with in that time. Instead he’s been toiling away to modernize a story from 20 years ago. Perhaps backwards compatibility could have reduced the market for an overhaul of Final Fantasy VII even if by a paltry amount.

For backwards Compatibility

Against

Preservation

Hardware limitations

It could be said that if games are to cement themselves as a medium for artistic expression, we must make every effort to preserve history in the industry’s fledgling stages. The games industry is not even 50 years old. But try to go back and explore the works of its early years and you’ll soon see the unique problems the very nature of the medium poses for preservation. Most of the time, it’s not enough to preserve a hard copy of a game, or even its source code. Depending on the nature of its platform, the original hardware must be preserved as well. Want to play an obscure arcade game from 1986? Odds are you’re out of luck without the original hardware in working order. Preservation could be important in a historical context, chronicling the evolution of game mechanics and game-making techniques over time. We stand at a crossroads where an industry-wide commitment to backwards compatibility could make historical preservation of games easier. The games industry could, in future, have a more complete recorded history than any other artistic medium, but only if we act now.

In this age of patches, updates, and a trend toward an all-digital future, backwards compatibility could be essential in ensuring access to the original form of a game. Drawing on a comparison to the film industry, many Star Wars fans today lament the fact that the original 1977 film’s theatrical cut is not available in any modern format. Without a VCR and a rare copy of the theatrical cut’s final release, it is simply not possible to watch the film in its original form. Fans and film historians instead must watch heavily modified editions of the film. Similarly, Final Fantasy VII has had many re-releases over the years, all of them modified slightly.

No version of the game is perfectly identical to the original release on PlayStation 1. If the PS4 was backwards compatible with all previous generations, access to the original, unaltered version of the game would be much easier.

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Remaster Culture

Now let’s imagine a world where backwards compatibility is the norm. Every new console must be backwards compatible with all prior versions of that product. This could be reasonable for a company like Sony, whose line of home consoles have always used optical media and fairly standard controllers, but for the likes of Nintendo, this creates a problem. How would we arrive at an innovative console like the Switch if it needed a way to play GameCube discs and NES cartridges? How would you ensure Switch compatibility with the Wii without packing in a sensor bar and Wii remotes? Nintendo could employ a digital verification system like with Microsoft’s Xbox One backwards compatibility, but Nintendo’s unique hardware differences between generations could make this clunky and expensive for both the consumer and the manufacturer. Without backwards compatibility to fret over, hardware manufacturers are more free to innovate with their machines.

Facilitating backwards compatibility isn’t free. Manufacturers would need to have a division of engineers and QA teams dedicated to ensuring that older games run on newer hardware. In some cases, the cost of the hardware itself can skyrocket if it is to be backwards compatible. In the case of Sony’s PS3, the console cost a staggering $600 to purchase at launch due to the inclusion of additional hardware to facilitate backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 and cost the company $900 to produce. This price tag crippled early sales of the unit and it wasn’t until the feature was dropped and the price reduced that sales began to incline. It seems lessons were learned from Sony’s failure in the PS3 generation. The PS4 and Xbox One generation saw a shift toward more PC-like hardware that will make backwards compatibility as far as the current generation near effortless in the future. It is for this reason that PS5 and the next generation Xbox will be compatible with their predecessors. Going back any further incurs hardware costs and the cost/benefit curve for manufacturers swings against backwards compatibility.

Conclusion Ultimately, backwards compatibility is a feature that lots of consumers want, but that only a small fraction of the market will actually use. A handful of players buy a brand new machine for the ‘backwards compatible’ label on the box. Most consumers buy a new console to play the latest games. The games industry is just that, an industry, and in designing the next generation of consoles, platform holders will forever be bound not to what benefits the consumer, or historical preservation, but to what makes sense in business terms.

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Games of the Teens It’s something of a futile effort to crown one game as the definitive best of the past decade. We at TN2 Magazine are choosing to take a different route with this idea.

Games mean many different things to different people. For some, they’re a form of escapism. For others, they’re an exhilarating competition. Like other media, games can also have personal meanings to the people who play them. The past ten years have seen the medium mature more and more, and along with it, the players themselves. Here are our personal favourites from the 2010’s, along with the stories and memories they carry for us.

Fallout 4 - Sean Clerkin (Games Editor) Fallout 4 was announced ahead of E3 2015 at about 3pm Irish time. I know this because I nearly missed a 4pm job interview that day, because I simply had to see the trailer when it was released. For me, games are the best way to get lost in a world other than our own and this escapism began months ahead of the game’s November 2015 release date. I found myself intently reading the Fallout wiki for any information I didn’t already know about the game’s world. This made the game all the more engaging when I finally got my hands on it. I happened to be in the midst of a particularly stressful time in college. As a Science student, I would go to college early and come home late at night, in dire need of a way to wind down before doing it all again the next day. Fallout 4 was exactly the game I needed for this. Though it had the trademark bethesda bugs, a plot like a B-movie, and felt like it was made in 2007, simply inhabiting in post-apocalyptic Boston for a little while every night was exactly the break from reality that I needed. As DLC was released, I kept going back to the game time after time and I still occasionally play it today. Fallout 4 played a non-trivial role in keeping me going through my time in university and for this reason, is my personal favourite game of the decade.

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Danny Antcliff (Contributor) After an eight year gap between Red Dead games, Red Dead Redemption 2 was worth the wait for me. The experience is incredibly deep, with painstaking detail put into the minutiae of RDR2’s frontier world. The game succeeds in portraying several different fictional U.S states during the 1880s in one environment, whilst taking inspiration from real-life locales. RDR2 boasts an enormous free-roam map, allowing players to travel from snow-capped mountaintops to open plains with nary a loading screen in sight.

An open-world game would be lacking without the immersive characters, stories and soundtrack that have made Rockstar famous. The fact that RDR2 is a prequel to 2010’s Red Dead Redemption meant that the studio not only had to juggle the backstories of characters that players already know, but that they also needed to keep things interesting and unpredictable. With the introduction of protagonist Arthur Morgan, I feel that they nailed this perfectly. Making an almost limitless amount of personal choices in the story made Arthur feel like a protagonist tailored to my own preferences. Incredible voice acting along with intuitive game design solidified Red Dead Redemption 2 as my Game of the Decade.

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - Sam Hayes (Editor in Chief) So often video games are defined by marketing that boasts what a given video game brings to the table. New features or improved graphics are some common examples.

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is no exception with its physics engine and large world, I think what sets Breath of the Wild apart is what it says through subtraction.

The game does away with the masses of quest markers that litter one’s map in games such as Assassins Creed in order to ask the player to pay more attention to the landscape after scaling a tower. The score is minimalist, using fragmented versions of recognizable tunes in order to create a more reflective and sombre atmosphere. This all ties into the game’s main themes of rediscovery, reflection and redemption. When I played Breath of the Wild I was studying for my Leaving Cert, and while I was restricted in my freedom I felt as though escaping to the kingdom of Hyrule I was swept away, freed and empowered.

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Si x Ways to Fa ster R ea di ng WORDS BY Shane Murphy One of the most popular resolutions made by people at the beginning of the New Year is to read more than they did last year. Whether you are deciding to get back into old habits of tearing through books or picking up a book for the first time in years, reading consistently again can be tricky, but keeping a few tricks in mind over the next few months can make a daunting resolution a great deal easier.

Set your goal Deciding how many books you would like to have read over the next few months is useful in knowing not only how committed you want to be to your resolution but also how you need to prioritise it. Whether you want to read ten or 100 books, it is important to be specific. This should give you motivation to turn those pages and grant satisfaction as you come closer to your goal.

A number of variables can determine how many books you aim to read: college work can take over, your job outside college consumes more hours but the cost of constantly acquiring new books shouldn’t. The college library is accessible to all students and as a legal deposit for copyright, it receives a copy of each text published in Ireland, meaning (with few exceptions, mainly forgein language books) you are almost guaranteed it.

Protect your time Knowing how much you are wanting to read means you can know how much time you need to dedicate to this. It could be Monday evening, when you’re on public transport or an hour each morning when you wake, but setting that time is vital and protecting it even moreso. Making a habit of sitting down to read takes practise but staying loyal to that time at the beginning will make it easier to continue your progress over the next few months.

Audiobooks The time you set aside for reading each day can be measured to the minute with audiobooks.

Portable and accessible, they’re a much better option for reading more throughout the day, you can listen to it while cooking dinner, cleaning around or travelling from one place to another; especially since traditional reading can be more difficult for some while walking or taking the bus due to distractions.

Audiobooks are also much more accessible than they have been before. Thanks to platforms such as Audible and widely available CD recordings of books, finding your next read is easy enough, and it needn’t cost you much. Many well-known texts can be found in full on Youtube for free. The likes of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott can be found in full, divided up into chapters, on the site.

Multiple books Spicing things up is never a bad idea as staying engaged in your novel and resolution is essential, regardless of how many books you would like to get through. If reading a few books simultaneously is difficult to separate, then reading books of completely different timelines, literary genre or form, books about narrators of different backgrounds or texts written in different languages can help you differentiate one book from another without having you conflate them.

Bring a book wherever you go Multiple reads at a time means there is always a flavour of the day. Taking advantage of those days when you are enthused by a book should be a conscious choice. Bring the book with you and dedicate any time you can to reading it; keep it in your tote; in the glove box of the car; sitting on the kitchen table in plain sight. Always being in the presence of a book is not only a reminder to turn a few pages but also an opportunity. When there’s a delay in leaving the house or a moment of down-time, there’s a chance to get a bit closer to your goal.

Go small Falling off track is nothing to worry about, and neither is having a rocky start to your challenge.

If you are lagging on your progress, a good way to catch up on books to read is to go small. Poetry collections, plays or slimmer novels are a great way to spend an evening and to catch up on your goal. It is also a way to stimulate motivation to read. These little victories increase your confidence in achieving your goal and increase your appetite to getting more done.

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No Authority // Review: Writing from the Laureateship WORDS BY Shane Murphy The position of Laureate for Irish Fiction was created in 2015 by the Arts Council of Ireland. The Laureate’s tenure lasts three years and blesses them with the responsibility of being the public face of Irish literature in Ireland and further aseas. Alongside continuing their own creative endeavours, the laureate assumes residencies at New York University and University College Dublin for respective semesters. The Arts Council asked Anne Enright to be the inaugural recipient.

Enright is the first to be selected for this position by a country famous for male writers such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and William Butler Yeats. Moreso, the laureateship makes Enright more than the main authority of Irish Writing during her time, she is the consciousness of Irish writing. However, when asked by France 24 if she felt pressure holding the mantle of Irish literary heritage and future as the first laureate (she was asked specifically about the significance of the first laureate being a woman) she answered: “no. not really, no… the job of the writer is on the page.” This humour and evisceration of fuss is classically Enright, something her readers are quite familiar with from her wholesome, gritty fiction. She knows what is important and does not consider things which are not.

Quite like her France 24 interviewer, Enright is interested in her own role as a woman writer and the purpose of that distinction from just “a writer”. No Authority is at times a discussion of the female voice as much as it is a personal reconciliation with that given label. Should gendered distinction be separated from the work, or is it by ignoring the differences in gender do we ignore the differences in experience and by such, the differences in fate and challenges. This is the prominent question in Enright’s second lecture of the collection, ‘Maeve Brennan: Going Mad in New York’.

Enright opens the lecture saying: “Maeve Brennan didn’t have to be a woman for her work to be forgotten, though it surely helped”. Enright goes on, much like Virginia Woolf in her own lecture printed under the name A Room of One’s Own, to detail the fate of female writers and their obstacles to success in the twentieth century, specifically the biography and heritage of Maeve Brennan, whose substantial body of work is only recently being rediscovered and reread, decades after her death. Similar themes and points are made in ‘Call Yourself George: Gender Representation in the Irish Literary Landscape’ which succeeds the previous lecture.

Few remaining signed copies of No Authority are available in Books Upstairs and Hodges Figgis. Enright’s next novel, Actress, is out this spring. The current Laureate for Irish Fiction is Sebastian Barry who will continue to serve until 2021; the next laureate will be chosen this summer.

The writing of No Authority is, too, classically Enright, that means full of fabulous one-liners and laden with innuendos. The collection consists of six pieces, four lectures and two short stories all written during Enright’s three years in the position. The collection is bookended by a substantial introduction and afterword. While Enright feels no pressure dealing with the history and future of Irish literature, she engages in the rich modern context beautifully and responsibly. The collection opens with her lecture ‘Antigone in Galway’, which was first published in the London Review of Books. The writing gives a deep account of the mass graves discovered in 1993 in Tuam, Galway in the septic tanks of a former Magdalene Laundry. She recounts the research done by Mary Raferty into the muddy history of the laundries across the country and the stories of “people maddened by information, misinformation, lies and ledgers” since the attempts were made to hold authorities accountable for the crimes of the laundries. The lecture content is disturbing and dense.

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Author profile: Carrie Fisher: the Princess, Doctor and Writer.

WORDS BY Shane Murphy

Edna O’Brien once said if she could change anything about her life, it would be to make it “funnier”.

Through her life, it seems as though Carrie Fisher learned of O’Brien’s regrets, and was committed to a funnier life. She wrote: “if my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.’’ At the embarrassments and the tragedies, Fisher’s life was constantly stranger than fiction, moulding a woman so phenomenally talented and creative that it is impossible to over-appreciate her work.

Fisher’s biography, in many ways, starts before her birth. She took her place in Hollywood history the moment she was born, being the daughter of the famous couple Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, the former of whom she had a strong, though tiring, relationship with throughout her life. Fisher lived a life full of this rarified celebrity, going through decades which were so defined and severed from the others that it’s like she was an actress, playing a different part for a decade at a time. As she summarized herself, there were the Star Wars years, the years in and out of rehab and the years as a relatively more relaxed writer.

Fisher broke away from her parents’ light astronomically with the role as Princess Leia in Star Wars, introducing her to a crowd totally unaware of her legendary lineage. Leia became the role she is indubitably linked to, she said of the character: “she is me and I am her”. Nothing has outshone her work as the General, and throughout her career, she asserted that she did not desire to escape the character of Leia. That said, through her creative life, writing dominated her time.

Her success from Star Wars, though culturally significant, was not personally successful for long.

Fisher infamously sold the rights away to use her image in merchandising, making her shut out from any profits made by the Star Wars franchise. She had literally sold the replication of her face and body, meaning posters, Pez dispensers and figurines could be made without her permission and with Fisher left without a penny of profit. She called

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the act “vampiric”. Fisher began looking for other ways to earn money outside of the series which made her and which she helped make.

She decided “to make a living at writing,” and so she did. Looking at her creative corpus, she wrote more than she acted. It totals an impressive eight books, four novels and four memoirs, all of which became bestsellers, the latter publications becoming their respective genuine cultural and literary events. Alongside books, she became a script doctor, diagnosing and fixing film scripts, making them funnier and more accessible, similar to the job Phoebe Waller-Bridge was hired to do on the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die. However, she garnered little credit for these in the tradition of most script doctors. She recrafted the scripts of Sister Act, The Wedding Singer and Hook, saying of her profession as a script doctor: “I was brought on to do a particular thing, to make the love scenes better and the women smarter.”

By the time she began fixing scripts she was already a vetted bestselling author, writing about her own life, to varying degrees of historical accuracy. She wrote Wishful Drinking, a memoir made from the original stage show accounting her experience of addiction and mental illness and Surrender the Pink, a semi-autobiographical novel based loosely on Fisher’s short marriage to Paul Simon. Her memoirs and novels recount most periods of her life, especially so the dramatic experiences with addiction and fame she faced. In line with her commitment to turning her personal horrors into public humour, they all paint a funny view of things, distorting an expectantly terrifying image into something so ludicrous and zainy that your first instinct is always to laugh. Fisher started with the publication of Postcards from the Edge in 1987, a fictionalisation of Fisher’s life during and after her time in a drug rehabilitation centre. The book is written in two parts, beginning in first person with diary entries from the protagonist Suzanne Vale and then begins to tell Suzanne’s story from a second person perspective, detailing her release from rehab and the complicated relationship she has with her famous mother, inspired by Fisher’s own manic relationship with Debbie Reynolds. It was turned into a feature film starring Meryl Streep, for which Fisher wrote the script. The writing cracks with whip-smart humour and Fisher seems immune to sentimentality. The book opens with the lines: “Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares? My life is over anyway”.

The Princess Diarist, her final book to be published, shares diary entries written by 19 year old Fisher during the filming of Star Wars, which became a backdrop for her scandalous affair with her co-star Harrison Ford.

In both her novels and memoirs, Fisher takes tragedies and doctors them into comedies, healing hurts with laughter and taking on the brunt of the joke herself. She fuses life and art so brilliantly that they seem to be inextricably linked, and for her, they needed to be. Her work may not tell her own story exactly, but it speaks for her in so many ways, just as she wrote:

“I don’t want my life to imitate art, I want my life to be art”

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An Interview with Babylamb Pop trio, Babylamb have burst onto the scene with their powerful single ‘Bodyright’. The new release sees the queer band launch themselves at the ever-growing Irish music landscape. Taking time to sit down with our Deputy Music Editor, Babylamb (Tobias Barry, Laoise Fleming and Rían Stephens) talk about friendship and music, their move to London and the importance of queer representation in the music industry.

I want to say thanks for taking the time for this.

Rían: I want to say thanks, actually! Thanks for having us here.

I want to ask about how you guys met, your origin story?

Rían: When we were 18, we met.

Tobi: We met at a party. I thought he was very cool and then I also knew his Soundcloud. I also played one of the songs which was at the time, it was a few piano notes and I was like that’s so cool.

Rían: It was so funny because back then, Tobi was making fully produced songs. I was with a microphone hitting off pots and pans.

Tobi: For three years we both wanted to work together, be a band but we weren’t saying that to each other. We musically flirted instead, sending songs to each other. We would say “yeah it would be great to work together” and then there would be silence...

Rían: It would be three months and then “check out this one”. It was first year of college when we first started talking.

We didn’t even meet up. He sent me half a song and I made the other half. I thought “this is really cool”. Then, that was summer time and by the time December came around, we bit the bullet and said you know what, let’s make a band.

Then Laoise came into the band last year, making Babylamb.

Rían: Since Laoise came, it’s felt like this is it, this is the band Tobi: We are a band but we’re also best friends. That’s the thing I love the most about Babylamb is that we’re all great friends.

Rían: The most fun part is the moment you finish the song and you spend half an hour together dancing to it, just together in the room. They’re the moments where I’m like “That’s the reason why I’m doing this” is to dance for that half an hour with each other.

Congratulations on your first single ‘Bodyright’. You’re already being included in the Irish music scene with a mention from GCN and Nialler9. How were you feeling coming up to the release?

Tobi: Leading up the single, I was in London. Rían was busy with his degree. Laoise was working and we had the bare bones of it recorded for ages. We started ‘Bodyright’ in 2018. There’s a demo of it which was wildly different. When I went to London, I was mixing and producing this thing for about a month and a half pretty intensively every day.

Started the whole process of putting it to a distributor and the anxiety of that was really difficult. My whole brain was focussed on this song which was about to come out. It was maddening. You get these moments where you’re comparing yourself to everybody else. It’s also the first single so it’s your first impression. I got to a moment where people started listening to it and liking it. It was lovely to see what people said afterwards. People also made a point of saying the production was really good, which made me feel like I’d been listening to a different song.

Laoise: My relationship to ‘Bodyright’ was different to you guys because I came into the band in July-ish. ‘Bodyright’ was written a long time before that. It’s really cool because when I joined, it was one type of song and now it’s a completely different song in my eyes. It was really cool to see it do its own journey.

Tobi: For our Workmans gig, we were the support act and everyone in the front row knew the lyrics.

Rían: It’s fun and a bop. It’s also half freeing as well. You feel outside of yourself and present in yourself.

I was going to ask about the small project that you did leading up to ‘Bodyright’, Bodybits. You had a few people talking about body image. What inspired that and how did that tie into the single release?

Tobi: We decided on a video series because since the song was written over the rough space of about a year, there’s quite a few different ideas in it. I was thinking if we did a series about how we view our bodies and how that

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perception is distorted and changed by things like the media or cultural/social contexts. The idea was to get different perspectives, asking people to sit in front of a camera and film yourself talking about your body for a minute.

Laoise: People were really honest which is hard to get. It was really inspiring.

What are your plans for the future?

Rían: We’re going to go to London. Tobi’s already there, I want to go there. Laoise wants to go there. The plan is we’re going to move to London, work jobs and in our spare time, hang out together, make music.

Laoise: Once we’re all together, we’ll have a better opportunity of being able to be productive. Our future plans are to spend a lot of time together. We can take this to the next step. Ideally, we would love to do this properly all the time.

Tobi: What’s nice is that we have so much stuff written, the other stuff we have written is so much cooler and that’s all ahead of us.

Unfortunately, Dublin is lacking at the moment when it comes to the arts.

Tobi: There’s so many gigs happening all the time but there isn’t enough venue space for everybody and that’s a real issue. There’s piss all investment in the arts at the moment so it’s a big problem.

Laoise: That’s a big reason why we’re going to London because we all in some capacity want to work in something creative and there’s just not space for that here. There’s nothing for us here.

Rían: It’s not an option. I’ve lived in Limerick the last four years and coming to Dublin is not an option to work and live as a creative here. There are probably a lot of people around the country who are in the same position.

Tobi: I don’t think being a musician is hugely valued by the current regime, whether they’re still here in a month or not.

Historically, Ireland has been a place where creative talent has been encouraged and fostered. To make people feel nice is a huge service and to squash that out for not being important enough is a really big mistake.

Rían: I think everyone in the country values it but the government doesn’t reflect what the country wants and what they value which is so sad. They’re supposed to be here to understand what we want in our lives and to provide that for us.

What are your thoughts on the importance of queer representation in the music industry? There’s been a queer renaissance recently.

Tobi: What’s nice about the queer scene in Ireland is we support each other and all know each other. I’m always slightly scared about turning queer identity in another saleable thing. This is what frightens me. You send out your press release and you realise that’s what you’ve done. It’s a huge, important part of our lives but it feels skin deep.

Laoise: It’s not a selling point.

Rían: We’re more than that.

It’s such a fine balance because it’s such an integral part of yourself. The music industry has become this weird, consumerist centred place, you don’t want ‘we’re queer’ to become a marketing point but representation is still important.

Laoise: I think it’s cool that I find a lot of freedom and comfort in being able to say “I’m bisexual”. I wouldn’t have said that three years ago. I think it’s cool also to say this is what I’m doing and to see other people saying yeah me too. The more bi, gay and all the different types of identities we have in music, the easier it makes it for people. When you see someone like you doing something, you feel you can do that.

Tobi: Should you be called upon to discuss your queerness and your identity as a queer band, you should be as true as possible to your experience because that’s what will help somebody. It isn’t so much you trying to package a piece of yourself in a cynical way, for it to be sold to people, it is much more so an act of compassion and empathy and togetherness.

Rían: What I love about it is I can go to a party and wear a dress. I can dance how I want to dance and speak how I want to speak, we have that in our little group. What I love about hopefully our gigs is we can have that space in a larger sense with more people being able to come to it, to be together and being comfortable doing that.

Babylamb play Workman’s on 21st of February in support of UCD Volunteers Overseas.

WORDS BY Sophia McDonald 33

and the

SHARING

OF

MUSIC

The inception of music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, has made the initially strained relationship between the music industry and the internet navigable. These services are vital in enabling people to legally and legitimately listen to music in the online world. However, not only are such services vital for listening to music but they also act as a method of sharing music. Streaming giant, Spotify, have mastered this balance, and their functionality encourages a communal or shared interaction with music.

PLAYLISTS: MODERN DAY MIXTAPES OR GROUP PROJECT? Expressing admiration for someone by sharing with them a collection of songs is not a new concept. Indeed, the creation of physical mixtapes as gifts is a practice of the not-so-distant past that was eclipsed by the development of an online music world. The essence of the concept endured, however, and has found new expression in streaming services like Spotify where carefully curated playlists made with a particular person in mind have become the modern day mixtape. This is a romantic example of the ways in which Spotify enables the sharing of music, but Spotify also recognises that not everyone will have playlists made specifically for one set of ears. It allows every user to follow the playlists of friends and fellow users, incorporating these playlists into their own music library. This is an albeit less romantic, but still effective method of sharing music between users.

Moreover, with the ‘Collaborative Playlist’ function, Spotify even further boosted the sharing potential of playlists, by allowing multiple Spotify users to determine the content of a single playlist. In this way, song recommendations can be inserted directly into a friend’s playlist and can be played by them with no extra effort on their behalf. Essentially, this function makes the sharing of music instantaneous (a necessary characteristic in the era of immediacy).

FRIEND ACTIVITY - THE MUSIC EQUIVALENT OF CYBER STALKING There was a brief period where the use of Spotify became slightly too immediate, with users broadcasting their listening activity on their Facebook profiles, spamming newsfeeds with live updates, and arguably generating more frustration than user interaction.

Thankfully, this practice seems to have dissipated, and has been replaced with a more contained model of live listening updates: users can selectively follow friends and, within the desktop application, become privy to their live listening habits. While this function absolutely contributes to the vision of Spotify as a platform for spreading music, it is not necessarily a deliberate attempt by the listener to share a song. Rather, it relies on the curiosity of the listener’s followers to investigate their song choices.

DATA SHARING - ALL WRAPPED UP Spotify makes excellent use of its users’ data in order to both enable the sharing of music and to cleverly market its service - the most recognisable example of this is its annual ‘Spotify Wrapped’ feature. Released every December, this feature calibrates user data and produces a visual and statistical narrative of each user’s most fundamental listening habits throughout that year. In 2019, for example, it presented each user with a breakdown of their favourite genres of music and a playlist containing their top songs of the year. Spotify has optimised the shareability of this function, and with great effect, as users flood their social media channels with their personalised data. Last year, the feature was at its most sophisticated yet, complete with an inbuilt story-like interface, resembling Instagram or Snapchat. This is one of the app’s most effective features, generating both user gratification and general curiosity about the music to which other people listen, thus creating the ideal environment for sharing.

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ALGORITHMIC SHARING - YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE...

The ‘Spotify Wrapped’ feature exemplifies one of the ways in which Spotify puts its user-generated data to use.

However, data serves another very important function for Spotify, allowing the streaming service itself to actively recommend music to its users. Spotify relies on the data it gathers on its patrons’ usage and listening habits to compile individualised playlists, such as each user’s ‘Discover Weekly’ playlists, updated every week with a host of algorithmically curated songs. Spotify users are also treated to their own ‘Release Radar’, a playlist regularly updated with new songs from musicians in which the user has previously shown interest. And this is just the tip of the iceberg: the app contains a whole ‘Made For You’ section populated with such playlists, from daily mixes and daily podcasts, to a collection of the songs the user has had on repeat. Spotify’s algorithmic music recommendations appear as if suggestions from real life friends. By taking advantage of this less traditional approach to music-sharing, Spotify are keeping up to date with the rapidly evolving music industry and technological climate. With thousands of new releases daily to the app, one doesn’t need to comb through them to find what they’d like - they do it for you!

“By taking advantage of this less traditional approach to music-sharing, Spotify are keeping up to date with the rapidly evolving music industry and technological climate.”

Emerging from the above is an image of a streaming service that succeeds in providing novel ways in which its users can share music with each other, while also sharing music with its users by generating individualised music recommendations. The ability of Spotify to act as a music sharing platform is driven by the incorporation of social features that allow users to interact with each other in a streamlined fashion, such as collaborative playlists. Before Spotify, one of the predominant methods of sharing music on the internet was to trawl through YouTube videos and copy and paste their links to a friend. And, admittedly, while this was an effective method of passing on a great tune, it lacked the sociality that is now establishing itself as an inherent characteristic of sharing music online thanks to services like Spotify.

WORDS BY Caoimhe White 35

The Five types of people you see on tinder

2. The Person with a Dog How do you know that someone of Tinder has a dog? They'll show you. (Mostly) everyone loves them and if you're lucky enough to have a dog, then you're doing well. When you first start using Tinder, one of the first things you will notice is how the app has given people a platform to showcase their dogs in order for a swipe right. At first it's cute seeing all the dogs, but after a while you become aware of the bait that's being presented to you.

3.The Faceless Torso Going to the gym is a great way to keep fit. It’s fun, and there are ample facilities to use. A lot of people go to the gym, however, I’m not talking about a lot of people. I’m talking about those profiles you see where there is a six pack and nothing else. It begs the question do people actually swipe right on these people? Bonus points for no bio.

Tinder is an app with a simple premise; you either swipe right or left depending on whether you like the person you’ve been presented with. In my opinion, it’s not really a good or a bad invention - it just is. However, there’s a vast array of people you come across and I’m here to tell you all about them as justification for why I spent an hour on Tinder in the Lecky.

1.The '25' Year Old Personally, I find it quite difficult to tell a person's age. I've met people who I've initially thought were my age who turned out to be younger or older. Although, bad as my age predicting capabilities are, sometimes it's glaringly obvious that someone is not the age they are pretending to be. This comes up a lot on Tinder. You'll be swiping through someone's pictures and then look down at their bio to see that they've put their age as 25, when they are most definitely barely 18.

Linking the Facebook you made when you were under 13 to your Tinder has its drawbacks it seems.

4.The One with Road Frontage To some of you, the term 'road frontage' might mean nothing, but to those of you who do know what it is, I can guarantee you have one mental image in your mind. Think Bulmers, bootcut jeans, a plaid button down shirt and one hell of an accent. In Dublin Tinder's defence, not many of these profiles appear on the stack, but every so often, you strike gold.

5. For One Night, and One Night Only Tinder has greatly influenced the rise of hookup culture. You can very easily match with someone, have sex, and then never have to look them in the eye again. This is absolutely fine and more power to the sex positivity movement, however, Tinder is not just centred around hookup culture, and many people form long term relationships from it. That's where these guys come in. Picture this; you've matched with someone attractive who seems genuinely, nice and you think to yourself 'wow, this person seems cool'. Then they ask you to come out. It's 2am and you're lying in bed, not a chance.'But I'm only here for one night' they persist.

WORDS BY Chloe Mant

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B(l)oom (ing) WORDS BY Larissa Brigatti What are TCD Drama graduates up to? Some people went straight to further studies, traveling, theatre supervision and management, creating their own companies and theatre-making… I recently talked to Grace Morgan, a 2018 graduate who is part of a new theatre collective founded by William Dunleavy, Morgan and Laoise Murray called tasteinyourmouth. Their new show will be in The New Theatre from the 21st—24th. Check it out and support your artist friends in 2020!

L: What is it about?

GM: B(l)oom is about two women - one is attending her sister’s wedding at Powerscourt Hotel and the other is working at that wedding - and their involvement in an appalling natural disaster/supernatural attack on Dublin city. The exact nature of their involvement is unclear, whether they are accidental catalysts in this disaster or knowing agents of the destruction is never made explicit. They journey through the greater Dublin area from Powerscourt down the M11 through Donnybrook and into the city centre, ending on O’Connell bridge. In a way, I suppose, it’s like a really twisted girls’ road trip.

L: What’s the aim/contemporary relevance?

GM: We were inspired to create this piece by a number of things. Firstly, the wanton destruction of buildings and landmarks in the play can certainly be seen as a response to a city which is currently filled with new construction and exclusive developments. Being an artist (that is, being a professional child), you feel an overwhelming impulse, once something shiny and new has been built, to tear it all down and start over, and I think that’s the job of an artist: to constantly be interrogating and reimagining the state of things, even when they appear to be going well.

We felt that this piece allowed us to enact the kind of frustration we saw amongst our peers, particularly among young artists who feel that Dublin is becoming a city which no longer serves their interests. The destruction undertaken by these two women feels like an act of reclamation, a way of regaining ownership over a city which seems to be in thrall to corporate entities. In addition, the fact that the two characters in this piece are women allows the a udience to see their actions as ones of feminist defiance in the face of patriarchal structures (both physical and ideological).

Finally, Ireland is, thankfully, largely free of severe natural disasters or terrorist attacks and it often feels false as creators to talk about events in other countries of which you have no experience, so we thought the best way to respond to these awful things happening around the world was to bring them home.

L: Goals/inspirations of the company?

GM: We are a collective of young theatre artists founded by William Dunleavy, Grace Morgan and Laoise Murray. The three founders have a writer/director/actor dynamic, although we all wear different hats at different times. We want to create new, experimental work in a collaborative context. Our aim is to deliver visceral live experiences that leave a taste in your mouth (that’s where we got the name). You may not necessarily like everything we do but we hope that a line, an image, a moment will stay with you long after the lights go dark. That’s very important to us.

We are inspired by a variety of artists and art forms and we are eager to create multi-disciplinary work that brings together theatre, dance, music and performance art. We each have our own particular influences, but we are all heavily influenced by contemporary postmodern practices (mostly originating in Central Europe) and the Irish avant-garde scene.

L: The collaborative process?

WD: This piece has had a long road to completion. It was originally presented in 2018 (a whole other decade) in a much shorter version (it was only about half an hour long originally). We then rewrote and redeveloped it in preparation for this production. With this piece, I usually wrote something and then brought it to Grace and Laoise and they’d suggest changes and cuts and basically tear it to pieces. Grace and Laoise starred in the original showing back in 2018, but Grace is directing this time. Having performed in the piece, I think Grace has a unique insight into how the show works, which has been useful for her replacement: Heather O’Sullivan. Heather is an old friend of ours and we’ve all been dying to work with her so we were delighted when she agreed to be part of this show. They make an amazing duo.

Another major inspiration for this play was the proliferation of pieces we have seen over the last few years which have referenced notable Dublin landmarks in their dialogue. The effect of these references is to provide a background which is comforting and gratifying - there is a feeling of pleasure that comes from recognising a place that is referenced in a work of ‘art’ - for the audience. We wanted to take that moment of recognition and mangle it by presenting well-known Dublin locations in a state of appalling destruction.

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The Witcher: Biggest Show of 2019 Drawing inspiration from a series of already successful novels and video games, Netflix’s The Witcher had big shoes to fill. Having recently been crowned the most in-demand TV show in the world by data company Parrot Analytics, it appears the fantasy series has met fans’ expectations. Following the adventures of monster-hunting mutant Geralt of Rivia, we are introduced to the world of the Continent, where humans’ struggles for power and control are far more dangerous than the creatures Geralt is used to slaying.

Drawing inspiration from a series of already successful novels and video games, Netflix’s The Witcher had big shoes to fill. Having recently been crowned the most in-demand TV show in the world by data company Parrot Analytics, it appears the fantasy series has met fans’ expectations. Following the adventures of monster-hunting mutant Geralt of Rivia, we are introduced to the world of the Continent, where humans’ struggles for power and control are far more dangerous than the creatures Geralt is used to slaying.

Naturally, with such a premise, many comparisons have been drawn between The Witcher and Game of Thrones. On a surface level, it may be able to fill the void left by the popular HBO show, but with great differences in lore and mythology, it would be foolish to label all fantasy shows as the same. The Witcher has proved equally entertaining for medieval aficionados and genre newcomers alike.

The series’ titular performance by Henry Cavill is captivating, bringing heart and even humour to the supposedly emotionless Geralt of Rivia. Despite his often-limited dialogue, Cavill makes surprisingly versatile use of the phrase “hmm” and conveys a lot of emotion in his body language and facial expressions. When we first meet him, we are introduced to his enhanced fighting skills, aided by elixirs and magic, which are dynamically choreographed to create fun and engaging fight scenes throughout the series. While these talents appear to be a gift, we soon learn they are more of a curse, brought about by torturous rituals on young boys, resulting in loathing and fear from humans. This allows the show to explore themes such as racism and xenophobia, grounding the fantastical setting with relevant topics applicable to our world.

Geralt’s monster-hunting exploits are interspersed with the origin story of Yennefer of Vengerberg, as she goes from a deformed peasant girl to a powerful sorceress. We also follow the plight of Princess Ciri’s escape from her war-torn kingdom of Cintra, as she is hunted down due to her mysterious powers. These three separate storylines occur at different points in the timeline of the show and are not shown in linear order. This can be quite confusing during the first few episodes of the series, as there are only very minor hints that this is the case. Yet, it is also a fresh approach to not have a narrative spoon-fed to you – the show just ploughs on and trusts you to keep up.

The series has created strong female characters in Yennefer and Ciri that can act on their own behalf, with their own agency, who are brought to the forefront of the narrative right from the beginning, through flashbacks to their respective backstories. Due to this creative decision we do not merely view them through the eyes of Geralt, but as individuals in their own right. This makes the moment when their three character arcs begin to merge all the more meaningful to the viewer.

The world of the show feels fully realised and well-rounded, due in part to the many interesting supporting characters, most notably Jaskier the lute-wielding bard. The character offers memorable comic relief to the show and is a major contributor to the soundtrack of the series. His song, ‘Toss a Coin to Your Witcher’, promoted Geralt to legendary status across the Continent, and is sure to be stuck in your head long after you finish watching the series.

Despite the absence of a modern setting, The Witcher manages to defy many typical stereotypes. The character of Jaskier serves, among many things, as a damsel-in-distress, a role usually reserved for women. While the female characters are shown to be powerful and well capable of combat without assistance, Geralt must spend much of his time saving his singing side-kick from certain death.

While this season of The Witcher often felt saturated with exposition of the world it was creating, it is a fun and thrilling fantasy epic at its heart. It will definitely leave you wanting more, but with the next season not scheduled for release until 2021, all we can do is put ‘Toss a Coin to Your Witcher’ on repeat, and wait.

WORDS BY CIARA CONOLLY

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Valentine’s Viewing Recommendations:

for the Loved-up and the Lonely

As Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, it is becoming increasingly clear to you whether you will have an evening of ‘Netflix and chill’ or end up binge-watching and brooding all night. No matter how you’re feeling this year, we’ve rounded up some viewing options to make 14 February a bit more bearable.

Pride and Prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that losing oneself in the dreamy world of Jane Austen is good for the soul, and with the Pride and Prejudice (1995) mini-series, one can do just that. The will-they-won’t-they slow burn romance of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy is sure to warm even the coldest of hearts. If you need any more convincing that this show is a hopeless romantic’s dream, then I only have three words for you. The. Lake. Scene.

Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings

For people who believe in true love, or just enjoy a good country music-inspired anthology series, Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings is here to brighten up your evening. With each episode inspired by a different Dolly love song, there are plenty of opportunities to laugh, cry and ‘yee-haw’ your way through the night. Whether you’re a hopeful singleton, or a loved-up couple looking to wind down for the evening, Dolly has got a song for everyone to help get into the romantic spirit.

You

In these dark times, toxic masculinity seems to be at the root of so many problems facing society, including many women’s inability to safely date in the modern age. If you wish to wallow in the essence of this dystopian world, where the unassuming ‘nice guy’ is waiting to pounce at every corner, then you may enjoy binging You this Valentine’s day. By following the journey of seductive stalker Joe Goldberg as he systematically infiltrates the lives of young women who he believes he is destined to be with, you will gain a sense of comfort from the fact that even if you’re celebrating alone this year, things could be a lot worse. For people who still have some feeling left in their hearts, You is packed with steamy sex scenes that will put you in danger of falling for the psychopathic protagonist. Hopefully, at the very least this show will serve as an important reminder to close your curtains at night.

Game of Thrones

On a surface level, watching the popular HBO fantasy series sounds like a nice way to spend the evening with your significant other, especially if you are both long-time fans of the show. However, if unfortunately this is not the situation you find yourself in this Valentine’s day, and you’re feeling rather scornful about the whole thing, you could try watching the show from a different perspective as a form of catharsis. I’ve come to the realisation that the entirety of Game of Thrones could be viewed as an allegory for a typical relationship. In the beginning it is new and exciting, still trying to find its footing. As it progresses it reaches major highs, with a few lows, but these fall away into insignificance since you are enjoying the journey so much. Finally, it crawls to a bitter end leaving neither party satisfied. This take might sound quite cynical, but if it gets you through the evening by adding a layer of nuance to the show’s disappointing conclusion, described by many as a monumental garbage fire, then who are we to judge? If you’re feeling more optimistic, the show is still overflowing with plenty of gratuitous nudity and sex scenes to hold your attention.

Planet Earth

When I find myself in times of trouble, and feel like shutting off from the world, I turn to the only man who has never let me down; David Attenborough. Planet Earth is the comfort food of television; turn on any episode and let Attenborough’s soothing voice take away your romantic misfortunes as you watch a baby penguin take to the water for the first time. Observing the beauty and power of Mother Nature is the ultimate distraction to a broken heart. The only caveat is that you must try and forget that due to climate change, everything you’re watching is now either going extinct or on fire. This is of course a global emergency that requires immediate action, but, on this challenging day, take a few hours of respite before resuming to your default state of impending doom about the state of the planet, and watch the baby animals play.

Sex Education

If you’re looking for an entertaining way of possibly expanding your knowledge of all things intimate, or maybe you’re simply in the market for a new heartwarming coming-of-age comedy (excuse the pun), then Sex Education may be the perfect choice. The series centres around Otis, the son of a sex therapist, as he navigates his adolescence while offering sex counselling to other inexperienced students at school. No matter how bleak your current love life may seem, Sex Education offers enough second-hand cringe to make you thankful that, if nothing else, at least your awkward secondary school days are behind you.

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WORDS BY Ciara Connolly

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Rodrigo Ternevoy // Interview How did you start your career as an actor, and was it here or in another country?

I always wanted to study acting and become an actor, but back in Brazil it was quite difficult to do so as I needed to take on more reliable paid employment to help support my family. Acting can be a very unstable career so I ended up suppressing those creative feelings and went to business school instead. Only when I decided to come to Ireland as an English student back in 2008 did those feelings come back to life and after a few years working as an auditor for a big accountancy company I decided to give up everything to pursue acting. I went to Bow Street Academy, a drama school focused on acting for the screen. I did the full-time course and graduated in 2015. Straight from the final year show-case I secured an agent and have been represented by her since.

Could you talk a bit about your experience as an actor from Brazil in Ireland? Have you encountered any difficulties with casting, or any other difficulties?

When I started drama school I was the only Brazilian male actor in the course, therefore I wasn’t really sure how things would work out for me as an actor in Ireland. I always thought that any production company or casting directors looking for a Brazilian actor would look in Brazil first, or perhaps in the UK, Canada or the USA, and that any bigger casting directors operating in Ireland would be looking for Irish people. The majority of the time, this is certainly the case.

However, being different also gave me a lot of opportunities. I started auditioning for a bunch of roles, some of them I ended up getting and others I didn’t, but my profile was increasing as a professional actor and that was exactly what I was aiming for. Ireland is still very small when it comes to the film industry and actors end up auditioning for parts a lot less than if you compare to the UK, USA or Canada, but the industry is getting bigger and bigger each year. We have some really good tax incentives at the moment and they’re attracting big productions lately. Here’s hoping more roles for people like me will arise from this!

Why do you think multicultural representation on TV, media and theatre is important?

The arts have a huge responsibility to accurately reflect the world around us. The world has changed; every society around the globe has evolved with the internet, and with it things such as buying, selling, travelling, etc. have become much easier.

We are all a big mix - a mix of people, cultures, faiths, looks, languages and this is the new reality; a multicultural one. The media, TV, cinema, and theatre should be reflective of it all.

Being from a multicultural country that has people from all over the world, what are the similarities and differences of a more diverse media representation in media in Ireland and Brazil?

In fact, in Brazil we barely see foreign people working in the media, film, TV, theatre, etc. Every now and then we find a Portuguese talent working on a show, soap-opera or film in Brazil. I believe the main barrier is the language; we’ve got a lot more English speakers around the world than Portuguese speakers.

Do you think Irish media is becoming more diverse in terms of multicultural representation? What are your thoughts about the future in media and arts in Ireland?

Yes, I do believe the Irish media is becoming more diverse, no doubt. We can see different cultures being represented a lot more lately. I’ve been working for Fair City on RTÉ One for the past three years and I play a gay character from Chile, we also have another foreign actor playing my brother on the same show for the same length of time. I remember watching a very good TV series called Taken Down shot in Ireland, it was about the reality of refugees in the country. Of course the multicultural representation in the Irish media can be better and can increase, but it does exist and it is improving step by step. The only downside in my opinion is when it comes to theatre, this multicultural representation is almost non-existent. TV and film seem to be always ahead of time when it comes to this topic in my opinion.

WORDS BY Larissa Brigatti 44

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