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fellowstrangetownappreciator · 3 years

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Curious and autistic-coded

Hello there! April draws to an end and with that I think it’s high time to hurry up and write this. What does April have to do with anything, you ask? April is the Autism Acceptance Month. So what better month to do this?

Unfortunately I didn’t make it. I failed. It’s already 1. 5. when I’m posting this. But at least I tried to deliver on time.

In this mini essay I’ll present my case about why I think the Curious brothers from TS2 Strangetown display autistic-coded traits and my personal takes on it.

It’s basically your average headcanon post but with a funny top hat!

0: Preface: What do I mean by “autistic-coded”?

When a character is coded as something, it means that they have traits that are associated with the demographics in question to make the consumer knowingly or not link the character with the demographic, although the character's "label” is never explicitly disclosed.

In the nutshell, it means that there are canonical reasons to read the characters as autistic, although you won't find the word "autism" anywhere in the game nor in the developer's commentary.

In this particular case I do believe that the developer may not even be aware of the code, as there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. If there is, I’m not aware of it and I would be happy to learn.

So, let’s start!

1: “The white male who is very good at science”

Unfortunately autistic representation in pop-culture has a long history of being rather straightforward in which traits the characters often have. This stems from the belief that autism is “a boy’s disorder” (that’s why some autism charities to this day use blue in their symbols). Among popular examples of autistic-coded characters are Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper and Death Note’s L and Near. I’m sure you can think of more but you’ll find that most of them are men and either explicitly white or racially ambiguous white-passing. They also tend to be gifted in tech, logic or other science-y activities.

There’s nothing wrong with that! Nothing wrong with being an autistic with those “stereotypical” characteristics and there is nothing wrong with people being represented. What is wrong is the monotony and afab people/people of color being underrepresented which leads (among other factors) to harder access to diagnosis and resources for those people in real life. But! That’s a topic for a different day. (and not for a simbrl, mind you)

Back to the Curiouses! I just wanted to say that autism in media is traditionally associated with characters whose gender presentation, race and interests align with theirs. Those characteristic thus make a very convenient template for autistic-coding.

2: Inconsistent performance, huge gaps between strengths and weaknesses

Pascal, Vidcund and Lazlo are very skilled Sims by default, extraordinarily even for their age. Pascal has a skill maxed while his younger brothers both near maxing theirs.

But as you can see in Pascal’s default skill panel, apart from Creativity, all his other skills are extremely low, 0 points for Mechanical, Body and Charisma, 1 point for Cooking and Logic and his second best skill, Cleaning, has only 3 points. The same situation can be observed in Vidcund’s and Lazlo’s, except their strong suits are Logic and Cooking respectively.

Huge discrepancies within performance in different cognitive areas is a common trait found in those on the autism spectrum. We’re often talking extremes here and the scale of the difference is the defining factor. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, it’s just in neurodivergent people those tend to be unusually noticeable.

I think that skills, simplified as they are, are the closest The Sims has to possibly simulate that because they track the character’s performance and expertise in different areas and allow comparison. In real life, of course, this comparison is not nearly as possible and exact, nor desired, but for all our analysis-loving enthusiasm, here we’re still talking fictional characters.

3: Struggle with social cues

It is widely known that one of autistic traits are difficulties with processing social situations, picking social cues and successfully replicating socially desired behavioral patterns.

But these three are Sims, are they not? They cannot possibly display this trait, since they’re programmed the same way as others.

Yes and no.

It is true that there is no specific in-game feature that would allow Sims to behave with explicit neurodivergency in mind* but with the right combination of traits they can simulate behavior that really hits close to home for neurodivergent players.

*at least not in TS2, TS3 has traits that simulate some possible neurodivergencies but their names tend to be rather... ableist unfortunate and they’re not relevant to this post since they’re not autism related, and even if they were, we’re focusing on TS2 exclusively

Let’s take look at Lazlo here. He is, indeed, a playful soul. He likes to goof around, tell jokes, make others laugh. And since he’s very close to his brother Vidcund, close enough even to Tell Dirty Joke (an interaction that needs quite a high relationship to unlock), he autonomously does just that.

And oh boy, does Vidcund disapprove.

From my personal experience playing them, their relationship usually takes quite a hit from every cheeky joke Lazlo throws Vid’s way. They usually autonomously repair it very quick but it happens often.

But that’s a standard behavior. Vidcund’s very serious, he doesn’t take well to jokes.

No. I mean technically yes, Vid is definitely a grumpy old plant dad but, at least in my game, he tends to accept Lazlo’s jokes. All kinds of them, actually, except for the dirty ones. And Pascal, who technically has even lower Playful points (0 in comparison to Vidcund’s 4), doesn’t seem to mind Lazlo’s poor attempts at grown-up humor.

But! What is it that makes Lazlo try still? What drives him to attempt to make Vidcund laugh with a dirty joke over and over again? (and fail?)

I my interpretation, Lazlo doesn’t do that on purpose, he is just really poor at evaluating “dirtiness” of a given joke and frequently misinterprets Vidcund’s cues. The animation of a dirty joke being rejected even supports that as Vid doesn’t signal his discomfort with any exaggerated easy-to-read facial expression until Lazlo gets to his punchline.

No only that but as I mentioned, the invisible lines between spicy and too vulgar are often hard to thread. I can recall many times I thought I was saying a witty quip on an “adult” topic and was met with awkward silence or someone shushing me because “that’s not how you speak in public”. I can well imagine myself in Lazlo’s shoes.

A situation of social cues being misinterpreted or ignored can be observed also in Vidcund. Programming-wise, those are just his low Niceness and extreme Shyness showing but combined they again paint a picture of a very neurodivergent-looking behavioral pattern.

He often behaves like the concept of politeness or social rules doesn’t exist because the combination of the aforementioned traits makes him come off very blunt (lecturing and shoving telescope-peepers with no warning whatsoever) and distant (having a high chance of rejecting simple small-talk socials).

(That’s Jasmine Rai casting the “Summon Vidcund” spell.)

Yes, I am fully aware that it makes a stronger case for him being an a**hole than autistic but... there’s no reason he can’t be both. Not all autistic people are sweet cinnamon buns, all personalities you can think of can be neurodiverse and, for some their neurodiversity can even amplify their inconsiderate ways, as I believe it is the case with our dear grouch Vidcund.

4. Their bios

“No matter what happens, Pascal believes there is a logical explanation for everything. In his free time, he practices home psychoanalysis and collects conspiracy theories.”

(that’s how I imagine practicing psychoanalysis looks like, sorry Freud)

“Serious and exact, Vidcund strives to fit the universe into a nice tidy package. He has an unnatural fondness for African violets.”

(let’s collectively pretend those are African violets)

“Not as studious as his older brothers, Lazlo got his degree in Phrenology. He likes to call phone psychics and spends hours trying to bend forks with his mind.”

*error: screenshot of Lazlo bending forks not found*

(but here he is hanging out with Erin Beaker, the closest thing to “calling phone psychics” you can actually do in-game)

Both Pascal’s and Vidcund’s bios point to a pattern-focused worldview with a strong emphasis on rationality as the center-point that anchors the way they understand the world around them and build their principles on. This “pattern-ization” of thinking is a common autistic trait, with rationality being a popular theme because emotions tend to be difficult to access and asses for many of us.

Lazlo’s biography is an outlier. But it still has something significant in common with those of his brothers: All three of their bios allude to a potential special interest of sorts.

Special interests as an autism-related term are very specific, in-depth and long-term hobbies or areas of expertise that make an autistic person happy and they tend to go to seemingly exhausting lengths, often at the cost of other areas of knowledge and most likely the person’s ability to talk about anything else for a long enough time. (a loving hyperbole, no disrespect meant) Mine are my characters and cats. An even more intense but a short(er)-term passion is called a hyperfixation.

Them potentially having a special interest is yet another possible autistic-coded feature.

5. Wait. Why does it matter?

Right. What does it matter if a Sim (A SIM) (or two or three) is autistic? What do I hope to achieve, pushing my autistic Curiouses agenda down your throats?

I got to write a long rant-piece about some of my favorite TS characters and I feel like I can finally die satisfied.

Apart from that and me sharing my happiness of finding some good pixels I can relate to, it is a matter of representation.

Remember by the very beginning I wrote how most of the representation our community gets in media tends to be just a one specific type of character?

And how the Curious brothers seem to fit the stereotype to a point?

There is something I omitted, something I saved for the last on purpose.

The role. The role in their story, the role in the society the piece of media portrays.

We often see neurodiverse, autistic or autistic-coded character as children, students, villains, lone savants, victims in distress, comedic relief sidekicks, either very vulnerable and needing protection, or detached and having their role defined only by their academic prowess or their special interest/profession.

What we rarely get to see them as, are... parents.

That’s what many of us autistics are or plan to be someday in the future. The dogma around autism has started to dwindle relatively recently and there are little to no examples of autistic adults being the care-givers for once in the media around us.

The Curious brothers are just that. They are chaotic, they are eccentric, they can be a little too much... but they are dutiful and loving fathers/uncles to their little aliens they raise.

They make it work. Even if they face difficulties, even if they don’t exactly fit the standard.

“Sometimes, a family truly can be three brothers raising alien babies, and it’s beautiful.”

It encourages us to define family by love rather than traditional structures and it shows us that portrait of a functional neurodiverse family we need to see.

And goodness, is it a powerful sight.

#the sims 2 #the sims #ts2 #simbrl #pascal curious #vidcund curious #lazlo curious #autism acceptence month #headcanon #actuallyautistic #autistic curiouses agenda #please someone take tumbrl from me

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yopalonso · 5 years

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Arle Nadja for Smash Bros. 2: An addendum!

GO READ THE FIRST PART IF YOU DIDN’T YET

So! We’re back! With yet another Arle in Smash post. Didn’t I say that I wasn’t a believer of Arle in Smash, then why am I back at it again with another post? Well, to not only share more info on the topic, but to also emphasize on the details I left vague on my first post, without having to reconstruct the entirety of it from scratch. Or without having to add on top of it and then tell you to go read it again, hoping you’ll find the new details on that post.

Número 1: More ideas equal more fun!

Let’s get things started then with my first addendum: more moveset ideas! Ever since posting mine, I’ve stumbled upon plenty of other moveset ideas that I think deserve more attention. All of these which were shared in the #ArleForSmash Discord server, so if you’re still not there, go do it.

My highlight from the ones shared goes to the moveset concept by Celerity910. I took a read to it way after I finished up mine (considering that the Tumblr post went live almost three months after I finished up writing it down), and I noticed the subtle nuances and similarities later on as I kept on reading it. Celerity inspired it fully on the SEGA side of Puyo Puyo, referencing stuff from Puyo Puyo Fever onwards and basing the whole moveset under the rules of Puyo Puyo itself, and under the assumption that Arle would be included as a base fighter in Ultimate. It even includes a mention on Amitie as an Echo Fighter! It’s a fantastic read, honestly.

But upon reading it I was left with an impending question on my mind, that I had to write down after my original post...

Número 2: What does No COMPILE mean for my moveset plan?

Shocker. This is what struck me like lightning. What would happen to my moveset if I had to remove all of the COMPILE-era references? What would become of it? I then found out that nothing on that matter, well, mattered. SEGA isn’t too afraid to reference the COMPILE-era Puyo Puyo games specifically, so the moveset wouldn’t fall apart if moves taken from games like SUN or Puyo Yon are considered. The only two I could think of that could give me trouble, would be the ones from Madou Monogatari: the proposed Down Tilt and Forward Smash attacks, since those reference Madou in its fullest (and, c’mon, a tackle attack isn’t truly a reference, the body does like, what, 70% of the work there?). If these had to be cut, they could perfectly well be replaced by similar moves in motion: a Nuisance Puyo pop as her new Down Tilt (from the Puyo series), that could work exactly like the proposed one, and a four-Puyo pop for her Forward Smash, keeping the motion and replacing the fire with the popping Puyos. Everything else could very well be kept without sacrificing anything that was established before. Other things such as animations and the like would need to be changed, but that’s par for the course, and the animations would most likely be similar.

Now that those two are said, it’s time for...

Número 3: Her playstyle.

Now that we have a moveset, and since we have a notion on how she behaves on the battlefield, it’s time we addressed how she would play. This is something I omitted in the last part, already due to how insanely big that post ended up as, so it’s time to address it now.

Even though her main gimmick is Chaining through her Down-B move, that doesn’t mean that her neutral should be ignored. Her whole kit, when looked at separated from Diacute, is perfectly capable of putting enemies at a disadvantage. Her Up-Smash is perfect for catching landings or a missed air dodge, her Down-Smash is a good shield-pressuring tool that could very well lead to some crazy shield breaks, and her projectile game should keep opponents on their toes when trying to approach, mostly considering Fireball’s explosiveness on contact. I couldn’t say more about Ice Storm, her Side-B move, but this could lead to some crazy 2-frames, ledge traps or stage spikes if placed accordingly. Her stage control would be insane if the players learned how to properly lead their foes into some traps, such as anticipating a recovery with Fireball, only to then trap them with Ice Storm and sending them off with an Up-Smash. And her aerial game, while mostly situational due to how three of those moves have some anticipation, would be useful when attempting to stop some landings or when trying some follow-ups. Like, I’m just creating scenarios, imagine a Fireball into a spike combo. How crazy would that be, eh? Her off-stage game would be very balanced, too. Given how she could chase down her foes for an off-stage aerial or set up traps with her Neutral-B and Side-B would be ideal for her, too.

So, her regular plan seems really interesting and enticing. And the Chaining mechanic makes things even better. Most of these moves don’t necessarily have kill power or follow-up potential. So, the regular increases in knockback and damage from Arle’s chains could get things from regular to interesting to downright insane in a couple of minutes. Things like chaining together some aerials to then finish it off with a special would be sick. Or connecting some attacks at first and gaining the necessary buffs by keeping your distance with some Fireballs, then catch up a landing with a buffed Up-Smash. Sounds crazy. I mentioned it in the first part, that her grabs do not get affected by the buffs of Diacute, and that they do not increase the chain counter. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be used to extend or start a chain. So imagine the follow-ups you could do from starting up a grab after the first Diacute!

Her prevalent problem, however, lies within her archetype. Magical characters aren’t speedsters when it comes down to their attacks, so Arle players would have to be mindful on that at every minute. Her fastest attacks to get out of certain situations, would be her Side and Up-Tilts, her Jabs, Up-B and her N-Air. Every other attack could be interrupted from other angles, or before the attack even comes out. And in some cases, the endlag from a move could be catastrophic for Arle. Not to mention, if the player depends way too much on Chains, this could lead up to several, terrible mistakes that could potentially mean disaster for Arle, more so if you consider how chains work and your attacks don’t land. Her Up-Air move has a small shield that could stop attacks from above, but that still leaves her unprotected from the sides and from below. Another important thing to mention is the endlag on Mind Blast, both her Down-Smash and Up-B variants: it’s huge. So if you miss it, you’re left in a terrible situation that could lead to a hard punish, or even, an early KO. Not to mention counters and reflectors, Arle would have to handle extremely carefully against reflector-type characters, considering how Fireball and Ice Storm would be treated as projectiles. And there’s nothing worse than meeting your end by your own medicine. Not to mention how feeble certain characters are against rushdown or fastfallers, and Arle wouldn’t be an exception to that.

But if you learn the playstyle, then knowing when to push and when to retreat will be second nature to you.

Número 4: What if... she had an Echo?

I’ll say this short: I was not prepared for this type of scenario. Her moveset does come with a strong variety of attacks that could very well suit up a character like Amitie to take her role as an Echo Fighter. However, I’d have to rethink what to do on spells that Amitie logically doesn’t know or that have no equal on her. The ones that do have an equal would be easy to pass over: Flame over Fireball, Blizzard over Ice Storm, Lightning Bolt over Thunder, Fairy Fire over Heaven’s Ray, Explosion over Judgement, Reflection over Counter, and Accel over Diacute. Stuff like Mind Blast would have to be reworked to be compatible with Cyclone or Tempest, and maybe have Wind properties instead of shield-pressuring. Most of her other moves would also be changed to better fit Amitie’s happy-go-lucky personality. And as for her colors, well, I was not prepared for them, but they’d have to be inspired on her classmates, as well as on other characters of the series, or on obscure Puyo colors, like the Chu Puyo or the Block Puyo. Maybe give her that sweet Puyo Quest Fever alt? Who knows.

Número 5: More flair!

I didn’t mention on topics like a Guidance (mostly because DLC Guidances are out of the question), or her Boxing Ring title. I’ll get the second out first: The Apprentice Sorcerer (魔導師の卵 [Madō-shi no tamago] [”Magician’s Egg”, in context, this refers to a magician still growing, thanks, Celerity <3])

This title isn’t really seen in Puyo games at all, the Japanese one is used as a passive skill in Chronicle. So where does this translation come from? Surprise surprise, it’s from Hatsune Miku: Project mirai Deluxe, Stamp #110, the hint reads “Put on your best impress of the apprentice sorcerer”. The Japanese one reads similarly:「魔導師の卵になりきってみた。」(loosely translates to ”become like the apprentice mage” [thanks for the translation, Kei <3]) thus tying the titles together.

As for her victory theme, I was thinking maybe a shortened version of her titular theme could work.

And as for Carbuncle... Well, I wasn’t too keen on sharing this idea before, but I wouldn’t feature him as an important element of her moveset. Much like Morgana or the Slime, Carbuncle would be more visible on her Down-Throw, her taunts, and her victory screens, but outside of those cases, it’s Arle, all by her lonesome.

Número 6: Special thanks and additional notes.

Ok, I swear, this is the last time I’ll address this topic. I have a hunch feeling that Arle won’t be in the game, but... it’d be really cool if she was. She’s a character as important to SEGA as Sonic and Joker. It’d be horrible if by any reason SEGA decided it was better to go with a Sakura Wars character instead. C’mon, let Arle have this one, SEGA.

By the way, I’m not sure on what Hosoyamada-san thinks in regards to Arle in Smash Bros. or anything the like. It would be really cool if someone could ask him what he thinks, maybe, just maybe, he’s silently wishing for that as much as we do, like Phil Spencer with Banjo. We just have to wait and see.

If you made it this far, then congratulations, you’ve made it yet again through a wall of text, and I couldn’t thank you enough. I also have to thank Kaite20, Celerity910 and Schezoroark for their small, yet incredible contributions. I promise I won’t touch on the subject ever again. I had my fun, I had my time in the sun. Now I need to sleep.

Did you know? Arle Nadja knows more spells than the ones she shows in the Puyo Puyo games, including one called Contia. I wonder if she ever used Contia to pull off an all-nighter...

©SEGA. 2019.

#arle nadja #ARLE FOR SMASH #super smash bros #super smash ultimate #smash bros #puyo puyo #Madou Monogatari #arle #ぷよぷよ

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moreinterestingonline · 4 years

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Old Blogs

5/11/20If I was pressed, truly reamed and grilled, for the location of where the last five days went, I would not be able to produce a satisfactory answer. It seems like they just flew by with neither rhyme nor reason.What I’ve been thinking about during these past five days wouldn’t fit in a blog post, but I can highlight one central topic: world building. I’ve been trying to write three novels this year. I often get asked if it’s difficult to keep the worlds separate from one another. I usually answer with a “It’s really not that difficult” or segue into a cute anecdote about my dog, since most people aren’t interested in an actual answer. To those prepared to listen, I hand them a “yes and no.”No, it’s not as hard as it seems because I use one to escape the others. The worlds must be different, unique, and distinctive because any bleeding through wouldn’t offer me the complete new reality I crave when I am struck with writer’s block. I try to think of it as preparing for a triathlon. Sure, you use similar muscle groups to run, bike, and swim, but you don’t show up to the pool in track cleats because the detail would be identified as alien immediately.Yes, it is hard because the same overarching themes will appear as they will in an work of mortals. What kind of story would it be if there isn’t a struggle of good and evil? Would it be listed with the best sellers if there wasn’t an endearing mentor who gets killed at the beginning of the adventure? Oh? Too far? Even so, the themes that have defined my life will more than likely pop up in more than one of my books. I will have to work then even harder on my characters and their environments.These considerations are important to my approach to world building. I must carefully paint with three different pallets the physical attributes of each of my worlds. I must be cautious of what the careful reader might notice. I do not reuse sets or scripts. Still, as I compose three separate works, the ideas I believe in will show up in these different colors. I am only one writer with one perception of reality. I am extremely limited in my quest to entertain masses. All I can do is work and revise and work again, and hope that there are other people willing to step into my shoes.Personally, not a lot has been going on. Today was the first day in I don’t know how long that I did all the hygiene an average person would do in one day. I’ve started bullet journaling again and texted my goals to my best friend so I have accountability. My project right now is to make looking and feeling good my job for one month. My personal hygiene has become so neglected as I have sunk deeper and deeper into my depression. The other day, I just woke up with the motivation to turn that part of my life around.I know it’s only been one day, but it’s been so long since I actually achieved something in this area and I’ve been so sad that I thought I should celebrate this step.I’m so tired, but I wanted to get one more thing checked off my list tonight before I go to sleep.Sometimes I wonder if it’s time to learn another language. I feel like most people my age have at least two languages under their belt where I have just the one. I want to be considered bright and I feel like this is the next step.Here is the point again where I consider sleep less important than the things I could be doing instead of sleeping. Where is this little voice coming from? What is so dark inside us that wants us to fail? How can you ride a ship you’re preparing to sink? Is it fear that wants to personify it? Make it a separate entity so I can’t be to blame for my own bad habits? Who knows.I’m beginning to enjoy television, which is sort of new for me. I wonder if it means my attention span has finally reached null. Sure, there have been very well done productions I’ve been a fanatic for in the past, but I’ve never been able to turn on a random show and just enjoy. I’ve almost finished watching all the Storage Wars available on Netflix. I never thought I’d be the kind of person that turns to reality television, but here we are. Maybe this is how quarantine truly breaks me. If I don’t have focus, I don’t have anything. I’m beginning to nod off. I really want to reach a thousand words before I go to sleep. That means no editing whatsoever, just stream of consciousness. It’s been feeling more like a dry creek bed lately. I could stare at the ceiling for hours. I could sleep all day and not be bored. I know that’s concerning. I’ve already made an appointment with my doctor about switching my medications. I just want to feel like I did when I was in second grade, seventh grade, ninth grade. There is so much left for me to do here that it feels overwhelming.Nearly there. That gibberish sure helped. Take this as an example, kind reader, of what I usually cut out for your benefit and mine. It’s okay, I know no one is reading this. I just need to allow the chance for someone to hear what the people in my life can’t hear for themselves. I’m so scared of being a burden that I don’t know how to open up to people I meet in real life. It’s either I don’t want them to know my middle name to “What’s your mother like and how did that affect your psychological development?” That’s it, thanks.

5/6/20

Alas, another day has passed and! I’m still depressed. How did that happen? Did I make zero changes and expect something to happen? Maybe. But I did wish for it really really hard. (I know, in THIS economy??)

Silliness and vague misdirection aside, today sucked. I spent the morning in a weird, unawake haze because I hadn’t slept. The afternoon dragged on as I crammed for my Modern Grammar which (and now here’s the real kicker) kicked me good in the pants. Lastly, I told my roommates that I plan on moving out and they did not take it well. All this contributed to a day ill spent.

I don’t know where my weird relationship with sleep came from. Logically, I know that I need sleep. I know that sleep will do me well and allow my body to get ready for another day. One day, a little voice crept into my mind and told me that sleep was optional. I haven’t been able to shut it off since. Need extra time to study? Want to get to the next level? Only another hour before your friend in another timezone wakes up? Might as well pull an all-nighter. Objects in motion, after all.

I’m also out of my sleeping medication. And I haven’t been taking my medication. I’m struggling and I’m lacking the discipline to push myself the extra mile to potentially getting better. I think what I need are some small victories. Already, I am writing. I am journaling. I am crossing small things off my list in a desperate attempt for dopamine. Desperate, yes, but shameful? Absolutely not. It feels like I’m running a marathon underwater, but I still intend to finish. It’s just going to take me a little longer.

At one point and time, I was filming taking my medication every day and posting a little mental check on Youtube. That was good, until I missed one day, and then three days, and now it’s been almost a month. I just feel so guilty over any reveal of failure or shortcoming. How am I supposed to come back from showing that I’m not perfect?

I don’t know if this needs to be said, but if I were talking to my friend in the same situation, I would reassure them 1000% that I would love them no matter what, especially through their imperfections. It’s not that I set the bar lower for my friends than I do for myself, but I am a lot harder on me when I don’t meet my expectations. I guess that comes with being a wild romantic, right? Reality is that blinding white light that pierces through daydream. The clear solution is to have more realistic daydreams, but those aren’t nearly as fun.

Small victories, eh? What goals can I set for myself?

It’s late. I should go to bed. Today was rough and on top of everything I’m dehydrated. I hate complainers and hypocrites. I shall bless your feed with another rambling posthaste, rest allowing.

5/5/20

I’m going to pretend I didn’t see the clock strike midnight and write this from the perspective of today, May the 5th. A good, round-numbered day to start something new. I’ve always been fond of round numbers. I’ve always been fond of clean slates.

My central problem in life right now is that I’m depressed. I don’t like myself. I don’t like what I do with my time. Everything seems pointless. I lack purpose, direction, inspiration. I love the world and find myself submerged in curiosity often enough, but I don’t apply myself towards meaningful goals. My lack of application is the root of my unhappiness. If I wasn’t me, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me. And that invokes a whole other can of worms; namely insecurity, impostor syndrome, and low standards. But I digress.

I. Want. To. Be. Happy. I want to feel like I am making progress. I don’t want to feel vaguely ill anymore. I don’t think I should have to live with boredom as my default emotion. I don’t want to have to repress anything anymore.

How can I be happy? Well, isn’t that the age-old question. If there was a simple, clear-cut answer, I would bottle it and become a billionaire. Instead of a product, though, I have the following goals.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my body. I need to be kinder to the vessel through which I experience all happiness, through which I enact all acts of generosity. What will this look like? For one, I would like to have a “glow-up”. I would like to have a before and after photo-set that I can look at and be proud of. This will mean skincare, daily showering, healthy eating, and regular exercise. I can’t expect myself to be happy in an unkempt body.

I am going to execute this goal by applying a hygiene routine, researching daily workouts, and keeping track of what goes into my body. I will also take the time to do silly, frivolous things like put on eyeliner and curl my hair simply because it makes me happy. I will have a more coordinated plan by tomorrow. For now, I research.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my brain. Practice makes perfect and no practice makes mush. I don’t want a pile of mush directing the rest of my life. I want a clean, sharp machine dictating my every move. I want the gears to shift as smoothly as a well-oiled watch. I want to feel as efficient as I did in high school, when I was taking college courses and researching off-curriculum subjects just to ease my questioning mind.

I am going to execute this goal by finishing my semester strong, spending dedicated time each day towards active learning, and planning monthly projects. I will also find ways to implement healthy curiosity in my daily conversations. I was a “why” child. Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green? Why do we have ten fingers and ten toes but only two ears? Why? Why? Why? I want to transition back to that motivated, inquisitive mindset. As with taking care of my body, I will have a more decisive plan for this goal tomorrow.

In order to be happy, I need to take care of my soul. One of the biggest reasons I’ve been increasingly unhappy these past months (or even years, you could argue) is because I am simply not creating more than I am consuming. A great joy that is allowed us is pure creation. I am tired of sitting passively while muses give up on me, moving onto to the next open mind. I want to build up my patience for writer’s block, to give in to the urge to write badly rather than not write at all.

I am going to execute this goal by setting word counts for myself daily depending on my schedule, setting due dates for my projects, and holding myself accountable with creative partners. I know I have stories to tell, characters to illustrate, worlds to discover. I have always felt that within myself. “I contain multitudes.” There is opportunity here, if I am only willing to open the door. I’m a firm believer that nothing worth having comes without effort, but I’ve been sitting idly anyways. What hypocrisy.

Those are my main goals. This slate is no longer clean. I have marked it with intent.

I’ve always like clean slates because it feels better to start something new rather than digging yourself out of a hole of failure. Let me acknowledge, I am buried deep under years and years of bad habits and ill-fated mindsets. I have allowed myself to sink to this depth. It is no one’s fault but my own. I am not trying to say anything different that, nor will I ever attempt to blame someone other than myself for my circumstances. This has been my doing and my doing alone. So, when I say clean slate, you know that I know that there is no such thing as a clear state. I am merely marking a line in the sand to cross over and become a different person. Hopefully.

This has gone on for too long. I sent a goal of 1000 words per day. Initially, I was wondering if that would be enough, or if it would be too little. Would I be boring whoever came across my articles of dis-wisdom? Would I be leaving them without adequate information to ever bother reading something of mine again? We don’t really know the fate of our goals when we set them. We pin our hopes to them like ribbons, we shower them with expectations, but we can’t ever really know how things will turn out. I can’t say for certain that i will ever complete these goals, but I cannot let that discourage me. After all, this has been 1000 words.

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segadores-y-soldados · 7 years

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Overwatch: Apocalypse Now

TL;DR: Overwatch is slowly building a world of apocalypses and horror stories through references to mythology, literature, and pop culture. Through these, it continues a cautionary tale of “humanity’s greatest flaw is its own ambitious arrogance,” the same arrogance which caused Overwatch to fall. It has also presented a few different routes of “hope” to try and break the cycle.

More stuff to read, if you want: Soldier: 76 Fact Sheet, References, and Some Analyses Reaper Art Assets Reaper References Reaper and Soldier: American Cultural References Ana as the source of conflict

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” - Genesis 11:3 - 4

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: Like much of the still-growing city, the massive tower at the center of Oasis is still under construction and has no estimated completion date. Though the current structure is already one of the world's tallest skyscrapers, the final plans call for it to extend even further, easily becoming the world's tallest freestanding building. Not much is known about the tower's purpose, other than it ties into the city's massive data gathering and computational efforts. - Oasis Travel Tips

In the hype of Oasis dropping and the ever wonderful jump-pad, many people missed the very quiet and almost hidden lore about the city that was simultaneously released by Blizzard. The “Oasis Travel Tips” revealed that the “city of science” was controlled by a group of ministries governed by “a brilliant collective of eight of the world's leading scientists.” Among the lore dropped was the revelation that the Gardens map was intended to evoke the Hanging Gardens of Babylon -

And that “the tower” in the distance was a clear homage to The Tower of Babel.

For those of you who are not familiar with the story of The Tower of Babel, it is a tale from Genesis that explains why there are so many languages. In the story, all of humanity shared one language, and as means of this communication, began to build a tower to reach the heavens and God Himself. When God saw what humanity was doing, He destroyed the tower and scattered the people, giving them different languages so that they could not perform such a feat again. The lesson here is that the arrogance of humanity led them to believe they could build something as impressive as God Himself (or so some say).

While it is difficult to detangle The Tower of Babel from its religious connotations, the emphasis here is that “one should not be so arrogant” or the “higher powers that be” will bring their wrath upon you.

Which is precisely the overarching story that Overwatch’s lore is building. I’ve been wondering for some time how to structure all these disparate pieces of lore into something that connects to the major themes of “Who watches the Watchmen?”, “History repeats itself,” and “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” but with Uprising, we finally have a lot more tangible proof that the “grand theme” of Overwatch’s lore - both the “canon” lore outside of the game, and numerous “in-game” references - are building a new version of an age-old tale of the apocalypse and “the ancient horrors” lurking just beyond human perception. These “larger forces” are dropped through mythology and religious references, but also a number of pop culture and “horror story” references that litter the game. I’ve tried to collect the majority of them here. But to start with, we need to cover some background info.

1. The Nameless City of Oasis

"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die."

I’m not gonna claim to be any authority on Lovecraft, but any Lovecraft or Eldritch horror fan should look at Oasis with a slight skepticism. Already we have references to the Tower of Babel with the map, and there are numerous in-game lines that imply that something vaguely sinister is going on beneath the shiny surface of the city.

Junkrat: “This place is a bit posh for me…” Symmetra: “The Vishkar Corporation would love to have a presence here.” Zenyatta: “What a fascinating place! Can science alone unlock the path to enlightenment?”

The most important one, however, is this set (I cannot find the direct quotes, so I’m basing this off memory but):

Sombra: “What are we doing here?” Reaper: “We’re here to see an old friend.”

Now this is extremely interesting. One of the prevailing fan theories is that Angela “Mercy” Ziegler may have connections to Oasis - she is depicted in the Recall short as being located somewhere in the Middle East, particularly somewhere in present-day Iraq, which is where “the city of Oasis” is located. In the Reflections comic, she is shown to be working on some sort of “active field duty” in a tent that is brightly-lit. In the “We Are Overwatch” short, she rescues a young girl on the edge of a large city with multiple skyscrapers in the background.

I know there is already speculation that, if Mercy is in fact located in Oasis, Reaper is “out for her.” Another version of the theory goes that Reaper is coming to see her to ask her for help with his current state of existence (note that I am not a fan of the “Mercy botched saving Reaper” theory because that has been effectively debunked by Chu).

Because if there is anyone capable of helping Reaper restore himself, it would be “the doctor of death herself,” Angela Ziegler.

We know from Dragons, Recall, Hero, and the Museum Heist that 1) ultimates such as the Dragons and Tactical Visor are canon, 2) Reaper is capable of transforming himself into smoke, 3) Winston’s in-game abilities - including his Rage ultimate - are canon. At the moment, there is no reason to believe that Mercy’s Resurrection ultimate is not canon. People will no doubt argue that I’m making a leap of logic here, but until confirmed otherwise, I’d say it’s likely that all Ultimates are canon.

And therefore this means that Mercy knows how to revive the dead.

More than anything, this means that if Mercy is associated with Oasis, that we should be giving a solid, hard look at what exactly this implies for lore. I’m not saying that Oasis “having Lovecraftian connotations is 100% canon,” but rather it is important to note that the types of references a story builds for itself almost certainly influences the type of story it wants to portray. The fact that Mercy has not one, but multiple skins that are related to “raising the dead in morally-ambiguous ways” is telling. She has two Valkyrie skins, the Imp and Devil skins, and the Witch skin (which literally carries “a book of life” on her).

Again, I already know these skins aren’t canon. That’s beside the point. The point here is that all of this combined creates a very ambiguous tone about Mercy and Oasis - the undercurrents of mistrust, the sensation that “something lurks in the city,” the feeling that “humanity is playing with forces it cannot control,” the idea that “a doctor who defies death” lives and works there, the idea that the “in-game embodiment of Death Himself” is going there to “visit an old friend.” These are all things that build an eerie sense of foreboding.

Exactly as Lovecraft would have wanted it.

Lovecraft’s Nameless City builds the groundwork “lore” for his Cthulhu mythology. The “nameless city” is a city in the Arabian desert, older than Babylon, implied to have been “lost” to the ages as humanity began to conquer the earth. The ancient race that built the city retreated underground, where they continued their worship of the Great Old Ones. The human protagonist of The Nameless City wanders deeper and deeper until he is beset by the presence of the ancient race and some form of the Great Old Ones, ostensibly for “intruding on a realm he had no right to access.”

“I think I screamed frantically near the last—I was almost mad—but if I did so my cries were lost in the hell-born babel of the howling wind-wraiths. I tried to crawl against the murderous invisible torrent, but I could not even hold my own as I was pushed slowly and inexorably toward the unknown world. Finally reason must have wholly snapped, for I fell to babbling over and over that unexplainable couplet of the mad Arab Alhazred, who dreamed of the nameless city:

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Only the grim brooding desert gods know what really took place—what indescribable struggles and scrambles in the dark I endured or what Abaddon guided me back to life, where I must always remember and shiver in the night-wind till oblivion—or worse—claims me. Monstrous, unnatural, colossal, was the thing—too far beyond all the ideas of man to be believed except in the silent damnable small hours when one cannot sleep.”

Here again we have a reference that “humanity is toying with forces it cannot hope to control” - time and death, an understanding of the universe much larger than “simple mortal sentience” can bear. Above all else, The Nameless City is where the author of Lovecraft’s mythological Necronomicon first begins writing the book, which originally has an Arabic title of “Al Azif,” loosely translated by Lovecraft himself as “that nocturnal sound (made by insects) supposed to be the howling of demons.”

Demons being jinn/djinn, or “genies.” And there is one character in Overwatch who has a Djinn skin.

2. God Programs and Null Sector

It always struck me as odd that Zenyatta has not one, but four mythology references that are NOT Tibetan or Nepalese in the slightest. In fact, he has two Djinn-based skins and two Egyptian skins (Ra and Sunyatta) which always seemed better suited to Ana or Pharah. Zenyatta did not get a Tibetan skin until the Halloween special, where he got a death-based skin with a Tibetan skull cap (again - I get this is not canon, but it is telling that his Halloween reference was to skull artwork). I do not doubt that Zenyatta’s skins - much like the other skins in the game - are simply following “a rule of cool” but like Mercy’s skins, they should give us some pause. In mythology, the djinn are trickster-type creatures that can span a range of morality (again, very similar to Mercy’s Valkyrie and Witch skins), and their whimsical natures certainly match Zenyatta’s, even if their origin is a bit far from Nepal.

The Ra and Sunyatta skins, however, are really interesting when you consider the fact that the only “canon” God Program currently revealed is Anubis.

For those of you that don’t know, Anubis is featured in Pharah’s comic “Mission Statement,” where it is revealed to be a supercomputer Omnic dubbed “a God Program” that is capable of mind-controlling other Omnics.

Which, you know, is the kind of stuff that Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones are capable of doing.

What is not stated outright in the Mission Statement comic, but is instead implied (once again, by Reaper) in Old Soldiers and in other in-game dialogue, is that Helix Securities is somehow “messing around” with “something beyond their control” by doing strange and possibly unethical experiments on Anubis, and that Anubis “lashed out” against them (causing Helix to send in Pharah’s Raptora squad to put it down).

The only other characters to have Egyptian mythology skins are Pharah herself (shockingly called “Anubis”) and her mother Ana (“Horus”). It is implied in Old Soldiers that Ana is attempting to “find out” what happened in Mission Statement through a Talon associate Harkim (the man Reaper speaks to).

So what does this mean?

Once again, humanity is playing with forces much larger than itself - in this case, a literal supercomputer that rivals “gods” - and the effects of this trickle down all the way to Pharah, Ana, and Reaper, who have to struggle with the aftermath of this “small scale disaster.” Only unlike Oasis, where a lot of the “inferences” are “non-canon” or simply implied, Mission Statement is canon to the overarching lore. While the “Egyptian god skins” are non necessarily canon, we can see that Blizzard is pulling in characters like Pharah, Ana, and Zenyatta into a shared “background mythos,” much like Mercy and Oasis.

And this has direct implications on Uprising’s lore and background.

In the Uprising comic, we see that Null Sector arises from pushback against anti-Omnic sentiments in London, which city officials and Mondatta were trying to rectify when Null Sector attacked. Overwatch - more specifically, Commander Jack Morrison and his fellow leaders Ana Amari and Gabriel Reyes - are put in a position where they are forced to make a difficult choice: stand on the sidelines and watch the situation deteriorate even further, or take action and risk getting in further international trouble with their Director and the rest of the world’s governments. As most people know, they do the latter.

“Canon Overwatch lore” shows that a team of four - Reinhardt, Mercy, Tracer, and Torbjorn - go into King’s Row and deliver a bomb before taking down Null Sector’s main base and freeing the hostages. But what is extremely interesting are a number of the new interactions - both canon and non-canon - that can be found in the mode.

(Note that most of these are based on memory):

1. A Torbjorn-Tracer interaction in which Tracer protests that “Not all Omnics are like this.” Torbjorn responds along the lines of “Look around - this has happened before and this will happen again!” He seems to be implying that the normal King’s Row map - in which a group of attackers is trying to push an EMP to the Power Plant to disable “hostile Omnic forces” - is a result of the consequences of the events of Uprising, and even that Null Sector may return in the future. However, this also builds on the old adage of “history repeats itself” which once again is a major thematic issue of Overwatch.

2. Null Sector troopers will say the lines of “Error: Faulty Programming” when Zenyatta’s discord orb is placed on them in All Heroes mode. 3. Orisa has a new voiceline when being revived where she says “I think I saw the Iris.”

The last two are super fascinating because we have two new ideas being presented here. The first is that Zenyatta’s discord orb operates by disrupting mental or computational abilities and works by “disorienting” enemies, allowing allies to target them in their “mentally weakened state.” Even though this interaction is not canon, it once again builds on the idea of mind control/mind effect that Anubis and Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones have. Zenyatta’s standard lines about the ability - “Bask in the shadow of doubt.” “Darkness falls.” “You are your own worst enemy.” “There is disquiet in your soul.” - are among some of the most ominous and sinister lines in the game. With this, Zenyatta’s ties to the “background mythos” of “uncontrollable chaos” lurking at the edges of Overwatch’s fictional world get much stronger, especially now that it’s shown he can perform these same abilities on other Omnics.

Orisa’s new voiceline is extra telling because previously it was implied that “only enlightened Omnics” could see the entity known as “The Iris,” but now a “one month old” Omnic with limited experiences in the world has implied that she has seen it upon her death and “resurrection” (once again, we should be thinking of all the shady stuff about Mercy here). Since Bastion does not have the ability to speak any known human language (oh look, another lowkey Babel reference), Orisa is now the third Omnic character to confirm the existence of the Iris outside of Zenyatta and Mondatta.

3. Gazing into the abyss - Sombra, The Eye Conspiracy, and the Popol Vuh

I know that other people have already put forward the idea that the Eye featured at the center of Sombra’s conspiracy web is “the Iris” - personally, I’m not a big fan of the idea but I want to examine it because the motif of “eyes” is recurring in Overwatch. We have, at a glance (heh): 1. Ana and Pharah both having “eyes of Horus” tattoos.

2. Ana, Reinhardt, and Torbjorn are all missing eyes.

3. Soldier: 76 with his “enhanced vision” thanks to Tactical Visor.

4. Widowmaker’s “multi-view” camera headgear.

5. Hanzo’s “eyes of the dragon.”

6. Zenyatta’s Iris references.

7. Winston and Mei both wear glasses (and reference it).

8. Sombra’s Eye conspiracy.

9. Orisa’s new voiceline about the Iris.

10. Multiple characters in masks or headgear that obscure their eyes.

11. McCree’s “Deadeye” ultimate.

12. The literal name of “Overwatch.”

I’ve probably missed some, but in any case, the associated motifs of eyes/vision/watching things is constant and ubiquitous in Overwatch (even down to the name of the game itself), which wraps about around to the very blunt and obvious “Who watches the Watchmen” theme that the series has going on. With Uprising, we have the implied idea that “Overwatch has steadily overgrown its original parameters and started acting as ‘world police’ for justice and assistance.” It may mean well, but ultimately, Overwatch is directly told by Director Petras, the UK government, and public protests (shown on the news blurbs) that “its oversight and protections” are no longer wanted or needed, even if its intentions are good and pure.

It is not surprising then, that the idea of Overwatch “becoming too ambitious - even with good intentions” brought down the “wrath” of something even larger than it, something with the ability to move forces such as Talon, LumériCo, Volskaya, etc.

Something that “watches” the “Overwatchmen.”

Personally, I think the idea that the Eye Conspiracy being the same as The Iris is a little on-the-nose, especially since a lot of the “background mythos” is a series of obscure references that require semi-inane “connecting the dots” to find (am I self-depreciating here? Yes), but it is a promising theory, especially with the new stuff surround Null Sector, Zenyatta, and Orisa. So while I don’t want to talk to much about “what the Eye Conspiracy could be,” I do want to get into a little bit of “background mythos” around Sombra -

Because it too involves “deaths that cannot die.”

Dorado itself was rather blindly (hah) designed by the Overwatch team who, in their haste to make a “bright, colorful village map,” drew references from an Italian city by the sea (gj guys, way to double-check your sources). But the LumériCo power plant was almost certainly designed based on the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant, which exists in almost the exact same location as Dorado’s maps (note that the in-game map within the LumériCo appears to be incorrect, as the Uprising map confirms that Dorado is supposed to be further south on the Gulf of Mexico). More than anything else, the LumériCo power plants are designed to evoke the pyramids of Aztec and Mayan design. These were massive stone builds of ritual, political, and social power that were meant to mimic the mountains that gods such as the Feathered Serpent, Tlaloc/Chaac, and Huitzilopochtli were believed to live on. They were also meant to be displays of power and regality by various kings, queens, and rulers.

So like the Temple of Anubis, the LumériCo power plant is a remixing of “real world mythologies” with the dev team’s “vision of the future,” a vision where humanity celebrates its diversity and the beauty of its multitude of ideas and histories with a “futuristic twist.”

But what it also implies is that Portero - the CEO of LumériCo - is imposing himself as a psuedo-ruler in Mexico.

And that’s not just me “reading the inferences” like with Oasis or Mercy. This is outright what Sombra calls him in the Sombra ARG.

“Long live the King!

“The King Guillermo Portero of LumériCo invites cordially, his loyal servants, to participate in his crowning event and to celebrate his infinite greed and treason toward the people of México. We gave coordinated the publication of info that demonstrates that Portero is a viper, that have for a long time ripoff the riches of our country for his own wealth. He has corrupted our government, turned our sisters and brothers into beggars, and he won’t stop until controlling the whole country under his dominance. But we, Los Muertos, won’t tolerate the celebration of his reign of corruption. We’ll demonstrate to our new conquistadores (conquerors) who will take the reins of the future of our country! On November 1st, we’ll dethrone the King Viper and we’ll celebrate the recovery of our home.”

Surrounding Sombra and Los Muertos is a mythos of revolution and resistance, notably against a “new world oligarchy” of which Sombra perceives Portero to be “only the start.” In Infiltration we see her take on Katya Volskaya through blackmail and “trickery,” and in her Origins video, Sombra outright declares war on “The Eye Conspiracy.”

“I’ll find out who really runs the world. I’ll find their weaknesses and how to exploit them. And when I do - I’ll be the one pulling the strings.”

Whether intentional or not, Sombra’s arching story and its motifs parallels one of the major Mayan mythologies - the Hero Twins of the Popol Vuh. The Hero Twins are symbols of life and death, war and peace, day and night. In the most famous version of their adventures, the Hero Twins take on the lords of Xibalba (the underworld) and “beat them at their own games” using information, trickery, and cunning. In some versions of the myth, they go on to become the Sun and the Moon, and watch over the world for the rest of eternity.

We have seen Sombra challenge “the reign” of Portero and through her leaks, she forced him to resign under public humiliation. We have seen her start to make a move against Volskaya Industries. And we know, from her interactions with Reaper, that she is semi-aware that “something is going on with someone in Oasis.” Michael Chu has stated that Sombra’s interactions with Reaper are canon, and therefore, “the shadow” and “Death himself” are relatively close (as implied by the “you don’t mind if I call you Gabe, do you?”/”stick to the mission” interaction).

Interesting here too, again whether intentional or not, is the idea that figures who represent or are associated with Death - Sombra, Los Muertos, Reaper, Null Sector, Zenyatta, Anubis, Mercy - are “pushing back” against much larger powers, resisting against those who “watch the Overwatchmen,” and trying to reclaim power.

4. I’m not the one with the statue.

Before there was Lovecraft, before the Nameless City, before the Cthulhu mythos, there was Shelley’s Ozymandias.

“I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Surprise, surprise - a Very Important Statue of a Very Important Character in Overwatch got referenced in Uprising. Surprise, surprise - this same statue was depicted from The Very Beginning in the Museum Heist short, before Soldier: 76/Jack Morrison had even been revealed as a character.

Surprise, surprise - this very same statue is implied to have been blown up in the Swiss Base explosion (you can actually see a “trunkless leg” in the Soldier: 76 Origins video).

And - surprise, surprise - Ozymandias is the “superhero alter-ego name” of Adrian Viedt in Watchmen, the “true antagonist” of the story and whose jaded, misguided morals designs an “impending disaster” in order to try and force humanity to unite against it.

“Before Manhattan leaves to create life in another galaxy, Veidt asks him if he "did the right thing in the end". Manhattan replies that "In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends", leaving Veidt in doubt about how long the peace will last.”

In Watchmen, there are constant themes of “history repeats itself” and “humanity’s arrogance and desire for personal short-term satisfaction outweigh idealism and hope for long-term peace and prosperity.” And of course the ever prevalent theme of “Who watches the Watchmen?”

And since Overwatch straight up rips off Watchmen, it’s not surprising at all that these major themes have worked themselves into the “background mythos” and outright lore of the game, its characters, and its world. Of course, Overwatch attempts to portray its version of Ozymandias - Jack Morrison/Soldier: 76 - in a more...morally acceptable light, framing his decisions as “doing the right thing but ultimately sacrificing his ‘empire’ for it.” If anything, Uprising shows Morrison as a character “setting out on the right track, but ultimately brought down by the corruption of the larger forces in the world - the conspiracy that invades his organization, that seemingly ‘brings down and blinds (hah) his friends Ana and Gabriel,’ and that literally attempts to kill him.”

Of course, when you read between the lines of the Uprising comic, we can see that “the rest of the world” has begun to perceive Overwatch a rather different way - as a policing force that has started to overstep its bounds, impose its ambitions of “peace” upon the world “through means of trickery and deceit (Blackwatch) and even outright control methods (Overwatch Strike Team),” and aims to “reach for the impossible.”

And so we come to the idea of “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

Much like the Tower of Babel, much like Mission Statement, much like the Sombra ARG, we have a recurring “background story” where “the larger powers that be” are fighting (from their perspective) to “keep humanity in its rightful place,” to restrict and lay low its ambitions and “arrogance,” to show that - no matter how well-meaning - overstepping one’s bounds will result in disaster and strife. If Overwatch could not achieve global peace “through its Strike Teams and Blackwatch,” then how can anyone else?

If the Ozymandias of the poem could not maintain his empire and his power, if even Time Itself brought him down and ruined “his works,” if even Time Itself could wear down on the Nameless City, if even after twenty to thirty years of hard work for peace could not solidify Overwatch’s worth in the world -

Then what will defy Time Itself?

What will break the cycle of history repeating itself?

Overwatch has set up a few “routes” - all of them paralleling each other - out of this “background mythos of endless horror and despair” it has built for itself.

The first is Recalled Overwatch - the “Neutral/Chaotic Good” route. In this Route, Winston and Tracer have begun to rebuild the fallen Overwatch from the rubble, in direct defiance of the Petras Act. We know that, in due time, Genji attempts to join them (after Dragons), and that he invites Hanzo along. Other agents who receive the Recall notice are Mercy, McCree, Reinhardt, and Torbjorn. This is the route that will “do things the right way this time,” where “the darkness” is fought back with “the light,” where “discord and disquiet” are overcome by “harmony and tranquility.” The uncertainty here is that there is nothing which prevents this route from repeating the same history as its predecessor.

The second is the Old Soldiers - the “True Neutral/Chaotic Neutral” route. In this route, we have Soldier: 76 and Ana setting off on their own, looking for “answers” to the “war that never ends.” What exactly Soldier and Ana are looking for is unknown - arguably, they’re looking for a way to bring down the conspiracy that ended Overwatch, but this is never stated outright. The problem with this route is that since there’s only two of them, they may never find what they are looking for.

The third route is the “Even Death may die” - the “True Neutral/Chaotic Evil” route. This is the route that, in my opinion, is by far the most interesting. It is the route that follows Sombra, Reaper, and Widowmaker. We know for certain that Sombra is out to find and control “the larger forces that really run the world,” and arguably Reaper “may be in on this plan.” Widowmaker’s role in this is uncertain. This is the route that probably parallels the Hero Twins - descending into “the underworld” to fight “the Lords of Death” with tricks, cunning, and intelligence, besting them at their own games. This is the route that would counter “whatever Great Old Ones exist” in Overwatch’s world with their own abilities - Sombra’s hacking and systems, Reaper’s inability to die, and (if she’s part of it) Widowmaker’s sniping abilities. The issue with this route is that there is nothing preventing these individuals from being “corrupted” by the same forces that “corrupted” the Eye Conspiracy and led to the fall of Overwatch.

One thing I want to stress is that none of these routes are necessarily “morally or ethically correct.”

After all -

It depends on how you see it.

There is a lot here for the development team to play with. It’s taken them quite a lot of time to get their feet on the ground, but now that they have an increasingly solid foundation to work on, they can build their bizarre and beautiful world however they want, with increasingly interesting and oddball references. With Uprising, we got stuff as wonderfully whimsical as the Selfie and Baby highlight intros, the Contra sprays, the Null Sector skins, etc, but we also got stuff as eerie and surreal as the Zenyatta discord orb lines, Orisa’s “Was that the Iris?” line, the strong implication of Null Sector using reprogramming to make Bastions and OR-14s fight against their will, and Torbjorn’s lines of “this has happened before and it will happen again.”

What the Overwatch team is building here is a series of “range of canon” background mythologies (some that are “non-canon but merely background white noise that colors how the players view the world,” to “these are kinda sorta canon and you should be paying attention to how we use these references,” to “these are outright canon and we will be using them blatantly for whatever we want”) that develop the world in a set of unique ways. Even for the stuff that “isn’t canon,” it still exists in the game and it still tints how players interact with the characters, their personalities, and their story arcs. Reaper’s Mariachi skins and Zenyatta’s Djinn skins may never matter “in the overall story,” but they still show small “slices” of personality that reveal something new about them. Similarly, Zenyatta’s lines about his discord orb may never “make it to canon,” but they still demonstrate that “something dark” lurks within them.

And this is, arguably, both the strength and weakness of this style of storytelling: anything and everything is open and available for use. You can design a world where a map references the Tower of Babel and more or less imply that “the doctor who defies death” lives there, but you can change this at the drop of a hat. You can create a robot monk whose abilities rely on amplifying “the disquiet” in other characters’ souls, but then say that his statements on these abilities are not “canon.” You can craft a narrative surrounding three old comrades who have had a major falling out and then leave massive gaps in the explanation for this problem. You gain freedom, flexibility, and openness in exchange for lore that stands on a foundation as steady as shifting sands.

So yes, I know that like half of this essay or whatever “isn’t canon.” But if Mercy’s Witch skin has impacted how you view her, or knowledge of Watchmen has impacted how you understand Overwatch as a whole, or hearing Orisa’s voiceline about the Iris has changed your perception of it, then does it matter “how canon” it is?

If it has impacted how you see it

Then it has already influenced how you interpret it.

---------

This doesn’t even BEGIN to cover all the apocalypse references made by characters like Roadhog, Junkrat, Ana, Reaper, etc. There are, frankly, a massive amount of voicelines that - once again - shade how the player perceives the characters and the world of Overwatch at large. This doesn’t even cover backstories like Reaper or Mei or D.va, that latter of whom straight up has Godzilla/Evangelion references in her background. And this doesn’t even cover stuff like the battle of Eichenwalde, or Deadlock, or “HAL-fred Glitchbot” (who is literally a reference to HAL and Alfred Hitchcock, both elements of “Hollywood horror”), or even the issues around Los Muertos. There’s a ton here that shows that the Overwatch devs are dropping apocalyptic and/or horror references as varied as Mad Max to Apocalypse Now to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Neon Genesis Evangelion to The Headless Horseman to “the grandfather of all sci-fi” Frankenstein to “the grandfather of American macabre Romanticism” Edgar Allan Poe.

The “background mythos” of Overwatch is filled with horror story references - everything from The Raven, to Thriller, to Psycho. Behind the bright colors and beautiful maps are canon stories that imply something darker - a God Program being contained against its will, a yakuza clan that “needs to be reigned in,” a city “building the tallest tower in the world,” an arms-dealing gang “coming back into power,” an EMP being delivered to “hostile Omincs” - and a whole slew of “non-canon references” that display something even deeper, “even darker” that lurks beneath them all.

#overwatch #overwatch lore #my essays #my writing #i don't even know what to call this #sorry to drop this on yall on a sunday night #lol #references #ideas #inspiration

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juushika · 7 years

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travel to first city > get out of habit of playing Zelda in sleep-deprived travel and recovery days > stall out > pick game back up same day we started playing Dark Souls III again and wow the games do not mesh > oh well > travel to other city again, can’t play Dark Souls while here > tl;dr finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

My liveblog from ~50% to the end: game events, Navi as mechanic, time travel???, so much metadata, Gerudo are the very best, cyclical narrative are fascinating and I wish I wanted to play the other games, etc.; it is very long!

me: hello dark Link is in this one 1) this is the 1.5 things i was not really spoiled for (in context of Ocarina) 2) oh my god i have so much fanart of this scene what a well-done sequence! really subtle and eerie effects/use of reflection and clever combat and like not skillful combat at all “don’t lock on, try and sort of flail until you get around him then stab his butt wildly” but pretty and the fade-out is really effective! so much really good subtextual-to-the-point-of-not-existing narrative; fights with shadow selves are best trope?? i looked at that art again and! it v good! i remember finding this dynamic compelling even before familiar with canon in any way! but it’s not explored, just, “you could explore this yourself, if you want”

me: where is Link keep iron boots when not wear that they don’t effect his weight just curious

Missy: don’t ask they magic also it really amuses me that your biggest connection to OoT is “i have sexy pics of Link and dark Link”

me: what is the logic of traveling BACK to kid Link??? (there is no logic, i know, i know) “you picked up the sword and were too young for it so we incubated you until ready” implies that Kingdom Hearts-esque he grew up in the jar, time passed but he wasn’t there for it but then no! and he can go back! and i get it would be awful to put collectables/shortcuts and then be like ARBITRARY UNPREDICTABLE CUT-OFF POINT being able to pop back is polite; and having offered that, tying it into plot is clever but ……..how???? it work?

[future Juu: Spirit Temple is best dungeon b/c it makes the time travel mechanic part of the core gameplay, aka the dungeons; but the time travel still fails to make sense, here or there or in the ending. maybe I read too much into chrysalis imagery b/c of my KH background? but the original wording, “we put you in sacred realm until you growed up,” just conflicts hugely with everything else time travel does in this game]

Missy: in the room with the rolly boulders HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY GODDAMIT NAVI I GET WE NEED TO AVOID THE BOULDERS YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL ABOUT THEM NONSTOP hey navi. you don’t like getting squished. i don’t like getting squished. HOW ABOUT YOU STOP SAYING HEY SO I DON’T JUST SQUISH YOU.

me: i am so 50/50 on why everyone found Navi so annoying i have this strong “it not her fault” feel “it the limit of her programing”

Missy: normally she fine but sometimes HEY HEY HEY HEY

me: some of [the boy’s] retro game adventures in the time before waypoints are… interesting like it’s super immersive which is great more active exploration, less “mindlessly follow waypoint” but they forget that in the samey-textured-fucking-identical-rooms you just … can’t pathfind naturally i come away with this really strong sense of “oh that’s why we handhold” when actually! we could handhold less now that we can have unrecycled textures/assets and rooms that aren’t just boxes! but you still spend the whole time (in retro games) wishing for a waypoint or a fucking HUD or anything in the world that tells you how go where [examples of retro games that fit this matrix: the original Thief series, the original Deus Ex] and i feel like Navi is that “in such a sprawling and potentially non-linear game, player needs an aid” Missy: esp when HEY WHERE DO I GO? HEY HEY LISTEN sorta useful me: yeah she's good for "how to begin next dungeon" stuff but for stuff like "what do these magic seeds do" "chickens????" she useless and then she breaks out the advice for "DID YOU KNOW BOULDER MAKE THE SQUISH" thanks navi, i had guessed

Missy: hehe yahh

me: there’s actually--and, let us still preserve my overall ehhhhhhhhh opinion of Undertale, but--there’s a great sort of hat-tip to that trope when helper NPC interrupts you while doing a puzzle so that you are forced to “fail” it (need to push three buttons; NPC: “I’ll help you with timing!!”; reminder re: timing forces you to fail timing lol) god aren’t vidya games cool they’re like 50% experience/feelings/narrative and 50% mechanics/game design it’s so interesting!!! i have feelings!!!!

me: Bongo Bongo actually fav boss so far WITH savestates without, probably hell but with, save stating becomes another mechanic, another move to time, like saving after stunning second hand so i can make sure eye of truth + counter eye + dmg, and then reset to save state if i miss one of those steps which happens a lot pacing great with savestates, very tense without, probably just ragey

Missy: yes and yes

[future Juu: this became a consistent theme. I started using save states to avoid the constant walking back each time I returned to the game, but they universally made combat feel more strategic and dependent on my actions, and less flaily and dependent on ehhh controls]

me: hello yes the Gerudo are extremely interesting is very Amazons

Missy: yes except Ganondork

me: like in any single-sex society, even those created by feminists (Joanna Russ, Nicola Griffith) i want more interrogation of sex=gender, how gender binary works when part of the binary is super unrepresented, characters forgoing binary entirely, etc. esp. interesting here b/c they 1) do have very rare males 2) have contact with non-Gerudo men, so they’re exposed to a gender binary, but how does that impact their culture “occasionally a man and then he becomes king of everything” is super icky for obvious reasons but i wonder what the on-the-ground view of that is, like, they have their own leadership roles, 100 years is a long time to be periodically self-sustaining, does the average citizen even care is it a figurehead monarchy “they just wear the pretty crown and look important; meanwhile, we rule ourselves” system fucked up every cycle that Ganandorf shows up to be ~evil~

me: obviously they do enough breeding outside their race to sustain it, but their culture is actually pretty self-contained/even xenophobic, so how does culture sharing work, how does race work???? Gerudo have distinct skin tone, but are breeding with whiter people presumably a lot, what does mixed race look like??? or b/c ~magic~ is that not a thing, are the daughters all just Gerudo wiki says we unno if they have contact with bio fathers, is there any cultural sharing??? what does Gerudo family unit look like; j/k it’s a “a lesbian and her extended lesbian family”

Missy: Keep in mind Historically speaking *every* Gerudo male in known history is Ganondork Following every game And every timeline So the king of everything may not be so much icky political as Gerudo + triforce of power = Ganon king of Gerudo/evil = harbinger of end of world and Hyrule reset

me: so, Dark Souls-like, we’re sort of stuck in a timeline/event loop, looking at same sort of events in different times/iterations (maybe it’s a reverse Jesus, like, they had this prophecy indefinitely but it didn’t effect daily life, but when it’s realized via Ganon we begin a sort of cycle of the game series) Missy: Most interesting bits there are the Twilight Princess stuff Where the n64 Link is a shade waiting for end of world to pass on his knowledge before disappearing Because yeah--Ganon loop seems like public Gerudo knowledge But Link loop is less talked about. The hero of time is just the legend

me: i’m sort of mad that aesthetic/the plot is just hero’s journey/here have the same narrative 2023842 times makes me not want to play others while iterated narrative is such a great trope and does make me want to care

Missy: Zelda future is open world The narrative is apparently partially taking back seat So the future lore from Twilight Princess would be tasty for you (esp. since Hyrule is bigger and more history has been written) But then the open world of BotW is a different allure. You write your own story etc

me: but open world just so ……………tired the dumb shit one can do in BotW is interesting, i just i like, you know, a narrative or sense of purpose

me: i finish Ocarina i have questions so Zelda sends him back to original time, everyone happy in future, life beautiful, sages together & everyone seems to know what’s occurred or at least that evil gone now child Link shows up at temple, Navi is like bye bitch, child Link goes to see child Zelda does he tell her to not fuck up > Ganondorf doesn’t come to power in new alternate timeline???? b/c either she’s like, hey, i know you want to be an adult now, but time to be a child and live through the reign of terror until future you saves shit, OR they’re alternate timelining it and everything sages etc did won’t really exist, so why so long an epilogue focused on them either way the time travel still doesn’t make sense since all the sword does is pop Link in chrysalis until old enough to use it??????/ Missy: Ocarina -> timeline split the adult saved timeline is the one that leads to Wind Waker, i think tl;dr Link saves world and then goes poof oops

me: “Regardless, Ocarina of Time has always been one of the centerpoint games in the chronology, with the events at the end of the game, where Zelda sends Link back to his youth, splitting the timeline.” (source) okay okay that’s a thing

Missy: yeah so Twilight Princess is the other branch

me: Zelda: still fucking things up sorta gj Zelda she is the center of everything isn’t she, i guess, like, thus the title

Missy: yes she is Ganon-Link-Zelda triforce

me: “When the official timeline was revealed in Hyrule Historia, the placement of Ocarina of Time in the series was revealed to be of even greater value, as the events of the game actually split the series’s timeline into three branches.” (ibid.)

Missy: oh yeah third branch we fucked up branch as in you lose to Ganondork and then.. snes game?

me: god i love iterated narratives it really is a pity i don’t care about the worldbuilding (except lesbians obvs.) and also characters and also aesthetic and also hero’s journey and also gameplay “Link is sent back to his childhood, leaving this branch without a Hero, as told in the prologue to The Wind Waker. Ganondorf eventually overcomes the Sages’ seal and attempts to take over Hyrule, but with no Hero to face the evil,” GJ ZELDA JEEZE like tbf, Link telling Zelda > child timeline is also Link’s fault and Link failing to defeat Ganon > grimdark timeline is also him so he is central, triforce, etcetc but Zelda is actually interesting and Link is mostly fridge horror so, shrug that said, it some good fridge horror i propose alternate timeline for another fanfic i never gon’ write child Link almost warns Zelda, goes, wait, what about timeline shit, nvm, decides to just wait it out seven years of increasing darkness watching bad shit pile up actually seeing it from the ground instead of in summary, it worse than he thought, “i done fucked up”

Missy: do a triforce swap Ganon comes out with wisdom Zelda has power Link still courage

me: Ganon wisdom = grimest dark b/c he would be smart enough to succeed wisdom is power really, it’s more effective longterm than brute force then Hyrule rip

#Juu metadata #conversations with Missy #Juu plays #The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time #too many to tag #but uh:#Undertale #The Legend of Zelda #Dark Souls #Juu watches other people play #Thief #Deus Ex #Juu reads

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rbeatz · 7 years

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rBeatz Exclusive Interview with dwilly

We here at rBeatz have had the pleasure of interviewing dwilly, who released his first single in 2017, Birds and the Bees, last week featuring one of our favorite new artists, Kyle Thornton.

David Wilson, aka “dwilly,” gave us some insights into the charismatic young producers life and story.

INTERVIEW:

Where are you from and how has that shaped the musician you are today?

I’m originally from Greenville, South Carolina a southern town not too far from Atlanta and Charlotte. It’s pretty much the perfect place to live besides the fact that musical opportunities are sparse. People are huge into trap and hard rap down here so I believe that living close to ATL has definitely had a “harder 808ish” impact on my sound. People generally don’t listen to electronic music where I’m from so I really wasn’t exposed to it until I came up to Boston to study at Berklee College of Music.

Where does the name dwilly come from?

“dwilly” is the alias derived from my name David Wilson. I was formally known as “D-Will”, but changing it to “dwilly” recently was a decision my crazy dope manager Noah and I thought would be better for my branding. It has a sense of “silliness” to the sound of it and I’m a silly ass mofo.

What was the best studio moment when you recorded, ‘Birds and the Bees’ with Kyle Thornton?

Hitting the studio with Kyle was a blast. We’re both goofballs so in between moments of seriousness were pretty much joking around and laughing our asses off non-stop. My favorite moment was bringing Kyle out of the tracking room into the studio room and thinking of crazy moist harmonies for the chorus together. Most of the creation behind the track was very spontaneous. We definitely spent a good amount of time in the writing process to experiment and play around with ideas until we were satisfied.

Can you explain a bit how you made that bird synth sound on ‘Birds and the Bees?’

Honestly, I had no intention of replicating the sound of a “bird” when I was designing that patch. The character of the sound is a result of both pitch envelope and basic filtering. My whole manifesto as a producer is designing my sounds from scratch with intentions to make my music both powerful and unique. It wasn’t until after I had designed the “drop” that I titled it “Birds and the Bees”. I had my buddy Demitrio Albano, a brilliant sound designer that works in NYC, send me some samples of outdoor bird nature and you can hear those ambiences throughout the track, especially in the intro. After finishing the skeleton of the track, I sent it over to writer and a good friend Jake Torrey out in LA where he quickly became inspired with the theme of the track to write the hook. Jake also recently wrote on Lupe Fiasco’s recent single “Wild Child”.

What instruments did you play when you were younger?

My parents pushed me to learn as many instruments as possible. Fortunately, they realized my love for music at a young age and had me taking classical lessons when I was 5 with the amazing instructor Steve Griner. Later on when I was in middle school, I started taking drumset lessons as well. I was inspired by classic rock legend drummer Neil Peart (Rush) after my dad showed me his performance videos online. After being accepted into the Fine Arts Center high school in Greenville, I expanded my musical studies into orchestral percussion and jazz drums. There, I joined several student orchestras focusing on timpani and mallets. My percussion professor Gary Robinson helped me organize my audition for Berklee where I was accepted for my principal instrument as Orchestral Percussion. Now, I am graduating in May with a degree in Electronic Production and Design. I believe the best producers are performers as well. My piano and drum skills contribute to both my melodic and rhythmic process of producing records.

Are there an instruments that you currently wish you COULD play?

Saxophone. I’m always amazed at how much expression a monophonic (one voice) instrument is capable of achieving. Maybe one day I’ll have time to pick it up and figure it out.

What do you like to do when you’re simply hanging out – aside from music?

You’ll find me either kicking it with my friends around Boston or watching Netflix in my underwear. Every activity I do in my free time is pretty impulsive since it’s rare when I not working on music in some way or the other. In the summer time, I spend a lot of time outside exploring the city on my longboard with my best friend Zach. Usually when l let off some steam on the weekends we’ll hit our local favorite bars/restaurants around the area.

Who are your musical influences?

Growing up on legendary artists like Michael Jackson and Rush rooted me in a strong respect and understanding for music and theory. But sonically, my influences come from current artists and producers like Porter Robinson, Skrillex, Disclosure, and Graves. Like most kids, I went through a variety of musical phases including classic rock, metal, and rap. Even classical composers like Bach and Beethoven contribute to how I choose to dictate melodies and phrasing. I love where Pop music is headed and how artists/labe ls are integrating more contemporary styles like electronic and hip hop into the charts.

What DAW do you use and why?

Ableton is more than my go-to-DAW, it’s like a family member to me lol. I use Protools as well but explicitly for recording. I find that sequencing and composing in Ableton is much faster and efficient than alternative DAW’s like Logic and even Protools because of the way that the workflow is designed. Ableton has an amazing capability to synchronize external devices within the workspace. Also, the way it handles automation allows me to create extremely precise and flexible paths for instrument and plugin values.

What is your favorite MIDI Controller right now?

I really enjoy using Ableton Push. It’s great for drum sequencing and creating loops. Using a surface pad such as Push is a luxury that most producers don’t have. Honestly, I don’t even use controllers in my production except when I need to hop on my Akai 49-key midi keyboard to play a quick loop or idea. Most of my composition is done internally within the software on my mouse and keyboard.

What is one of your favorite or go-to VST Plugin?

SERUM!!! I hopped on the bandwagon a couple semesters back during the earlier version and it has been the best decision I’ve made as a producer. It has so many capabilities such as FM modulation and the ability to design your own wavetables. It has a very “sharp” sound so I mainly use it for heavier synthesis in my tracks. For more “bread and butter” patches like bass or super-saws I tend to use Massive. It’s a classic reliable VST that always yields incredible results.

Do you have a key production tip for our young producers out there?

I’d say the biggest thing is to trust your ears. There’s a lot of great software to utilize these days and it’s easy to get distracted by fancy visuals. Also, use reference tracks in the mix-down process. It’s taken me years to get to the point where I am as a mixer and I still use references to ensure that my tracks are sounding commercial. Another important thing– send your music around to your fellow producers and friends and ask for feedback. Sometimes a non-musician’s opinion is more important than a musician’s because their impression on a song is often based on “how it makes them feel”.

What is your biggest accomplishment to date?

Recently I got picked up by a student organization here at Berklee that sends artists to summer festivals. They are sending me to Outside Lands Festival where I will be performing my music to big crowds. That’s my biggest accomplishment so far.

What has been your top favorite venue to play and why?

I’ve played at several venues here in Boston, but my favorite place to play so far has been at this basement house party in Allston outside Boston. It’s a very intimate experience playing at house parties as opposed to playing in a club. All these kids were just crammed in this basement bouncing around and having a blast. It was an amazing experience just being able to party with people and see the crowd react to my music.

What is your favorite color?

Red.

What food do you eat the most?

I eat a lot of Kraft macaroni and cheese.

What is your favorite social media platform and why?

My personal favorite is Snapchat. Like I can post the most savage things and I don’t have to worry about it really affecting my image as an artist or professional. **Knock on wood**

What is next for Dwilly?

More releases throughout this summer, and appearances at several shows in Boston and LA!

from rBeatz.com http://ift.tt/2oQkJKP

#rBeatz.com #rBeatz Exclusive Interview with dwilly #Music #Fun #Dance #Love #Baila #rBeatz

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pcinvasion-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on PC Invasion

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2jNcgUa

Memoranda Review

Memoranda, a Kickstarted adventure game inspired by the short stories of Haruki Murakami, shows that while Magical Realism may be a terrific style from which to pluck characters, it can cause some structural problems.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Magical Realism is literature’s equivalent of the videogame Rogue-like; it has a broad definition, and people will argue endlessly about whether an author or book fits into the category or not. Basically, it’s when strange or unusual events bleed through into an otherwise realistic setting, and the inhabitants of the story treat this as completely normal. If a talking cat shows up, the characters tend to simply talk to the cat rather than exclaiming “holy shit that cat can talk, what is going on here, am I losing my mind?”

It’s not quite a case of ‘anything goes’, but you can imagine how carefully an adventure game’s puzzles need to be constructed in a world where the bizarre is commonplace. 1993’s Sam & Max Hit The Road got this (mostly) right. Memoranda has some difficulties.

Magical Realism in a nutshell.

It’s been a few years since I read a Murakami novel (Wild Sheep Chase and Kafka On The Shore are good choices for anybody curious about his work), but his influence is certainly felt throughout the game. Certain aspects and characters are direct references to his short stories, including a missing elephant, a chap named ‘Superfrog’, and the abundance of cats. Not being as familiar with his shorts as some of his novels it’s hard to say for sure, but it’s safe to assume there were more references I didn’t pick up.

The only Murakami trait arguably missing is a whole lot of 1960s jazz and pop records; though an indie studio can easily be forgiven for skipping this expensive indulgence. Instead, Memoranda has an unobtrusive ambient score, full of extended tones which evoke a dreamlike, slightly off-kilter state. In part, it reminded me of softer tracks from Ice-Pick Lodge’s The Void, another (albeit very different) game where the player is bombarded with strangeness.

Memoranda is much more down to earth than Ice-Pick’s hellish afterlife, taking place in a sunny, coastal town of cafes and cottages. But it retains a feeling of underlying melancholy, both in its cast of odd characters beset by obsessions and problems, and in the spidery, slender frame of its protagonist Mizuki. She’s a lady troubled by a serious lack of sleep, unable even to retain a grasp on her own name (we know it though, thanks to the subtitles).

Luckily she can still remember how to obtain delicious pastries.

The re-discovery of Mizuki’s name provides the main impetus for Memoranda, though simply walking around and interacting with the town’s bizarre citizenry is a convincing secondary incentive. I’m a big fan of The Dabchick, an aquatic fowl in a suit who helps to transform others into human-animal hybrids, and who may be involved in organised crime (at the very least, his business is operating outside of normal legislative boundaries). A pair of morally ambivalent talking owls also make a good impression during their short cameo, and showcase an amusing range of human-created hooting sounds.

But while there isn’t too much to criticise about the game’s presentation (the voice-acting falls victim to mic hiss at times, that’s about it) or use of Magical Realism as its stated inspiration, it makes some pretty fundamental adventure game mistakes.

Points of progression are often arbitrary, relying on specific actions or Mizuki’s return to certain locations in order to advance the plot and open up new areas of the game. Twice, this hinges on returning to a screen outside of Mizuki’s house; an area you can’t immediately jump to with the map’s (otherwise extremely helpful) fast travel system, and one which you’d almost certainly have no other pressing reason to revisit. Nonetheless, showing up there makes Mizuki see the new issue of a magazine (denoting time passing, pushing the plot further), and, later, introduces a completely new, one-off character offering a plot-critical item for no particular reason.

You can never trust that you’ve exhausted the possibilities in any given location, because it’s quite possible that a new point of interaction or new character may just show up there out of the blue. This undermines any attempt on the player’s part at methodical progression, and gives aimless wandering between locations the same mechanical value as applying thought to inventory items and clues.

If you play Memoranda, check outside this apartment lobby a lot. For your own sanity.

Objects are inconsistent in their disappearance from the inventory. Once they no longer have any further use in the game, they tend to vanish. But not always. This leads the player to wonder if a particular item will have a second function, or whether it’s just one of the ones sticking around without purpose.

Memoranda also manages to include some mini tasks and tacitly highlighted points of interaction which wind up serving no function. A request to find somebody’s cat ends up going nowhere (you do come across the cat, but Mizuki seems disinclined to return it – only later do you realise this isn’t actually a prompt for further action), and, later, a Komodo Dragon shows up for no apparent cause nor effect.

Some of Memoranda’s dialogue reads as if it has been sent through the filter of a second language. Unusual grammatical constructs and word choices can add to the slightly otherworldly feel of the game in a positive way, but they don’t always help with the dissemination of audio or written clues. Mizuki has a limited number of stock ‘this won’t work’ responses, all of which will infuriate you by the game’s end, but none more than the one along the lines of “that doesn’t make any logical sense”. I’m pretty sure using a cloth flag (“could still be used for cleaning”) on a dusty window (“I wish I could see the other side”) does, in fact, count as fairly logical. She even gives you anti-clues at times. One particular item prompts a “I don’t want to give this away to anybody” response, despite the fact that is precisely what you need to do.

The key conflict at the heart of the game is this: many of the game’s puzzles (and indeed the general theme), do not revolve around standard actions. Point and click adventure games are notorious for obscure solutions, and Memoranda practically codifies this approach by basing itself in Magical Realism. Combining this with an arbitrary structure of progression and some unclear clues begets almost crippling frustration.

I’m feeling slightly angry just looking at this mouse/rat hole location again.

Developers Bit Byterz have stated their intent to add both an object hot spot system and layered hint system to the game, but these have not yet been implemented at the time of writing (two days before release). The hot spot system will be essential, because there’s not a whole lot making objects of interaction stand out from the background art, and some items are outright hidden. Frankly, a hot spot toggle is such a staple of modern adventure games that it shouldn’t have required user feedback to get it included.

Hints will obviously help too, but they’re going to be a bit of an ineffective bandage for the main wound. The problem is that certain puzzle solutions are borderline impossible to deduce from observation and audio/textual clues. Having access to a feature that will gradually tell players the answers will allow them to progress beyond these sticking point, but it won’t do anything to improve the actual design of the puzzles themselves.

Memoranda has capably replicated the strangeness-as-the-everyday feel of Magical Realism, presenting a point-and-click world full of unusual characters and off-kilter situations. Unfortunately, it struggles to reconcile the oddities of its coastal town with the necessity of providing clear clues and logical steps of progression for its puzzles. The promised addition of hot spots and layer hints will only be able to go so far in alleviating these structural design problems. Too often, this homage to Murakami sends frustrated players on a Wild Sheep Chase for a solution.

#Memoranda

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