Thoughts: Death
As my grandfather passed over the last few weeks, I found myself examining my interpretation of Death.
Atheism has always come naturally to me, and while I am unbothered by a lack divine meaning to existence, death is still a hard pill to swallow. No God is necessary for a person to engender love in others, and the sudden irreversible loss of that person hurts. While I grieve and mourn as bitterly as the next person -- more, perhaps, without belief that the soul continues on -- I have stuck, dogmatically, to the literal interpretation that dead is dead.
Meditating upon this, I now question myself.
Why must I, who can cry for fictional characters on a screen, who hold within me unwritten imagined universes, not allow myself to suspend disbelief here? Knowing something is untrue has never prevented me from exploring or enjoying an idea before; why must I be so firm on this? Are the atheist police planning on inspecting my heart and mind and finding me lacking? If I am master of my own mind, what a cruel master I must be.
Perhaps this habit is some remnant from a teenage me, grasping onto my lack of faith as if it were it's own religion at risk of being crusaded against. Or, perhaps my years steeped in scientific rigour made me feel that imagination had no place in the workings of reality. It feels infantile to me now to be such a staunch vocal defender of "Nothing happens, you're just dead." It is a mentality that provides no value.
All lives are comprised of many tragedies, and I have many more awaiting me. Why not allow myself some reprieve? What's the harm in envisioning the souls of lovers reunited? To imagine a rebirth as a cub or sapling? To imagine, occasionally, the soul of a beloved pet nearby? Being not chained by any faith or scripture, I am free to be whimsical here, to temporarily lean into the beliefs of others, to pick in my own heart the ending that I feel they deceased most enjoy to be true, or the one I would most enjoy to be true.
What's the harm in a little fantasy, even if I don't truly believe it? And who's to judge if I do?
Story: A Dream
Koos' bare feet burn against the hot packed earth as he stalks the pale figure across the savannah. The sun at its zenith rages, the open plain like an oven. Then, briefly, it is an oven -- blazing sun gone, in its place rows of searing red zig-zag elements fill the sky.
Back to the savannah. The lion hunts. The lion hunts. You have to be careful here.
In writing, the path to becoming a visser is a simple one: learn to Dream, find an object in the Dream that corresponds to an object in reality, bring together the Dream thing and the real thing. Thing is, what's what in reality isn't always the same in the Dream.
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Game Thoughts: Clair Obscur, Expedition 33
Note: Trying on a new writing style, things may be awkward for a bit.
My heart will always hold a very special place for Final Fantasy 7 through 10. Not only were they fantastic games for their era, but I experienced them at an impressionable age where they left an everlasting mark. I can't honestly say I've enjoyed attempts to replay them as an adult, but that golden age of 3D JRPGs established a unique formula -- a combination of music, visuals, melodrama, and gameplay mechanics that not even Square Enix itself has managed to replicate since.
These titles founded my appreciation for games as more than a pastime, elevating them to an artform. Yes, in hindsight the stories were messy, the combat monotonous, and the characters varying degrees of one-dimensional; but there was some magic there that simply isn't present in the later titles of the series, regardless of how well they were received.
That magic electrified me. It began a lifelong passion and pushed me into learning the technical skills which now furnish my life with material wealth (though I never did become a full-fledged game developer). It also and kicked off interests in the myriad artistic and technical skills required to build such games.
I have spent many years hoping for a game to rediscover that formula -- to find a way to make it shine again -- only to be disappointed. Other RPGs have evolved and innovated on different aspects of the quintessential RPG, but for me none have ever reached the same heights. Until now, that is!
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has rediscovered the magic formula, updated it for modern tastes, and delivered a nearly perfect experience which captures the magic of that golden era of RPGs. The game pulled me in and consumed me for the duration I spent with it.
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Game Thoughts: Baldur's Gate 3
I recently spent a few weeks completely enthralled by Baulder's Gate 3 before my annoyances with the game's mechanics finally outweighed my fun and I put it down for good (Around the middle of Act 2.)
The game is unquestionably a masterpiece. We are served a world lush with rich characters, filled with interesting stories, and peppered with discoverable lore. Astounding care was poured into giving players a simulacra of the creative freedoms offered by traditional table-top RPGs through the many available paths, dialogue options, and unexpected interactions. It really feels at times that the developers thought of everything.
However, the adherence to D&D mechanics was a major turn-off for me. A table-top RPG is a structure crafted of many rules that, by design, can be bent or ignored. A living, conscious Game Master is responsible for deciding when the laws that govern the very fabric of their tiny universe need to be re-shaped to ensure that the players in their world are having fun. One could argue that every rule in a tabletop RPG is fundamentally designed to optimize for player enjoyment, and so this flexibility to change any rule to the tastes and personalities of the people around the table is key to the overall enjoyment of these games.
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Project: 0dd.company
A little bit ago, after realizing I needed to do more things with more people, I decided to start a little artist collective, because sometimes that's just what you need to do.
It's one of those things I feel like should have rules or regulations, but it turns out it's just something you can do. You get a couple people you know online into a group chat, pick a name, and declare yourselves an art collective and nobody's really gonna stop you. I recommend it!
For the initial members I reached out to creative people I knew who had been struggling to produce art. Maybe they've been too busy with their career, or life had just become too complicated lately, or perhaps they'd simply been having trouble finishing personal projects.
The last was my own pain point! I would look at things like gamejams and artistic dailies and feel so unworthy as a creator. How could these people in 24 hours build entire games when I can barely publish a blogpost in that time?
And so with these creatives in mind, the concept was to provide inspiration. Every few months, a new inspiration file would be published, and members would be free to take the next couple months, when they could find the time, and make anything they wanted. A poem, a song, a doodle, whatever, just keep the inspiration in mind.
The first piece of inspiration I found for the group was 13 minutes of whale song dedicated to the public domain, and while the group's pretty small I feel like we still got a pretty good variety in the handful of submissions!
Without a bar (low or high) or any real restrictions and a generous timeline, almost everyone got a little something finished. Not all of the original members had time to finish their piece, but there's no stress or judgement. There's always the next piece, and members still get to celebrate the works everyone else produced.
Anyways, I'm happy to announce that the 0dd.company's first gallery: Deepsong is now open for viewing, and I'm really happy with my first piece: Whalefall. I finally found an project to use Orca with, and I learned a lot over the course of the project!
I also broke down my process for making the song on my music page -- though the 0dd Gallery has the way better video version!
Thoughts: LLMs - A Weekend Drive and a Steak Dinner
I was having a chat with a friend recently which kept circling around LLM (or "AI") usage within our respective jobs, how people around us use them, and our own feelings about engaging with LLMs.
We came to a conclusion that actively using LLMs is a lot like eating steak: something many people will openly acknowledge as being "bad" while still willfully (often even eagerly) partaking.
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Story: Blades of Wheel
It was the summer of 2019 when I looked out from the 9th floor window of our condo north of the "Big City" and decided I wanted to buy some rollerblades.
I don't know what drove this -- perhaps I had seen someone in rollerblades in a park or video, perhaps I wanted to extend the range on my daily walk to farther flung reaches of our neighbourhood -- whatever it was, I became fixated and rollerblades became inevitable.
Before continuing, I want to make two facts clear which made this decision a slightly not great idea. First, I don't know how to skate. Despite being Canadian all my life I avoided the siren call of the hockey stick, eschewing both ice and street flavours of the sport as a youth. We frequently had "ice rink" gym days in grade school, but I was one of those kids that just goofed around in boots or ate nachos in the stands.
Secondly, I am large. Not large enough to be featured on degrading reality TV shows, but my height draws the common questions of "how tall are you?" and "do you play basketball?" more frequently than not, and I've got enough meat on these long bones that the last time I saw 200lbs was in grade 9.
In fact, until this event I doubted that they even made rollerblades in my size, as most shoe stores don't even have me covered -- but on that fateful summer day I found myself a specialty rollerblade store, and my fate was sealed.
Said store was a 2 hour walk away. I had much saner means to get there at my disposal, but very reasonably decided that a 2 hour walk there would give me a solid hour of rollerblading on my way back, which would give me plenty of time to learn how to rollerblade.
Did I mention people treat me like a fully functioning adult?
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Comic Thoughts: Solanin
A while back I read "Goodnight Punpun" which was a horrifically depressing manga I could't put down. Solanin is a short work by the same author, and while it doesn't come near the depths of awfulness that Punpun reached, it still manages to hurt in a way that keeps you reading.
Solanin follows a group of post-graduate young adults finding their way in life, with the focus on Meiko, a woman who hates her job as an "office lady" and abruptly quits without any real direction or goals in life. She struggles with finding meaning, pushing up against her group of friends and boyfriend who all suffer from varying degrees of listless lack of direction.
It's a story about growing up and facing reality -- it manages to be depressing and uplifting at the same time somehow. There's a lot of reality in between the ennui-drenched pages, and a lot of hurt, but still there's hope.
I think reading this as an adult past my "figuring it out" phase (though my own phase was much less dramatic) is a very different experience than it would have been if I had picked it up while in university or earlier. I'm glad I picked it up now when the angst has subsided. In a weird way this read ended up very much in-phase with my reading of Keep the Aspidistra Flying on that front.
It's a short and bittersweet read that was worth the time.
Game Thoughts: Sable [DNF]
On a lazy weekend evening I booted up Sable on a whim and set out into the desert on my pod racer to find myself.
It's a strangely muted game of small quests, serendipity, and climbing things. If Breath of the Wild were a font, this is the monospace variant. There's less to do, less excitement, no enemies, and not a particularly large story -- but what the game lacks it makes up for in vibes.
Zooming around the various desert regions and discovering interesting locations is as engaging as it is relaxing and the world is scattered with mysteries both subtle and not. The sparse population of masked strangers are both creepy and endearing, and the slow accumulation of lore was satisfying -- though not quite compelling enough to beat the game.
One thing that stood out in my time with Sable was how well the developers captured feelings through sparse dialog, a touch of music, and visuals. They captured the bittersweetness of leaving home, of the excitement of a journey, and even of the dizzying confusion of the first time in a big city. It was all masterfully done, and I'm sure they nailed the landing with however they wrapped up the game.
It was a wonderful experience overall, but vibes alone aren't enough to keep me coming back beyond the 10-hour mark. Perhaps I'll revisit the game on another chill weekend, but for now I've packed it away in the pod racer satchel.
Book Thoughts: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
I recently wrote a complaint-post about my inability to read books lately. My curse has been broken at last!
I was in a local bookshop when my eyes fell on a reduced-price copy of George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and my highschool memories of 1984 and Animal farm compelled me to pick it up for $5 without much research. I had some time to burn over the long weekend and read the damn thing cover-to-cover laying on my porch furniture in the almost-comfortable-but-still-chilly spring sun.
As previously mentioned it's been a hot minute since I've picked up a work by Orwell, and I really need to emphasize how much I appreciate his writing style. It's to-the-point, clean, and doesn't go heavy on prose while still feeling extremely well-written. Just a solid writer all 'round.
The book itself was thoroughly interesting -- it follows Gordon Comstock, an almost-30 poet in 1930's London who has sworn off bowing before the "money god", and insists on living a life on minimal wages, dashing his family's hopes, squandering his education, and defying his own ability to hold down a "good job". Despite his resolve, he rails against how his own lack of money destroys his life -- in fact it consumes him entirely as he bemoans his miserable life page after page.
A shocking amount of Gordon's pains echo through to modern times -- how easily could this book have been written about a modern day "incel" and their views on life and women!
Interestingly, I believe if I had picked this book up in my youth, I would have been squarely on the side of Gordon. Not his terrible views on women, but his attempt at self sabotaging for his principals. Fuck the money-god and all that.
Reading it as a working adult, his follies are as obvious as they are painful, and his eventual "growing up" felt inevitable. I still joke about dying poor and principled instead of selling my soul, yet I've managed to sell enough of it to afford patio furniture to read books on in the sun.
I know this book is a satirical critique of the middle class, but much of it rings true. Gordon ultimately fails in his rebellion and falls into the inevitability of the middle class life, "making good" and ultimately becoming somewhat boring and mundane -- but happy, perhaps, at least, in the middle.
The most poignant line in the book to me comes from Gordon's well-off publishing friend Ravelston -- a character I somewhat ashamedly can related to much closer than Gordon despite being firmly in the middle-class myself. It was to the tune of "You cannot expect to live in a corrupt society without becoming at least a little corrupt yourself," one must either leave society all together or sell some part of themselves. If not dignity, then time.
In the middle class, one must ironically find the balance that they can live with. Figure out how much of their soul they're willing to sell that they're left with a satisfactory share and enough capital to live a good life. 90 years later, every word of Orwell's view of capitalism and the middle class ring true.
Keep that aspidistra flying. All hail the money-god.
