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Scroll.in
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Scroll.in
‘Sucker Punch': Scaachi Koul's writings are unable to move beyond the trappings of ‘internet essays'
There are many essayists, but no group with a style as recognisable as that of BuzzFeed essayists. The New Journalism practitioners were discernible too, but only because they make the journalistic novelistic. Even then, where Tom Wolfe is flamboyant, Joan Didion is stone cold, precise like a surgeon. They followed no cult of regularised style. They were not siblings at the same dinner table. They were not canvassers on the Internet. A child of the internet 'I picked a career that's preternaturally suited to getting into arguments on the internet,' writes Scaachi Koul in her latest offering, Sucker Punch, a collection of essays about, of all things, fighting. Not pugilism in the ring as much as the banal sparring with yourself, your parents, your partner, your friends, and your fans. Koul owes her present reputation to her stint as a culture writer at Buzzfeed Canada, where she wrote essays with titles like ' I Went To A Summer Camp For Adults And It Was Weird ', ' There's No Recipe For Growing Up ', and ' Can TV Make Us Not Hate Ourselves? ' It's a background that places them squarely within a certain type of online writing, that of the BuzzFeed essayist. The standard BuzzFeed essayist is a child of the internet. They have known no other home. Only their devices, a reliable data plan, and a penchant for living a narratable life keep them company. To them, the journalistic is the memoiristic. In BuzzFeed, it hardly matters where you come from. Just one caveat. You can never shed the skin of the BuzzFeed essayist. With a beast of an internet to feed, what else will the BuzzFeed essayist write about if not themselves? While recognisability as an essayist is desirable, being recognisable as a specific type of essayist is perhaps not. An essayist is only as good as their personality. When in history have good writers ever wanted to sound like regular ones? Ever since the internet, apparently. 'I know how to write these stories because they're all the same,' writes Koul about writing profiles that follow women falling from the grace of their television producers, '…but the readership rarely tires of them and neither do I.' The readership rarely seems to tire of the internet essay, either. Although not to be confused with the personal essay, the internet essay owes much to its compatriot. It shares its vanity, vapidity, virility, verity, and variety, not to mention vitriol. Even fiction has been the target of rants against the personal essay, as this piece points out. Where the personal essay seeks to enlighten, the internet essay entertains. 'The internet made the personal essay worse, as it does for most things,' writes essayist Jia Tolentino in her 2017 New Yorker article, 'The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over'. Tolentino narrates the noiseless abandonment of personal essays in favour of good old reporting; one of the missteps of our time was to confuse the two. What is the internet essay, though? Like the personal essay, it is where the writer fidgets with the question of whether they have something to say. Except, the writer (as well as the editor) shelves the question immediately. It's too demanding. Content begs quick production (cumbersome questions get in the way like a pestering co-worker). Where the internet essay breaks away from the personal essay is when it becomes conversational, digressive, and sometimes fragmented. It is a work-in-progress impersonating a completed draft, strewn with hackneyed cultural criticism and memes, often structured for skimming. Mobile-optimised. I could've read Sucker Punch on my phone, and it wouldn't have made a difference. As a Brown writer in America, Koul can't not talk about race, but she goes the extra mile and whisks in religion. Even her index follows the pattern of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth in Hinduism. She writes, 'It was boring to talk about God,' before slinging out an extended metaphor comparing herself to Parvati: 'Parvati wanted to marry Shiva; her parents, however, didn't approve.' Koul married an older white man, which seems inevitable, considering how even the deities have 'white skin'. '(Why were they always white?)' she asks in parentheses. There are many other such considerations relegated to these brackets: '(I'm sure there's a joke in here somewhere about the white man in my life getting his visa during a Trump administration in about five minutes while mine took more than a year, but I'm too tired from living through that administration in real time to mine for the punchline. Later, when Trump becomes our cyborg king, I'm sure I'll be able to make sense of those heady early years).' That titbit is from an essay titled 'Lolita, Later,' which is perhaps the most vulnerable of the lot, which questions the trouble of embodying the character of Lolita the way Humbert Humbert intended, as a girl who has agency. In the essay, Koul struggles to reach a point, bringing together morsels from her age-gap marriage that ended in divorce, the experience of dating an emotionally unavailable man after the fact, and her reasonable distrust of men. The Trump joke has no room unless Koul wants to stick to narrating her deliberations at a cocktail party. Perhaps that's what she desires. As millennials like her might say, she's too 'lit' to write a book, y'all. A Brown woman in America The tedious digressions are inescapable in the internet essay, a form that desires a clear political leaning. No ambiguity allowed. Depending on the country you're from, there is a checklist of things you must have an opinion on to be worthy of writing on the Internet. In America, it's trans issues, Trump, and vaccination. In India, it's Modi, minorities and Hindutva. A self-diagnosis is also mandatory, obliged by an internet nibbling on the scraps of psychoanalytic theory: Falling in love with someone older, protective, and angry was a response to him assaulting me. Running away from Toronto was another attempt to avoid reckoning with the kind of girl who would 'let something like this happen' to herself. And, ironically, kick-starting some gupshup with Jeff during lockdown was my own way of avoiding the more urgent fight happening inside my marriage. In this essay, squarely titled A Close Read, Koul examines her fraught relationship with a man named Jeff, who sexually assaulted her when they were at university. Before his passing, she had contacted him; their conversations were lukewarm, inviting no apology and only derision from her husband when he found out. Going by these pieces, nothing in Koul's life appears to exist independently of everything else, and life imitates the structure of the book, where its claim to being a collection of essays seems propelled by a desire to stand out in an American market buffeted with divorce books. Perhaps the difference, to labour my point as Koul often does, is that hers is a Brown woman's perspective. If I had to think prototypically, internet essays by 'a Brown woman in America' can produce prattling platitudes on identity, belonging, cultural duality, generational conflict, burdening expectations, and defiant joy – to name just a few – and Sucker Punch delivers. In the soliloquy on her relationship with her body, 'Chocolate, Lime Juice, Ice Cream', Koul chatters about her lifelong struggle with body image and self-esteem, the cradle of which she, as you might guess, owes to her mother ('I was at my thinnest at that wedding; I knew, because my mom told me I was. She was proud. I was hungry.'). Somewhere along her essay, Koul writes: 'It's rote for a woman to blame her issues with food on her mother, but clichés exist for a reason.' After her divorce from an ex-husband who 'was always feeding' her, Koul's mother had a persistent question: 'Did you eat?' ('Did you eat?' she'd say. 'You have to eat. Eat everything. Eat whatever you want. Eat now.') The essay paddles the same ideas that float in its sisters: Koul loved her husband, forgot for a whole hot minute that she was a complete person in her own right, left him, and is now discovering herself, recuperating all the while. Since she's a writer, a book is a part of that process. The internet essayist has to get to a point. She doesn't have the privilege of mere deliberations, even if the process of self-discovery guarantees simply that. Here's how Koul arrives at hers: But I don't need to hide from myself, or hide myself from other people. Besides, I cannot hide because no one will let me. Even if I try to slink away to an invisible place, someone will come and get me. It's nice in the light if you can stand in it long enough to feel the warmth. Looking at my body with my own gaze is a light unto itself. I try to stay there as much as I possibly can. My mother told me to eat, and so I did. On arriving here, Koul sounds like anyone else. I won't deny that she's a good writer, but in Sucker Punch, Koul becomes the quintessential internet essayist, best read to escape the sludge of perpetually streaming 'content' but close enough to it that there are no withdrawal symptoms.
Glasgow Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Sigrid asked security for this request during TRNSMT set
During her brilliant performance on the main stage, the Norwegian singer asked a nearby steward to spray her with water from a hose. "I'm so hot!" She exclaimed - and with all the dancing she was doing on stage, it is no wonder. (Image: Images by Gordon Terris, Newsquest) Donning a TRNSMT 2025 t-shirt, the singer never stopped moving about. Making use of the stage's runway and jumping around during her tunes, the star had a huge smile on her face from start to finish. When watching Sigrid, it is clear that she absolutely loves what she does. Playing huge hits like Don't Kill My Vibe, Sucker Punch and High Five, she also played some new songs like Jellyfish - which came out yesterday. Speaking on the new music, she revealed: "I released a single yesterday which was my first in ages." She continued: "I've been in the studio a lot over the last year." (Image: Images by Gordon Terris, Newsquest) (Image: Images by Gordon Terris, Newsquest) Her vocals were incredibly from start to finish - and she used her voice to share her love for Glasgow and TRNSMT too. After Don't Feel Like Crying, the singer said: "It's great to be back in Scotland. It means the world that you came to see us. "We love playing TRNSMT it's so good to be back here. We played the King Tut's stage and now the main stage." (Image: Images by Gordon Terris, Newsquest) As she finished off with her huge hit, Strangers, Sigrid's set was a huge ray of sunshine to an already sweltering Saturday.
Mint
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Sony unveils Ghost of Yotei PS5 limited edition bundles inspired by Japanese art
Sony has announced a limited-edition PlayStation 5 bundle tied to the upcoming game Ghost of Yotei. The bundle features a redesigned PS5 console, a matching DualSense controller, and a digital copy of the game. Sony plans to release two distinct designs inspired by Japanese art, set to launch on October 2 alongside the game's debut. Sony revealed the new bundles during its State of Play livestream. The designs draw from the fictional Ezo region depicted in Ghost of Yotei, created by the game's developer, Sucker Punch. The first design, called the Gold Limited Edition, takes inspiration from kintsugi, a Japanese art technique that repairs broken pottery with gold lacquer. This design highlights gold accents on the console and controller. The second design, called the Black Limited Edition, uses black tones influenced by sumi-e, a traditional style of Japanese ink painting. Both controllers in the bundles carry a silhouette of Atsu, a character from the game, placed on the touchpad and rendered in gold and black to match the respective bundles. Sony said the Gold Edition bundle will be available worldwide, while the Black Edition will be sold exclusively through in regions where this is supported. Each bundle includes a disc edition PS5 console, a DualSense wireless controller, and a digital copy of Ghost of Yotei Standard Edition with pre-order benefits. For PS5 owners who already have the slim or Pro versions, Sony will offer limited-edition console covers that match these designs. These covers and the limited-edition DualSense controllers will also be available for separate purchase through online retailers, but only in limited quantities. The bundles and accessories will launch on October 2, which will coincide with the exclusive PS5 release of Ghost of Yotei. Sony has stated that it will offer pre-order information at a later date.
Time of India
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
What is Watanabe Mode in Ghost of Yotei?
(Image via Sucker Punch) The upcoming Ghost of Yotei has fans buzzing, not just because it's the spiritual sequel to Ghost of Tsushima , but because of a brand-new feature that feels straight out of an anime soundtrack studio. Say hello to Watanabe Mode, a lo-fi, vibe-driven experience tucked inside a samurai action game. Sounds unexpected? It is. And that's exactly why players are curious. What Is Wantanabe Mode in Ghost of Yotei? Watanabe Mode is Ghost of Yotei 's love letter to fans of atmospheric storytelling. Named after Shinichiro Watanabe — the legendary director behind Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop — this mode introduces a Lo-Fi musical backdrop to your gameplay. Imagine cutting down enemies or strolling through misty forests, all while chill beats hum in the background. Yes, it's that cool. No Gameplay Changes — Just Vibes Watanabe Mode doesn't impact combat mechanics, character stats, or difficulty. What it changes is the feel . You're still swinging your katana with deadly precision, but now you're doing it in a more meditative space. It's like switching from an action-packed anime to a slow-burning, lo-fi AMV — same visuals, new rhythm. Collaboration with a Legend The mode isn't just inspired by Watanabe; it's a direct collaboration. The developers worked with him to craft original tracks specifically for this mode. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like An engineer reveals: One simple trick to get internet without a subscription Techno Mag Learn More Undo That's not just background noise; that's curated audio storytelling. Ghost of Yōtei: Special Modes – Kurosawa, Miike & Watanabe Mode | PlayStation State of Play 2025 Can you toggle Watanabe Mode on and off? Absolutely. It's optional. Watanabe Mode can be enabled or disabled at any point, depending on your mood. Want the traditional Ghost of Tsushima musical tension? Stick with the standard. Looking to vibe out on a peaceful trek or take some photo mode shots with a chill backdrop? Flip on Watanabe. This kind of flexibility is a smart move by developers, adding more ways to personalize your experience without forcing a single direction. A bold blend of anime, music, and samurai Watanabe Mode isn't just a feature; it's a mindset. Whether you're a hardcore samurai fan or just in it for the scenery, this mode gives Ghost of Yotei a modern, artistic edge. It's stylish, unexpected, and exactly the kind of risk we love to see in gaming sequels. For real-time updates, scores, and highlights, follow our live coverage of the India vs England Test match here. Catch Manika Batra's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 3. Watch Here!
Time of India
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Ghost of Yotei gameplay deep dive reveals open world changes, clue system and Kurosawa mode return
Ghost of Yotei finally got a detailed gameplay showcase at PlayStation's latest State of Play. The upcoming PS5 exclusive, set to release on October 2, builds on Ghost of Tsushima but brings new ideas to the table. The biggest changes are in how players explore the world, pick quests and fight enemies. Sucker Punch showed over 20 minutes of new footage, highlighting how the game lets you track clues, hunt bandits, and survive as Atsu, a lone mercenary seeking revenge. She's not a samurai or ninja like Jin from the original. She's on her own path, using whatever it takes to win. Clue-based exploration and bounty system Instead of just marking a spot on the map, Ghost of Yotei uses a clue system. Defeated enemies can give you information, leading to new locations and quests. Clues show up on cards so you can track what you've learned. This makes exploration more active and personal. The biggest upgrade that nobody is talking about in Ghost of Yotei has been done to exploration:Ubisoft-style checklist open world is completely have FINALLY removed the question marks from the map and now inspired by Elden Ring and Red Dead Redemption 2's… As Atsu's story grows, so does her reputation. A bounty gets placed on her head, attracting hunters who will track her down. She can also collect bounties and take out outlaws for rewards. This adds tension to every part of the world and makes traveling feel more dangerous and real. New weapons, allies and ways to fight Combat looks even better this time. Atsu can fight with katana, odachi, spear, kusarigama or dual swords. Each weapon works differently against certain enemies. She also has bows, rifles, bombs and other throwables. The old grappling hook returns, and now there's a spyglass to spot enemies from far away. Bounties, clue cards, and a wolf ally are all part of Atsu's journey for vengeance in Ghost of Yōtei, out October 2 on PS5. Catch up on the new details from today's State of Play: She's not alone either. Atsu will have allies in the game, including a mysterious wolf companion. Players can also build camps anywhere in the wild to rest, cook, and talk to characters who help upgrade your gear. The world feels alive and reactive. Lo-fi mode and tribute to filmmakers Ghost of Yotei continues the visual creativity of the first game with three special modes. Kurosawa Mode returns, turning everything black and white in tribute to the famous director. But now there are two more. Ghost of Yotei PS5 Graphics 🔥🤯 Miiko Mode brings the camera closer during fights and adds more intense blood and mud effects. Then there's Lo-fi Mode, inspired by Shinichirō Watanabe. It adds chilled music and soft sounds while you explore. The tracks are made by Watanabe himself, adding a calm, dreamy feeling to the world. This mode lets you enjoy peaceful moments just by walking through the landscape.
