#466

Damn, people. Last post was longer than propriety would dictate, probably. I mean fuck's sake.

 

Today's, well, today's is probably gonna be too long as well, since I locked myself into the breakdown of what happened by posting about the damn thing in media res. Really I'm only interested in talking about video games, but whatever. Shouldn't really take that long.

I guess here is the problem: that great ability I have which I discussed last post, with the plates and the spinning and the keeping things real, well, it gets a lot more complicated if the torches and pitchforks are already out. And plus, we don't live in a world where like, you're ever alone anymore. Everywhere you step, physically and digitally, the hot beams emitted by a million palantíri pierce your entire self and every shadow you have ever cast, the clicking insect brains nested at their root transmitting vital data to the pulsing, bevatted brains ranged in a great circle round the Black Pillar. 

What kind of data? It doesn't mater anymore. Stuff you wouldn't even think a person could use to fuck you up, but believe me--regimes like the one whose installation we are facing do not in any way need a legitimate reason or avenue for fucking people up. They will write the forms that say they give themselves permission to execute you in the street because you posted, oh, say, the wrong opinion on your blog one time, or purchased a product from a blacklisted company, or turned the wrong dude down for a date, or because a large language model made a profile of you and gave that profile a number and that number was either too high or too low, no one knows what makes the numbers be what they are but the numbers do not, cannot lie.

Yet the reality of it all is so much worse than that because they just don't need excuses or reasons anymore, which is great for them because it will be increasingly about venting naked id upon their surroundings at all times. The question of what happens when a government declares that you do not, legally speaking, exist, your phemonelogical insistence to the contrary, mute and and incontrovertible, becomes a crime. When existing is a crime, what is your defense? What about when no defense is acceptable once criminality is determined, and criminality can be determined on sight or through the use of an algorithm which is unerring simply because it will always be obeyed?

Some of us live with the prospect of this thought experiment breathing down our necks. I have mentioned this recently. One does not, though, sit any more comfortable when the breathing gets hot and heavy and one can only too easily imagine strong, brutal hands quickly grasping.

Well, here we are. I say it for fun a lot, and now I say it once more, quietly, in deadly earnest, before we move on to other things: strap in.

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And hey! Like I said yesterday. Things may collapse and transform so quickly and radically these fuckers may not have time, wherewithal, or opportunity to do a damn thing. As only one example, if climate change doesn't get paid attention to like fucking crazy here pretty soon, well, Atlantis stopped having political problems of any kind in one fell swoop! Starting to sound pretty good, huh?

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An embarassing confession: sometimes I fantasize about what the world might be like if more people read this blog and were able to intelligently catalyze the hidden (theoretical) wisdom from my cavalcade of tongue-in-cheek bullshit. 

Maybe they would spread my memes in a way that made better sense. Maybe the aggregate effect would be powerful enough that we would chill out a bit, collectively. I guess all writers wish this somewhere deep inside, unless of course they have a similar fantasy, except instead of stargazing and meditating on rocks stacked in little piles, which is the outcome that makes me smile, their readers busy themselves setting the world on fire, which is the outcome that makes them smile. The world is always happy to provide your diametric reverse, in the interest of a balanced universe. And I am not even mad about this, for it is meet that the universe should be in balance. All piles of rock, no matter how perfectly stacked, must at some point come tumbling down.

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Ok, VIDEO GAMES

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Finishing Unicorn Overlord was a great battle, but it only whetted my appetite for the hardest mode the game has to offer. I chose to begin on Tactical Mode, the third difficulty level out of four, the better to move through the story at an even pace. It was precisely what the doctor ordered, but I suppose I thought the last level would punsih me a bit more--it pierced my guard a time or two and I had to make one major strategic adjustment, but I essentially guillotined it.

Well, I mean, this type of game has gotten harder, more hardcore. Gotta admit it. Fire Emblem had to make itself much harder as it went along in order to prevent the "serious" player (in this rare case, I count myself among them) from straying, outraged by the inclusion of things like dating sims (written in to appease a different, but just as hardcore, demographic of the games--here I am situated more in a middle camp). The interlinked pair for the DS, as I recall, were particularly merciless, and they had not yet even graduated to having actual hi-res tea parties in-game, for which I think they put in like a sixth difficulty level and the ability to have like a hundred and fifty people under your purview. I replayed the first Fire Emblem game I ever played, the U.S. version of Blazing Blade, as released on the Switch Online service--a game, incidentally, with very few such frills and stuffed to the gills with great combat--and the sheer violence that I did to that game, and the time in which I did it frankly surprised me. I had no idea the level to which I had taken its education as a young person, nor the extent to which my abilities had surpassed its demands. 

Here's how weird I am with these types of game on the real: I will probably play through Unicorn Overlord at the same difficulty I started with (tactical, not expert) to get really dialed in on my optimization, then jump straight to the True Zenoiran difficulty, which will murder my units and limit my item uses to ten per battle even as it throttles my honors and valor points (not something that will make battles easier). In this way, I become more acclimated to the game, but the shock of the jump in difficulty develops for the experience a unique gestalt. I like it. It simulates being dunked into cold water in your own bedroom, and having to defend yourself from the attacker in the nude. Bracing. 

All told, bearing all this in mind, realizing now that I will have to resist the urge to play Unicorn Overlord as much as I have been. I will try. One ought not just play a game three times in a row. There is too much other stuff to play! Plus one must make an intimation towards sanity, at least, and crack a book on occasion. Balanced universe.

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Anyway, still early to call it, but Factually Game of the Fucking Year 2024. I guess it would be really fun to make a retroactive list of Factual Games of the Fucking Year--I shall think on this.

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Aw SHIT gotta cram some food and take a shower and go to work. Insane that I have to go to work today, but as we have said since time immemorial, the show must go on.

--JL