Continue This Blog

While it sort of feels appropriate that a blog about the process of tailing off and abandoning projects should be tailed off and abandoned rather than closed definitively I am pretty clear now that I will not be posting here anymore. As with most of the projects I've talked about here this should not be considered a bad thing, but merely just a thing which says or doesn't say certain things about the state of how we live our lives. As a project, I am just no longer interested in it. Which is not to say that I no longer find it interesting, I just have other things to be doing.

On the other hand, this project was certainly formative and a bit of a testing ground for various versions of my blogging voice. There are quite a few posts which are not very good, but there are also some I am still very pleased with. Reading through them I can see certain positions which I would no longer hold, and others which I have since refined or developed. Nevertheless I thought, as a way of ending a project that became about escaping the gravitational pull of the expectations of the past, a post which singularly fails to do that would be particularly apt. So, please find below some links to my favourite posts, the ones I still think are the most worth reading a few years down the line.

It also serves well as the first post which any future visitor might see.

Becoming a Tory What happened when I went to public school.

Marzipan 2 I-10 I put up over the course of the blog an entire unfinished manuscript for an attempt at left-wing, character-based fantasy. Simultaneously I talked about what it means to shed the once certain belief that all you need to succeed as a writer is to try, as well as an image of my future that will never come to pass. There's a lot of it, and a lot is very scrappy to read, but I think this is the best distillation of both the fiction and the reality of my life.

Marzipan 2 II-8 Meanwhile this chapter just has sex and death in it.

Jade Empire and Baldur's Gate Borking narratives in choice-based games.

Snake Agent/Wicca Cultural appropriation.

Fallout Finished things that still feel unfinished.

Dead Space

I keep not writing about Dead Space because I keep thinking to myself that I'll go back and play it, because I was really enjoying it up to the point that I got to. And then I remember that my last save has fuck all ammo or cash and is two rooms away from some double-hard wall-based monster that requires hardcore precision shooting and I get scared again and then I think about how much of a failure I am and how my life is meaningless and incomplete.

Yeah, I know. I really ought to be saving that kind of overreaction for something a bit more special, like Rainbow Islands (never got past World 2 on my own). Dead Space is just Zombies on a Spaceship; blah blah Resident Evil blah blah. The thing is, it's really good zombies in space, and the change in setting, in palette and in character design really is refreshing.

It is also one of the most seamless attempts to model a realistic space I think I've played. Whilst remaining functionally linear, the linearity in Dead Space feels justified, and is rarely enforced counter intuitively. Partly this is due to the setting - a spaceship makes a very good haunted house because death on exit is not merely implied, it is necessary and unavoidable without the need for extra narrative work or distracting exposition (one of the things that works so well in Alien); a malfunctioning spaceship is even better, as bulkheads and corridors are far more convincing constraints than the standard insurmountable waist high fence, or the need to stick to the mission rather than just piss off out of there that seems to pervade the later Resident Evil games. Partly however this is due to the cleverness and the light touch with which the game leads you around the sometimes relatively open areas, making you fix this or switch on that is made to feel necessary, rather than arbitrary. You are telling a story as you do it, not just collecting key cards.

This cleverness extends to the puzzle solving elements of the game (all survival horror games seem to have puzzle solving elements. It's apparently a thing). Again, the puzzles tend to be integrated into the environment in a much more naturalistic way, they feel like part of the world, rather than elements of a game.

That integration of game elements to world design has always been a problem as games become more realistic in design - there has to be an understandable, and recognisable challenge, but very often that seems to break one out of the world. It's in the curse of the quicktime sequence: 'press X not to die'; it's in those tedious gate puzzles, where apparently the in-game designers of some factory didn't think one switch per gate was sensible enough; it's in the blocks and crates that litter all sorts of locations and only ever slide in proscribed paths or areas.

The other big problem with realistic game design, and another place where Dead Space won out for me, has always been distance and time. Big, open world games like Fallout 3 do manage a very strong sense of realism, and they tend to be pretty good at not imposing the sort of arbitrary puzzles I just talked about onto the player, but they have the big problem of space. The space between places, while still vast, has to be necessarily contracted, or else you would notice it as being immensely boring, rather than just kind of tedious. Similarly, if you want to differentiate between day and night the cycle needs to be  sped up to something that is likely to occur within a single session of gaming.
This is something older or more abstracted games are much more capable of getting away with, with different maps at different scales, turns, or simply the fact that because it doesn't look real, you don't expect it to act real. Now, the best games tend to have these contraction effects pretty fine tuned, so that you don't notice it unless you are looking to, but still, you can understand why, when making a game about sea travel and harnessing the wind the Zelda series went all cell shaded for Wind Waker - that game is full of scale-shifts and time contraction, as well as a setting that, played real, would probably end up very dismal-looking indeed.

But yeah, all this started off with the fact that I've never actually finished Dead Space, but also haven't quite brought myself to trade it in. If only there was a game that atmospheric, that integrated and that real-feeling but that wasn't that pant-shittingly scary. Maybe I'll just go play Kinectimals or something.

The Atom Twins and The Mirror

If you've been reading this blog, you'll probably already have heard of the Atom Twins. They started life as a stupid idea in a bored moment at work, but came back years later when Underfire Comics conceived of a grand plan to write a ten issue superhero graphic novel that was also a story about a comic company falling apart. In classic style, we actually managed to write the entire thing, including making up an entire superhero universe to set it all in including fake back issues and story arcs, but in the course of it have so many arguments and tantrums and so on that not only did we not even manage to start drawing it, we basically stopped functioning as a comic publishing collective.

Actually, that's not really the reason we've basically stopped making comics as a collective, it's more that Underfire has actually succeeded in it's original goal, which was to be a springboard to real paid comic work (at least for some of us). Meanwhile, the small press scene has changed an awful lot in the last ten years and the publishing model we had, while never hugely successful, is now completely obsolete and there is much more value, traction and accessibility (to both readers and creators) in stand alone titles under your own name. Basically, when we started Ka-blam! didn't exist and a pirate copy of Photoshop took days to download and was just as likely to be a virus that trashed your computer as a functional piece of software. (I know, software piracy is a Bad Thing, but the small press as it is today probably wouldn't exist without it. The comics industry expects you to be able to use Photoshop etc., but they aren't about to pay for your copy to train with - they aren't about to pay you enough to live on for your first couple of jobs either.)

Anyway, enough of that. Have a read of the Atom Twins issue from that Superhero Graphic Novel. It's got lizardmen in it, although it's really about siblings and watching your life slip out of your control. As this is a working document, the first page is spoilery though.

(picture by Iain Buchanan)

The Atom Twins

And have another issue, The Mirror - which I am vaguely considering attempting to paint myself, but who knows if I'll ever manage to do that. This one is hugely over-ambitious, full of backwards narrative, tarot imagery and an attempt at a meta-narrative about the second generation immigrant experience (i.e. mine). God help me.

The Mirror

Donkey Kong 64

The Nintendo 64 was a strange and essentially bungled console. It should have been era-defining in the way that the NES and the SNES were, but corporate arrogance and stupidity managed to get in the way. Having said that it was by no means a flop, but I suspect part of the problem was that more people played on them than owned them. Of the era defining games on the N64, and it had its fair share, a large number were mainly about the 4-player multiplayer; Goldeneye, Mario Kart and Super Smash Brothers being the most legendary. You only needed to have one friend who owned the console - and it helped that, due to the pricing differentials, the kid whose parents brought them an N64 probably also had the best telly and the biggest living room.

But single player is how you get a console into everyone's home, and single player is where they messed up. Oh yeah, and by deliberately creating a base machine that  was below maximum spec, then short-shipping the shonky upgrade pack and bundling it with an even shonkier game intended to display its power. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is quite simply one of the most innovative mainstream games I've played. The fact that I had to buy Donkey Kong 64 in order to play it is a tragedy.

Rare were gaming legends; behind Battletoads, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct and the Donkey Kong Country games, there they were. Yet currently when you see them turn up in the press its in a vain attempt to tell you that playing darts with Kinect is the future of gaming. Now, I know that their current position as a Microsoft toy is actually to do with corporate poilitics and manouvering, but I like to think that it owes something to what they did to Donkey Kong 64.

The Donkey Kong Country games were near perfect 2D platformers, and Mario 64 had already demonstrated that a 3D platformer was not only possible, but could be really good. So there is literally no excuse for DK64. It looked bad, it played bad and they killed Wrinkly Kong, then brought her back as a ghost. What? Why? That was completely uneccesary and creepy and weird and mean.

I think I got about halfway through before I just couldn't be bothered to go any further. And just so that you know, there is no metaphor in there.

Marzipan 2 II-9

And so it ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. The manuscript for this story does actually go almost all the way to the end - I left out the final movement because I couldn't quite work out how to do it and I thought that going back and reviewing the story as I did the typing and the rewrite might fix it more clearly in my head. However, there were too many points earlier in the story that I had had the same idea about - that I could do them properly in the re-write - and so I ended up just stuttering to a halt. 

Marzipan 2 II-8

I really liked this chapter. its all about death and sex and self hatred and being unable to relate to your family. Basically things quite close to my heart.

Big Bad Wolf

The afternoon seemed endless. It had been formed of empty, searingly blue skies and featureless landscapes that seemed to feed into themselves, so that Nina could not be sure that she hadn’t walked in a giant circle, watched only by a static sun and the distant hovering hawks.

Nina felt the sun as a weight, bearing down on the heavy clothing that she wore. She refused to expose herself any further though, and just drank steady sips of water as she tramped the hours underfoot. Her reasoning was this – the air itself felt somehow chilled, so that if the sun were to pass behind a cloud then there would be nothing left but cold. The oppressing heat was a false jollity, one that would be crushed by ice she felt sure. It was a very peculiar feeling that, in sixteen years of adventures, of never stopping, she had felt only once before - or so the saying goes.

Except that she hadn’t, because it was the feeling that always came from inside, that - no matter where she was - swarmed up and invaded her muscles with heavy self awareness, with twitching incongruity. It was the memories that came first, unwanted and unrelated they brought the feeling with them and they crowded out her peripheral vision so that her eyes tunnelled forward and she had to be careful where she stepped. So that everything slowed down and speeded up at once and you had to stop to think about everything that you did from moment to moment. Because even when you were curled up against the shielding warmth of a frost giant in a bed of furs it’ll still course through you and you’ll have nothing to stop it.

She misses that frost giant, misses the frozen reaches in the far south where she had found him, although she realises that the affection is probably born as much from location as it was from true happiness. She was not happy there, she knows, because she had gone as far as she possibly could go from where she started but she was still herself. She doesn’t like to say his name, to even think it, because it upsets her – because she knows that she will never do better. Because, as far as she travelled, as protected as she could be, the memories crowded in, the feeling fuzzed through her nerves and she knew that she couldn’t stop, because stopping meant death, one way or another, by her own hand or by the weight of existence, and so she had had to leave.

Too young, she thinks, but Nina is not sure that those thoughts are Nina’s, are hers. She knew exactly what she was doing, which is the worst of the problems because it gives her no excuse. Others she could forgive, at that age, but she was aware – she knew that she was. And what s the worst thing that she could have done? Exactly what she did. Every time.

It comes up in her vision, swimming into hazy focus that darts from a solid gaze and remains present even in the cleansing glare of the sun. Closing her eyes is no proof. Fenris is there, all flesh and hands and touches that are almost still good to feel. Watching where she should have stepped in, where she should have stopped. She feels the crunch of bones that are not hers. She feels the touch of hands that are not hers. She feels the shapes her mouth made. She feels the stupidity of separate events intertwined irrevocably in her mind and she knows that she was wrong. Every time.

She should not have picked the fights that she picked. She should not have said the things that she said. She should not have let the fights that she didn’t pick go unpicked. She should not have let her sister climb trees. She should not have done with Fenris what she did with him. Despite everything.

Marzipan 2: II-7

I had great plans for this, but as usual they went nowhere. Sel remonstrations are as present in the original typescript. The Well of poison was the name of the ship that they were going to sail up from the depths.

The Well of Poison

The five sailors looked far worse than the captain did, but that was because their deaths had been more violent. They displayed limbs that had been chewed up and cracked, and crushed ribs under loose-hanging strips of flesh. Some had stomachs that had been eaten out, others trailed gore like pendants of favour, and one even had had his skull crushed by gigantic jaws so that he saw with only a single eye.

The captain took them across the seabed, countless leagues of shifting scenery filled with life. Shoals pulsed and startled when they drew near, larger fish took an interest in them in great passing sweeps, but nothing dwelled, for they were protected; a troop of sacred lepers, untouchable out of fear and respect. At times they even thought that they could make out a great bulk in the gloom ahead or to the side of them, but it was always gone as soon as they were aware of it, leaving only a faint pressure shadow in the vast currents that surrounded them.

description of mussel shore (why can’t I fucking do this already?)

The pain was intense, even to the dead. The salt tore at their bloodless flesh and bathed them with agony until there was nothing left of them that wasn’t bone or metal. They continued, though, because they had to. The ship must sail again, though it was an ill-named craft who’s previous had been distinguished by notoriety.

Stuff about the background of the ship?

Marzipan 2 II-6

Scratched Out

It had been a while since Nina found herself washed up upon that quiet and secluded shore and it should not be expected that she should still be found there. As, unvisited as it is by fishermen and other shore-huggers, and that for good reason, it is not privacy that Nina craves above all else, although it may sometimes seem to others to be so. It is stasis that is her worst enemy and biggest fear, however. She had not eaten any of the reeds that grew by the sand, which was a good move, but there was nothing else to be seen of her presence either. She was gone.

She had gone inland, specifically, away from the unbroken, terminal line that was the sea. She was headed toward civilisation, if she could find it – it was destination used in an abstract sense. She didn’t know if she was headed in the best direction, only that she was headed in the only direction she was prepared to head in. She would find civilisation eventually, it was always there in the end.

As she travelled Nina searched for a road, willing to make the cross-country hike until she found one and secure in the knowledge, or at least the working assumption, that roads were always connected to cities, or towns, or hamlets, or even individual houses. At the very least, someone who could tell her where she was and where she would have to go. It is hope, as they so often say, that keeps us going. Here, at least, they are wrong.

Nina was used to living in this manner, to grabbing what she could from the natural abundance that surrounded her. It was easy when you knew how, a trick as simple and as automatic as breathing. A root here, a berry there, you could almost forget that you were doing it, although it only seemed to work for one. But that was because one person could go hungry for days without noticing it. You just had to believe that the landscape you wandered through really was as magical, as replete with shifting mystery, as it seemed to your misfiring senses – you just had to let the hallucinations of starvation go unchallenged, so that they passed instead for clarity of vision.

It is only when others share your pain, when another’s suffering attempts to intrude upon your own that it becomes apparent for what it is, that it becomes noticeable as suffering. A companion will always remain steady, to remind you of their, and your, misfortune, with nothing more than their presence, their haggard expression and their sunken features. Their visions, different to your own, will therefore cancel yours out. Two together will see nothing but their own, shared, separate pain.

Nina was better, much better, alone, carving tracks of her own volition and scratching out a path amongst the almost infinite possibilities that were available to her. The air, the earth and the woods, and the other secret places surrounding, were barren. They were free of magic and fairies, but laden only with the fruit and slow moving, active animal life of late summer. No mushroom rings beckoned with the promise of other worlds, nor did the sky oppress with strange winds and even stranger shadows. Instead, all was freshness and clearheaded beauty.

Far away from any cities, far out in the wild, there was peace and order and, of course, the old way of things. There was no difference. Because, although everyone is entitled to be who they are, difference can be disconcerting. Complicating. So unnecessary. Out here, it need not be an issue.

It should be noted that Nina does not think this way, does not think so badly of the complications that difference entails. Or at least, does not allow it, when these thoughts come unbidden and unstoppable into her mental fortress, to go unchallenged. Does not let the thoughts take root but instead she argues, as she often does, that this is not the right way to be.

There is often blood.

And let it not be forgotten that in these southern reaches, where the air is cool and the people pale, Nina is a beacon of difference in herself. But only when she is not on her own, wandering and starving, in the wilderness.

Marzipan 2 II-5

Lets keep going with this. Someone somewhere might want to know how it doesn't end.

Thriller Pacing

Cold, fresh water surged over Grey’s head, the current threatening to pull him down and away from life as he fought his way from the bank and into the central flow of the river’s course. He couldn’t see the others in the dark and the confusion of the rushing water, so he could only hope that they had followed his lead and in the mean time concentrate on reaching the other side safely.

Marzipan 2 II-4

Around about now the chapters got really short, this one because I think i was planning on writing a huge long passage where the dead captain treks across the bottom of the sea, but I just couldn't get it right. This is really bad writing, even by my standards.

Formula

Clouds of plankton shifted mystically, twisting in the heat currents like living silt. Their density in the already soupy water showed them up to the things that hunted them in the dark, a sonar block in the lightless depths.

Marzipan 2 II-3

What happens when you realise that you are not actually the lead character of your own story? I really need to start writing again, I'm getting the feeling that I get when I need to get something out of my head. I'm going to have to have another go at using Storybook and actually start putting down some prose, especially now that I don't have to do any studying right now.

A River Runs Through It

Gray took the lead, with T’Dore riding pillion and Robin following behind on the other horse. They trotted quietly out of the village but as soon as it was far enough behind, and despite the danger of doing so in the darkness, Gray took them up to a gallop for a mile or so. He said it was to put some distance between them and anyone that might try to follow them, and he might even have believed it too.

The air was still and the night was clear and moonlit and there was nothing but emptiness all around to take the frustration out on. It crowded around him, the more he tried to impose himself on it the more it took him away. No matter how far he rode, he was always still himself. For all that he wanted to scream, it was the night that brought screams to his ears instead.

All three of them turned their heads as the cries came wafting to their ears. They watched as the sky behind them took on a flickering reddish glow that had nothing to do with the dawn that they should have been riding into. ‘I think that we had better keep going,’ Robin warned.

‘Is there something we should be worried about?’ Gray asked innocently.

‘It smells like a raiding party,’ T’Dore intoned, although the other two could smell only the damp of the dewy grass around them. ‘We do not need to worry,’ he said, his voice a mixture of sadness and indifference. ‘If it is the Fightstar tribe, as I should think that it is, then they will spend the next day in the village. They will take what they can and do what they will with those that they have not killed.’

‘Then it is not our problem,’ Gray maintained. ‘You should be grateful that you are not among them any more,’ he said spitefully, aiming it at Robin behind him.

‘And you should be grateful too,’ she shot back, ‘that I got you away from there in time. You would not have made it so easily without me. Either way, it is our problem. How do you think that the Fightstar made it so far east? Can you not hear the horns?’

‘No,’ both boys replied together.

‘Exactly. If it were Fightstar warriors who had somehow made it past the Paladins who patrol our borders then we would surely have heard their war horns far before we heard the cries of the dying. It is not the Fightstar who follow us, and I have done a terrible thing. We must hurry now before we have no more time to do so.’

‘What do you mean?’ Gray asked. ‘What terrible thing?’

‘It matters not,’ Robin said gravely. ‘Just know that those who have done this will not be held long, and when they find that they do not have that which they seek in their grasp, they will come after us with a swiftness that will be hard for us to match. And then we will have a fight that we may not be able to win on our hands.’ And with that she spurred her horse onwards once more and began to gallop ahead so that Gray and T’Dore had little choice but to follow her.

Livejournal

My head is rather closed down right now; I've got the old grey static charge on all my nerve endings, hence the lack of eloquence. But anyway, Onwards!

Livejournal really wasn't the place for me. I'm not sure I actually know what is the right place for me, but it's good to add to the list of definite nots every now and then; makes me feel more comfortable about things.

There's not a huge amount to say about it really. Livejournal is fundamentally a community-based bit of blogging infrastructure - really supporting conversation threads and cross-post/user discussions. Basically, it's for people who like to, and are able to, talk to other people. I'm not very good at that. Moreover, the livejournal etiquette that has built up reinforces this - with replies to comments, made feasible by the very-powerful threaded comment system, considered a sort ofexpected politeness, amongst other things. Again, I'm not very good at this - mainly because I'm instantly embarrased by everything I ever say, although also because at the time I was using LJ I was even more unsure of myself and also naive enough that I let myself get drawn into internet arguments. (Another thing that the threaded comment system is very good at is drawing out and fuelling wank.)

A lot of different communities use Livejournal, but the main one I suppose that I would have been a part of is sci-fi/fantasy fandom. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at being part of fandom, because I don't really want to know what other people think about my favourite stories and worlds. This isn't because I don't think that their thoughts are valid - it's because I often find that, unless I'm talking to someone I already like, or rather, I'm talking to a single person or a small group of people, the vast mass of interpretation threatens to overwhelm my own. I find fandom is often a tyranny of people telling you that their view is correct, and it can be worse when those people are at the same time telling you that you shouldn't take the author's word on what is correct as correct. I just don't have the energy; I'm a fan of things because I can't help being a fan of them, and because they provide me with enjoyment. I really don't need anymore stress or opportunities to think that it would be better, or at least wouldn't change the world, if I didn't really exist.

So basically, I ended up using LJ as a place to make random, sporadic, unfocused and bitter blog posts (as opposed to this blog, which is at least focused as well as being, despite some appearances, an attempt to at the very least challenge my bitterness and other confidence issues), as well as harrass a few writers I really admire who are on there - not out of malice, but out of lack of confidence in myself, and lack of understanding of the medium and out of not being very good at talking to people. So, yeah: for all of the above, and to anyone I freaked out or was a dick to, I really do apologise.

Vampire: The Dark Ages

In my teenage roleplaying group Vampire: The Dark ages was 'my' game. This isn't just because I had bought the books, and most importantly the Book of Storyteller's Secrets for the setting; I had the core book and various supplements for plenty of other games which I either never ran myself, or maybe ran as well as someone else although at different times. Other people had their own games too - where the rest of us were discouraged from buying the supplements, other than maybe player's guides.
More than anything else, though, there was a sense that this world was mine to play with, to know all the secrets of. And I had big plans for it. I had a big bad all worked out; I had his various henchmen, one of whom was the apparent big bad at the end of the first arc of the story, all worked out. I had the skeleton of the overaching story sketched out. I had the first few adventures pretty much written. And I even had a vague plan on tying it in later on to the Transylvanian Chronicles - the campaign White Wolf wrote that could bring Dark Ages characters into the 20th century so you could be badass Elders in the modern game.

Unfortunately, I only ever ran one adventure - over maybe three sessions. Roleplaying is very time consuming, it's true. Even as a teenager, when we were basically gaming every weekday and at least every other weekend, the tally of abandoned campaigns far outnumbered the completed, or even continued ones. It didn't help that we were never a very focused group - constantly starting new games, new campaigns and trying out new systems. It also didn't help that I killed off one of my players in the first adventure, although it was something I couldn't not have done since he was acting so incredibly stupidly - managing to use a special power to make the other players forget he had ever existed. It didn't help either that I'm not a very forceful DM, and ended up happy to slide back into a player role while one of the better DMs in my group took charge.

It was a shame, overall though, that I didn't ever take it any further. I even have all of my notes, filed away still, because I'm that organised when it comes to these things, even though my organisation when it comes to things that matter is completely pisspoor. I ran one other V:DA campaign, which again lasted a single adventure. So much for 'my' game.

Nearly Enough Revision for my Exam on Tuesday

The pass mark is only 50%, and I do know the syllabus, just maybe not inside out. Wish me luck.

Marzipan 2 II-2

I have an exam in just over a week. It's starting to get real.

What are we Doing With our Lives

In the dark there was a great deal of noise. It came from insects mainly, but also from nocturnal mammals; foxes and bats and the white eyed albino apemen – degenerate abominations who lived below the ground – all hooted their rage at the dark. These mindless sounds came intermittently: eerie howls that drifted across the land, calls that could have been laughter or could have been the slaughter of innocents, that cut across the background chatter of crickets to chill the blood of those who are not expecting to hear it. But more about them later.

Marzipan 2 II-1

Across the underwater plains... A placeholder for the kind of epic, submarine adventure I just couldn't get out of my head and onto the  page. This kind of substitution gets more common from here on out.

Part 2

Jonah and the Whale

The dead captain sunk, the chains that bound his form dragging him far out into the ocean. After Scylla had taken her tribute his body had been deemed worthless by the black-robed agents of the emperor and he had been cast aside. This had been a mistake, to return him to the element he was bound and sworn to, and his enemies would know of it soon enough. It would have been far better to bury a man like him inland, far, far away from the call of the restless sea.

As the corpse drifted the sea bed fell ever further away until at last it bottomed out into an abyssal trench. The captain floated through darkening waters that swirled about him like great drapes, already tugging at his flesh to add it to their rich effluvium – food for squid and baleen whales and the other more misshapen inhabitants of the deep dark. And yet, as he sank further from the sun, further even from the memory of the sun, he seemed to be dragged towards another light; a strange and dreadful glowing that filtered up through the silent surge of the ocean depths.

Across the underwater plains...

At last he arrived at the city. A natural bowl, an ancient crater from the upheavals of the prehistoric world, that served as an audience chamber sat at its centre, and from it radiated spectacular boulevards of sediment and fossil, lined with waving anemone crowds. Down one of these festival streets the homecoming hero travelled, now joined by a welcome party of pilot fish, nibbling at his flesh and guiding him toward their master. Festival colours strained to fill the muted spectrum and glinting silver light flashed from the scales of his retinue. The water pulsed with their master’s heart beat and they fled, leaving the captain alone before the twisting bulk that filled the dark ahead.

‘You come before me, at last,’ the voice rumbled like a shockwave, pulling the captain ever closer to destruction.

You are my god. I must. It is my time to be judged. The captain spoke without speaking.

‘You have not failed,’ the god said. ‘But there is more that you must do. There is a lake, so far down and so poisoned by salt that it is death to all of my people. You must enter it and bring back what is there. Only you can, for you are already gone.’

I will do so, the captain grinned. He had to. His lips were already almost gone.

‘Good,’ and with that the leviathan was gone, his great wake forming new currents in the deep that would later be felt far away upon the surface of the sea.

The High Dragon

It won't surprise you to know, or be a spoiler to say so, but there is, in Dragon Age: Origins, a dragon that you can fight. You don't have to fight it - it is rock hard - but you can fight it if you want to. I spent something like three hours over the weekend trying to defeat it, and I failed every time. Eventually, I had to admit that the story I was telling in this game (that's the way I always play western style RPGs, by the way: based on story considerations, rather than stat-maxing) was one where my party sneak past the dragon as they have too much important and pressing work to do to risk unnecessary death rather than call it out to be brutally butchered for the glory of my name.


Having said that, despite my years playing D&D I never got to defeat an actual dragon in that either. A part of me wants to go back to where the dragon is, stocked up with health potions and fire resistance, and take it out anyway. Which might just work in the context of the game, as I'm playing a character who's clearly heavily conflicted. Motivated by pride spiked with self loathing and a stranger both in her homeland as well as her home, she doesn't think she should still be alive but has a duty which she wouldn't have chosen but which, now that she has taken it on, she won't ever let go.

I relate to this character more than I was expecting to when I started playing the game, which is funny because my character builds for Bioware games are usually much more straightforwardly escapist or based on a core of simple wish-fulfilment. I'm actually not sure, even considering the time implications, if I could face another play-through of the game anymore with a different character; It would just feel too wrong and cheap and disloyal even though, maybe especially because, I'd like to see how the different origins stories play out. It would be like plotting out how your life would be different if you'd settled down with someone else.


(Or if you'd been born in a different family, and all of your loved ones were not who your loved ones actually are. Moving even further away from my original point, I think this partly seems disloyal, and in fact an actual dereliction of duty, because despite not being one now in many fundamental ways I still think like a Buddhist, because that is the religion under who's auspices I was raised. And one of the tenets that turns up in Buddhism is that, when we reincarnate, we sometimes have some choice about the situation into which we are born; and in doing so our life becomes a challenge we have set ourselves - to wish for another is to fail only ourselves. And no, when I started writing this I never would have thought that one of the Bioware signature game mechanics would help illustrate a function of Buddhist philosophy either. Although, to be fair the use of game mechanics to embody  philosophical concepts has been on my mind recently.)

Marzipan 2 I-10

This is the end of the first part. It all goes back in time, which is part of the structure of the thing, being all about regrets and things in the past that you cannot change, and how they affect the things that we try to do in the present.

The song is bad, but I'm ok with this; the songs in fantasy novels are always bad. It's a tradition, or an old charter or something.

Action vs Introspection

Mia sang to her daughter, a lullaby that her own mother had sung to her when she had been a troublesome baby herself. It was a quiet song with no real melody to it, and it went like this:

I’ll wrap you up in marzipan,
My little princess you will be,
Through the deepest forest,
Across the darkest sea,
I’ll wrap you up in marzipan,
Take you away from me.

Completing a Sonic Game

Amongst my generation there is a meme, or a trope - you might even call it a myth as its truthfulness is somewhat in doubt, although it is a story that we tell to tell us about ourselves and who we are as a people. It is to do with the two great tribes of the playground. Or rather, one delineating line in the ever shifting allegiances of the two great tribes of the playground; one aspect of the eternal war that is childhood, whose main battlefront is drawn up in the spaces between lessons.

Marzipan 2: I-9

Enough of this self-serving nostalgia. I have one more post about computer games that I was thinking of writing, but that will have to wait. And soon, I promise you, there will be a glorious return to the mistakes I've made and the ramifications thereof. 

Because some people's issues are just more important, you know?

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