Witcher Books Discussion and Ciri Witcher 4 Game Musings

Hello Old Friends, today I'll be discussing the Witcher Books naturally. I should say I've only read 6 of them to this point but it was all the narrative ones and the Last Wish (The Lady of the Lake leads directly into the Witcher 3 proper). I bought the Last Wish and Blood of the Elves for my Dad about a year ago and finally decided to read those two myself on a camping trip an the magnificent Pictured Rocks. The Last Wish is fantastic and the rest of the books are above average fantasy or so, probably slightly worse than someone like Timothy Zahn and nowhere near Gordon R. Dickson's Way of the Pilgrim (it should be noted, Dear Reader, that Science Fiction and Fantasy are the same genre at this point in time, all using similar tropes). Here's a quick ranking of the 6 books I've read (chronology in parentheses), I can only assume the last two would be second and third best since the short story format works much better than an overarching constant cliffhanger style:

1. The Last Wish (First)

2. The Time of Contempt (Third)

3. Tower of Swallows (Fifth)

4. Baptism of Fire (Fourth)

5. Lady of the Lake (Last)

6. Blood of the Elves (Second)

Firstly Blood of the Elves is probably dreadful if you have no frame of reference, even having one it was still unbelievably dull except for the 30% of the book where things were actually happening; it is essentially just a giant fuck-off exposition dump. I was reading the books at this point looking for more elaborations on the world state and so forth and that's the entire book, but even having played the games it was still almost completely dry and uninteresting.

Time of Contempt is a massive improvement, having a fantastic banquet scene followed immediately by the biggest event in the narrative right up until Lady of the Lake; the whole sequence is great and at this point Ciri, the star of the narrative books, is pretty much a flawless, wonderful character. That starts to go awry a bit afterward but I'll elaborate more on that continuously; for now a discussion of Tower of Swallows.

Swallows introduces lots of new elements, aggressive usage of boring, tedious framing devices (the Lady of the Lake is nearly 20% such tripe), and extremely dark hyperviolent scenes; pretty much Cormac McCarthy levels of dark. Now that's not to say Andrzej Sapkowski is anywhere near as good a writer as Mr. Cormac; he is a fantasy writer after all (though whoever wrote Hearts of Stone is pretty close to McCarthyism) but that is the tone he's shooting for. At this point Ciri is part of a group of child/young adult bandits called the Rats; under their tutelage she's been raped by a Lesbian who she promptly falls in love with (more on sexual violence shortly) and also becomes a hardened killer; perhaps having killed somewhere around 15 people prior to the start of the fifth book. The Rats run into Leo Bonhart, a not-Witcher Witcher who is basically invincible a la Judge Holden or Anton Chigurh; his motivations are not entirely clear to start with but later he's revealed as a horrible sadist. Bonhart is the second best character from the books, behind the one-chapter Calanthe; neither is even close to Gaunter O'Dimm.

Bonhart kills all six of the Rats attacking him from all sides, Ciri shows up to watch her lesbian lover/rapist (for whom the rose on her crotch is tattoo'd) die, then he ties her to a post and decapitates them all in front of her. Great scene, I don't have much more to say about it, speaks for itself. Through the rest of the book he continues to torment her but does grant her the sword Zireael (Ciri's Elven Name Swallow) so she has a fighting chance, at one point she tries to kill herself and he says "You won't do it, witcher girl. In Kaer Morhen you were taught how to kill, so you kill like a machine. Instinctively. To kill yourself you need character, strength, determination and courage. And they couldn't teach you that." Great line, speaks for itself. I envision him sounding like Michael Wincott in 1993's Three Musketeers.

Bonhart is sort of Ciri's third parent (or fifth, even sixth if you want to be technical), bringing her back from a relatively evil path to a more Witchery neutral one; he drags her around like a circus act and eventually threatens her with posthumous rape; which she recoils from naturally. Unfortunately Ciri doesn't respond to even mildly offensive sexual encounters negatively; it's only absurdly evil ones (like, say Cannibalism, Science Experiment Cesarean Section, and Necrophilia) that draw her ire. 

One need only look at my youtube thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fredchuckdave/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid to realize I am not a prude as far as respecting certain parts of the female anatomy and also understanding the nature of sexual violence in the modern world and the perhaps irreparable damage done to the female psyche by thousands of years of such things, as farcical as notions of modern peace and prosperity are amongst robber barons the notion that women will simply cease to enjoy sexual violence almost as much if not more than men is preposterous. All of that said I don't think women are "supposed" to be that way and I don't think an extremely assertive woman who's killed 50 humans, many in cold blood would just willingly submit; no matter how pragmatic and intelligent she may be; to repeated sexual advances.

This discussion ties mostly into the last book, though I should note her first experience with Mistle is somewhat believable given her state at the time, the scene with Hotspurn less so, and the scenes with the Elven High King downright reprehensible (though oddly her scene with Eredin is perfectly fine, excellent even). Essentially she's stuck in the second Elf World and her only described way out by Avallac'h of Witcher 3 fame is to get pregnant and have a kid, conveniently time is warped so she could still make it back. After about two words of protest she's down for it and has sex with the Elf King three times, he eventually commits suicide due to his inability to inseminate her; what a tragedy (Eredin's involvement is ambiguous in the books, only intentional murder in the games).

If you've only played the games you may wonder why this isn't discussed at all, not even a little bit. That's because it's terrible on so many levels and utterly preposterous for a character that is effectively the ultimate badass and also a God of Space and Time. But because she's a woman she must willingly submit or something, Ciri is not Aloy levels of intelligent but she's smart enough to realize she can obliterate anyone whenever she feels like it aside from Bonhart, a male writer should theoretically understand the character he fucking invented and not subject her to such primitive chauvinism.

The other main element the narrative books bring is the gradual assembly of a Dirty Dozen type group for Geralt to hang out with, including Dandelion, Zoltan, and Regis from the games and Cahir (fantastic character), Milva, and Angouleme; they're all great and all reminiscent of any number of scenes from the games when those characters are around. The Dwarves in the books are interchangeably the same character just with 7 different names so I suppose it's simpler to just think of all of them as Zoltan, but Zoltan is also the brief participant in the Dirty Dozening.

Here we get to the more typically controversial part of the books, the latter half of Lady of the Lake; all the characters show up to save Ciri (who once again through asinine total submission is in peril) from the comically Arch Arch-Villain Vilgefortz and his henchman the fantastic Bonhart and the inept proponent of democracy Steffan Skellen (who gave Ciri her scar with a Shuriken or a Shuriken flail; doesn't really make any physical sense if you think about how he hits her with it and the shape of the scar). And then everyone died; the end. That's it.

I suppose it should go without saying that it is lazy writing to just kill off one major character and then kill off the next one two sentences later, the next a page after that, and so on and so forth; resolving all of your loose ends and confidently saying "I'm tired of writing these books assholes!" Kills the dramatic tension, generally an unsatisfying conclusion to a ~1200 page/3 book build-up. There's nothing wrong with characters dying, hell even all the characters dying (though the killer would have to be Eredin and the Wild Hunt for it to work); but the way its done sort of robs you of any sentimentality by the end; aside from the excellent scenes with Tywin Lannister, err; I meant Charles Dance, no wait Emhyr var Emreis. 

Yennefer, Ciri, and Geralt emerge from the ruins of the anti-climactic climax and as is discussed in the Witcher 2 Yen and Geralt are killed in a nonhuman pogrom/riot in Rivia (where I'm fairly certain it did not actually all begin despite what the book says). The pogrom is better than the castle sequence and maybe could've worked, but we're in this universe where Yen and Geralt survive and the games happened. The games are better than the books overall (Last Wish notwithstanding) so I feel Game Canon is superior to Book Canon, debatable though I suppose. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of early Polish readers since they are by and large the only people who read the books prior to the games existing, but I suspect most native English speakers probably feel about the same as me.

Geralt, Yennefer, and Dandelion are all brilliant characters, the Witcher's universe is fantastic and without the books the games would not exist; thus a top 5 game and a top 20 game all time would not exist and a top 2 character in Gaunter O'Dim would not either. So we are indebted to Mr. Sapkowski, no matter how unsatisfying the book conclusion is.

Extended Aside: The next Witcher game (which will sell 10 million copies and is therefore going to happen no matter what) is almost certainly Ciri as Witcher-girl (a frequent enough occurence in the books but only broached right at the end of Witcher 3; Bonhart's Cat medallion notwithstanding), with occasional guest appearances by all your favorite and not dead characters from the previous games. The best way to do this is make like 5-10 individual areas a la the Witcher 2; probably 2 of those being fanciful teleported worlds and the rest being in Temeria/Redania/Aedirn/Kaedwen/Nilfgaard (probably more Nilfgaard this time); somehow finding a way to justify bringing Cahir back to life would work quite well as a conclusive element. Game Ciri is fairly underdeveloped, similar to book Ciri except no catastrophic flaws to this point; but she will probably just wind up being an Androgynous Geralt and semi-indistinguishable from him in the long run.

Tenet

 

First a brief discussion of the theater-going experience; in my state there are (wisely) no theaters open so we had to go south to Toledo; we entered a cavernous, yet bland one floor mall from the opposite end and there were several hundred people in the mall with varying degrees of social distance practicing; however when we reached the theater there was no one in it and it gradually filled to a staggering fifteen viewers. This was more or less as predicted, Tenet (so far) has made $30 million domestically and in a non Covid world would have made somewhere around $200m by this point (and ~300-350m lifetime, an additional 400m or so worldwide) so had to anticipate a small audience. That said they appeared to all be stalwart movie-goers and no irritation was had throughout.

Tenet is an extremely ambitious film; picking up from Inception Nolan was not dissuaded by criticisms of how much exposition he could use so he made this entire movie nothing but exposition. That said the dialogue and performances in Inception work pretty well and the main emotional components happen in brief sudden instances, but those in Tenet are drawn out for half hour long segments with minimal resonance. The actors are fine, I suppose a bit lower tier than the usual Nolan casting extravaganza; each of them has had strong performances in the past but Nolan dialogue is a different monster than what they were used to. Even an established Shakespearean actor can have troubles parsing inscrutable dialogue.

Christopher Nolan is not here for dialogue, he's here for interesting philosophical and partially scientific concepts expressed through creative film-making. The final bit of exposition is basically yelling "DETERMINISM!" emphatically at you. If you're not familiar determinism is the idea that every action taken is based on every choice you've made in your life prior to that moment; it is an invincible argument logically and of course contravenes every notion of free will that you have. It does not preclude the perception of free will by participants merely the actual existence of free will itself. Determinism is extremely compatible with monotheism though strangely rarely emphasized by theologians, perhaps because it is difficult to understand for the layman. 

A mild spoiler warning here, I won't necessarily discuss specific elements of the film but I must discuss the primary element dictating object time travel. There are vaults in the world of Tenet where entering one side reverses your position in time so that you travel in reverse; this is very well established by the hour+ of setup for it, much like Inception (but not as elegant); and then you have a long sequence that slowly demonstrates what happens to the reverse travelling person. In Tenet there are at least two "loops" but you can infer that there are more happening behind the scenes *somewhere;* however they are all happening within the same time continuum.

The idea here is that they're trying to avoid the multiple timeline fallacy (even discussed as the Grandfather paradox in the film), but since every different version of yourself that's been through the vault exists in the world simultaneously eventually the whole world would be populated in an inevitable infinite timeline scenario; so there are actually infinite John David Washingtons, Elizabeth Debickis, Kenneth Branaghs, and Robert Pattinsons amongst us somehow magically avoiding each other; that's right an entire world filled with 6'3 anorexic women. This is a Nietzsche sentiment that is one of the better ways to express Determinism logically as well as the still tenuous primordial soup theory, but I haven't seen it in a single timeline before so that's neat if completely impossible to portray on film.

Hence the ambition, so in the limited scope of the film there are three such internal timelines within the timeline and what's really interesting is how they film it all from different perspectives. There is some CGI to be sure but I think they did actually shoot like 150 soldiers running different directions from a dozen different camera angles and somehow make it coherent. There's no Dark Knight truck flipping or Mad Max: Fury Road final car chase but the very concept of how the action scenes proceed is incredibly impressive.

The score is actually not by Hans Zimmer for once, it's Ludwig Goransson of Black Panther, Creed, and The Mandalorian fame; like seemingly every Nolan movie ever it is utterly fantastic especially in the action sequences. I guess you wouldn't listen to it by itself like you might Tron: Legacy or Ennio Morricone but man does it work well in a movie theater. Maybe Nolan is just trying to expand who he works with since there's only a handful of token "Must appear in every Nolan movie" appearances, but I assume someone like Guy Pearce could have carried the questionable dialogue and lack of viciousness; alternatively you could have made the movie R rated. In (the comically ludicrous) Lucy there is an extremely violent scene with the prime heroine of modern heroines (Scarlett Johansson, the weakest part of the Prestige) being kicked in the stomach; in this movie there's that scene except nothing is shown and the cuts don't make much sense, the villain establishing scene which utterly fails to establish the villain.

Nonetheless I still find Tenet to be a bit more philosophically compelling than Interstellar; Interstellar is unquestionably more emotional which perhaps Nolan has difficulty expressing in real life so that might be a personal accomplishment for him; but the exceedingly grounded scientific elements of Interstellar are not as interesting as the more philosophical elements in Tenet (though I'm sure it makes more sense than virtually every other time travel movie ever). For me that matters more since I'm not going into a Nolan movie to tug at my heartstrings but moreso to have a conversation with an intellectual peer and a dear old friend.

Aside: It's interesting that the film industry is pushing out quite a few movies in a short time period from now till whenever COVID ends, worldwide the movies are doing quite well, like 70% of their expected gross; enough to cover the cost at least. But domestically they are doing horribly; even something that looks incredible like WW: 1984 is probably going to gross under $100 million domestically; I think there's just too many of these movies out to re-release them all later; so at most like five will be released again in 2022 or whatever and all the rest will rot in this increasingly odd timeline.

The Last of Us 2 Spoilery Ending, Sequel Bait Discussion

Howdy friends, been a while. The Last of Us 2 is the talk of the town, or moreso a bunch of fairly inaccurate/exaggerated leaked spoilers and images are the talk; but behind all that it's actually quite a good game. That said it is sort of the inverse of the first game, I find the first Last of Us to be quite distressing and to more or less transcend the medium on a story front; the gameplay is fine, mildly engaging and occasionally very effective (the house fight most notably, especially if you use spike bombs); but in The Last of Us 2 the gameplay is what shines, being very engaging and even quite fun; also the shocking moments mostly happen while you're playing and not in cutscenes. In the first game basically all of the good story beats are cutscene exclusive, in this one there's just like one or two cutscenes that are extremely effective but blowing a guys leg off with a shotgun and listening to him scream extremely loudly (while he grabs the specific limb you shot) is pretty damn unnerving, turns out; despite something like that happening in almost every other shooter and being par for the course.

However there's no denying the story is worse and with the way it was constructed its hard to imagine a way to make it not worse; though it could maybe be a roughly top 10 game story all time (the first game is third behind The Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy Tactics, bonus points for coming out well before TW3) with perfect decisions. Did they make perfect decisions? Well if your story goes on for 30 hours and there's like 15 fake endings it kind of feels like an overwrought arthouse film that doesn't quite hit the mark. That said maybe an extremely tight 15-18 hour campaign that ended at the best spot could've been better than the first game in every way and not simply on the gameplay front.

Indeed this game has roughly 15 hours of padding, but it is very fun to play so it's not really a problem per se, it just means you'll likely have the most enjoyment out of things that you yourself are actually doing outside the actual narrative (though one of the scripted fights (against a totally anonymous foe) is exceptional as well). Case and point, my finest hour in this game was shooting a dog-walking man with a sniper rifle, laying a land mine and running as the dog was blown literally in fucking half by said mine. That's right, The Last of Us 2 is the best savage dog murder simulator on the market, Machete to a Dog's throat? Check, Arrow to the face? Check, Dog Dismemberment (a first in any AAA game?)? Check. Obviously I'm being somewhat facetious but damn is it ever satisfying.

At its best The Last of Us 2 is a spiritual successor to Spec Ops: The Line and Manhunt, with much more vivid depictions of violence. Ellie does have some Spec Ops-esque dialogue but she only throws it out every once in a while when you're not in stealth; not quite the Nolan North "GOT THE FUCKER" masterwork of yore. An argument I had about the first Last of Us springs to mind here, the discussion: whether Ellie is a mass murderer. Objectively: Yes, but she is a video game protagonist of course she would be; however since the depiction is so realistic and the character's reactions similarly so it actually holds some meaning. People thought at the time that she would have a redemption arc in this game, but on the contrary she kills way more people and the ending is extraordinarily ambiguous as to whether that will keep happening or not (spoilers: because of money it will).

On that point I guess I'll point out that Abigail is more or less a good person, she does brutally torture and murder one person and shoot another guy in the face out of the blue; but essentially everyone else she kills is in the line of duty or self defense; so she's got 2 kills on her tab to Ellie's 150-500+? I'm not sure who the game wants you to root for in the end but they did make the turn on Abigail (around the first visit to the Aquarium; because everyone loves my boy Owen), which is an astounding success all things considered. But it doesn't really matter that much because she's not Ellie and thus I still only care a fairly small amount about Abigail (and a larger amount about Lev) on a personal level; because Ellie is from a better story and is a better developed character.

On to the ending discussion a bit, there are a shitload of places where this game could have ended, it seems like the story was in development hell while the gameplay was near-perfectly refined; a common trend in movies but quite rare in games where usually something else fucks it all up. The best place for the game to end is at the Ellie Boss Fight, Abigail kills Ellie, Dina kills Abigail, Lev kills Dina; fade to black. Nice and neat; very few loose ends, no sequel bait. Also the game probably wouldn't have felt so damn long. Is this the longest linear shooter of all time? Mayhap not but it's gotta be close. The second best ending is if during the Abigail Boss Fight Ellie is killed. Both of these more or less conclude the story a few outstanding character actors notwithstanding (Tommy's arc is fucking amazing), and both of them end the franchise (in its current form) and of course reduce the chance for Sony to make more money. So instead we have obvious sequel bait in the form of the New Game Plus title screen and there being no other logical place for the story to go; the plot of the next game only has a few options for endings but they could make it interesting I suppose; more likely the journey will be satisfying but not the story itself; just like this game.

It should be noted if you wanted to you could have Ellie brutally murder Abigail or vice versa and just stop playing because the number of absurdly violent player death options in this game is massive; a choose your own adventure of post apocalyptic mishaps. It's quite time consuming to actually see or record all of them so I probably won't bother but I am certainly curious. There are so many unique melee weapon animations and each melee craft is distinct unlike the first game; in that regard it is much like Assassin's Creed 2 where you have numerous unique animations that are fun to find and figure out. Though I return again to the dogs as far as what would be most interesting and unnerving. So while the ending was happening and I was mashing square a bunch since having QTE final boss fights is cool I thought back on that guy who I shot with the shotgun; the last regular enemy in the game turned out. Just some dude; screaming in sheer agony, that is a really good narrative moment and it had absolutely nothing to do with the story. Game must be good if it can cause you to reflect on an unscripted moment so much.

Aside: There are ways to make foes surrrender in this game (typically a few melee attacks or pistol shots to the legs on the last enemy of a given encounter), I feel like there's a scripted one in the first game and that was it; the original pitch for the original was something along the lines of moral choice based on encountering groups of enemies; naturally that didn't happen.. Unfortunately if you just sit there pointing your gun at them instead of murdering them (Game: "You know you want to!") they just randomly die after a while; not sure what happens if you walk away though.

Another Aside: The Last of Us 2 has the best depiction of the unappealing nature of war in any game to this point, but since it keeps going for another 5-7 hours after that that aspect kind of loses its narrative punch; large men being terrified of small women is much more impactful in the end. Punished Ellie kind of reminds me of my shitty little cousin; ratty and irritating; tattooed and psychologically abused, but what if he was actually the ultimate badass and a lesbian? Wouldn't that be something. She's a lovable mass murderer guys, it's cool.

Story Time, Brood War Edition

What follows is a sea of memories perforated by lucidity in transcendent megolomania (a la Frank Thomas' legendary Hall of Fame speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMOUf97yWxU), I'll keep it Brood War related to start: I probably played with you a few times (Baron_Efreet was my ID), off the top of my head notable people I've played with: Shadow_Poga, Galdor(WC), Eomer(WC), Ecthelion(WC), semihalfwit, Legolas, Adun, Vexorian, I_Need_Alcohol, Isildur(WC) (in Starcraft 2 ironically), Hell_Razor (runs the discord), Term-of-Use, Duffman911 (still plays) and thousands more. Galdor was definitely the best player as far as how good he was on average across all maps, rest of the top 5 when I was playing was likely myself, Poga, and two randomly selected individuals that are not Semi, Adun, or Lego chosen at random from memory depending on the day (note I did have a Top 5 noted a few weeks ago but somehow can't remember the transient two). Alchy was usually fifth is something I vaguely remember.

As far as Pre is concerned I was playing Risk Marines (made by the DotA mapmaker Icefrog) at the time and did not adapt to LotR for a year or so when LA was the new hotness; I sucked with the Nums for a while and eventually started playing with Galdor and Alchy who had an endless number of maps. Adun at the time was always attended by his two fellatio granting lovers; Semi and Lego; in a tripartite circle jerk which legends dare not speak of. That being said this magnificent cerberus of stupidity somehow brewed up a fantastic map in War of the Soulstones and granted me great happiness as I mastered one faction after another, becoming the best player at five (out of eight) of them and utterly destroying Semi and co. In this process I taught my good friends, non LotR players, how to play WotS and Poga came along; these friends were MrPoey, SmartMan001, Lightning-Baron (who I am still in touch with), Tainted_God, and quite a few more; taking such luddites I beat the mapmaker's toadies repeatedly with such force as to satisfy any sadomasochist gleefully.

I eventually moved on, Galdor took Duff on as apprentice in my stead, a surrogate me if you will; though not nearly as strategically sound or tactically brilliant or ludicrously arrogant (a trait of greatness of course); I'll elaborate on my future goings after a brief discussion of BW remastered.

First it bears mention that Brood War was revived massively in Korea before Remastered, by a few years even, all of the legends returned in the greatest playlist in the history of mankind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-12J0YmqI&list=PLo2fPnM8EiQxwqKvAnVtue6K4pt82Pudp&index=137

If Starcraft was your childhood it behooves you to watch that playlist whenever depression takes hold as it most assuredly will. When remastered came out I didn't buy it, but I did play the original version with those who did; tragically LotR was not really an aspect of this aside from Last Alliance. W.Emery was my most frequent compatriot in this process, and I did play other games beyond LotR when I was a UMS monster; the aforementioned Risk Marines, Various Diplo Maps, Napoleon's Ambition, and the Civil War maps by Fenix'01; the beloved Emery and his pals gave me just about every map I could've ever wanted; excepting Star Wars AotR, WotS, and various Melkor LotR maps.

At this time I realized that my mechanical skill had become transcendent, much higher than it was before; I destroyed everyone with trivial effort at every map; the reality is that UMS players just weren't very good and while my strategic and tactical ability has always been superhuman my raw ability at games was relatively lacking except for JRPGs in youth. But after I left Brood War (after a brief stint being a top 5 player in the world at WoW and Warhammer online) I moved on to the twin masochistic endeavours of becoming good at Fighting games and playing Souls games, starting with Demon's Souls in 2009.

I won't go into overly mundane details on those tasks but this is a combo I can do in KoF XIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_eyPPibeio and in Nioh I was the Fourth player in the world to get the hardest trophy (clear all missions); of those who played on release (top 20 including people who had the game several days early): https://psnprofiles.com/trophy/5812-nioh/13-samurai-of-legend . Note I didn't try to get the Nioh trophy quickly, it just happened that way; which I suppose is indicative of the general skill level.

Having become quite good at other games somehow translated to much better RTS skill, though of course nowhere near Korean skill, and makes me wonder what it would have been like to be even better when I was already top 5 back in the day. The answer: Probably wouldn't have mattered that much but maybe would have made my shit talk even better.

A random strand of advice I had at work motivated me to attempt making a youtube channel and it did unbelievably well; in fact I still have a single video that gets 50,000 views a month by itself (it has 2.3 million now); which is more views than this blog has gotten over its lifespan. Most people that attempt Youtube or Twitch fail immediately and now Youtube is all but inaccessible to everyone but corporations and massive singular channels and Twitch is simply the misery of conducting an audience of 12 year olds to donate you money. But somehow despite that I did quite well with youtube leading to relative financial security despite never having a permanent degree requiring Job post university; presumably more self-achieved security than virtually everyone I've ever known who's roughly the same age.

That said I am on the cusp of transitioning into a new phase, writing a (doomed) novel and then presumably becoming a university professor in around a decade. I should be quite well for 5-6 years but who knows what will happen after that; China could invade Taiwan in that timeframe and change the entire global landscape; thus making all future plans irrelevant.

Thanks whoever read this spiel.

Cyberpunk Vs Post Apocalyptic (Two Near Certain Futures) in Philosophical Terms

Hello Friends, given the certainty of dystopia in the near future I am once again compelled to remember the old bud John Stuart Mill and the concept of Utilitarianism. The general idea is that the best way to run society is to create the most happiness while avoiding unhappiness; it's also largely pacifist. In the pacifism lies the utopian nature of the argument, as surely as death and violence are inevitable; but if we accept that death is a necessary component of life then Utilitarianism becomes immensely more interesting in a philosophical sense.

So, as China's incoming Tiananmen Square 2.0 brews in Hong Kong and Holocaust 2.0 continues in the Xinjiang provinces we come to this realization that either World War 3 must occur given China's new imperialist ambitions (as evidenced by films like Operation Red Sea and Operation Mekong (extremely jingoistic, 80'sesque military action movies)) or that Capitalism itself is so embedded into the global economy that restricting China is deemed impossible or impractical to extremely wealthy people who may or may not be pedophiles. The first option leads to a post apocalyptic horrorscape followed by a rebirth of nature and beauty given the absence of most humans and technology and the second leads to Cyberpunk where some very small handful of people has all of the world's resources and no one else has anything (but they do live, if a simulation of machine-life entitles living).

Thus the question presents itself: is it better to have 5 happy people and 20 billion unhappy people or to have 20 billion dead people and 500,000 happy people. This is an oversimplification in many ways but so is utilitarianism of course; wealth does not lead to happiness for most people in today's society so why would it in some theoretical future society? In the post apocalyptic land surely social and economic stratification would re-emerge in some fashion regardless of how technology progressed or was preserved. However if we grant that both of these do not nullify the greater chance of happiness for the remaining aspect of humanity, then the argument is still an interesting question.

It should also be noted that these are not mutually exclusive realities; Cyberpunk is not necessarily a bulletproof society and future decay may as yet lead to some different vision of the apocalypse.

Mill ignores this eventuality by embracing pacifism and eliminating harming others from the thesis; but it is abundantly clear that attempting to indoctrinate large sections of society in largely pacifist ideologies does not remove it from all aspects of society; if some segment of the populace seeks to be armed and/or violent it will not cease to exist because some greater portion merely wags its finger in disgust at them. Similarly if the most powerful actor controls a huge portion of the global economy and chooses to be violent and oppressive it undercuts any and all notions that pacifism is a universal possibility, let alone a universal good.

Why did Starcraft 2 Fail to be Better than Brood War?

Highlight the text and you're good to go.

This is an extremely complicated question but there are a huge number of factors. Firstly: Starcraft 2 (and the expansions) is easily the best single player RTS of all time, nothing else comes close. So they did that part well.

Secondly: Brood War was balanced by accident and SC2 was attempted to be balanced by force; the latter is always worse and leads to "meta" gameplay which is horrible of course, a modern Blizzard concept that destroyed any of the fun in playing multiplayer games well by forcing you to have a 50% win rate; which is only fun if you're terrible. Note this concept is rapidly dying in modern game design so we won't have to deal with it for much longer, much like Bioware's shitty restrictive and repetitive RPG design finally gave way to the Witcher 3's expansive design.

Thirdly: DotA killed Mapmaking and thus killed the replayability and the heart and soul of the community. Now by the time SC2 had come out Indie games would have killed mapmaking for obvious reasons (it takes months upon months to make a good BW map), so technically it doesn't matter that DoTA killed mapmaking. BUT DoTA did kill mapmaking and thus all true brood war fans must inherently hate DotA for by and large murdering the entirety of the RTS genre; else they're not really RTS fans. That said I eventually got over it and occasionally have fun with mobas (a word that sounds like dota)

It should be noted that I played with the creator of DotA/Aeon of Strife and every other good UMS map in Brood War at one point or another (Panzer-Kavalier, Melkor (WC), Ar-Adunakhor, Fenix'01, Theromangeneral etc.); he seemed like an innocent enough fellow (as did the TROP 1.2 creator Isildur (WC) which greatly simplified the excellent LotR genre and made it a lot worse for several years (eventually the good maps that Melkor (WC) came back around; though ironically I met Isildur playing SC2). So I don't place the blame on the map creators; it is the fault of the community for abandoning other map genres, many of which could easily be the biggest game in the world right now since nearly every mobile game genre is just a Starcraft UMS map remade.

As to the Indie Vs DoTA killed Mapmaking genesis question its impossible to solve like any great philosophical conundrum. If DoTA doesn't exist then obviously the entirety of twitch/streaming/esports and a whole lot of other shit is completely different. But I still think we can guarantee that SC2's mapmaking scene never would have took off because you could just make an indie game instead. Now granted there's only like 5 or so actually good indie games (FTL/Into the Breach/Spelunky/Isaac/insert favorite indie game here) and the rest are all just somewhat worse version of SNES games; but the fact that a lot of them are limited in scope etc. is very similar to how Brood War maps were made. But since in BW you're working with a limited toolset as opposed to the limits of your imagination in modern toolsets it was much easier to find like a linear path to a great map with the limited tools available instead of having countless Steam Greenlight games that aren't even close to half baked. I must've played at least 1500 maps I enjoyed to one degree or another and I'm still waiting on my 10th or so indie game that I actually enjoy as opposed to seeing where it could be better in numerous fields.

For me personally the decline of Starcraft led to my embracing console games instead of only playing a very limited number of PC games forever; so it was probably a net benefit aside from the loss of countless friends (I did reconnect, briefly, with a handful when remastered came out at least, the nostalgia vibes and the beep boops at match start in ASL/KSL streams are enough to stave off depression)

Judge Holden and Blood Meridian

Greetings friends, it has been about a year since my last post; in the meantime my youtube has expanded fourfold; my stocks have done quite well, I have more friends than any point in my life except the last two years of high school, and my mental health has deteriorated to strange lows. Of course virtually everyone in First World Countries is unhappy and its possible my pseudo-depression is simply a physical hormonal imbalance of some sort that I can't fix without pharmaceutical assistance; however succumbing to that is not something I'm willing to do at least in the near future. The reliance on medication to solve your ailments is an absolutely crippling one in most cases.

However I've found some solace in simply reading outside, its too cold to do so right now but I began with James Michener's Centennial (followed by Caribbean and the Source) in the summer and enjoyed my experience immensely. In fact being outside in the sunlight is a sort of opiate since I hadn't spent that much time relaxing in this fashion for many a moon. Michener is pseudo Non Fiction in how well researched and detailed the work is; a more grounded Michael Crichton if you will. In the process of procuring more Michener I started using a university library with a close friend and suggested he read Cormac McCarthy; commonly considered the best living author. So it was that he came to Blood Meridian and I return to it after having misplaced my copy (which I still own, somewhere) ages ago.

In Chapter XI Judge Holden (a sort of Ares of the Mexican-American war era) is drawing in his sketchbook and a man requests to not be drawn; the Judge responds with "What is to be deviates no jot from the book wherein it's writ. How could it? It would be a false book and a false book is no book at all." This line gave me some pause, as it is a philosophical argument presented by McCarthy; and oh how I love dissecting those. It's explained a bit more shortly thereafter but the truly perceptive reader will see something awry just from this one line.

The Judge is saying that a man cannot avoid his own permanence; Webster, the man who doesn't want to be sketched, simply wishes to be forgotten; or to go about his existence without external bother until he expires, another speck of dust lost to the ages. But the Judge continues "Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world."

It is very common to believe that each man's own existence is pointless; though reasonable to acknowledge that the grand tapestry of history is created from the interwoven relationships of countless billions of people. The Judge says otherwise here, that you cannot choose to be forgotten, no matter how much you would wish it; barring a proverbial solitary island existence from start to finish. This is a remarkably optimistic train of thought coming from McCarthy in his most brutal, Macbethian narrative. I don't know that I'm willing to accept it quite yet, but it gives me some solace to spare a thought for it.

Statistically society is become more and more like Max Weber's doomed future where each individual is so disassociated from one another's work lives because each job is more and more specific to the point of absurdity; thus there is no relating to one another through one's work. My "job" as a youtuber has no bearing on my relationship with anyone in my life, it is an esoteric, vague service provided to millions of people from all over the world, but the exact meanderings of its viability still elude most people. The concept of profiting from advertising is simple enough, but what of the prospective value of providing somewhat repetitive entertainment to vast hordes of anonymous viewers, no matter how much positivity I receive from my viewership (dozens or hundreds of comments a day) it still feels like they're abstract unknowable things extracted from the raw core of the NSA internet databases; an endless filtering of chain of consciousness to be rebounded by everyone and no one.

Perhaps historically I've made more of an impact than any other member of my family as far as how many people I've reached, even with just a mid-sized channel; but I can't escape the awareness that I myself am largely immaterial despite having a mind that grasps. If I am immaterial how much more so the millions or indeed billions of dunces roaming the planet. McCarthy, my old friend, says no; each man has meaning because he has contributed to the tapestry of existence. Hopefully one day I'll believe this as well.

Aside: The pointless accumulation of wealth and the evasion of any and all particular difficulties with existence as is given to me by virtue of birth in a first world nation (and essentially all others so gifted) doesn't really hold much attention for me. Instead this act of writing, no matter how little it will be seen or understood or perceived is something that I would like to continue with. Eventually I'll have enough to just sit back and write with no need for success beyond affirming that I was able to write what I wanted with no need for greater affirmation nor financial gain.