Issue 9 Games

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Dominika Front

EDITING & PROOFREADING

Adrianna Bartoszek

Dominika Front

Piotr Gorczyński

Karolina Kowalska

Julia Krzeszowska

Kacper Kusio

Sara Kusio

Piotr Miszczuk

Antonina Nizielska

Maria Sawicka

Aleksandra Socha

Julia Sułkowska

Dawid Wośko

Jan Ziętara

And last time as Editors

Yousif Al-Naddaf

Helena Żegnałek

ILLUSTRATORS:

Jan Bodzioch

Daria Chmielewska

Paulina Durakiewicz

Sanaz Nouri

Palina Sachyvets

Natalia Urban Włodzimierz Danielewski

COVER AND BACK COVER DESIGN

Paulina Durakiewicz

DESIGN AND LAYOUT

Jan Bodzioch

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The views and opinions expressed through our magazine, social media, websites or any medium of information we send out are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Second Thoughts student club. Any content provided by our authors and designers is of their opinion and is not intended to malign anyone else’s opinion or beliefs.

Welcome back

to Second Thoughts! Leader

Kacper Kusio

The pressures of mounting school work, unending job-related stresses, and the terrifying prospect of one day actually settling down (or already being settled down) and becoming fully responsible pull us away from “the curious” more towards the realm of “bland, but stable.” Sooner or later, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Sure, I can’t imagine spending six hours playing Minecraft or hide-and-seek on a rainy Saturday afternoon like I did a good half a decade ago, but as we grow older, it might be a good idea to take stock and realize that games are already embedded in our lives, even in areas we wouldn’t think to suspect.

In this issue of Second Thoughts, we tackle the notion of “games” and how the very concept of competitive fun—or sorrow— can be found in the most unusual places. Hopefully, this will in turn help brighten up your day and let you blow off some steam. So stick around to find out what Taylor Swift, capoeira, and a 90-yearold legal case from Pennsylvania have in common with games!

Leader | Kacper Kusio

3 Mario Kart Wii Is Still a Painfully Fun Experience | Szymon Malkin

6 I can’t finish thi-: To Farm or Take Back the Farm? Cosy Gaming vs. Resistance Gaming | Natallia Valadzko

11 Minecraft, Elden Ring, and Disco Elysium: On Video Games Altering Nostalgia | Wiktor Dymkowski

15 Gothic, Ghosts, and… Dancing? | Antonina Nizielska

18 History Engine: To Cost an Arm and a Case; or, How a Railroad Giant Played with the Law | Marek Kobryń

21 Let’s Play War | Julia Krzeszowska

24 Let The Games Begin: Understanding the Global Phenomenon of Taylor Swift | Karolina Kowalska

28 Play for the Win or Play for the Game: A Note on Cultural Differences | Alyona Shimberg

31 Que Roda Maravilhosa é Essa: a Glimpse on How Capoeira is Played | Weronika Kubik

Szymon Malkin

Mario Kart Wii Is Still a Painfully Fun Experience

Growing up, I was a rather happy kid who only cared what I’d have for dinner, or which cartoon would be on TV when I got back from school. However, once I had started playing Mario Kart Wii, I was witness to things no child should ever be exposed to. A sudden boost from behind, ending in a frenetic ride. A lengthy fight for the first place, only for the whole effort to be eventually wasted away by a sudden power-up. And while there are many racing games out on the market, none of them is as efficient in bringing out the best and worst in a person as Mario Kart Wii.

Now, granted, there is a very good chance that I am suffering from a strong case of nostalgia, but there is something truly special about this Mario Kart edition. While many people enjoy the game, it is not as revered as the solid, classic arcade feel of Mario Kart: Double Dash or the modern fluidity of Mario Kart 8 Mario Kart Wii is a league of its own. Perhaps it is the graphics that, even with the jump into the next generation of consoles, make the game look somewhat worse than its predecessor.

Maybe it’s the controversial exclusion of the iconic double power-up items from the previous game, which were brought back in Mario Kart 8. Or maybe it is because of how much joyful suffering this game has caused.

I find Mario Kart Wii to be one of the most ruthless Mario Karts ever made. With its approach to power-ups, which can immensely aid you in your races, the competitive computer players make for a vibrant experience of vehicular combat. Many of the tracks are designed to allow the racers to blindly throw anything that can cause damage, even to themselves. Alternatively, some levels are built tight and narrow, essentially making it nearly impossible to avoid a likely barrage of three shells launched by a vicious player. All these factors come together to elicit engaging, tense, and exciting feelings in the midst of the race. And it’s something very few racing games can achieve.

Palina Sachyvets

I believe that the then-new controller, the Wii Wheel, contributed significantly to the frenzy of the game. There’s something electrifying about being physically able to turn the wheel in such a frantic setting. The rush and the increased blood flow kick the brain into overdrive. There are moments when I am surprised and terrified of what I do when playing the game, as if some demons possessed me. Many Nintendo games centred around party modes, such as the Mario Party franchise, are known for causing great distress and even rifts in people’s relationships. Mario Kart Wii is a prime example of such a game, with a longstanding reputation for being one of the least forgiving games in the franchise. The rage I’ve witnessed during the countless sessions of the game I have played with my friends and family certainly raises questions about how much of a “family” game it really is. A major factor contributing to the calamity of the gameplay is how the items are used. The worse the position you’re in, the better and more menacing the item you receive is.

There are a few of these items that can greatly disrupt the race. The POW Block, a staple of the Mario franchise, comes in to deliver a localised earthquake, which wipes everyone out in front of the player. No defence is possible against this block. You still lose your items even when applying the trick of shaking the Wii Wheel when the POW Block hits. An even more souped-up POW Block is the Lightning. The only way to protect yourself from the wrath from above is with an Invincibility Star, that is, if you are lucky enough to find one. Another power-up is the Mega Mushroom, which crushes anyone under your wheels. Then there is the Thunder Cloud, also known as “how to cheese a race.” You see, when the Cloud is picked up, it floats above your head, slowly counting down the time until it strikes and makes you small and slow.

How do you get rid of it? Simple! You give it to someone. Well, makes sense. Here’s the sick part – before it strikes, it speeds you up. A lot. Thoughts race through your head, and you start wondering how to gain the most out of this temporary boost while figuring out when and to whom you should give the cloud, so as not to get zapped by it. Personally, it is one of my favourite items of the game because of the tactical thinking it involves. If you want to ruin someone’s day or one of your friendships, it’s the ideal tool.

This game is a one-of-a-kind experience. It provides the player with an outstanding arcadelike feel, not seen much in modern racing games. While the game market is full of more “realistic” games of this kind, sometimes the move to throwing bombs out of karts while flying through space is a needed change. That is the magic of Mario Kart Wii

To Farm or Take Back the Farm? Cosy Gaming vs. Resistance Gaming Natallia

During COVID-19 lockdowns, many people took up different hobbies: making sourdough bread, learning to play a musical instrument, or… Animal Crossing: New Horizons (ACNH) The delayed release of the game in March 2020 coincided with the global pandemic, which turned a social simulation game into an entire “phenomenon”, according to The New York Times It sold over 43 million copies worldwide, broke the console game record for most digital units sold in a single month, and became the 14th best-selling video game in history. Meanwhile, I was watching every sports anime I could get my hands on. I didn’t own a Nintendo Switch, so I didn’t really get to experience Animal Crossing first-hand. Spending too much time online, however, kept me in the loop about the game’s extraordinary popularity. It was said to offer a safe and wholesome escape from the frightening reality of worldwide pandemic outbreak. It was also sometimes used as a substitute for social interactions, for example, weddings, graduations, and even political campaigning (shoutout to Joe Biden and his ingame yard signs).

Valadzko

In essence, an ACNH player controls a character who moves to a deserted island and develops it to their liking. You can farm, go fishing, gather and craft items, decorate and customise your island, and meet your neighbours, who are anthropomorphic animals. The visuals are relaxing, and the gameplay is stress-free. One of the reasons for its outstanding success was that it was very easy to pick up, no matter your age or background. You didn’t need any prior experience with controllers or video games at large.

These days, ACNH is almost guaranteed a spot in endless lists of “Top Cosy Games” – the kind of games where ‘cosy’ is used not just as an additional description but a definition. Unlike other genres (e.g., tactical RPGs, firstperson shooters, puzzle games), cosy games do not hint at the type of game mechanics employed, just an emotion. Both developers and gamers agree that cosy games are primarily defined by how they make one feel, and it doesn’t matter if it is a platformer, an RPG, or a puzzle game. Nonetheless, this slightly peculiar categorization makes sense. A person might not know which exact type of game they want to play; they just know how they want to feel.

Daniel Cook, the author of Cozy Games Manifesto, talks about cosiness in games in terms of three components: safety, abundance, and softness. Safety is described as the absence of danger, punishment, or exclusion. The player is free to play at their own pace and express themselves. Abundance has to do with the fulfilment of our basic needs, for instance, a character is not hungry and has housing and necessary resources. Then, a player can focus on the higher needs, like self-actualisation, appreciation of beauty, and interpersonal relationships. There is no lack or struggle. Finally, softness lies in ‘soft’ stimuli and the game’s manageable (spatial or emotional) scope. The aesthetics are not overstimulating and they signal being in a low-stress environment.

A cosy game protagonist is usually an ‘everyman’ and not the Chosen One, superhero, or a top-secret assassin. Combat and killing have long been an established progress mechanic in video games. Fighting and conquering – understood very broadly – is what often keeps people engaged. But if we take away the violence, there is a real challenge to find other ways to maintain the players’ engagement. How do we preserve the feeling of achievement without the high-stakes risk? How do we extend ‘cosiness’ beyond lo-fi soundtrack and farming? These are some of the questions that a lot of large game studios and indie creators are addressing right now, as more and more cosy games are being released every year.

Discussions and content creation around cosy games became especially widespread throughout the early 2020s. But of course, this doesn’t mean that ACNH started the cosy games trend. One of the earliest known posts about cosy games is a message on Reddit on 3rd September 2016, seeking recommendations for such games. And while we can say that the term was coined and popularised in late 2010s and early 2020s, unsurprisingly, the nature of cosy gaming is not new at all. Think of a life simulation game The Sims with its first release in 2000. Several elements present in The Sims are considered features of cosy gaming: endless character customization, the ability to spend hours building and decorating houses, etc. However, the game is not always that wholesome… A player can delete doors, which traps their Sim, or remove pool ladders with the Sim still in the water, all of which may result in dying. Or the fact that while you’re enjoying your sense of accomplishment from mastering the skill of knitting, your Sim could unexpectedly die by being squished by a pulldown bed, or literally die from embarrassment or laughter.

Cosy games are not just decorating and chatting with townsfolk. Sometimes a cosy game is just unpacking boxes of someone you’ve never met. Unpacking by Witch Beam is a part home decoration, part block-fitting game, which lets you explore someone’s life. With the mundanity of emptying boxes of your possessions and finding them a new place, the game creates an exceptional feeling of intimacy and vulnerability. Or let’s take Kind Words by an American indie developer Popcannibal. At the beginning of the game, the player helps a mail carrier deer, named Ella, who is nervous about her new job, by writing her an inspiring letter. After that, the player can anonymously send or ask for letters, while lo-fi music plays in the background.You can share your sorrows by requesting letters, receive words of comfort and sympathy from real people, and include a wide collection of stickers. No timers, no combat, no leaderboards. Only cosy soundtrack and reassuring messages.

As I mentioned before, a lot of cosy games include the mechanics of farming, whose monotonous repetitiveness can bring a feeling of calmness, and eventual harvesting – and with that, a sense of achievement. But what do you call a game where you’re stealing equipment in an attempt to take back the farm?

Daria Chmielewska

Here’s another kind of gaming: something I will label ‘resistance gaming’ for the purposes of this text. By no means is it a genre. But just like cosy games are defined by a vibe, resistance gaming can be defined by all the anti-topics it explores: anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, anti-patriarchy, etc. In contrast to cosy gaming, which is often escapist in nature, this kind of gaming zooms into one of the social issues and does not allow you to look away. You’re thrown right in the midst of it and are given a chance to make a change. No safety, abundance, or softness. Instead, risk, lack, and injustice. All of which you can fight against, though.

To illustrate, consider the tabletop roleplaying game (TRPG) Our Farm Becomes the Battlefield by Fen Walters which deals with the themes of cooperation and anti-capitalism. The game’s description encourages you to play it if you “are sick of wealth inequity and wish that you could somehow punch those problems away” and if you want to play subversively and help those who need it. The game’s tagline reads: “What do you do when one man owns everything? You steal it, and you break his stuff”. At first glance, it sounds aggressive, violent and, honestly, criminal. But with more context, we learn that in this TRPG, you play as displaced farmers piloting magical golems – farm equipment which you’ve retrofitted for battle. You want to take back your land from the wizard Tysanto, who gained a monopoly on food production and forced you into sharecropping. Your characters are tasked with teaching themselves magic and forming a collective. All of that will help them fight the wizard but also the system that allowed this to happen in the first place. The game also highlights that there is no killing or death. It means that player characters don’t have individual health, so they cannot die. Instead, they function as a collective and level up or improve when the cooperative improves.

Another example is a TRPG that deals with colonialism and its consequences. Dog Eat Dog was written by Liam Liwanag as an attempt to understand his personal process of assimilation as a half-Filipino. The final 10-odd pages of the game’s handbook is A Brief History of Colonialism in the Pacific. It outlines several key points of imperialism and assimilation in the Pacific Islands, providing a bit more context. The game asks the participants to work together and describe a conflicted relationship between the colonisers trying to maintain control and the natives who either assimilate or rise up. One player takes the role of the Occupation, which means being in charge of the military, the government, and also businessmen or tourists. The rest of the players roleplay as individual Natives, each choosing the ways in which they deal with the new regime. On each player’s turn, they describe what they might do in response to either the Occupation’s actions or to anything in the preceding scene. The author also points out that the game can be played in any setting and time possible. According to the author, the game was built on the assumption that “[c]olonization implies contempt for the colonized”. It does not matter if they’re aliens with green skin, the Teutonic Order, or the Peace Corps: they wouldn’t be there if they did not believe they were better than the colonised.

Finally, I’d like to mention Invincible Sword Princess – a TRPG designed by Kazumi Chin. It is a game about postcolonial revenge. The setting invites characters to tell a story about their people who lived in the Hallows for a very long time, and about the Imperials who came with riots, armies, and mobs. The Hallows is described as a vast steppe with many lakes and a few settlements, the inhabitants of which live off fishing, herding sheep and cattle, and cultivating fruits and nuts. The Imperial presence is the violence of colonial occupation but also the terrors of what might happen, or of what they might say. At times one can just tell them what they want to hear, and they’ll ignore you; at times you are not as lucky. Players of Invincible Sword Princess assume the role of sword-wielding sisters who travel across the Hallows seeking the killers of their mother, who was not so lucky.

The player’s character defines superpowers of their sword, the relationship with their sisters, and assigns points to the three game stats: invincible, sword, and princess. They are used to avoid danger, unleash fury, and gain insight respectively. By rolling the number of dice determined by your stats, players and the game moderator decide the outcome of different encounters in a local saloon, in a small log cabin on the prairie, or before an adoring congregation. So, the hunt for the killer is not just combat. It is also about seeking information about the perpetrator, as well as keeping a low profile to avoid becoming a target for the Imperials.

Under the “Some Safety Considerations” section, the game’s rulebook encourages players to take their time to understand the principles that matter to the people of the Hallows: sovereignty and adaptability. The sword represents the long-standing tradition of the people of the Hallows and is contrasted with the new gunslinging technology brought by the colonial forces. Moreover, it is underlined that despite maintaining some traditional ways, the people of the Hallows are not stuck in the past. In fact, they alone have mastered the technologies necessary to create adaptive swords with which the vengeful sisters fight. Their weapons are customisable (e.g., adding invisibility, hydraulics, smoke-emitting, boomerang, etc.) but also keep “the heart of what a sword is”. Even though the game touches upon typical tropes and locations of the Western, it claims to be a refutation of the genre as it puts sisterhood and resistance to settler colonialism to the forefront.

Despite their differences, both types of gaming can be very therapeutic. Cosy games achieve this by removing the danger and allowing the space to just blissfully exist. Resistance gaming, on the other hand, makes you feel better by bringing about a much-needed change, or – oh well – lets you heal by taking revenge on those who’ve wronged you. With more and more global crises occurring and looming over us, we might need different ways of coping with them or imagining the necessary steps to handle them. As for now, let us watch studios create games that lift people up, in whatever form they need.

Minecraft, Elden Ring, and Disco Elysium: On Video Games Altering Nostalgia

Svetlana Boym in her phenomenal work Nostalgia and Its Discontents diagnoses the 21st century as an age in which: “[…] globalization encourages stronger local attachments. In counterpoint to our fascination with cyberspace and the virtual global village, there is a global epidemic of nostalgia, an affective yearning for a community with a collective memory, a longing for continuity in a fragmented world.” She outlines the experience of modernity as one’s placement in a culture of homecoming and homebuilding, where an imagined view of the past is often fabricated to serve a certain outlook on the present and the future. Feeding on memories, it fosters “stronger local attachments” – fondness of regionality –cultivating the sense of home. In my opinion though, this very “longing for continuity,” with the rising dominance of digital entertainment, became not a counterpoint, but another symptom of a fragmented world. Its fragments, having multiplied in the so-called cyberspace, have turned into yet other places subject to our desire for continuity. And so, our fragmented world is made of scattered memories. Some of these memories take refuge in cyberspace, filled with signs of nostalgia: the digital world of video games.

Much like every adult cherishes their beloved form of childhood fun, every player surely remembers their favorite games from adolescence – or rather the essence of time spent on virtual playgrounds. This sense of nostalgia related to video games may well be due to associating these activities with simpler, carefree days.

Video games are one of the most timeconsuming entertainment forms. The level of engagement they offer is unsurpassable, as they are capable of creating a distinct realm of physical agency. This is evident in the way our constant button-clicking organizes the on-screen reality, providing us with a sense of control. It is a phenomenon evident in both single-player and multiplayer experiences. Whether it’s fighting for a high score, experiencing its unfolding plot, chasing its secrets, building something more pretty than useful, or going over the hill to see what’s behind it, time goes unnoticed.

Modern operating systems, emulators, etc. often allow you to launch any older game, so you can start it up whenever you want. You can instantly return to cyberspace, to the digital world of a game, along with its sights and sounds. In a virtual Minecraft (2011) village, a dog waits for our return. You’ll find there a house full of ladders and too-low ceilings – probably altogether smaller and less imposing than you remember. Or you can have games such as Elden Ring (2022), where no one awaits our arrival –the world is already dead, mummified.

The world of Elden Ring is bleeding out, showing no likelihood of change. The trope of the player responsible for saving the world is challenged. The game’s universe is a sphere of forgetfulness, a time capsule of collective memory unable to reconstruct its former glory. The player tries to prevent this amnesia – a foray into the fictional realm of memories. Taking on the role of The Tarnished, they attempt to break this miserable standstill. Over and over, after many failures the protagonist delves into the Lands Between, cutting through its rich lore. Memories of the lost world help us understand and navigate it.

Daria Chmielewska

Video games can give us not only a sense of return sparked by nostalgia “in” the world, but also nostalgia “for” the world. Nostalgia “in” the space itself is similar to an old part of town, where time seems to have somehow frozen. It means that this place is a witness of history. It encapsulates stories – it is inherently nostalgic. Whereas nostalgia “for” the world refers to a personal sense of longing for a time gone by, for example, missing the time captured in a happy photo from childhood.

Similarly, Minecraft, is now an exemplar of these two nostalgic experiences: “in” and “for.” Not only does it serve as a repository of cherished memories and a sense of childlike discovery of the block-built world. After numerous updates, it also becomes an uncanny world of flashbacks. It aims to compensate for the past sense of discovery with a world design similar to that of Elden Ring – filled with ruins, which are new to the player, but ancient to the world. Archeological escapades into the new structures (Bastion Remnants, End Cities – ruins of other civilizations in different dimensions and new enemies to fight in Deep Dark Cities) might be intriguing, but they are not as fun as the first adventures years ago. Mining those first diamonds or climbing over a hill seem to be better. Mind you, I am well aware that today’s version of Minecraft is much more advanced than the one ten years ago. The game was simple, and so were the days. It has all changed now. What has not been altered is the inaccuracy of memory and the ever-growing “longing for continuity in a fragmented world”, to quote Boym again – a call for homecoming All the information buzzing around pushes the mind to resort to a good memory or the atmosphere of a given event, rather than its factual properties. We create “places” of nostalgia that we are able to revisit whenever we want – boot up an older version of Minecraft, visit our beloved dog in a digital village, without leaving our real house. These “places” do not have to be filled with our nostalgia (for the world) – but its general penetrating feeling (in the world).

Undoubtedly, nostalgia is becoming more pervasive, especially in our fast-paced world. It has even made its way into cyberspace, where we often spend a significant amount of time. Nostalgia makes us confront our vulnerabilities, in the setting of a game or a website, a place where we’re supposed to feel safe. Stylized with a VHS overlay, videos of old Minecraft landscapes with its iconic music might just pop up on YouTube’s main page instilling yearning, where comfort of undisturbed time consumption should reign.

In my opinion, games have evolved precisely because of the capacity to dwell on nostalgia like no other entertainment medium, exploring it in various ways. This is achieved by the use of aesthetics: pixel art, an illusion of cinemascope screens – visible for example in Loop Hero (2021); or in gameplay design: retro shooters with gameplay stylized to fit the past memory of its rawness – as in Doom from 2016, rewriting the experience of Doom (1993); or using dialoguedependent narratives: my favorite examples being Night in The Woods (2017) and Disco Elysium (2019).

The latter is a detective RPG game with the plot set in the fictional world of Elysium, in the city of Revachol, in the Martinaise district. This part of the city has witnessed the collapses of both the monarchy and its “murderer”: the communist revolution. Yet both sides have been blown out of the water by international government and capitalist thought. Although these events, including Disco’s People’s Pile recalling the Chernobyl tragedy, are fictitious, they are not much different to our reality; they mirror it. And so does the architecture of the Martinaise with its desolate tenement houses. They are designed in a manner of expressionist paintings, which hints at its decadence. This is amplified by the hauntingly beautiful, calm, yet dredging music and the omnipresent horns heard once we leave the first location.

Our role as a detective-alcoholic, who wakes up in a hostel room with no memories, is to solve the hanging of corporate-hired mercenary. We also have to reconstruct our character’s psyche through interaction and dialogue with the world: by discovering the properties of items and traits of other characters. We might very well be drawn to the majestic ideals of monarchy through the pride and longing for the glory of a former member of the royal army. Perhaps we shed a tear or two for Kras Mazov’s (Disco’s Karl Marx) bust and vouch to bring back the revolution, a fantasy now more impossible than ever.

We get to develop our statistics and abilities by “internalizing thoughts”: memories of the character’s past and the world, which appear gradually over the course of the game. The implementation of game mechanics into the narrative as well as dice-rolling call back the origins of tabletop role-playing games. This, alongside the aforementioned audiovisual presentation, constitutes one of the most poignant nostalgias “in” the world. Nostalgia “in” the world is a result of contact with something that evokes sentiment. It is the noticing of nostalgia felt by its characters, their wishes and fascinations, the world’s ruins, and stories. The sentiments become our own because of creating a bond with the world by inhabiting it and investing our time and emotional capacity. Once we leave that digital world, we remember it. And we feel nostalgia “for” it – missing the experience of a certain time in our lives.

That leads to yet another way of exploration (and therefore capitalization) of nostalgia, perceptible within the phenomenon of sequels, reboots, and remakes – but different from that of the cinema. It’s because we remember the gameplay. It is a feeling of the countless hours spent on that Sandbox, MMO, or FPS game, eventful gaming sessions, and the exchange of experiences with fellow gamer-friends. The sense of active participation in fictional events is unachievable in cinema.

That leads to a series of questions: would hypothetical Disco Elysium 2 feel nostalgic because of the memory of my involvement in the play-through of the first game, or would it evoke a sense of longing by itself? Would it be possible to differentiate these two sensations? Because I surely will feel nostalgic “for” Revachol, and surely will play Disco Elysium again once some years pass.

Such attempts (replaying, remakes, sequels) at resurrecting past experiences highlight the imperfections of memory. Games’ replayability exposes that to the bone. Yet, it is not always a negative experience, even though it may seem sad and rather painful. I might not be able to enjoy nostalgia “in” the world of Minecraft like I long “for” the experience of its place in my upbringing, but it is nonetheless a worthwhile game. To enter these digital worlds – spaces of memories to come – means to embrace their rules and their temporality. Play subsequent games, cherishing what you remember well from the previous ones, without actively romanticizing your own fantasy. Send a postcard from time to time to your already remote, old, digital worlds of the past. Walk around them, sweep some dust. Ask them innocently, with utmost care: What’s up? What’s changed? How is my digitalized nostalgia doing? Will it prevail?

Paulina Durakiewicz

Antonina Nizielska

Gothic, Ghosts, and… Dancing?

Here I am, in my living room, playing Just Dance 2022. I pick Lady Gaga’s “Judas” as the next song. The dancer strikes a pose and begins to move. She dances in a strange, dark castle with enormously high, black walls. And then it hits me. It’s a Gothic mansion with a modern twist.

There are more than 80 songs in Just Dance 2022 and 2023. Each song has a unique map functioning as a background for the dancing coach. The scenery can be quite diverse; from dancing life-size pandas and K-pop stars to inanimate objects and blue-skin aliens, Just Dance has it all. Also, some maps incorporate elements from Gothic fiction into their structure – be it a forgotten castle, a cemetery, a monster, or a vampire. Those motifs are grounded in the literary tradition of Gothic fiction from the 18th and 19th centuries. Gothic is more than a literary trope. The term can also be used to denote a general atmosphere of terror, fear, and the existence of the supernatural.

Probably the first thing that comes to mind after hearing the word ‘Gothic’ is an old, gloomy mansion. It’s exactly what a player sees on the map for “Judas” by Lady Gaga. The mansion contains several architectural elements of a Gothic cathedral in mediaeval Europe. On the other hand, there are parts of a motorbike built into its structure. They say that Gothic architecture was born out of a desire for natural light, but in this mansion, there are no windows. The walls are plunged in darkness, lit to the beat by bright neon pink and yellow lights. Tires with wheel rims are incorporated into the building’s splendid, curved arches. Instead of stone gargoyles, there are shiny, black motor fenders placed on the facades. Furthermore, the coach’s name in “Judas” is Shadow Rider. Dressed in a leather motor suit with silver chains, she and her gang of shadow men prowl the area of the mansion. Rather than praying or running around in a labyrinth of corridors, like Matilda or Isabella from Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (a Gothic fiction classic), Shadow Rider prefers attending a modern rave in

an old cathedral. Overall, the mansion’s space is not nearly as hostile as in Gothic fiction. Shadow Rider owns the place and transforms it as she pleases: into a strange hybrid of a Gothic church and a motorbike. But she’s not the only female figure haunting Gothic places. You can also encounter witches.

Who is the witch’s best friend? A black cat, naturally. The black cat’s owner, a sorceress called Felicia, performs to Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary”. Felicia is equipped with everything an average witch needs – be it magic potions, candles, kettles lit under green fire, a short, sleeveless, glittery dress with sexy Victorian bustles, or her many cats. Felicia dances in two locations. The first one is her witch study, the other one is a cemetery in the middle of the night. The area of the graveyard is filled with examples of liminal space – a place of transition between the real and the fantastical – a pivotal element of space in Gothic fiction. Using existing physical boundaries, such as gates, tunnels, or secret doors, characters from Gothic fiction transcend the realm of the real and step into the supernatural. As a result, the liminal space illustrates a clash of two different dimensions – a black iron gate and a gigantic cat-shaped mansion are these boundaries. Felicia’s map exhibits the conflict of realistic versus artificial and natural versus supernatural, as it transforms the inside and outside of the house from something domestic into something witchy.

Gothic fiction is strongly connected with the presence of a monster – sometimes perceived as a creature out of this world, contradictory, incomplete, or even revolting. When talking about monsters, there is always more than meets the eye. The Forgotten Queen, the coach dancing to “Human” by Sevdaliza, half woman, half water creature, performs her flowy, sensual dance at the bottom of the sea. She has long curly dreadlocks and is wearing a net-like bra and skirt. Although she looks like a woman at first glance, the coach transgresses the boundaries of a fully human existence and presents herself as somewhat uncanny. She has a liminal body, arms, legs, and torso of a human, skin with scales, a big head covered in thick ridges, and the protruding structure of bones of a monster. She embodies the clash of human versus beast and civilised versus primitive, just like Frankenstein’s monster from the pivotal Gothic novel by Mary Shelley. The Forgotten Queen rules the place below, where darkness, rocks, waterfalls, and little particles of light flow along with her movement – all placed deep underwater beyond the vision of the human eye.

An immortal, bloodsucking bombshell – in short, another archetypal character from Gothic fiction: the vampiric figure of a woman. Lilith, the dancer in “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” by Usher, resembles the female vampires from Bram Stoker’s Dracula who try to seduce, drain, and possess Jonathan Harker during his captivity. Yet, this female vampire hunts outside Dracula’s castle. Lilith, a modern party vampire, meets her prey at a Halloween beach party with blended vampiric motifs which help her camouflage, such as bats, candles, and a crypt-like beach house. Rocking her black, leather skinny pants, a choker, ruby red corset, and ragged cape, the coach epitomises a vampire living a modern nightlife. She dances with Alano –a generic partygoer wearing blue jeans with a neon Hawaiian shirt. Lilith, a possessor of demonic powers, manipulates her dancing partner with her blue flame magic. Enchanted and seduced, Alano is drained of his colours and his clothes change from pink and yellow to black and red. Becoming her marionette, Alano dances repeating Lilith’s moves, completely preoccupied with her vampiric presence. Gothic female vampires display both a strong sexual lust and a lust for power. Being a tease, an enchantress, and a dancer, Lilith fits this definition perfectly.

The female characters are the best proof of how Gothic fiction has penetrated the aesthetics of modern culture. The songs presented in Just Dance are rooted in the Gothic tradition; at the same time, they twist and modernise its quintessential elements. The traditional Gothic merges with the modern version of the aesthetic to transgress well-established features and produce a refreshed and contemporary view. The inspiration and factual references to Gothic fiction are illusive and reshaped, but still operative, captivating, and witty. A gloomy mansion turns into a disco, a domestic space metamorphoses into a witchy suite, monstrosity becomes mesmerising, and a vampire hunts on the dancefloor. In other words, binary oppositions of old and new fuse into a spellbinding perspective.

To Cost an Arm and a Case; or, How a Railroad Giant Played with the Law

Around 2:30 am on a July morning in 1934, Mr. Tompkins was on his way back home via a path alongside the railway tracks when a badly secured door protruding from a train car severely injured his arm to the point of amputation. Mr. Tompkins decided to sue the proprietor of the railway, Erie Railroad from the state of New York, because, as he claimed, the area where he was injured was open to public use. That would make him a licensee, and therefore, liable for damages on account of the railway tracks not being properly secured. And so, the game began.

As one might have guessed, the Erie Railroad did not see eye to eye with Mr. Tompkins on the issue of his accident. The company instead argued that according to the ruling of the highest court of Pennsylvania “persons who use pathways along the railroad right of way […] are to be deemed trespassers.” What then is the difference between a licensee and a trespasser? Essentially, the former has a right to use the railway-adjacent pathways and the latter does not. In practice, it means that if a trespasser on the railway path is struck with a protruding door and loses their arm, they have to prove that the railway was consciously neglectful, acting without a care for the wellbeing of the passersby. In Mr. Tompkins’s case, that was very difficult to prove. Additionally, no state statute obliged the railroad company to a duty of care to those who use railway pathways.

It had then become abundantly clear that, if Mr. Tompkins were to sue in a Pennsylvania court, it would have inevitably led to the complete loss of compensation. The only way for him to secure the money would be to somehow make use of the laws of other states. Here’s where things got interesting.

In the United States, each state has its own judicial system. Beyond that, there are also federal courts, which have the power to hear cases from distinctive branches of law, such as copyright or patent law. However, that’s not the sole circumstance in which federal courts may hold jurisdiction over a particular case. The other is the so-called diversity jurisdiction. If the two opposing parties of the judicial proceedings originate from different states, and the plaintiff seeks more than $75,000 in a lawsuit, the litigant can decide to sue in a federal instead of state court, as a way to avoid local bias. In most of the US, the state court judges are chosen in popular elections rather than being nominated by the government, which in theory makes them more objective. Still, in the 1930s, there was yet another incentive to sue in federal courts. Not only did they have different judges elected in a different procedure, but also – most crucially – there were different laws in play.

Originating in the 1842 Swift vs Tyson Supreme Court decision, state judicial rulings – the most basic element of the common law system – were not to be considered law and were not binding in federal proceedings. Consequently, if there were no clearly defined rules written in statutes on a given issue, the federal court was creating its own common law from the rulings of federal judges instead of using already existing precedents established by state courts.

As a result, the decision of the highest court of Pennsylvania would be void – or invalid – and because there was no specific statute on the matter, the federal court would be free to use federal common law to decide the case. In other words, the court would either cite other federal judicial decisions or decide the case at its own discretion.

Because Mr. Tompkins had been a citizen of Pennsylvania, and the Erie Railroad had been based in the state of New York, the basic requirements for the diversity jurisdiction were met, and the case was filed by Mr. Tompkins’s lawyer to the federal trial court in New York.

The Erie Railroad unsuccessfully argued that the case was a matter of local law, and therefore, should be decided by the common law of Pennsylvania. The federal trial court ruled otherwise. Ultimately, the verdict was reached by a jury, and Mr. Tompkins was awarded $30,000 in damages – today, roughly $600,000 adjusted for inflation. After the defeat, the company even approached Mr. Tompkins with an offer of $7,500 to settle the case, which he denied.

Despite riding high, Mr. Tompkins yielded to the further suggestions of his lawyer who claimed that, according to federal common law, appealing to a higher instance of federal courts would most likely grant Mr. Tompkins an even greater compensation. The district court, which is the higher instance of the federal judicial system, affirmed the ruling. The Erie Railroad, refusing to accept the decision of federal courts, decided that two can play that game and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States. Yet again, the Erie Railroad argued that the plaintiff was not playing by the rules, and that the case should be decided by the Pennsylvania state common law as a clear example of a local law matter. The Supreme Court, however, was an entirely new ball game neither side expected.

Sanaz Nouri

The binding precedent established back in the Swift vs Tyson case was ruled unconstitutional. Moreover, the phrase “laws of the several states,” quoted from the Judiciary Act of 1789, was incorrectly interpreted as referring only to statutory and customary laws. In fact, common law rulings of the state courts should be cited when pleading a case in front of a federal court.

The Supreme Court concluded that according to the previous interpretation, a thread of forum shopping unraveled: Mr. Tompkins had an option of choosing a different court and – along with it a different type of law – therefore giving him an unfair advantage. After this ruling, such loopholes were no longer viable because when deciding on a diversity case, the federal court was now supposed to use the law of the state where the court resides.

In the end, Mr. Tompkins’s strategic decision to appeal the case in federal court was for naught. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the court of the first instance, which, in turn, ruled according to the verdict of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court. Mr. Tompkins was, in fact, a trespasser. Because he couldn’t prove wanton negligence on the part of the railway, he was left with nothing but a bittersweet feeling of a spectacular victory, and, perhaps, an even more spectacular failure. The Erie Railroad came out victorious and ultimately won their tug-ofwar.

Sanaz Nouri

Julia Krzeszowska

Let’s Play War

It is a children’s game with simple rules. Everybody can have a try. As many players as you want. However, the more people play, the harder it becomes to find a winner, and the distinction of who wins and who doesn’t gets muddier. The idea is that the stronger one keeps on beating the weaker till nothing is left of them and then, if the players are not bored already, one of them shuffles the cards, and they play again. Winning isn’t a matter of skill but of circumstance or luck – if someone didn’t tamper with the card deck earlier, that is.

Here, I’m just talking about the card game called “War”. Yet, those statements, to various degrees, could be applied to real military conflicts that were, are, and will someday be happening out there in the real world, with real people’s lives at stake. And, indeed, it may be cruel or insensitive to compare war to a game one plays for pleasure or to kill time. I’m not a war specialist. I’m a linguist, at best. When I engage with war discourse, what interests me most is the language at work –particularly, one very powerful rhetorical device: the metaphor.

The idea of metaphor, as understood in linguistics, could be explained as taking a phrase in the “language of reality” and translating it to the “journey language”, the “plants language”, or the “game language”, to name just a few. The last sentence uses a metaphor, too. Translating from one language to another and the mental act of constructing a metaphor are, in fact, two distinct, unrelated things. Even so, we can find some analogies between them: the former’s function is to convey a message expressed in one language into another; the latter’s is to render a concept expressed in one domain (a field of meaning) into another. Because we notice this similarity, we can “borrow” the familiar vocabulary associated with translating and use it to describe something new – here, the function of a rhetorical device. And so, we create a metaphor. It’s a great tool that helps us mentally visualise and talk about abstract, difficult or complex experiences. In this case, war.

Palina Sachyvets

It’s necessary to pinpoint one key quality of metaphors – they allow us to focus on only one aspect of a given thing at a time, inevitably obscuring others. For example, the experience of “love” can be described in many ways, depending on what kind of love we have in mind. We can speak of love as a journey (“Our relationship is going in the right direction.”) to highlight the progress and cooperation. We can also discard the whimsicality and randomness of falling in love, as expressed in the metaphor “love is magic” (“He was enchanted by her beauty.”). It is also possible to focus on the violence and determination, as conveyed by the metaphor “love is war” (“She is willing to fight for their relationship.”).

Metaphors are so deeply embedded in our personal and shared vocabulary that we often don’t notice we’re using – or even overusing – them. One interesting example of that would be a quote from the current US Deputy Defense Secretary’s speech on the Iraq War: “Iraq has had 12 years now to disarm, as it agreed to do after the Gulf War. But, so far, it has treated disarmament like a game of hide and seek, or, as Secretary of State Powell has termed it, ‘rope-a-dope in the desert’”.

But this is not a game, the Deputy adds immediately He doesn’t want us to associate war with playing games. Games are unserious and frivolous, wars – just the opposite. Yet, it is hard to ignore the fact that we regularly borrow phrases heard on the playgrounds and in video games to describe military conflicts. In every war we identify “the winner”, “the loser”, and their goal (simply put): to beat the other one.

For all that, some may start to wonder whether it is the metaphor that shapes reality or the other way around. Just think of virtual reality. When asked what it is, most people start to talk about VR goggles and games. And they aren’t wrong. Owing to VR technology, war games, or “wargaming”, have become a part of modern military training in many countries, with the US leading the way. Before being deployed on missions, soldiers practise by playing

simulations of combat scenarios on games like a military-issued Call Of Duty

However, the rising popularity of wargaming technologies isn’t the only factor responsible for the difficulty in drawing a line between “war” and “gaming”. If you’re into strategic games, you probably have heard about game theory. Originally invented as a method of analysing mathematical models of games that don’t involve reflexes or aiming skills, nowadays the theory is used in the planning stage of many military activities. Its purpose is to predict strategic interactions among players – or, when applied to war-waging, the sides of the conflict, who are called rational agents. Notably though, “rational” doesn’t mean “reasonable” but “purposeful”. Therefore, “[p]layers in a game can have just about any goal including those that a game theorist might consider fanciful, misguided, or immoral”, writes Frank Zagare, Professor of Political Science at the University of Buffalo, in his article on the use of the game theory in interpreting wars.

The theory gives us a meaningful insight into the inner workings of the war machine. As a byproduct, it also articulates some simple truths about what modern war is: a calculated, goal-driven confrontation. Whether those objectives are “fanciful, misguided, or immoral” doesn’t matter here. It’s not the one who’s good or right that wins, but the one who’s more persistent (or lucky).

Yet, it should go without saying that equating war with a game is only a simplification. War isn’t “a game” or “like a game”. At some level of specification, nothing is like anything else. And so, at the end of the day, war is war, and that’s it. Language can only take us this far. But, despite their limits, we shouldn’t completely dismiss the potential the words have to shape and to change our reality. After all, skilful use of words is just as effective, if not more so, than the use of force – as one 19thcentury British playwright, Edward BulwerLytton, summed it up almost 200 years ago: “The pen is mightier than the sword”.

Let The Games Begin: Understanding the Global Phenomenon of Taylor Swift

Note: this text was written before Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, was released.

Late last year, nobody could have predicted the response from fans and media alike when this celebrity updates account tweeted a picture of Taylor Swift snacking on a post-football game meal with the caption, “Taylor Swift was eating a piece of chicken with ketchup and seemingly ranch.” Early Halloween costumes of the seemingly ranch condiment emerged. The Kraft Heinz Company confidently jumped on the viral wagon and released a limited edition of their signature dressing in honor of the picture. Or maybe we should have seen that coming? This frenzy that took over social media for a good portion of the week may seem perplexing to an outsider, but for Swifties (as fans of the singer are dubbed), these are routine incidents. It takes merely a casual photograph for Swift not only to become the topic of fervent discussions, but also to impact the revenue of an international food company. In the past three years, Taylor Swift’s influence and global appeal have reached incomparable heights. Album sales, concert attendance, and streaming numbers all continue to exceed the audiences’ wildest dreams with no signs of slowing down. While this unquestionable success puts Swift in a league of her own, a question arises: what makes her star shine so bright?

Despite debuting in 2005 with her selftitled country album, never before has Taylor Swift’s fame been so explicitly unchallenged – with each new record, her popularity grows bigger. Even artists with equally impressive industry experience

have a hard time matching this level of unwavering success. A simple comparison of likes left on her Instagram posts speaks volumes about her reach: the announcement of her last pre-pandemic album (Lover, 2019) received a little over 2 million likes, while her latest album announcement (The Tortured Poets Department, 2024) amounted to a whopping 14.6 million likes. While one might argue that Internet influence alone cannot be the measure of an artist’s worth, this devotion certainly illustrates the development of Swift’s fame – from an undeniably successful and popular musician to what her Spotify biography deems “the rarest of pop phenomena.” When I went looking for a reason, among countless other factors, I actually found three major ones: the release of pandemic-time sister albums folklore and evermore (2020), the endeavor of rerecording her masters (2021-), and the global musical pilgrimage that is the Eras Tour (2023-).

A stylistic departure from Swift’s previous body of work, 2020’s albums folklore and evermore offered richly told escapism in the midst of the pandemic. Lyrically poignant, not only did this poetic venture win Swift record-breaking number of awards, but it also reintroduced her art to people who still associated her with the country banjo of “Mean” and the catchy chorus of the pop smash hit “Shake It Off.” Stories of isolation, regret, and heartbreak intertwined with eulogies celebrating life and rebirth, making the records staples of the time of quarantine. Yet their storytelling is so universal in its message that the albums cannot be shoehorned strictly into the time of social distancing. However, the records’ storytelling is not the

sole reason for the enticing novelty. Both folklore and evermore were surprise releases, announced hours before their streaming premieres. It was a move which prior to the pandemic was unthinkable for the highly calculated marketing strategies of Swift’s team. The general disbelief at the releases combined with their uncharted sounds and melancholic lyrics established folklore and evermore as the introductory act to Swift’s era of sophisticated artistic expression.

It is impossible to overstate the cultural impact of the indie sound and vivid storytelling of the two records. The intricate lyricism with equal acclaim from both the devoted amateurs and key music industry players granted Swift unparalleled nominations and awards. Hailed as Album of the Year at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, folklore became the representative record of a time of fear, isolation, and longing, while evermore’s extension into Swift’s narrative remains a fan favorite.

The undertaking of re-recording her back catalog has undoubtedly augmented Swift’s constant presence in the global arena. After parting ways with her original record label Big Machine Records in 2019, the musician found herself in a dispute over the ownership of her first six albums. The legal argument concluded in the sale of the music to a third party. Consequently, Swift was rendered unable to profit off of her work, e.g. through licensing or streaming. To reclaim the rights to her masters, she set out on an ambitious project of re-recording all of her first six albums released between 2005 and 2017, and, in true Swift fashion, she did so with overwhelming success. The re-recording process began in 2021 with the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version).

As of early 2024, four out of six albums have received the Taylor’s Version treatment (as the re-recordings are dubbed): each amounting to even greater commercial success. Exceptional sales continue to astound the industry, since the music remains virtually unchanged from the original “stolen” versions. An additional incentive that Swift offers on each of the records is the inclusion of songs “From The Vault” – singles that originally never made it to the album slates but were written at the time of their conception. Praised for their timelessness, Swift’s decade-old albums find new audiences in a generation of fans introduced to her work through the recent re-recordings. Given that the entire process began barely three years ago, this temporal proximity of each album’s release allows for a close inspection of Swift’s work, whose genre-hopping evolution is a testament to her versatility as an artist.

Known for her playful tendency to string her fans along on a journey of carefully placed easter eggs and clues, Swift remains faithful to her usual antics during the re-recording process. Dropping hints in Instagram post captions, sparkling rumors by emphasizing the dominant color of an outfit, or cryptically smirking while leaving a recording studio, the artist plays her usual game of speculation, maximizing downthe-rabbit-hole fan engagement. While Swifties theorize, Swift plots, and the game continues to amuse both sides: “Cause you know I love the players and you love the game.”

Paulina Durakiewicz

In the post-pandemic landscape of Swift’s impressive endeavors, none contribute to her industrious superiority and raging popularity quite as much as the world tour she embarked on in 2023. Upon the release of her 2019 studio album Lover, the songwriter was forced to cancel the planned international Lover Fest Tour scheduled for 2020 due to the pandemic. In hindsight, the 16 planned shows (including the singer’s first appearance in Poland at the Open’er Music Festival in Gdynia) grow pale in comparison to what eventually became the 152 monumental performances of the Eras Tour (2023-). Named after each of Swift’s musical ‘eras’ – a mash of themes, aesthetics, colors, and sounds, each encompassing one of her records – the shows are over 3-hour-long spectacles of performative might. Each night thousands of devout fans gather both inside and outside the sold-out stadiums and millions of people tune in for amateur livestreams on various social media platforms.

Even before the very first show in March 2023, the tour garnered considerable media attention. Upon its announcement, “astronomical demand” forced Swift’s team to continuously add new dates – from the original 27 to 62 US shows, and, eventually, revealing plans for international legs of the tour. Even some of the world leaders, such as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, publicly invited Swift to tour in their countries. Buying a ticket became synonymous with winning the lottery due to the Ticketmaster platform’s inability to satisfy this overwhelming demand. The sales fiasco even made its way to Congress, prompting a political debate on the viability of the Ticketmaster/Live Nation Entertainment monopoly, with figures such as President Joe Biden voicing their concerns.

Once the tour kicked off, it quickly became apparent that, just like anything Swift does, its impact would be immense. Each hosting city has welcomed the musician. For example, Las Vegas lit up its Gateway Arches in the colors of the ten Eras. While Tampa presented the singer with a key to the city, some cities went as far as to rename itself for the duration of Swift’s visit – e.g. Minneapolis became Swiftieapolis. Eagle-eyed Varsovians surely noticed the singer’s name light-projected on the facade of the PGE National Stadium on the eve of the announcement of international show dates, among them, three upcoming Warsaw shows in August 2024.

Aside from this cultural frenzy that rocked America (and beyond!), the Eras Tour has made a significant impact on the economy. It has already been announced as the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning Swift a billion-dollar profit to date, over half of which the musician distributed in the form of bonuses for her team and crew. Additionally, so far, the tour has also boosted the US economy by over 4 billion dollars, mostly in the hospitality area, with experts dubbing this fiscal boom “The TSwift Lift.” With the first North American leg of the tour concluded, Swift now sets her sights on conquering the rest of the world: the Eras Tour is certainly going to leave a similar impression worldwide. Are you ready for it?

In the last four years, Taylor Swift’s stardom has risen to previously uncharted levels, not only impacting the music industry, but also flooding unrelated areas, such as Internet culture, or even the economy. Despite worries about aging and fading from the limelight voiced in the 2019 documentary Miss Americana, Swift is undoubtedly enjoying a golden age of her hard-earned success, and it looks as if her star shines too bright to fade any time soon. We may never truly know if it was indeed the ranch, but the craze surrounding Swift is sure to deliver another seemingly engrossing viral moment in no time.

Alyona Shimberg

Play for the Win or Play for the Game: A Note on Cultural Differences

Lively music starts playing. Children begin to walk around chairs arranged in a circle. Some stroll carefree, while others slowly and methodically move from chair to chair, prepared to react at any moment. Then the music comes to an abrupt stop, and everyone rushes to the closest chair in an attempt to claim a place for themselves, prepared to fight for it if necessary, so as not to get eliminated. Each round, one chair is taken away, until finally, only two players and one chair remain, and the winner of the game is decided. That’s how the popular game of musical chairs goes – an activity enjoyed in educational environments and at parties alike. While the origins of musical chairs could be traced far back, the modern version formed in 19th-century English parlors and quickly gained popularity. Simple rules, high levels of engagement, and the need for constant vigilance ensured that the game left the salons of the upper class and became a true party hit that is played to this day.

However, musical chairs is not the only game of this kind. Its Japanese equivalent is called fruits basket. It is very often played in classrooms and therefore, most Japanese people know it. The game begins with the same setting: a group of people (usually children) and a set of chairs in a circle. But, one player stays in the middle, while everyone else sits on a chair and each is assigned a fruit. The players end up forming a whole “fruit basket”: a few strawberries, a couple of bananas, some pineapples, etc. After that, the player standing in the middle names a fruit, and whoever is called out must stand up and move to a different spot. The person in the center also attempts to sit on one of the freed chairs. The player left standing has to say another fruit name, and so the game goes on. It’s also possible to exclaim “Fruits basket!” and then everyone must stand up and find a new spot.

The main difference between musical chairs and fruits basket lies in the basic structure of the games’ mechanics: musical chairs is first and foremost a competitive game, where the main goal is to become the last person sitting on the chair. However, in fruits basket there is no elimination, no winner, and no prize. The game doesn’t encourage rivalry, and the main objective is to unite the players. At the same time, it can be seen as a reflective model of society: every child belongs to a smaller group of a certain fruit, while all of them together are part of the basket – just like in society, where social groups of different sizes exist.

Both games are used in schools to help socialize children. However, the fundamental difference between their designs corresponds to different goals of socialization in American and Japanese cultures. Children begin their education at a very young age and that’s when they first encounter the concepts of competition and cooperation. American pupils tend to have a more competitive mindset when playing games. They’re eager to win and stand out to such an extent that they sometimes create additional rules to prevent others from winning. Using musical chairs in classrooms forms exactly that kind of attitude, as it promotes independence, ambition, and selfsufficiency. These traits are all desired in American society. Comparative studies of American preschools showed that teachers and parents view individual development and achievements as the most important reasons for early schooling. Acquiring social skills is considered important, but is still perceived mostly as an addition to individual development.

In Japanese games, however, children cooperate so that everyone can win or receive a prize, whether tangible or not. Instead of eliminating players to determine one winner, as is often the case in the U.S., school games in Japan are usually curated to involve everyone and avoid leaving players out of the process. The design of the games is not individualistic, but oriented towards creating group identification. Socialization is believed to be the single greatest task of the earliest years of schooling. Thus, the goal of the game usually involves letting every child in the class participate or connect with others.

As Diane Hoffman, an anthropologist of education, argued, many differences between the two educational practices stem from different cultural understandings of the individual, with Japanese education leaning towards a focus on individuality and American education – on individualism. The former is defined by the inner cultivation of unique individual qualities and creativity, and at the same time – by acceptance of certain social obligations. The latter can be described as assertiveness and agency of the self that continuously draws a line between the individual and the people and structures around them, which allows the individual to act according to personal interests and desires, unrestrained by social boundaries or expectations imposed by others.

In Japanese schools, group activities are preferred and much attention is given to ensure that children learn to adjust to the classroom’s collective life. American educators, on the other hand, often regard whole-group exercises as contradictory to individual needs, implicitly conformist and teacher-centered. A comparative study found that students in American classrooms spend the majority of their time working alone on individualized tasks, while students in Japan spend comparatively less time on seatwork and much more participating in group activities. At the same time, even the concept of group work is understood differently in the U.S. and Japan. For Americans, a group is defined by its task or central interest, and so this goal comes before relations to each other. For the Japanese, however, the feeling of belonging becomes more important than the task itself. As one Japanese teacher remarked in the same study: “Everyone doing the same thing at the same time is not the same as real group life, is it?”

The various tendencies in education are closely tied to the understanding of the individual and the self. In Japanese culture, the self is conceptualized as multilayered: one’s true feelings and thoughts are located on the inner level, while the outer level is geared towards interactions and is adjusted depending on social circumstances. While being able to change your selfpresentation to match the social situation is considered a mark of maturity, Japanese early education offers children the space to develop dimensions of the self that are difficult to cultivate at home. At the same time, it is encouraged to create a private domain of the self that can grow and flourish separately from the demands of social life. Although Japanese schools stress the importance of group activity and conformity, this is not contradictory to the notion of independent and autonomous self, but complementary to it. Meanwhile, the U.S. views the self more as a monolith consistent across different situations. Social behavior is supposed to align with inner thoughts and feelings, which is reflected in the all-American traits of honesty, frankness, and forthrightness. This is exemplified by the cultural emphasis on independence, self-expression, and individualism.

There is a concept in Japanese education that reflects a distinctly Japanese approach: it’s called ibasho – literally “place to be”, but its actual meaning is described as a place where you can be yourself and be accepted. Many Japanese educators hope that school can be an ibasho for their students, and so they become children’s companions or partners instead of simply being their instructors. And while the concept of ibasho is uniquely Japanese, the desire to make schools a safe space isn’t. This practice, along with some of the Japanese educational activities and games, can be a benchmark for other cultures.

Weronika Kubik

Que Roda Maravilhosa é Essa: a Glimpse on How Capoeira is Played

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “game”? Video games? Chess? Football? Hide-andseek? The world of games is widespread, diverse, and entertaining. However, games can be so much more than what they appear to be. One such surprising activity is capoeira – a complex mixture of physical exercise, acrobatics, and music, which holds tremendous cultural and historical importance primarily, but not only, for the people of Brazil.

Even though it is considered a martial art, its practitioners would never say that they use it to fight. The proper Portuguese terminology is jogar capoeira, which translates to “to play capoeira.” Hence, capoeiristas themselves can be referred to as os jogadores, or “players.”

There exist several hypotheses about the origins of capoeira, two of which are the most prominent. Some trace its roots back to Angola, a country in Southwestern Africa, which used to be one of the main sources of slave labor in colonial times. Others believe that it originated later, among slaves who worked on the plantations of Brazilian fazendeiros. There, the eye-catching martial art had to be disguised in a way that would not alarm the overseers and slave owners – with its music and rhythmical movements, it resembled a complicated dance. As such, it could have been practiced without putting the enslaved people in danger of being punished or suspected of preparing a revolt against their oppressors.

Today, capoeira continues to be a defense against social and economic oppression, even though the times have changed. It’s not unusual for mestres and instructors to set up pro bono programs directed at youth from impoverished neighborhoods. There, young people who often come from disadvantaged backgrounds can nurture their newly found passion and build friendships that only grow stronger as time passes. Because of how diverse capoeira is, each person can find ways to practice it that incorporate their individual skill set and talents. Moreover, they could find themselves exploring one of its three distinctive styles: Angola, Regional, and Contemporânea.

Capoeira Angola is believed to be the style preserving its African heritage to the highest degree. Mestre Pastinha, conventionally called the creator of Capoeira Angola, started his school Centro Esportivo de Capoeira Angola in 1941 in the city of Salvador. In his teachings, the master focused on the fluidity of movements, which are performed close to the ground at a slow pace, and require the players to find a perfectly smooth rhythm of attacks and defenses. He also stressed the importance of malícia, a sort of cunning that allows an experienced capoeirista to outsmart their opponent.

By contrast, Capoeira Regional is much quicker and more dynamic. It was officially established back when practicing this art was still illegal, that is, under the rule of Getúlio Vargas in the 1930s. The first school of Capoeira Regional, AcademiaEscola de Cultura Regional, was founded in 1932 in Salvador by Mestre Bimba. When it comes to this style, it emphasizes the speed and acrobatic prowess of the players and includes a wide array of kicks, strikes, and grapples which make it a more aggressive variety. Additionally, unlike in Capoeira Angola, Regional has a gradation system, which differs slightly from one capoeira group to another. Still, it involves awarding its practitioners with colorful cordas, or ropes, worn alongside traditional white abadá trousers. Each color is a mark of the growing experience and skill of the practitioner. The advancement to the next level is decided by a council made up of instructors, professors, and sometimes even mestres of a particular group. It is an acknowledgment of the dedication, hard work, and overall growth of a student.

Being rewarded with a new corda is always a thrilling experience. The overwhelming joy, pride, and excitement can be felt in the crowd, as the mestre wraps a freshly dyed rope around a student’s waist and encourages them to play with instructors, guests, and other alunos as a type of initiation ritual. The joyous atmosphere is completed by cheerful exclamations and singing that fill the hearts and souls of the players with inimitable energy.

Capoeira Contemporânea, on the other hand, is a fusion of both of the traditional styles. It’s believed to have emerged in the 1970s as a modernized, more creatively open version of the martial art. The contemporary style includes Angola’s focus on the fluidity of movements, mixed with Regional’s spectacular attacks and acrobatics, and may even be influenced by modern dance forms and musical styles.

Music is one of the key features of any style of capoeira. Although the composition of the orchestra, called bateria, might vary depending on the type of games and circumstances, several different instruments are associated with this art. These include a pandeiro (a tambourine), an agogô (a two-toned bell made out of Brazil nut shells and struck with a wooden stick), an atabaque (a large drum), and the most important instrument: a berimbau, used alongside a caxixi (a woven rattle, traditionally filled with seeds called Lágrimas de Nossa Senhora). The berimbau is a musical bow, a simple string instrument, made out of a wooden pole, a singular metal cord, and a resonator made out of a hollowed-out gourd, a cabaça. There are three distinct types of berimbaus – viola, médio, and gunga – each one producing a different quality of sound and fulfilling a distinct role in the bateria

Once a group of capoeiristas gathers to play, the game begins. The bateria plays one of the many rhythms as two players enter a circle called roda, formed by all the practitioners. They engage in a complex show of attacks and defenses, intertwined with acrobatics and performed to the rhythm of the music. Meanwhile, the viewers clap and sing cantigas, which can focus on a multifariousness of topics, such as the African heritage of the art, the history of slavery in Brazil, legendary heroes and mestres, like Besouro Mangangá or Zumbi dos Palmares, or tributes to different capoeira groups. The songs are performed in Portuguese and often include words of African origin. The verses are sung by the person leading the bateria, usually a mestre or one of the jogadores with the highest level of experience, while the players repeat the chorus.

For the players, capoeira is much more than a martial art and definitely so much more than a game. It is a type of “therapy” that leads to all-around growth and self-improvement. It is a way to escape the daily hardships and struggles. It may even provide salvation whenever we feel lonely and hopeless. It allows a person to become an integral part of a family. For those who have been practicing capoeira for decades, it’s nothing short of a way of life.

Even though the styles of playing may emphasize distinct elements, capoeira invariably values unity and amizade, or friendship, between its practitioners. The groups arrange open events which attract players from different organizations, cities, or even countries. Physical training and musical lessons are just as important as spectacular games between capoeiristas, The goal is not only showing off some impressive skills, but also simply having fun with friends. And for those who would prefer not to enter the circle – it is nonetheless an exhilarating performance to watch!