Let's Not Lose Our Heads.

This post is just for me, really, but on the off-chance anyone finds it helpful, I'll publish it anyway. 

 

So, this Summer I've been thinking a lot, not been able to do much else amid the heatwaves, (which, I generally don't mind except for when I can't sleep at night) but I have got back into reading in a big way, which is always nice, I haven't been this able to read since before uni a decade ago. 

 

I started making a concerted effort to do that beforehand, because, as I get older (I'm still in my early 30s, which is not old, but it bloody well feels like it is sometimes) my attention-span, which, frankly, was never good, has only got worse. I started trying to read more again to remedy that, as I've developed something of a fear of mental atrophy, and what the logical conclusions of that might be. The mind is a muscle, and like any muscle, if you don't use it, you will lose it. 

Also, I feel like in this era of anti-intellectualism, A.I summaries, and regurgitation of misinformation, the act of doing the reading yourself, whatever that may be, is in itself, an act of defiance. I won't go too deep into that here, because...well, where the fuck to start? But all of this does contribute to the overall landscape I want to talk about in this post. This isn't all about A.I, but I am gonna rant about A.I for a bit.

Fact is, there's a mental decline happening on a societal level, and I hate it, but what I hate even more is that I can't really blame people for it. It's all very well for me to say "ChatGPT is not a replacement for research" but that doesn't change that it looks like one, and unless you've been taught how to properly research, which I've never even seen mentioned outside of university, how the hell are you supposed to know the difference? The only way you would is if you already know the answers you're looking for, in which case you're likely only using ChatGPT to demonstrate to someone else how wrong it is, and how often. To anyone else it just looks like if google was a chatbot, which sounds great, honestly.

Of course the problem with generative A.I is that the name is a misnomer, it's not A.I. There's no intelligence in there, artificial or otherwise. It's a word-cloud with an algorithm designed to use maths to spit out whatever response that algorithm deems the user most likely to want to hear. Companies have fed it the entire internet and a every piece of art under the sun, (copyright law, and the rights of artists be damned, apparently) just to turn it into the facsimile it currently is. This isn't even mentioning the impact on arts industries or the environment, but that's A, a whole other post that I haven't done enough research to make, and B, not what I'm here to talk about now, but I'm pretty sure we're all agreed that both impacts are bad. 

 And for what? An algorithmic simulation of the confident-sounding idiot at a party, without the personality that occasionally makes that experience bearable.  

I think the thing that fucks me off most about Generative A.I and what it is, and does, and I might lose a few of you here, is how much I love the idea of a potential good version. Frankly, I love the idea of what currently available A.I is being pitched as, the thing that pisses me off is that it isn't that and never can be. At least not without changing it on a fundamental level until it's something else entirely. 

A chatbot that can cut out the legwork of research for you and work as a sounding board for your ideas? Fuck yeah! sounds great! Unfortunately that's not what "A.I" is, and for it to become that, in it's current state would either require everyone on the internet to always be honest and correct, or a level of human oversight that would defeat the purpose of having an A.I in the first place. 

Well, I suppose there is a third option, you could narrow the data pool to only include reputable sources. But even if you were to do that, it would still hallucinate all the time because, again, it's a big word cloud with pattern-recognition designed to spit out whatever its algorithm says you're most likely to want to hear. There is no comprehension happening on the part of the "AI." 

 

 I'm gonna sound a lot like an old man yelling at a cloud here, but social media has a lot to answer for in all this. That whole thing has been one gigantic monkey's paw.  Social Media sites are designed to keep you on them for as long as possible. To this end, certain types of content get prioritised, those being devisive, or easily digestible posts, bonus points for both, I guess. 

 there's nothing that drives engagement quite like an argument, and nothing that keeps one scrolling quite like almost giving a person what they want. Which of course, ruins people's attention-spans as the latter thing engenders frustration, and therefore impatience, there's a reason TikTok is a bugger to use any kind of search function with.

 I heard once that Mark Zuckerberg, creator of Facebook, doesn't allow his kids to use it, or any other form of social media for that matter. Reason being he knows what it does to a person and their attention-span. The following is a screenshot I took from the Times of India from June 2024 (it was the first page I found, to be honest.)

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-tips/bill-gates-mark-zuckerberg-and-other-tech-leaders-advice-on-limiting-kids-screen-time/articleshow/111321403.cms

 It makes sense that he, of all people, would restrict his kids' access to social media. He knows exactly what it does to your brain, because he's built his entire business on monopolising your attention.  

I noticed a while ago, I found myself wanting to "multitask" a lot, even during recreational activities. I listen to audiobooks or podcasts if I happen to be playing a repetitive videogame that doesn't require my full attention. Sometimes it's the other way around and I get up a match-3 puzzle game on my phone to give my hands something to do while I listen to things. It feels good to do things like that, honestly, it leads to feelings of productivity that I rarely approach. But I think doing things like that has come at a cost. 

 I can't sit through a film anymore, unless I'm at the cinema. (Luckily, I really like going to see movies on the big screen, so I do still see a fair few.) Not just that, one of my longest-standing obsessions, professional wrestling, no longer holds my attention like it used to. In fact, I typed up half of this post with it on in the background. So I assume then, that dividing my attention like this, while gratifying in the short term, is having some troubling long-term effects. (Incidentally, I've just discovered Brain.fm, for focus sounds and I haven't stopped typing for the last 20 minutes, so that's exciting.)

 I haven't done the research to say this concretely, and I'm not about to, because if I stop typing this to do that now, then my chances of ever finishing this post drop quite drastically, but my personal experience leads me to believe that multitasking like I've been doing has been killing my focus, which, again, was never exactly good to begin with. 

This is why I say social media has a lot to answer for, don't lie, you've probably checked at least one since you started reading this, haven't you? I've certainly looked at one or two since I sat down to finish writing it (I think this is about my fourth sitting, and it's not that long a post.)

 I'm not sure what it is I actually want to say with this post beyond that I'm actually quite worried about the prospect of mental decline, and I think it's being exacerbated in the worst of ways by things like Generative A.I, which gives the illusion of easy solutions and therefore allows people to avoid thinking, and social media, which has our brains chasing dopamine, along with every other kind of digital media which has our brains task-switching all over the place, and going a mile any given minute of the day. 

 I don't think things are gonna get better either, I think things are only likely to get worse as social media adjusts it's delivery method and algorithms for shorter attention-spans and "A.I" gets shoved into everything whether we want it or not. I'm not a neurologist, and I have no scientifc data to hand to base this on, but going off the assumption I made earlier, that the mind is a muscle, and you use it or lose it, I have to think we're gonna be looking at some pretty nasty mental health consequences in the next decade or so. 

Just...keep yourself sharp as best you can, yeah? That's what I intend to do. Whether that's trying to read books more or just doing a crossword or playing Sudoku every now and then, whatever works for you. Just don't fall into the trap of letting yourself not have to think, because the longer you stay in that rabbit hole, the harder it is to get out.

Let's not lose our heads, yeah? 

I have more Clair Obscur thoughts. (Ending spoilers)

 Okay, I recently finished my New Game Plus run of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Gotta say once again, I love how the story of this game is written, and specifically how the first and second go-through are completely different experiences, despite not a word being different. Particularly the conversation between Verso and Renoir inside the monolith before you fight him. Every single line of which carries two completely different meanings depending on whether or not you've finished the game before. Last time I talk in vagueries, so I encourage you one more time to go play this game unspoiled if you have any interest in ever doing so.

 

Okay, so. The point of this post, I wanna talk about the ending.

 

Quick rundown for context, just in case you are reading this without playing the game; the world you're in isn't real. 

I don't mean that in terms of the fact that videogames are fictional, which we've all, always known. I mean the world in which the characters live, is a painting. A magical canvas created by equally magical painters. Verso, the second player-character from the death of the first one, Gustave, is immortal because he was made so by the Paintress, who is using the canvas as an unhealthy coping mechanism in the wake of the loss of her son, the real Verso, who died in a fire. She painted her entire family into the canvas and made the painted versions immortal. Maelle, (party member throughout, and player-character 3) is actually Alica Desendre, who fell into the canvas and was accidentlly "painted over" and so has two sets of memories, as a resident of the canvas, in which she has lived and grown up for the last 16 years, and as one of the Desendre family. The latter memories resurface when she gets wiped out with the rest of the population with the defeat of the Paintress, who was actually trying to preserve everyone, it was the Curator, the persona of the real-world version of Renoir, who was bringing the gommage and trying to kill everyone to get Aline (The Paintress) to come out of the canvas

 To surmise, the Desendre family lost Verso in a fire, in which Alicia was disfigured and rendered unable to speak, and the canvas, belonging to the late Verso, contains a piece of his soul, and as such, is the last thing that remains of him, and his mother Aline has been hiding from her grief in it, while Renoir, his father, has been trying desperately to pull her out of it and destroy the canvas because of what it's doing to her, and the effects of being inside a canvas for too long which appear to be sickness, and eventual death. 

The problem here is, by any real metric. the residents of the canvas are presented as being every bit as real as those outside of it. Indeed, the first two acts of the game pass before we even know we're in a painting and everyone is shown to have lives, personalities, hopes and dreams. Even after the big reveal, their personhood is at no point called into question by the story, in fact, if it is at any point the subject of conversation, unless I missed every NPC who says otherwise, it's pretty much unanimous that the people in the canvas are thinking, feeling beings. The only time this is contradicted in any certain terms is the painted Alicia, herself a construct of the canvas referring to those ignorant of the reality of their world as "those who know not, that they are not." Even she displays emotion, agency and desires.  She even opts to be erased should you complete Maelle's relationship sidequest and find her. Aside from her, the closest the game ever comes to couching that they might not be real is in the raising of the question, by the shadowy boy. (Who is revealed at the end to be the last vestige of Verso's soul) who says he thinks they are. 

 So, basically, the painting powers that the Desendre family possess, are, essentially Godlike within the canvas, not to mention existentially terrifying to think about. Thankfully the game doesn't really dwell on the implications much. 

 

So. The ending I wanna talk about. 

 

After successfully beating back Renoir, Maelle promises to come home (leave the canvas) after "just a little longer." He promises to "Keep the light on" for her, and leaves. This immediately follows Renoir opening a visual portal outside the canvas to show Aline sick and coughing with paint running from her eyes. 

Verso steps through this portal and finds himself in what I can only describe as the core of the canvas. The game just registers it as part of Lumiere, but it's clearly not. He finds a small boy, the one you've seen a shadow of at various points throughout the game, and says "you're tired, aren't you?" The boy nods. 

 The boy in question is the last vestige of the real Verso's soul, and his painting in this place is what allows the canvas to keep existing and functioning as it does (at least that's the implication from the ending) 

 Maelle follows him through, apparently, the immortality he was given by Aline is what allows him to even exist there, he seems to be shedding petals as if about to gommage, but unable to do so. 

 

What I love here, is everything is visually set up beforehand, Verso's shock at the vision of an ailing Aline, as well as his face when Maelle tells Renoir he can trust her. She lied, and they both know it, she doesn't intend to leave the canvas, even knowing that it will kill her. 

 Verso begs her to reconsider, telling her that she can always come back, but she doesn't trust that Renoir won't erase the canvas as soon as she leaves. He tells her "This isn't worth your life." To which she replies "What life? My life of loneliness in a shell of a body!?" "In here I have a chance to live, Verso, to live! Out there, I merely exist." 

 Verso realises words won't reach her, and draws his sword. The game presents you with the choice. You can choose to fight as Maelle, and save the canvas, or fight as Verso, and erase it, along with everyone in it. 

 

 I am of the opinion that the game seems to expect you to choose to fight as Maelle. For starters, saving this world has been the goal since minute one, whereas the only experience we have of the outside world is the manor interior wherein we only see Alicia treated with disdain. Add to that the fact that "fight as Maelle" is the default option that the cursor begins on, and I do think the game subtly steers you towards choosing Maelle, that said, even though I don't think either ending is supposed to be strictly "canon" Maelle's ending is definitely the darker one. She rebuilds Lumiere, and revives it's inhabitants, including Gustave, but, and I want to give the animators credit here, there is a definite sadness hidden in her smile. Either that or the tone of the scene with the music is making me see that, but either way the scene is very well-constructed. 

That, of course and the two titles, "A life to paint" for Maelle, and "A Life to Love" for the Verso ending, during which the Desendre family lays Verso to rest and Alicia sees the people of the canvas (including Maelle) wave her goodbye before disappearing, is much more hopeful. 

 But that's not the only reason I think that ending is, for lack of a better term "the correct one." 

 

I've seen it argued a lot, that those in the canvas "aren't real" and therefore it should be a no-brainer to choose Verso and erase the canvas. But I find that argument wanting, for many reasons. 

 Firstly, as I said above, the personhood of the people of the canvas is never once called into question by the game. As far as the narrative is concerned, they are every bit as real as anyone outside it.

 But even accepting and assuming from now on that they are thinking, feeling, sentient being, there is basically no way I think the Maelle ending...well, ends well. 

 Firstly, Maelle has made it inescapably clear that she intends to die in the canvas, after which, Renoir would definitely erase it anyway. Maelle would effectively trade Alica's life for a stay of execution. 

Even setting that aside, Maelle can never have the Lumiere she knows again. She knows, and can never forget, that she is a paintress. I think that level of power over the world you inhabit will inevitably engender detatchment from it. Can one wield nigh-godlike power without at any point becoming less human for it? I don't think she'd ever find the home she was looking for in the canvas at that point. 

 Tragic though the loss of the canvas and it's people is, we also have to consider the remnant of Verso.

The ending made me think of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.  A short piece of philosophical fiction by Ursula K. LeQuin of Earthsea fame. Essentially, imagine whatever your ideal utopian city is. Now imagine that it's function depends on keeping a small child in abject misery and suffering forever. Could you still stay? For me, that the last vestige of Verso's soul says he wants to stop, should really be enough. He deserves to rest in peace. I love the characters and I hate that this decision comes at the cost of their lives. (the very reason I originally picked Maelle) But, and I hate to say it, they're doomed anyway, as I said before, the only person whose fate changes with this decision is Alicia.  At least in one ending, she gets to live, and again, "A Life To Love" at least ends on a hopeful note. 

 

I've heard it said that the ending decision is in-keeping with the trappings of classic French melodrama, which has me interested in that genre now. 

 

I don't think Clair Obscur will ever get a direct sequel even though Sandfall have announced they'll be making another game. But in a way I think that's a good thing, we don't have enough standalone pieces in popular media of any kind these days. Sometimes one and done is good. 

Incidentally, after New Game +. and beating Simon again, my play-time on the PS5 dashboard is registering 200 hours, the actual playtime on the save file is closer to 150, no idea how that works, I didn't leave it running that much. 

 

Okay, I think I'm finally done, what a game this has been. Thanks for reading my idle waffling on, I'll probably do a ranking next, but don't hold me to it, see ya! 

Clair Obscur and the Cycle of Grief.

I recently finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (or at least the story) and the short version of this post is, it's good, really good. if you haven't played it yet and you have any interest whatsoever in turn-based RPGs, then I would advise you to stop reading this and fix that before you get spoiled because the story is worth experiencing sight-unseen and as free of outside influence as possible. No, no, stop right there, even if spoilers aren't usually a thing that bother you, I would encourage you in the strongest possible terms to avoid them if at all possible if you have any interest in this game. That being said, consider this your spoiler warning, because I'm going to discuss plot details and themes in this post. 

Here's how good this game is. I keep forgetting to cancel Gamepass, the upside of which is, I had access to this game for free. I bought it on PS5 anyway, because I felt more willing to support a game that is released at the £45 price point at a time the industry is pushing to price them at £80 minimum, and I didn't want my experience to be compromised in any way by the restrictions of cloud gaming. Basically, I paid 45 quid for consistent resolution because the art direction of this game is fucking sublime. Add to that the fact that the story gets going pretty quickly and the gameplay loop is basically immediately fun for me, and I knew within the first hour or two that I would not regret that decision.

Throughout my time with this game I see it wearing the development teams influence on it's sleeves. That overworld, and general structure of progression through the game just screams 90s era Final Fantasy, the dodge/parry mechanics put me in mind of a soulslike, as do the limited recovery items replenished by rest points (which, naturally also bring back the enemies in the area.) It has social links like Persona, the campsite reminds me, personally, of Dragon Age: Origins (I mention that one specifically as it's the only one I played.) 

 Yet, despite all these clear and often, disparate influences, it doesn't feel derivative in the least. Clair Obscur is a thing wholly unique to itself, any elements born of something else are seemlessly integrated into a whole that feels as cohesive as anything I've ever played. All of this to convey a story of exceptional quality for any medium, which makes it positively trancendent for videogame writing, and I wish that was saying more than it is.

This game has it's hooks in me in a way that I thought no longer possible. I could gush about the art direction, engaging gameplay or fun monster design all day, but that's not what I want to talk about. Suffice it to say that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 represents a modern take on a tried-and-true classic genre rarely seen in this form anymore. If your favourite Final Fantasy is numbered Ten or lower, you'll love it. 

Okay, so that's my glowing spoiler-free review of the game, spoilers beyond this point, you have been warned. If the above unadulterated fanboying has convinced you to give it a try, this would be where you stop reading, I'll leave some space below just in case, but from this point on, if you're reading I'll assume you already know the story.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay, so I've described the story of this game to a friend (in an attempt to get them to play it) as being "A bit Attack on Titan in a lot of ways". I liken the two mainly in terms of structure, both open by introducing us to a dwindling remnant of humanity at the mercy of a predictable, yet unknowable entity that has devastated the population and about which, despite repeated excursions to learn more, they still know frighteningly little to nothing. As we journey through this world we discover that the reality is far beyond the scope that the initial premise suggested, and eventually, that basically nothing is as we thought it was, and one of our number has a special link to the aforementioned unknowable entity.

That's about where those similarities end and I didn't even include that last part in my description to this person because I want them to be as surprised as I was about the twist. The battle with the paintress feels very much like a final boss, the area leading up to it being a facsimile of Lumiere, coupled with the fight with Renoir, the other antagonist, immideately before, the ascent to the highest point in the world of the game to fight her, it's all there. Only for the game to pull the rug out from under you immediately thereafter in a way that I had two completely contradictory opinions on in the space of an hour, before setlling on the latter, which I'll get to.

These kind of 11th-hour twists, are not uncommon across media, but one like this, could only really be done this well in videogames, for the singular reason that a game's runtime is indefinite, fluid, it lasts until you finish it. If this were any other medium, you'd be clued in by the number of pages, or amount of runtime left. This isn't even the first time this game takes advantage of the strengths of it's medium to surprise you. I'm talking of course, about Gustave. 

Gustave is positioned, and presented as the protagonist, from the word "go." Everything an audience could be expected to know, not just about games, but about stories, would reinforce the notion that this is Gustave's story. So naturally, the game "Ned Starks" him at the end of act 1. I make that comparison because like Ned Stark, Gustave is, as things would transpire, a fairly minor character in the grand scheme of the story, presented as the main character from the beginning, which lends a lot of surprise and weight to his eventual demise, thanks to his relationship to the character whose story this actually turns out to be. 

I'm not trying to make a point here in likening what this game's story does to other examples I've seen, the points of comparison just make it easier for me to talk about, and contextualise in case, for some reason, you're reading this without playing the game first, in which case, I think you've lessened your own experience but I'd still like you to be able to follow what I'm saying.

Videogames as a medium, and I would argue RPGs especially, are uniquely positioned to attach you to your main character more easily than more linear stories, or less interactive media. This is because that character is the avatar through which you experience the world.  In essence, you are they, they are you, their journey is yours, and in the case of RPGs, you grow and cultivate their skillset yourself. it feels forever ago now, even though it's only been a week and a half at time of writing. But I distinctly remember the feeling of loss I had after Gustave died not just because I was close to learning the last skill in his tree, though that alone, is a pisser. But the other characters (all superbly-written by the way) make that sense of loss palpable, add to that the fact that he's never functionally replaced in-game. Verso, the closest thing to, can use some of his weapons and skills, but that's about it. Add to that the total number of five party members, the reserve team is always a man short, which I choose to believe is a decision made to remind us of his loss. 

Incidentally, in the post-game, I like to put the reserve team up-front, functionally serving as a mini-boss for the enemy, so I can feel them out, and hopefully beat them, but if not, have the main party come in after to begin the real fight.

But anyway, I bring up the sense of loss, because this is, fundamentally, a game about loss, and it's here I come to what I actually want to talk about most. The strength of theme in this game is nothing short of breathtaking. It is my opinion that theme is the most important part of a story, character comes second, then setting, and then plot. setting and plot are close enough that you might switch them in the order of importance depending on the story, but nobody is going to care about either without strong characters to experience them through, and theme is that all-important guiding philosophy that makes the whole thing work. Without theme, you don't have a story, just a sequence of events. 

All that to say, Clair Obscur is written to theme impeccably. Right from the off we're introduced to a world of loss, I'd be lying if I said the fact that these people are around my age didn't colour my experience somewhat. Seeing people not long out of their twenties coming to terms with their iminent deaths and those of their loved ones. The world immediately feels lived in and the characters relationships defined despite sparse dialogue outside the main three characters of the moment. We learn the fundamental difference that drove Gustave and Sophie apart was the question of children, and her refusal to bring them into "a doomed world." 

I think that speaks to another fundamental difference in their attitudes, from that difference alone we learn that Gustave is an optimist who sees a future worth preserving, whereas Sophie has resigned herself to the situation. Gustave's optimism shines through in the prologue, even in the face of the loss of the one he loves most. Not only did he invent the mechanism your abilities come from, but he's volunteered, in his final year, to lead the expedition, from which no one has ever returned, expecting to be the one to kill the paintress and save Lumiere. So confident is he, he agrees to let Maelle come with him, who still has at least a decade left if he fails. But therein lies a question, is he really that optimistic, or does he simply wish to die among friends and loved ones on their own terms.

Obviously his confidence comes in part from ignorance, no one has ever returned from the expidition, therefore by definition, he has no idea what he's up against. To say nothing of the scope of the journey, or anything that making it means having to do. Naturally, when he makes landfall, his expidition is immediately decimated by Renoir, whose age, at least twice his own, immediately establishes that the premise we've been operating under is not absolute. It might just be one anomaly but it lets us, and Gustave know, that not only do we know next to nothing about this world, we can't even trust the little we thought we did know.

 Gustave survives the encounter, but loses almost everyone. I could swear I saw Maelle among the dead at the time, but I must've been mistaken because Gustave doesn't seem to think she's dead when looking for her. But alone, among a pile of bodies, Gustave's optimism crumbles. He has entered a world of which he knows nothing and now, faced with just how far out of his depth he finds himself, he puts his pistol to his temple.

The contrast of Gustave being the most hopeful and then needing to be talked out of suicide by Lune is jarring in the best possible way, but it also betrays Gustave's naivety. He has been in the danger zone for all of about ten minutes, and he wants out in the worst of ways, as if he thought that Expedition 33, alone, would not only return alive from this annual expedition from which nobody in 67 years has ever returned, but that he would suffer no casualties in doing so.   With how well realised the world of the game is, it would've been easy for Gustave's optimism to come off as ignorance, or stupidity. But I think it's something else.

Clair Obscur is fundamentally, a game about grief, the theme of loss is ever-present and woven into every facet of the story and its world. Cycles of loss are perpetuated every year, with the gommage, and so grief is a universal constant. Gustave, therefore, I believe represents, not optimism, but denial. the first stage of greif. 

To expand upon this point, I'm going to have to fast-forward to the "ending" at which point, we learn the following things

 Maelle is actually Alicia Desendre, of the Desendre family of painters, artists with the, actually kind of existentially terrifying, power to create worlds within canvasses. 

The world we have been experiencing thus far, is one such canvas, belonging to Verso, who is not the party member from Expidition 0 by the same name, he is a facsimile of the real Verso, who died in a housefire to save his sister Alicia, who entered the canvas and was, essentially, overwritten by it, being reborn as Maelle in the process. (which, makes his canvas, which harbours a piece of his soul, the last thing that remains of him). it's implied, that the fire was the fault of "the writers" who are only breifly referenced, but it has me wondering what their beef is with the painters and how their powers might work differently.

Alicia and Verso are the son and daughter of Renoir, the real-life person who the Renoir we just defeated was a painting of, and Aline, the paintress we've been fighting to overcome since the get-go. It is revealed that the paintress wasn't killing everyone over a certain age each year, as we had assumed, she was keeping everyone else alive, and the declining number was due to her power waning. The reason for the gommage each year is because Renoir wants to destroy the canvas, for fear that greif, and the attempt to escape it in the canvas has consumed his wife, and may soon claim his daughter as well. 

The elephant in the room here is that yes, that means everything in this game and every character in it, is a painting, and therefore, not real, which is a revelation my feelings went on a fucking journey about.  Initially, I didn't like it, because I felt a little cheated for having got invested in this world, only to be told that nothing in it was real, and therefore, didn't matter. Don't worry, though, those feelings quickly dissipated. 

I found myself thinking of two things, a little after that revelation, the first was a question posed by Randy Feltface after his famous "Bookshelf on Gumtree" story. "Why is it that we feel so cheated when we learn that a story we've been told didn't happen, and yet so satisfied at the end of a fictional novel?" I'm paraphrasing a bit there, that might not be the exact wording. But more than that I was reminded of Hbomberguy's video essay. "Pathelogic is genius, and here's why" where, during a deep-dive into the game, Pathelogic, he brings up a part (spoiler warning, by the way) where the entire game is revealed to be a game of dolls played by children. Then, at a later point, you can have a conversation with an avatar of the game developers, whose response to any potential disappointment in this, is essentially "you're playing a videogame, you always knew this wasn't real, what's the problem?"

those were the two points of reference that counteracted my getting annoyed with this reveal after a bit, not that they were necessary, because the game goes on to say yet more. Essentially, going onto establish that, in spite of the nature of their creation, everyone inside the canvas is self-aware, with their own inner-life and is therefore, in my opinion, every bit as real as anyone outside it. Which makes the power of the painters that much more terrifying but if I go too far into the existentialist portion of the games themes this post will never fucking end. 

All this to say, that where Gustave represents denial, and not, the paintress, who I would argue represents Bargaining, Verso, represents Acceptance. (I think Renoir is anger, the painted Alicia is depression,) Maelle herself, in essence, replaces the paintress in the end/post-game, embodying bargaining through escapism into the canvas. I don't think it's any coincidence that Gustave is her guardian in Lumiere, nor is it coincidence that he dies as the painted Verso, who embodies acceptance, is introduced. After all, what is bargaining but the child of denial, and what is acceptance but it's death? (it is later established, during the relationship subquest for Maelle, that Verso could have saved Gustave, and chose to let him die. which, in my opinion, confirms this theory. As does Verso's ending. 

At the end of the game, Verso goes through a portal, to an area that I could only describe as the core of the canvas, and attempts to convince the last vestige of his counterpart's soul to stop painting, which would erase the world of the game and everyone in it. 

He is confronted, by, and in turn confronts, Maelle, who persuaded Renoir to let her keep the canvas, and stay a little longer, on the condition that she come home soon. Verso revels that he knows she was lying, and has no intention of leaving the canvas, which she does not deny. in the real world, Alicia is disfigured by burns, unable to speak, and, as she sees it, treated like a burden by her family. But in the canvas, Maelle can actually live, as opposed to "merely existing" outside. Therefore, unable to trust that Renoir, or Verso would not simply destroy the canvas when she leaves, she decides never to do so, even accepting that this will eventually kill her. 

It is here the game presents the player with the decision of the ultimate fate of this world, Verso and Maelle have come to an impass, and you choose who to play as in what will be the final duel. I believe that the player is guided by the game towards choosing Maelle, at least initially, for several reasons. Firstly, that saving this world, has been the goal since minute one, which Verso's ending runs counter to. Secondly, throughout the story, Verso has lied to the rest of the cast, a lot, and it seems odd that the narrative would elect to make him "right" to have done so. Thirdly, and this is a small thing, when the option is presented, the default choice being highlighted is Maelle, the player has to move it off her to choose Verso, which, I grant you, is a tiny detail, but I do think it betrays a certain level of expectation

 I don't think either ending is intended to be 100% good but I do think Verso is intended to be the right decision here;

If the player chooses Maelle, she rebuilds Lumiere, and resurrects its people, including Verso, despite his clear reluctance, but when he looks to her, he sees the signs of decline on her face. A clear indicator of the consequences of her decision. 

Verso sees what I think I needed to see the other ending to fully understand. The grief of the paintress has corrupted Verso's canvas, it's no longer an escape from the loss, it has become an embodyment of the bargainning stage of grief, as was the Paintress, and later Maelle. From the beginning we're introduced into this world of cycles. The annual tradition of the expedition and the aspiration of breaking this cycle of loss, but the world itself being all that's left of Verso's soul, reframes the paintress's attempts to keep it going as a refusal to move on, which the Maelle ending confirms. her refusal to move on will consume her. 

The Verso ending, by contrast, carries an uncertain, but ultimately hopeful note, we're meant to be sad in saying goodbye to that world, (I have my thoughts on the implications of an entire world and it's people being created and subsequently reduced to a therapy tool for a grieving family but that's another subject for another time.) but I think it is presented as the right thing to have done. The Maelle ending is entirely in black-and-white, and carries an unsettling tone to it, even apart from the colourlessness. Whereas the Verso ending sees the family standing together in the real world, coming to terms with his death, as Alicia sees, for the last time, the cast of characters from the story as they wave her farewell, and disappear. 

In choosing Verso, the player chooses acceptance, and lets the real Verso rest in peace, in choosing Maelle, we choose to bargain for more time in this world, knowing what the cost will be. Verso's ending is bittersweet, but Maelle's is haunting, and I kind of love that both choices are completely understandable. Ultimately though, the implication is clear, choosing Maelle would just perpetuate the cycle of greif all over again, as the canvas consumes and kills her, at which point, the world she's chosen will be lost regardless, and her family will have one more member to mourn. Only by moving on can she live, despite her insistence to the contrary. 

There's a big message about the value and dangers of escapism here, but this post is plenty long enough

 

God, I fucking love this game. It's served as a reminder of what I love about videogames in the first place and I think it deserves a place among the ambassadorial titles for the medium. Especially of the RPG genre. "are games art?" is not a question worth asking, the answer is yes, all games are art, but if you need an example of artistic merit in the medium, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a better one. 

 If you've read this far, thanks, it's been a while since I've been enthusiastic enough about something to write about it. Sometimes art is good.

The internet isn’t fun anymore

I’m not exactly sure what the point of this is going to be, this is essentially going to be a stream-of-conciousness rambling to try and process a feeling I’ve been having for a while now.

I doubt I’ll come up with anything profound or even noteworthy to say, hell, I’ll be surprised if I manage coherent in this self-indulgent, wistful lament of a post. But I can’t be the only one feeling like this, or perhaps I am, and I’m just showing my age. Either way, I miss the old internet, I guess would be the central theme of what I’m trying to get across here. (and trust me, I’m as suspicious of that feeling as anyone else)

What do I mean by “the old internet”? Well consumers of whatever form of media this eventually becomes, I was born in 1991, two years before the World Wide Web was launched, The internet is almost as old as I am. As such, I remember the early days of this newfangled computer-machine wizardry. I wasn’t allowed on it for very long as a kid because we had to unplug the phone from the wall to plug an ethernet cable into the phoneline socket (people still used landlines back then) But since all little me wanted to do was go onto the cartoon network website and play the flash games, that wasn’t too much of a problem. I remember there was this turn-based Dragon Ball Z flash game I couldn’t get enough of for some reason.

Anyway, as time went on. I, and those around me would discover new websites with new and fun distractions. Obviously Newgrounds was a big one, and the only example I think I’m going to mention that still exists, and, at least based on a cursory glance, doesn’t even appear to have changed that much. Which is honestly comforting, but there were others too. A friend from school showed me a site called Phrozenflame.com that had a lot of flash animations on it that I found really cool. Also, who remembers proboards? Everyone was on a proboards forum somewhere, and most people had their own, I know I did, it was hacked and deleted years ago and lost to time, but I had one. I met some pretty cool people on some of those, most of which I’ve since lost contact with...I wonder how they’re all doing.

The charm of things like these for me was that anyone could make a website about anything, no matter how esoteric, and present it with equal weight to a mainstream interest. Who remembers Mr. T vs. Everything? A series of photoshopped comic strips that featured Mr. T taking on various celebrities or fictional characters, that would invariably end with him throwing them into space, and the villain of the strip reacting “Damn that Mr. T can throw Helluva far” (side note, I have never once encountered “helluva” as opposed to “hella” outside of that website.) Other running jokes included the A-Team’s van being the fastest thing in existence, and his gold chains acting as some kind of invincible shield.

So prevalent was this creative spirit on the internet that I once joined a forum that was essentially a hate-site made by a friend of mine at the time, dedicated entirely to bitching about a specific group of people from another forum known only by their online handles that they, and therefore I, and the few friends I brought along, didn’t like. (I was 12 and stupid, and didn’t go outside nearly enough please don’t judge)

humour was a great driving force of the internet of yore. It gave rise to rampant creativity from the likes of Jonti Picking of “Badger Badger Badger” and “Weebl and Bob” fame, also theNarwhals thing, guy doesn’t miss. He still has his own website but the videos are hosted on YouTube for reasons I’ll get to in a bit. Well, now’s as good a time as any, there was another, called Rathergood.com, had this one video about singing cats, “we like the moon” that also spawned a TV ad, that just redirected to a Youtube channel when I tried it a while ago, and rather than give about 6 more specific examples I’ll get right to the point.

As fun and adventurous as the early days of the internet were, nowadays,while some places I mentioned do still exist, I can’t imagine they see much traffic. Functionally speaking, there’s maybe three or four big websites people use that mostly just reference each other, a few places to buy things, and New-Cable, otherwise known as streaming services.

The reason for that is simple. As the internet became more and more mainstream over the years, audiences on the internet became bigger, and...well, there’s no other way to say it really, more profitable.

In business, there’s a phenomenon called the “tendency towards monopoly.” The basic idea is that any business that becomes successful enough will grow, expand, and usually, buy smaller businesses to expand further and diversify.

Eventually corporations become so big that we now live in a world where everything is owned by maybe four or five of them if you go far enough up the chain. In essence, this is also what happened to the internet.

There are still holdouts sure, but at a time in the early 2000s where you could find pretty much anything on YouTube, why would you even go anywhere else? And since YouTube became the place where the audience was, why would you bother making and paying to host your own site when you can just make a YouTube channel for free? I guess what got me started thinking of this is the recent mass-exodus from The Escapist of their entire video team, among them, Yahtzee Croshaw, whose series, Zero Punctuation, was one of the few constants of the internet for the last 16 years. Whatever else happened, whatever drama you heard about, whatever was going on in your life, however dead The Escapist otherwise was for a number of years, you could count on Yahtzee to be there and deliver a few minutes of irreverant critique every Wednesday, regular as clockwork. (his books are fun too, they’re on audible, I’d recommend them)

The end of Zero Punctuation very much feels like the end of some kind of institution to me, I know that’s silly, because 2 days later, the former video team of the Escapist launched Second Wind, and it looks like, functionally, all that happened is Yahtzee didn’t put a review out one week. (at time of writing, Second Wind has just had it’s introductory stream, we’ll see how long it takes me to make this, if I do at all.)

UPDATE: it’s roughly a week later, I was going to record this and make a video, but I wasn’t happy with the recording and I  feel like the moment is gone, so I’ll just make it a blog post. Anyway, in that week, Yahtzee debuted his spiritual successor to Zero Punctuation, “Fully Ramblomatic.” Which is essentially ZP with a paint-job, which was what I expected, and I think all people wanted really. In fact, early followers will know that before The Escapist signed him to make ZP, his first two videos that got him the gig were both subtitled “a Fully Ramblomatic review.” and because the whole endeavour is patreon-funded he doesn’t have to watch the language anymore, so if anything it’s a return to form in many respects.

Even so, Second Wind isn’t a website, and on the current internet, I doubt it ever would be, it’s a Youtube channel with accompanying Twitch Stream, and why wouldn’t it be? That’s where the audience is.

I’m not completely blinded by nostalgia, I do think things are better this way to a point. Things were always going to go this way as the internet became a mainstream utility. I just miss those early days of discovery, that’s all. As much as I do believe the convenience and ease of connection of the latter-day internet is for the best by a long way.

That’s basically what the title of this means, the internet, as a thing in and of itself, isn’t fun or exciting anymore. It just is. Even though there’s still a fair amount of funny stuff on it.

So what do you guys think? What were your favourite sites of old? What were the forums you went on, and, statistically, created dedicated to? Share some classic internet memories in the comments! (if this ends up on a medium where there indeed, are comments)

Thanks for letting me ramble for a bit.

The Right to "Writer" and some ADHD musings

 

I'd call myself a writer, if I thought I had the right.

But to earn the right to "writer", at some point, you have to write.

So people who ask what I do, will get a smile, polite.

I'd tell them I'm a writer, but do I have the right?

 

That little rhyme came to me as I was looking around my local corner shop in full knowledge of what I was there for, and where it was, but it was raining outside and I wasn't in a hurry to go back out in it. 

I struggle to nail down what my actual reputation is among my circle of friends. I've been called many completely contradictory things depending on who I was talking to. But one thing that is generally often said to me regadless is that I'm "creative", and while I certainly appreciate the compliment, I can't help but think of it as a bit of a misnomer. Creative people create things, and I seem to struggle with that part. It's generally known among people I talk to that I fancy myself a writer, but I don't really have much to show for that.

I have a lot of ideas, sure, but the ratio of those that materialise in any way to those that...don't is, well, not worth mentioning really. I once did a short piece for a showcase in college, it was a dramatised non-sequitor about how I can never seem to finish anything and my ideas splinter off and get away from me.

That was thirteen years ago, I've written things since, a script here, a video essay that I never put into production there. ad-hoc reviews of whatever I see at the cinema, whatever thoughts I have that stay in my head long enough to put on this blog arranged to have something resembling a theme. 

Most of the things I've actually managed to finish are things that were completed in one sitting. (with the exception of that video essay script I mentioned, I actually managed to write about 24,000 words on that one, but video editing is even more difficult to maintain for me than writing ends up being) So I don't end up calling myself a writer, despite that being my most notable skill, if I ever affix that label to myself in a bio or something, I tend to pair the word with the elongated asterisk that is the "aspiring" prefix. At least until I finish one of the what, nineteen novels I have the first few pages to a couple of chapters of lying around, to say nothing of that one big one that I keep changing my mind on what I want it to be.

I do other things as well, I have a Youtube channel that has basically devolved into an archive of shitposts, because anything of any complexity is really hard for me to pick up again once I put it down. I am ostensibly a performer, even though opportunities to do so are rare. Did stand up for the first time in a while a few weeks ago at a convention. I didn't think I did very well, but people kept coming up to me and telling me how funny it was, so I'll take that. I also stream on Twitch, but that's more a way to do something I was gonna do anyway and still feel productive, so I don't tend to mention that as much, even though that is by far the thing I manage to do the most consistently.

 I've not managed to get a diagnosis, it's hard to get that done in the UK, what usually happens is you call your GP, they say they'll get back to you about a referral, and then don't. But I'm fairly certain that my trouble with focusing is down to ADHD. I have friends with it who consistently tell me that the experiences I describe line up with it. The inability to do anything important until the last minute, rampant procrastination, even on stuff I want to do, short bursts of hyperfixation with complete inability to follow-up after, being prone to tangents, bad time management, etc, etc. So, whooptie-doo, I have a convenient excuse.

Without a formal diagnosis I'm not getting medicated for it. (edit: I should mention that in the UK, such things are not available for purchase and are tightly-controlled) Absent such, the most I can do to manage it is find whatever way I can to trick my brain into letting me be something resembling productive, I've been taught and picked up a few techniques over the years, none of them work consistently for long, but if you switch them up, sometimes if you can find the right sequence you can stave off the self-loathing for weeks at a time, so I'll write a few of them down here, maybe someone will find them useful. 

1. Make your bed first thing. 

This is probably the easiest one, once you've done that, you already have some momentum going, that's one task finished, you've already got the ball rolling, which is the hardest part. 

2. Make a bullet-point list of small things to do tomorrow

This one can help for the same reasons, it helps keep momentum going, I think it's important you keep the tasks small and manageable, it also just feels good to cross stuff off the list. 

3. the three-minute challenge. 

Put simply, whatever it is you want to get started on, set a timer for three minutes and challenge yourself to do as much as you can within that time, you might actually build some momentum and want to keep going. 

4. Procrasti-work

The problem with all of the previous techniques, is that they're all tasks in themselves, and therefore, on a bad day, can be just as difficult as what they're supposed to help you get moving on. That in mind, always make sure you have two things you should be doing if possible. That way, you can put off one by doing the other, then something gets done either way. (I'm putting off something else to write this even now) 

 5. Association 

This is a very situational one and will only work for specific things, but if you're in the midst of a hyperfixation right now, try to relate it to things you need to get done somehow. 

 6. Gamification 

Another situational one, but if you're having trouble making yourself do something, try to make some kind of a game with it, sort of like the three-minute challenge, but the game can be whatever works with the task. 

7. fidget-work to audio

This will depend entirely on how much attention you need to give your current task, but put on some music, or an audiobook, or a podcast, this will pull on your attention so you won't get bored with whatever you're doing, it helps me get through visits to the gym, or tidying up on the occasion I can make myself do that. 

Side note, tidying up is quite difficult for me, not just because of my physical limitations, but ADHD changes how you interact with a room. (at least I assume that's why based on what I've been able to gather) When I enter a room, there is the room, and whatever in the room has my immediate attention. Everything else is just part of the background for me, if there were anything on the floor I'd go right past it without noticing anything out of the ordinary. I don't even see when the room gets messy, it starts with a can or bottle on the floor, and before I know what's happened I'm sitting in a landfill and I really couldn't tell you when any significant shift happened, nor can I usually get my head around making a start. 

8. don't check social media first thing 

I've been trying to cut down on the scrolling in general really, it's a timesink and can kill any momentum you manage to get. Fact is, I have trouble task-switching, and whenever a person shifts focus from one thing to another, the brain sort of soft-resets itself I think. Scrolling through Facebook and Twitter first thing is an excellent way to drain all your momentum and trap yourself, there's a reason it's called "Doomscrolling." Social media is designed to pull at your focus and keep you engaged, to the more impulsive among us, that's a hell of a trap. Messages are probably fine, but no scrolling until tasks are completed.

9. Spite

There isn't really a nicer way to say that, in the same ways the stress of a deadline can get one with ADHD moving, channeling any anger or negative emotions you might be feeling can do wonders for productivity if you can do it, I think it's the adrenaline. God knows some of the posts on this very blog were written in a state of frustration. I wouldn't recommend relying on this one though.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Hopefully someone with similar struggles to mine will stumble on something they hadn't tried yet. Anyway, I can feel my momentum waning, so I should wrap this up before I put down this laptop and forget what I was doing...or suddenly change my mind and decide this post was a terrible idea and not do it, chances of either happening are about equal.

Review: The Whale

 I feel like I should preface this with a few qualifiers. I don't generally like this type of movie, I don't typically like movies that try to pull on your heartstrings with terminal illness as the story, even when it's done well, it feels like a cheap shot. Even more do I dislike those kind of documentaries that this kind of reminds me of (you know the ones.) Maybe this says somethiing about me, but it feels too close to inspiration porn for my liking. I'm also not typically one for movies that feel like they were made to win Oscars. This film is all of those things. To be frank, my interest in seeing this film began and ended with the fact of Brendan Fraser playing the lead role. So anyway the first thing we see Brendan Fraser do on cinema screens for the better part of twenty years is jack it to gay porn in a fatsuit...

All that said, while The Whale is all of the things I described, it is a very well done version of them. Even if I find the premise distasteful, I cannot fault the performance of Brendan Fraser, or indeed anyone else in this movie. It's largely localised to one room as is Fraser's character himself, and as such films like this live and die on the strength of the cast and their chemistry. Which, as mentioned, is excellent. 

The story is appropriately tragic for an Oscar movie about a morbidly obese man, and more than a little cheesy, which I usually like, but this movie crosses the line from sincere to hokey several times, though rarely enough that it's not an issue, until the end, by which point there's little point in maintaining that veneer anyway, might as well go nuts. It's also based on a play, so I guess it gets a little leeway there for cheesiness if nothing else.

If I had to come up with one word to thematically sum up this film, it would be "judgement." Brendan Fraser's character Charlie secludes himself from the outside world and disables the camera on his zoom calls because he fears the judgement of those around him. As an English professor teaching courses online, his job is to judge the writing of his students. He is judged harshly by his daughter and ex-wife for leaving them for a man, whose ultimate fate was rooted in the judgement of his peers.

Thomas the missionary judges Charlie to be in need of "saving" and is running from judgement in his own story. Charlie's daughter Ellie resents the judgement of others for her falling grades and abraisive personality. Even Liz, Charlie's one constant pillar of support throughout the film and the only one with whom he is visibly comfortable, is not exempt from this theme. 

Sooner or later it all comes back to judgement, which compliments Charlie's fondness for honesty nicely. The one lesson he tries to impart to his students throughout the film is to find their voice and be honest about their perspective. Thematically this film ties together very well, I just wish it didn't feel so mean-spirited about it, though maybe that's the point. 

 It's here I should probably mention my own biases in appraising this film. Growing up as a disabled person, more specifically a wheelchair user, about as visibly disabled as one can be, I have, of course, inevitably been treated, and forced to interact with the world in ways that felt dehumanising. I'm also no stranger to the concept of "Inspiration porn" (A term coined by Stella Young to describe the reduction of disabled people to objects of inspiration, as if we exist to remind you that your life could be worse.) This film put me very much in mind of both things. In particular those, to quote Mitchell and Webb "point and laugh, but in a caring way" documentaries that, to put it lightly I was never a fan of. 

So what I'm saying is, I'm about the farthest thing possible from the target audience of this movie. This should be acknowledged when I tell you I found these aspects of it distasteful. That said, The Whale boasts the performance of Brendan Fraser's career, a very well-written and thematically strong interpersonal drama, and a fantastic supporting cast who all deserve to get a lot more work from this.

Not sure I understand the point of that aspect ratio though...

Reading wrap-up: January 2023

 So I've managed to make myself sit down to read books more, as well as having audiobooks on while I go to the gym, or play repetitive games. and I'm pleased to say I got through a fair few in January, so I thought I'd at least write up my thoughts on them, I might make a Youtube video to this effect as well, but this was written with a blog post in mind, just because that's how I find I can better organise my thoughts. Anyway 

Here are my thoughts on the books I read in January, in the order I read them.

Pyramids by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

I liked this one, I’d got a feel for the discworld series already, this being book seven. But this is where I really adjusted to the flow of things. Probably has something to do with reading the entire back half in a day, which I am not used to doing, but the lack of chapter divides was less of a problem for me here than it usually would be, and I’ve managed to maintain a much better flow ever since, personally I’d still rather have the chapter breaks, but STP’s lack of them has ceased to be much of a problem. It’s usually pretty easy to guess when I’m expected to stop if I need to now.

I was honestly kind of lukewarm on Teppec. I liked him enough but as Discworld protagonists go he felt like he lacked a certain something. But maybe that’s the point. His lack of agency in the story is very much part of the plot and themes, and didn’t leave him with much room to express himself. Everything is well-told. I had more fun with the supporting cast though, in particular his father the former king, and Ptracy (like how he makes common names look vaguely Egyptian on the page by putting a P in front of them) the pyramid architect whose name I can’t remember. Dios was interesting, but I kind of expected more of a conclusion than the one written. I know by now that Terry Pratchett’s endings aren’t the most climactic all the time, but this one felt like it was setting up for more to me, side note, I loved the bit where all the past kings and queens are helping God-Teppec up the pyramid, which I choose to read as a direct statement of collective action helping him reach heights that not even a God can reach alone. I also love all the little witticisms and commentaries about tradition and belief, but you don’t need me to tell you a Discworld book has great, witty social commentary, you find that peppered throughout the entire series.

Yeah, overall, I liked this book. I found it a lot easier to get through than some before it, definitely an enjoyable read.

Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

Might be my favourite one so far. The first Discworld book I read was Jingo which I was given by a friend years ago, so I was already familiar with Sam Vimes, Carrot and Nobby, but that was quite a while ago, and not to mention a fair bit later into their development than this. So it was interesting to see where these characters began.

So to set the scene, our first character, Carrot, discovers he’s actually human, and not, as he’d always been told, an unusually tall, 6 foot 4 Dwarf. After discovering that he’s adopted he goes to the city of Ankh Morpork to join the City Watch, which he’s told is an honourable job. When he gets there he finds that the existence of the watch is little more than a formality. But carrot, being the sincere naive good boy that he is, resolves to do the best he can.

First off, I love Carrot. He’s so earnest, and his good nature is contagious to those around him. I love that kind of character, someone so wholly good that they can’t help but make the world around them better just by their proximity and refusal to compromise their principles. I was a bit taken aback to see how Sam Vimes started out given how he was in Jingo, but I enjoyed the beginning of his journey a lot, and his budding relationship with Lady Sybill. I have a soft spot for characters who are really passionate about one thing, and her one thing is dragons, which is also a plus, because I like those too.

Discworld stories are often send-ups of genre tropes or parodies of specific works. Guards! Guards! Is sort of a police procedural but by way of several other genres in a unique blend of genre stew with a heavy dose of satire.

The book is full of Pratchett’s usual wit and social commentary, a particular throughline here is what our circumstances can make us do if we let them, and what we in turn can do to better them, the way Vimes goes from being a drunk in the gutter to actually caring about the city is impressively seamless, not to mention it’s just a really fun read, I breezed through this one, at least relative to me, and my attention span akin to that of a concussed goldfish.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Out of the Shadows. by Justina Ireland

I listened to this one on audible, as I do for all Star Wars books. I do that for a few reasons, firstly, I am running short of bookshelf space as it is, and there are a lot of Star Wars books. and secondly, I like the audio-presentation the Star Wars audiobooks generally have, I like to have those on while I’m at the gym or when I play like a fidget-game, something grindy. That’s how I go through all audiobooks really. Also, I find it hard to get invested in Star Wars books enough to buy the print versions, at least the ones that use legacy characters, for reasons that I’ll probably go into another time, but that’s why I’m basically going through the High Republic right now, anyway.

One of those reasons is kind of out of the window for this one because the audio-presentation I like these for, just isn’t there. It’s just a narrator reading, none of the usual music and sound effects. That’s not bad by any stretch, it’s just not what I expected, or usually listen to these for. Having said that, I found this to be one of the better stories I’ve seen out of Star Wars novels in general.

The story is experienced almost entirely from the perspective of one protagonist which helps a lot with the focus here, a problem I have with the High Republic in general is that it throws a lot of locations and characters at you in a short space of time, and I find that pretty hard to keep track of, I had to go through Light of the Jedi twice just to get a feel for who everyone was. But this is less of a problem here, Sylvestri Yarro (I’ve only heard it spoken, so sorry if it’s spelled wrong) is our main protagonist, and I like her. Not normally one for romance subplots, but I kinda found myself rooting for this one, the plot was kinda predictable in places, but not in a way that made it bad.

These books definitely benefit from narrowing their focus, as I’ll get into a little later, as much of a side-story as this was, I still found it compelling. Bonus points for the fact that I didn’t really feel like it was necessary to know anything that came before to follow this one. That definitely helps. Zylan Graff was a fun character to dislike all the way through as well, honourable mention there. Sure, there are a few returning characters, but this works just as well as an introduction for them as any other book so far. So yeah, Out of the Shadows is worth a read. Could actually have pictured myself sitting down with the print version of this.

Faust Eric by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

I haven’t read a book in one sitting since Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian. Though to be fair this one is very short, as such, I don’t have a huge amount to say about it, except that I enjoyed it a lot. It was nice to see Rincewind again, and I hope not for the last time, he’s as fun as ever. It was nice to get a real look at the creator gods of the disc in a way that put me in mind of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Some nice worldbuilding in the form of a parody of an old legend. So basically Pratchett’s bread and butter. I had fun with this one.

Star Wars: The High Republic: The Fallen Star by Claudia Gray

Okay, Now I’m officially on board for the High Republic. I’ve never been one for the “it gets good several books in” defense, but if you have the constitution to read/listen through several basically good enough books, the High Republic does in fact, get a lot better several books in. Again the story benefits from the narrowing of focus, following only a handful of characters, two of which return from Out of the Shadows, which immediately precedes it, and others from The Rising Storm and a few from Into the Dark which means, yes, our boy Geode is back and so is Leox Gyasi and Bell Zettifar, all of whom I liked. The return of the Out of the Shadows characters is a little jarring, only because, this one has the usual sound effects and music fare, and the narrator gives one of the returning characters a voice that put me in mind of a vastly different image from the one I had before. But I suppose if you’re reading it in print, that won’t be an issue.

As for the story, this is my favourite High Republic book yet. If you haven’t read the series so far you may be a little lost, but there is enough context to keep you in the know as to what’s going on. Claudia Gray is confident and ruthless with the established characters and setting, and there are some real horror vibes at points in this book, without it at any point feeling like a horror story.

There is one little nitpick I want to make, because it annoyed me a disproportionate amount. So, minor spoilers, there is a character called Geode, right? He’s what’s called a Ventian, a sentient rock species, and there’s a lot of tongue-in-cheek jokes there, but at one point, he deflects a blaster bolt to save someone, and the line that explains how he does this, is written exactly like this; “Ventians, could choose whether they were magnetically sealed or not” for reference, blaster bolts riccochet off magnetically sealed surfaces.

The wording on that just really took me out of the moment. I don’t even mind that the concept of a sentient rock being able to do that is ridiculous, a lot of Star Wars is, if you want hard science fiction you’re in the wrong series. But there had to have been so many better ways to word that. “Ventians could magnetically seal themselves at will” or, “project magnetic shielding organically.” in this context it essentially means to be bullet-proof. “I can choose whether I’m bullet-proof or not” just...look I know I’m harping on a single line, in a book I otherwise really enjoyed, but because I otherwise really enjoyed it, that one line sticks out in my head all the more. I freely admit that this is a nitpick, but what can I say? It bothered me.

Other than that one little nitpick though, The Fallen Star is definitely my favourite High Republic book so far. I liked the continuation of Elzar Mann’s story, the characters all feel familiar thanks to the groundwork of reading the series so far. I still don’t think it’s going to convert anyone not already invested in Star Wars, but that’s never been the point of these.

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

This one was fun. I’m not sure if this is a wizards book or something different, forgive me my Discworld ignorance, I’m going through them in release order, but I’d definitely call it “wizard-adjacent.” The main character, Victor, is a student wizard who is incredibly gifted, but also lazy, in such a way that he is always very careful to fail his exams, but with a high enough score to secure continued funding. Also lazy enough to work out and maintain himself so that running away is less effort, that kind of thing.

Throughout this book I really felt the evolution of the Discworld in a way that I hadn’t before, perhaps due to the rapid advance of technology present here, I won’t spoil, but this book is a send up of early Hollywood, but also, more broadly, of the entertainment industry as a whole. Pulling no punches as to how brutal it can be to those working in it, and also reframing film itself as a bizarre, Lovecraftian entity. The business side of “Holy Wood” also finds itself well represented, and hilariously so, by the return of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler. I may have laughed aloud at the part where he misses the point of subliminal messaging. The wizards are here too of course, and they’re fun, you know what you’re getting from them by now, but the reason I call this “wizard-adjacent” is because they don’t really factor in much beyond the tertiary.

I can’t not mention Gaspode and Laddy, But more would be spoiling, just suffice to say Gaspode is a talking dog and he’s great.

Moving Pictures is a great satirical read and well worth it.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Race to Crashpoint Tower by Daniel Jose Older

Yeah, I didn’t care for this one. Reading it after having read stuff further along in the timeline that was better probably didn’t help, but I don’t think I’d have loved it anyway. A couple of hours on audible that didn’t leave much of an impression really, A minor part of the Republic Fair incident blown up into a short book that could’ve been a footnote without losing much. I may revise this statement if Ram Jomoram or any of the other characters show up later and are part of a work I enjoy, because this at least did the job of introducing them. The Drengir show up, and are fun for a bit, but they feel crowbarred in honestly. The moment to moment experience was fine, and not unpleasant in any way, but all in all this whole thing kind of feels like a filler arc, which many Star Wars novels do in my opinion, but The High Republic doesn’t usually, so that was disappointing.

An unnecessary entry that felt inconsequential, the best thing about it being that at least it was short.

Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw

I will first put a tiny bit of a content warning, this book has a few uses of the ableist slur beginning with “R” in it. But it was written before I think it was commonly accepted as one, just to make aware those that would want to be.

Okay, so Mogworld is the debut novel of Yahtzee Croshaw, primarily of Zero Punctuation fame. He’s done a fair few other things, I quite enjoyed Yahtzee’s Dev Diary myself. But you’re more likely to have encountered Zero Punctuation.

This was another audible, I didn’t actually finish this one before January ended, but I was more than halfway through, so I’m gonna put it here anyway. Mogworld follows a beginner level magic student called Jim, who is killed at the beginning and brought back decades later by a necromancer, who finds out only then, that he, and the entire horde he’s just resurrected, all have their personalities and free-will intact. A funny negotiation then takes place, which sets the tone really well, they all end up as undead minions in this necromancer’s fortress. All Jim wants is to find a way to die, and stay dead. He’s accompanied by Meryl, a fellow, much more optimistic undead from his homeland, who sews him back together again and tries desperately to coax him onto the path of the hero.

If I had to compare this book to anything, I’d say, imagine if the film Free Guy came out about a decade earlier, with more fantasy, and was written by a depressed Douglas Adams. Those are the kind of vibes this book gave me.

The story itself is a lot of fun, if feeling a little stretched in places. I couldn’t help but feel like the story was taking a few more detours than was necessary. I won’t complain though as I did enjoy those detours. The supporting characters largely feel like broad comic caricatures, but never quite to the point of feeling one-dimensional, there’s always the suggestion of deeper characterisation there, and their, for lack of a better term, personality-types feels very much like a deliberate part of the makeup.

Overall, Mogworld is a fun read, and a promising debut novel. I enjoyed it enough that I’ll be giving Yahtzee’s other books a read-through at some point I’m sure.

Bloody hell, I wasn’t expecting to write nearly 3,000 words. Must remember to write up my thoughts on books as soon as I read them, as opposed to at the end of the month.