Reading Into The "Butterflies" Film Clip

As part of my ongoing mission to slowly leak personal information onto the internet so that stalkers can look for patterns in my behaviour and eventually kidnap and sell me to the Russian mafia as a sex slave, I have decided to share something about my day to day life. As a logical extension of "listening to the song Friday on Fridays" I've recently developed a "Song of the Day" list whereby every named day of the week (except Sunday as of yet) has it's own rediculous song that must be listened to that day. For all you Buffalo Bill's out there the list goes a little something like

Mon - Iceberg Season by Riff Raff and 50 Tyson (because they ball on a Monday and make it feel like the weekend
Tues - Dust by Frank Ocean
Wed - Wonton Soup by Lil B (just coz they both start with W)
Thurs - Butterflies by Alana Lee (just coz I wanted it back to back with "Friday" for an Ark Music double)
Fri - Friday by Rebecca Black (duh)
Sat - Get Down by B4-4 (just coz the boy band vibe reminded me of Saturday mornings watching Video Hits in the 90's)
Sun - Open to suggestions from the general public (guide me fans).

I mention this briefly because today is Thursday and that means my song for today is Butterflies, which has a cutesy, innocent but nonetheless stupid film clip that I want to read into for shits and giggles.. What can I say? I'm bored with reviews for now. The video can be viewed right here in the post in a place that I hope is obvious to you, I suggest watching it for the sake of this post.


So for the duration of the first chorus the stage is set for some high end drama. We see some sweeping shots of a bored classroom before we focus on Alana herself, who stops her dilegent study at regular intervals to lock eyes with the blank-faced, dough-eyed boy with the red shirt and shitty Justin Bieber hairstyle. A note is passed back across to Alana from the boy and he afixes her with another vacuous yet longing gaze.

We then cut to a scene in the playground, where the ruthless social paradigms of the teenage world provide fertile ground for bitches to be bitchy and where quiet, thoughtfull girls like Alana are easy prey. Alana and Boring McBlankface are talking, smiling and finding gentle facination the the computer generated image of a butterfly that has appeared before them. This inspires Alana to spend valuable school time ignoring her education and attempt to draw a more convincing butterfly. It is here we are introduced to the school bitch and her two tag along drones. I don't know why teenage whorebags seen to come in threes and yet still manage to have a clear, unquestioning leader? I guess it's so their one-dimensional characters will add up to make 3, but I digress. Anyway Bitch is handing out what appear to be invites and is hoping to invite Captain Dull but seems irritated that Alana somehow caught wind of the party as well by, I dunno, I guess being right there in mid conversation with him at the time. I mean what did she expect? I'm not some poppy exclusive bimbo who throws "cool people only" parties to get cute boys to make out with me, but even I know that you're supposed to sneakily invite people away from the prying eyes of people you don't want coming. So anyway out of spite Bitch decides to mock Alana's picture of a butterfly before tossing it in a bin. It's pretty rich to scoff at the childishness of drawing butterflies whilst handing out pink invitations that have "It's a Party!" scrawled across them. Also the invite clearly has no information on it regarding times, dates or places and is therefore completely useless.

Back in class Alana appears to be replying to the note that was passed to her in the opening. Ok so we're skipping about on the timeline here but whatever. Anyway she is caught out by the teacher who is apparently irritated that everybody treats his classroom like a speed dating service and decided to get Alana to bring the note out the front to "read it to the class" much to the smug amusement of Bitchy-Spice. Perhaps as a result of embarrassment Alana has some sort of cosmic trip where she imagines some terrible rapper is taking over her song whilst a dream sequence of the party takes place. Alana catches Le Bitch making moves on her man and old Passive Pete just sits there like a lost sheep while the Bitch holds his hand and projects onto him like he's a real life Ken Doll.

Alana then snaps out of the dream and decided that the best thing to do would be to sing the contents of the note to the boy in front of the whole class. Gosh it was lucky the note she wrote was also the chorus to her song. As she does this the camera pans across the class who not only seem to vary in age from 13 to 18, but also don't seem at all surprised or taken aback by this sudden musical number and instead just nod stoically in approval. Even the teacher folds his arms and nods with this look on his face like "fuck yes, respect" which is perhaps one of the many reasons why the children seem able to do whatever they like in his classroom. It might also help if he actually wrote stuff on the board but whatever. The story closes with the Boy finally getting his shit together and leaving a note on Alana's front door. These kids and their fucking notes. Anyway Alana opens it up and it's the picture of the butterfly she drew earlier that got thrown out, which isn't so much an appology or an admission of feelings as much as it is evidence that he trawls through garbage collecting things that girls have touched. But whatever, Alana seems pleased and that's really all the film clip wants us to care about. Actually the message of the film clip has this slight air of "let's drop everything and pander to the romantic whims of hormonal teens." I also can't tell if that whole party rap scene is supposed to be a dream or what. The blurred lense effect and the fact that what happens in it seems to have little bearing on any of the other events makes me feel like it might be, but to what end and purpose is beyond me.

It's actually interesting looking at this song alongside Rebecca Black's Friday because as previously mentioned they are both produced by Ark Music Factory, the co-founder of which is the same guy who shoehorns his out of place and terrible rap bits into each of the songs. Actually in both Friday and Butterflies I'd argue quite strongly that his presence is the worst part of each song, especially in Friday where he doesn't even rhyme anything and literally just describes overtaking a school bus. If you're unconvinced of his inferiority just check out his own rap version of Friday. I can't find a link for it but it used to be on youtube. Feel free to search for it but be warned, shit's fucked up yo.

Rayman Origins

Yippee! Today I'm going to bore you all with more shit that I love. You'll remember a few months back I failed spectacularly to name a game of the year for 2011 because the games industry thrust way more big dicks in my direction than I had orifices to appreciate them with. It didn't help that one of them was Skryim, which has 300 hours of content or something terrifying like that. So after some careful organising and a few months of having each game line up to take turns in giving me a thorough seeing to I have decided, to the interest of nobody, that Rayman Origins was by far the best game I played in 2011.

Giving Rayman Origins GOTY was not something I expected to find myself doing. It was up against some powerful competition and it was nothing more than a humble 2D platformer. It's nothing more than simple runny, jumpy fun. Sure it has a few nice little touches like wall running and wall jumps but there's nothing really new in the repertoire. So it just goes to show that you don't need crazy new ideas and gimmicks or even high polygon count 3D models of realistic Russian soldiers to make a fun game. Just really fucking awsome design choices will do the trick. Some of the best choices in Rayman Origins were made in regards to the difficulty. Rayman Origins is hard, very hard indeed. But really the game is only as hard as you make it. By that I mean the hardest level in the game is optional and can only be unlocked after finishing a series of slightly less hard speed run style levels. Hunting lums and freeing electoons presents another optional, yet satisfying challenge as they will require more advanced platforming skills as well as a keen eye for potential hidden areas. Additionally the challenge in the game is never made overly frustrating or unfair because Ubisoft decided to abolish any lives systems and use regular and forgiving checkpoints so that although the game is extremely challenging it is broken down into managable pieces. This makes the game very addictive indeed in a way that I haven't seen in a game in ages. People talk about Skyrim hijacking massive chunks of life but for me that was nothing compared to Rayman Origins forever tempting me to move forward and seek out the next challenge. It's also the most rewarding game I've played in ages (probably since Bayonetta) with more than a few occassions of me yelling "Fuck! Yes!" at the TV with some sort of obscene gesture accompanying it. You will find yourself being amazed at your own skill and at times needing to put down the controller and stare at the screen, all the while thinking did I just do that?

The level design and art direction are nothing short of superb. The platforms and jumps and enemies and lums are all perfectly placed to ensure the game has a nice smooth flow and rhythm to the way it plays. Think along the lines of Donkey Kong Country 2 and 3 on the SNES mixed in with a bit of the indie hit Super Meat Boy and that will give you a fair idea of how the game will feel to play. And all the while admist this wonderful yet challenging gameplay are the most beautiful and varied environments. I'd wife a bitch a fifth as pretty as this on looks alone. So the gameplay is excellent and the levels are excellent and the graphics are gorgeous so here's the part where we talk about the cons.

There are none.

Ok ok so I guess the story is kind of baffling. Not that it even fucking matters. Honestly if you can't have fun with this game because you don't feel the story is up to speed then I don't want you reading my blog. You are beyond help. But the story is basically Rayman and his friends snore so loudly they wake up the dead. I'm not exactly sure what the motivations are beyond this point for Rayman and pals to journey through these rediculously challenging levels except that they somehow find it equally as rewarding and fun as the player. But honestly I didn't even stop to think about what the end goal actually was until I was nearing the end of the game anyway, I guess Mario has conditioned me to stop caring about the story in 2D platformers.

As if all this wasn't enough but the game also supports 4 player co-op. Not that I ever used it but many trusted sources tell me that it works really well and isn't crap like it kinda is in New Super Mario Bros Wii. So there you have it. Rayman Origins; the best 2D platformer I've ever played, the best Rayman game by far and the best game released in 2011. It's been released on all home consoles, 3DS, Vita and even PC so you have absolutely no fucking excuse not to play it. For what it's worth I played the 360 version.