Six | Everything Everywhere All At Once | Chinatown Detective Agency

[jaggedwolf]

Six

Saw this musical about Henry VIII’s six wives, liked it far better than I expected. Will take non-fiction book recs about any/all of these wives! (I had zero historical knowledge beyond reading the playbill’s short-and-sweet bios before the curtains rose, so I cannot comment on the historical accuracy here.)

The audience atmosphere was so much fun and very infectious. Essentially a pop concert starring some wronged wives, with each wife even inspired by a different female pop star. Given the shitty fates of most of the queens, the show does a bizarrely good job of managing the emotional throughline imo. Like, you don’t want to be incredibly depressed at the start of the show, so the first two queens get defiant songs, we get a manic party break, the queen with the best life is followed by Howard’s dark bop.

Songs were super catchy, had them stuck in my head for the week after, and I loved all the lighting choices - that one moment in Haus Of Holbein where it flashes to Serious Bookish Setting, the different schemes each queen gets, etc.

Only parts that didn’t work for me were the meta-meta discussion Parr instigates about the fake competition and the rewritten endings in the final song. The latter were hard to parse live in a way none of the other songs were and felt underthought.

Megasix was fantastic though :D

Everything Everywhere All At Once

That Michelle Yeoh multiverse movie. Unreal how good it was, I can’t remember the last time a work left me with the feeling of “you’re allowed to do that??” (Maybe The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, in a very different way.)

The climax with all of the Waymonds speaking was my favorite part <3 Did not expect to have a billion feelings about fancy!Waymond saying “In another life, I would have liked to do taxes and laundry with you.”

Chinatown Detective Agency

A Carmen Sandiego-inspired point-and-click adventure game about a private investigator, set in futuristic Singapore. Puzzles are of the kind that require looking things up on the internet, like figuring out where an old stamp originated from or finding a quotation.

Loved the vibes, art and a good number of puzzles. The story, mechanics and programming felt underbaked, and could have used several more months of work. (They’re still releasing bugfixes currently, so I’d recommend holding off on getting it until that’s done tbh.)

I was fond of getting around by MRT, ok, and all the art of various Singapore locations and cities across the world was lovely, as were their little info boxes. And the accents, man, I enjoyed that more than I expected - the downside here is again the bugginess: audio might cut out of conversations randomly, and two characters had mixing issues where they were barely audible even when I reduced SFX and music volume.

I picked Tiger Lily’s branch for this playthrough, and enjoyed the megachurch (megatemple?) investigation - Tiger Lily and Amira have fun banter (yes I ship it), it automatically makes you think of SG megachurch scandals, and I felt like I learned more about Amira through it.

Could have definitely done with more of the latter! At no point does the game try to explain why a former INTERPOL agent would quit being an INTERPOL agent to go play private eye, and at various points, Amira’s discomfort with working outside the law/not being able to trust the cops makes you want to know the answer to that question.

Mechanics-wise, I wonder if the original design for the game had you take on all three clients as it led you to the endgame? That would make the flights + wait mechanic make sense, as well as the “don’t be late!!!” mechanic. It would’ve made the world feel fuller too, from the drones to the collapse of the internet.

I look forward to trying the other two branches and seeing who the other sidekicks are. (No offense to Sammy, who’s fine, but my first pick for Amira’s assistant was not the guy who greeted us by talking about how we should be in awe of the Creator’s creations :P)

Links

Reality has a surprising amount of detail

Sci-fi In Singapore: 1970s to 1990s

The Indiana Jonesian discovery of the Royal Game of Ur