You cannot separate subjective suffering from the subject of the suffering.

For all today's bluster about mental health awareness, I rarely see compelling or empathetic discussion of what mental illness is. Intuitively, we understand a broken bone is a thing, a damaged physical object, an injured part of a human body. A viral infection is at least a physical event, an infestation of minuscule packets of genetic information, propagated through a human body. The common story goes that depression is an imbalance of neurotransmitters, an issue with brain chemistry. While I don't think this story is entirely without merit—I don’t want to discourage anyone from seeing if medication-based treatment can help them—it doesn't satisfy me. It seems to sidestep the problem. I want to propose a different definition of depression, not as a physical issue with human body, but as a self-reinforcing pattern of subjective phenomenological experience—in my case, recursively-driven dissociative yearning.

The neurotransmitter story of depression differs from broken bones and viral infections on the grounds of diagnosis. The latter two afflictions are (or at least, can be) physically verified. A swab up the nose can physically detect a virus, an x-ray gives a picture of a shattered radius & ulna. This isn't the case with depression. No doctor is taking samples of brain tissue to check for neurotransmitter balance. The neurotransmitter theory comes later, a post-hoc explanation for the physical behavior and subjective phenomenological symptoms on which depression is actually diagnosed.

The latter category, subjective phenomenological symptoms, is of interest. Consider that a doctor might diagnose a patient with a viral infection by listening to them describe how they feel. But even if the patient feels fine, they could still be diagnosed with that same infection if a nose swab come back positive. The subjective phenomenological symptoms (how the patient feels) are secondary to the observable physical evidence of infection (presence of virus in the body). Depression, by comparison, has no observable physical evidence. Like other mental illnesses, it's diagnosed wholly on self-reported phenomenology and assessments of behavior. Even if we could easily sample an individual's neurotransmitter levels, and found them shockingly low, they wouldn't be considered eligible for a modern depression diagnosis off that alone. Diagnosis of depression requires the presence of one of the following two subjective phenomenological symptoms, as per the DSM-5: – (1) Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day – (2) Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day

There's no way to write this piece without discussing my personal case. I personally suffer from (2). I've suffered from some variation or degree of (1) and (2) since early adolescence. Personal experience is no small part of why the neurotransmitter story doesn't interest me. It is so detached from my moment-to-moment experience as to mean nothing. Telling me that the neurotransmitter levels in my brain are what causes my (2) has no meaningful connection to my actual experience of (2). You may as well tell me my depression is caused by bad humors in my blood, curses from devious sprites, or karmic retribution for past-life sins. I don't particularly care what the 'cause' is, because any hypothetical cause is so unrelated to what my experience of (2) actually is—straightforward phenomenology.

I am depressed—I can use that term to describe myself—because I experience (2). This is our starting point. My specific, idiosyncratic experience of (2) is my depression. This is to say, the way a broken arm is the shattered bone or a viral infection is the presence of parasitically self-propagating packets of genetic material, my depression is my phenomenological experience of (2). Maybe that phenomenological experience could be explained by neurotransmitters in the same way a broken arm can be explained by jumping off a playground slide or a viral infection can be explained by eating bad food. But the cause is not the affliction itself. The depression is the phenomena.

Talking about phenomenology is difficult, because words don't map cleanly onto it. The purpose of language is to do compression on phenomena, make concessions, create a sizable map of discrete entities permitting some simulacrum of phenomena to be socially shared. The word “tree” is meaningful between Joe and Jill because Joe's phenomenological understanding of what “tree” means is close enough to Jill's such that no discrepancy is likely to arise when casually discussing the subject. Extending this, it becomes immediately clear that mental illness is difficult to talk about because it constitutes a phenomenological malady. An individual's experience of mental illness is not similar enough to common experience to be easily shared and discussed the way a “tree” can. In fact, the patient is defined as mentally ill because they are outside the realm of typical experience. Being mentally ill means suffering from a painful abnormal phenomenology, which by its very nature exists outside the realm of shared experience where language is comfortable and highly effective.

There is no way for the mentally ill to go to a psychologist and show them their mental illness as it is, as they experience it. Subjective phenomena is singular and private. The depressed patient can only bring that psychologist words which compress the (massive, fundamental, confusing, exceedingly painful) phenomena of their mental illness into generalized, socially-useful language-space—then they can only hope the nuances are accurately unpacked on the psychologist's end. In fairness, when it comes to mental illness, a psychologist is probably better at unpacking language than most. It's their job. But no matter how talented and empathetic the psychologist is, as soon as they respond, the patient becomes the party responsible unpacking language into phenomenological understanding—a task they have to accomplish in spite of the phenomenological malady which brought them to the psychologist in the first place.

It should go without saying that valid advice which makes perfect sense within the frame of the psychologist’s intuition often has no hope of being accurately unpacked by a depressed patient. Packing-unpacking-packing-unpacking—it easily slips into unnoticed circular patterns, failing to develop either party's understanding of the core topic, that being the patient’s depression and how to treat it. Trying to use talk therapy to resolve depression is like trying to explain Ulysses using facial expressions. There simply isn't enough available nuance.

I think it's unfortunate how little grasp most people have on the concept of their own phenomenology. This might be the primary 'space' where helplessness in the face of mental illness exists. An individual obviously cannot debug issues with their phenomenology if they can't even meaningfully grasp what 'their phenomenology' is. At a minimum, I suspect it has to be understood—really understood—that emotions and feelings are not reducible to common-sense linguistic taxonomy. Consider descriptors like happy, sad, ambivalent, envious, loving. They're just words. They don't map onto clean-cut distinct phenomena, they just gesture toward broad, hazily-delineated fields within the greater continuum of possible phenomena. If you've lived, you've felt all of those things in a thousand different ways. Deeper than language, anyone can find that even simple feelings are multi-faceted textures of experience, constantly in flux, countless ineffable sensations arising and passing faster than they can be noticed—let alone rationally considered or narratively packaged. Trying to treat mental illness without increasing the fidelity of phenomenological perception is like trying to fix a car without recognizing the single engine under the hood as being made of many distinct parts.

In spite of these hurdles, I'm surprisingly optimistic about my grasp of of depression as a concept. Talking about phenomenology isn't impossible, just hard. I believe the perfect words can occasionally resonate, suddenly clarifying previously indescribable experiences. Such resonance is inherently personal—occurring on the fringes of language, in the ways it's experienced by an individual rather than the in role it serves as a social tool—but that doesn't mean there's zero utility in trying to share it. It would be a shame not to share something so meaningful. Most Zen koans are gibberish until they suddenly enlighten a disciple. The chance at conveying profound understanding is worth trying for.

A few months ago, amidst efforts to practice greater mindfulness, I began to notice a recurring phenomenological motif—the vast amount of time I spent with my consciousness fixated to the idea of an indistinct better future for myself. Fantasies about the next place I'll live, the next meal I'll eat, the next semester where I'll finally study every evening and have the marks to show for it. The feeling was deeply familiar, something I knew I'd been doing since childhood. I gave the habit a shorthand name (“future-tanha”)^{1} and casually noted as it occurred over the next few months.

Over that period, it became clear that “future-tanha” was only a subcategory, an acute instance of a more general feeling—a miserable yearning for an indistinct elsewhere, a yearning for the phenomena of elsewhere-itself^{2}. I recognized it everywhere, in childish daydreams and in suicidal ideation, in manic productivity and in mindless scrolling. Attempting to satiate it was why I used to smoke weed every night before bed, why I still pick up my phone to check the internet first thing almost every morning. So many of my reflexive actions are desperate sprints away from the present moment, toward a sedated, indeterminate elsewhere.

Then I realized, softly at first, but with increasing clarity, this is my depression.

The psychic discomfort that had haunted me since I was twelve, the perpetual internal suffering I've spent over a decade managing, is the presence of this feeling.

Coming to terms with this was an experience of profound resonance as discussed above, a moment of lucid conceptual collapse. It quickly became intuitively obvious that the signified 'my depression' pointed to was one-and-the-same as the signified 'my yearning for elsewhere' pointed to. This created immediate opportunities for new linguistic bootstrapping. Before, reflecting on the phenomena of my depression, I only had one direct-match word to play off it—'depression'. This insight gave me two more: 'yearning' and 'elsewhere', in conversation with one another. Suddenly, I could meaningfully recognize my depression not as a background tone, but as a happening—not as something external to my ego, but as something I do.

I began to recognize 'yearning for elsewhere' as a recursive process that had reinforced itself over the course of my entire life. When the moment is uncomfortable, the mind attaches to elsewhere—a fantasy, a distraction—to escape the discomfort. Maintaining such attachment to elsewhere is uncomfortable and taxing. The present gives itself freely—the future or the past must be constructed within the mind on the stage of the present. This is subtly taxing, subtly painful. Doing it continuously has the net effect of making the present continuously more painful, burdened by the pressure and stress of trying to always escape elsewhere. As the present grows painful, the need for escape becomes even greater—imagine a man dying of thirst, trying to drink more and more seawater. Over time, the mind becomes conditioned into a state of perpetual dissatisfaction with the moment of hand, wholly dependent on fantasies and distractions. Eventually, little or no pleasure exists in the present at all.

I'm not going to lay claim to having discovered the phenomenological mechanism by which depression occurs. I can only speak for myself. But this is a mechanism, a mental pattern, which can spiral into a full-blown clinical depression. It has in my case.

This is an unoriginal complaint, but the world we live in today offers more attention-colonizing 'elsewheres' than any other time in history. It's trivial to escape the moment by scrolling, browsing, ruminating on an endless flow of novel information. Any discomfort can be drowned out by quantity alone. It's all too easy to teach the mind to view an unadulterated present as a threat, something to be escaped. But as discussed, the effort of constructing past and future is painful. Once you've ruined your relationship to the present, there is nowhere comfortable left to go.

I haven't solved all my problems by recognizing my depression as yearning for elsewhere. There are still good and bad days, upswings and downswings that last weeks or months. It has, however, given me some faith back. It's exhausting to spend decades exploring your own mind, rotating through the same tired tropes, feeling broken, clinging to various stories and methodologies in hope of uncovering one that would explain it all. Stepping beyond language—depression as a 'sign'—and into phenomenology—depression as a 'happening', a pattern or motif in my phenomenology that occurs—has given me my first truly new lens on it. There's a part of me that's almost ashamed to write that, remembering all the times before where I convinced myself I'd finally figured it out. Perhaps this insight is just another example of that kind of self-delusion. But I won't talk myself out of a good thing. Words that emerge to describe a familiar, recognized phenomenology feel meaningfully distinct from words in search of a phenomenology to attach themselves to.

I suspect all of mental health care would be better if we started with phenomenology rather than language. You are not a language model, you are not a storybook, you are not a text. You are an embodied person. The complete experience that comes with that is your birthright—nothing is inconsequential or invalid. Every blank moment, every ineffable emotion, every intrusive thought, every hot flash, every half-dream, every weird tingle, every lump in your throat, every smile on your face—none of it is disposable. Depression isn't a lack of neurotransmitters, depression is a distortion of all that, a painful and tragic cognitive maladaptation. If we want to solve depression, we have to start deeper. We have to get in touch with the real moment-to-moment, what happens underneath the words we lean into so heavily.

Another depressive might not find the same 'yearning for elsewhere' that I did. Those words might just be a personal Zen koan, something that resonates with me and me alone. But I confidently believe that every depressive's suffering is in some way a happening, a profound phenomena. Recognizing that with as much nuance and understanding as possible is the minimal prerequisite for countering it—you have to know what's happening if you want to figure out how to make it no longer happen.

Recognizing this with increasing conviction has given me some dim long-term hope for the first time in a long time. That, too, is a happening.

footnotes

{1} I didn't care too much if this was an accurate use of “tanha”, but borrowed the word because the feeling manifested as a painful attachment to the future.

{2} I differentiate the “yearning for elsewhere” from “tanha” broadly, because where tanha attaches itself to many things (perhaps all things), this feeling is defined by its relation to the category of outside the present moment. I could have called it “elsewhere-tanha”, keeping in line with “future-tanha”, but freeing myself from my concerns about butchering Pali makes this all a little easier to discuss.

{3} I've begun to read Gendlin's classic book “Focusing”. What I experienced seems like a textbook case of what he describes as a “felt shift”. I haven't finished the book, so I can't unequivocally recommend it yet, but if this sort of thing interests you it's likely worth checking out.

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Thoughts From Reading Ramblings 3

Thank you for sharing.

It is interesting to read another recommend having a crisis checklist. I had independently come to the same conclusion after an incident with a grandparent.

There was a situation where they were expressing stroke-like symptoms, which led to an ambulance trip. After the initial symptoms, before the EMTs arrived, the grandparent regained full functionality as if nothing had gone wrong. It was bizarre, and resulted in the EMTs arriving with us only being able to verbally explain what had happened.

On the car ride home, I quickly created an emergency checklist in my notes app and pinned it.

• don't panic
• designate someone to record everything
• designate someone to call 911
• don't hesitate to call 911
• designate someone to get the contact info for the person recording and have them email/text it to me so I can ask them for the recording later
• perform after action report to determine how to improve this process for next time

This list draws inspiration from standard first aid training and fiction literature.

When the symptoms disappeared, it was very concerning. What was the cause? Is it likely to happen again?

We didn't really expect the symptoms to go away quickly, so it makes sense that I didn't think to record things at the time to be analyzed later.

This brings to the forefront: what is it appropriate to record?

Whipping out my phone to record the symptoms and possible last moments of a loved one does not inspire good feelings about having to implement this in practice. However, what if the symptoms didn't go away? What if a recording of the episode could be used to assist in treatment? It would make sense to push past discomfort and gather the data that would supplement or discredit eye witness testimony of events.

I have lots I can say about the topic of privacy in our advancing digital age. This is not that article.

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Everyone should also pick up a craft that they do for themselves. Creating something physical with the sweat of one's brow, creating from nothing, taking something raw and turning it into a work worth more than the sum of its parts.

It is an emotive statement. At the same time, I sometimes feel left out that my works are primarily programming rather than physical creation. A program I write will affect pixels on a screen which physically emit light, so it's not like I have zero claim to physical creation. I do not want to attribute intent that is not present, I just want to keep typing the stuff that comes to my mind.

Wokeness has adjusted the way I think. Language is fascinating, being able to shape the actions of others by a low damage audio spell rather than relying on might-makes-right fisticuffs. The right phrase could get another human to give you a loaf of bread, or make them punch you in the face. It is possible to say the wrong thing, and people have created guides on how to avoid doing so.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/bias-free-communication https://developers.google.com/style/inclusive-documentation

How far do I go?

I can't claim to have read these guides entirely, but I have better attention to these themes than most I'd say.

A coworker said today that “we could have a powwow later to look into this”. I noticed at the time but didn't “call them out on it” and mention that the term is considered an offensive appropriation of a cultural term.

Is it my place to police what others say? My coworker doesn't have malicious intent when they say they want to have a meeting later using a word that they been exposed to as normal for a majority of their life.

Is it too late to take corrective action? To restore balance, I obviously must schedule a reminder to send a message to the coworker on Monday, mentioning that they used the wrong word over 50 hours in the past.

It seems that the best course of action is “if they say it again, I'll mention it”. Failing to act/delaying is also something to be cautious of, but in this situation I thinking waiting is an acceptable response.

Consider these examples from the Google guide

👍Before launch, give everything a final check for completeness and clarity. 👎Before launch, give everything a final sanity-check.

👍There are some baffling outliers in the data. 👎There are some crazy outliers in the data.

👍It slows down the service, causing a poor user experience until the queue clears. 👎It cripples the service, causing a poor user experience until the queue clears.

👍Replace the placeholder in this example with the appropriate value. 👎Replace the dummy variable in this example with the appropriate value.

Software is filled with biased terms. Some people bring contention when the default name for a new git branch gets changed from master to main. Another one I notice a lot is whitelist/blacklist where allowlist and denylist should be preferred.

It takes time to adapt to such large changes, to tread a new path in our brains until it becomes the new default. Technology and wokeness to this degree has only risen recently, and old behaviours are hard to overwrite.

---

The emergency checklist also mentions performing an after action report. In a story I am reading, the protagonist is part of Ranger teams that go out and fight monsters and protect humanity and stuff. Part of the training and being a Ranger is paperwork and meetings, including discussions on how the fight with that hydra went and how to do better next time.

I don't have much to say beyond “this thing made me think of this other thing”. This started as me writing an article because I appreciate reading the articles of others. This is my contribution, then, until I can follow through on some ideas I've had for other articles.

I am reading a bunch of stuff right now. I should create a book list and mention that I, too, liked reading Wolf Brother and appreciate the cover art.

My existing notes say more on the subject than I can properly articulate.

# Teamy @ Teamy-Desktop in ~\OneDrive\Documents\Ideas [02:06:53]
$ rg -i "i should"
I should.md
1:I should make a tool to aggregate all my "I should" notes.
9:In most cases, things "I should" do are more aptly described as "Things I think would be cool to see, and I could build it myself if I took the time to do so.".
$ rg -i "i should" | Measure-Object

Count             : 71

I have ran out of thought things that spawned for the initial premise of this article, +time4bed, so goodnight.

comics and coffee

lright, I got covid again. Might as well use this time to write some reviews on what comics I've read lately. But don't even think about starting this article until I've had my coffee.

Mmmm... You may proceed.

Roaming

by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki Published by Drawn And Quarterly Roaming tells the story of three Canadian girls in their first year of college, on a 5-day trip to New York City. I won't say too much of the story, because I want you to read this book, but it deals with only the kind of bullshit that really happens to 19-year-olds, in friendship, fast romance, and sitting next to a weird guy at the airport.

Every page is a pleasure to look at, drawn in a bubbly style that always works. The book is brilliantly coloured with only two pastel hues that create a dreamy and glowing New York City. From front to back, I was floored by the colouring.

The city is almost explicitly the fourth character in the book, depicted sometimes in near photorealistic drawings, and then swirling collages of artwork, landmarks, and people. In a way the depiction of the city is the same as the character studies: We start with the outward identity, the mask the person wears. As we learn about the person, we see more of their insides, what makes them work, their more private self.

Roaming does that thing which so many stories strive to but fall short: depict truth. The truth of young passion, friendship, and wonder, with all its jagged edges and corners. The main characters of Dani, Zoe, and Fiona are distinct personalities that are at times loveable, at times not so, but constantly believable to the point that you can only empathize.

If you are only going to read one comic this year, make it Roaming.

Clippings

by Gabby Golee Self-Published A brilliant little comic with really expressive art that is oozing cuteness and weirdness. Dealing with the awkward relationship between two girls living in a crumbling Torontonian house, I highly recommend buying this here if you want a cute zine by a Torontonian artist who deserves some attention. They also sell some killer stickers on their site.

The Complete Peanuts 1981-1982

By Charles M Schulz, Seth Published by Fantagraphics I don't have to tell you about Peanuts, or Charlie brown, or Snoopy. You already know about them. What I will comment on is the absolute mastery and merits of the daily strip in this volume. By the 80's peanuts had been running in the papers for 30 years, and Schulz displays an unrivalled ability to write consistent, witty jokes and fun storylines into his strip. By the point in time this book collects, he is far past fully developed in both his writing and drawing skills. As a daily strip, there is little put to waste in the drawing, each line is deliberate and there isn't a penstroke more than there needs to be.

One of the hidden abilities of the daily strip is that they collect into volumes so nicely- This book is the most approachable a comic book can possibly get. You can pick it up, read as much or as little as you like, and put it down. You can start reading at the beginning, middle, or end, and not be ruining anything for yourself. Unlike some popular manga like One Piece which boasts over one thousand chapters of continuous story, there is no barrier to entry for Peanuts or similar daily strips. Just start anywhere.

The foreword by Lynn Johnston, (creator of For Better or For Worse, as well as a personal friend to Schulz) is particularly touching and insightful. Her writing paints a picture of an artist obsessed, in melancholy and in love with his craft. Seth's design work on this book, as the other volume of complete peanuts I've gotten my paws on, is also top notch, putting together a hardcover that just looks good wherever it's sitting, that be on a coffee table or part of a collection.

While reading through this volume, I watched Schulz's interview with Charlie Rose and a specific moment I think aged quite well.

Rose: You are a real artist, in your eye. Schulz: You think so? Rose: You think so. Schulz: No. Rose: You don't think cartooning is real art? Schulz: Yes, but, not many cartoons lie into the next generation. Rose: Ah, that's true. Schulz: And that's probably the best definition of art isn't it? Does it speak to succeeding generations?...

Well, I'm sorry to do this Sparky, but I'm going to have to issue a correction on that one. If you want a solid coffee-table book that is witty, but also innocent and pure-fun, look no further.

The Good News Bible: The complete Deadline strips of Shaky Kane

By Shaky Kane Published by Breakdown Press Get ready for a wild one. From 1988 to 1995, Deadline magazine published some radical stuff (see: Tank Girl). This book is a collection of gigantic pages of kirby-esque, punk art that explodes on each page in glorious black and white. The oversized pages really do a lot for me, seeing the art in such fidelity conveys the pure attitude and weight of the drawing.

This book heavily features the 'A-Men', a group formerly NYPD, they have decided that their duty as cops should extend to the spiritual world, enforcing a Christian-facist rule on the city of New York. They take on such heroic tasks as beating on people in their own homes and monitoring all the city's pornography in their massive goon-cave.

Other heroic characters include Metal Messiah, who devours his worshippers with his iron jaws, Insect Erectus, The Sadistic Prowler, and your Pal, Shaky Kane.

Along with provocative and deeply satirical subject matter, I'm hypnotized by the drawing in this book and probably will be for some time, though i probably wouldn't recommend it.

Hunter X Hunter Vol.1

By Yoshihiro Togashi Published by Viz Hunter X Hunter got it's hooks in me pretty quickly with the drawings of wild beasts and simple enough concept. It's pretty formulaic, but doesn't give you any space to get bored. It definitely feels like a spin on Dragon Ball that's original enough to keep you from walking away, which is all that really matters.

I love the idea of the character's power being rooted in their attunement to nature and ability to do things like tell when a storm is coming, or a beast's emotions. I'll be cracking into Vol.2 whenever I feel like getting into another long Shonen Jump series.

This past September, I finally took a pottery workshop that I had been eyeing for a few years. This article kicks off what I hope will be a series of hobby review articles.

The Inspiration

Pottery is one of those hobbies that I always thought was cool, but reached a new interest peak for me during the pandemic. During that time, my social media feed was filled with creators, like the effortlessly cool Lisa Asano, showing off their works. Additionally, the concept of creating things that can be used in everyday life deeply speaks to me and my cottagecore delusions.

Prior Experience Skill Level: 1/5

I had previously taken one pottery class in 2022 where we used hand-building techniques. I did learn a bit about attaching during that session, but aside from that, nothing really transferred over. That experience was frustrating and my pottery pieces were underwhelming. This allowed me to have low expectations going into wheel-throwing pottery. I have also done those pottery painting things and similarly, my expectations did not match the reality of what I was able to paint. All this to say, I took a more reserved approach going into this one.

Week 1 – Throwing

Although I went in with an open mind and low expectations, I could not have anticipated what it was really like to throw pieces on a pottery wheel. Social media creators and other media we consume make it look so effortless. Let me be the first to say, it is HARD WORK.

We started the session by observing our instructor demonstrate technique and form while creating a bowl. Then we were each allocated 3 clumps of clay to make our own creations.

First, you need to centre the ball of clay on the pottery wheel bat (disc that goes on top of the wheel). You do this by smacking down the clay onto the bat. Even this very beginning step can take a few tries, but is integral to your piece surviving the wheel. After your clay has been placed, you'll need to press it down into a mound, cone it back up in height, and then gently guide it back down. This felt redundant but I'm told it helps make the clay uniform. On my first attempt, I felt like I was losing so much clay to my hands.

It's worth noting here that there is a proper form for wheel throwing. Your hands will react differently depending on the step you're on. However, for the most part, you have to be hunched over the wheel with your elbows locked to your thighs so that you are steady and don't get moved around by the wheel as you try to shape the clay. Holding this position for almost 2 hours non-stop is not to be underestimated.

Next, potters need to determine where the centre of their mound of clay is and poke a small hole. If well-centred, you'll then continue to press down into the clay until you create a tunnel. It was a bit hard to gauge how far down to go in order to create a stable base for your piece that isn't too thin or thick.

From there, potters will open, “pull”, and then shape the walls. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the best upper body or hand strength, but this can be deceivingly hard. The clay wants to fight you as you manipulate it into a hollow structure. You also have to be hyper-aware of the amount of pressure you are applying to both the inside and outside of the walls. Due to the centrifugal nature of the wheel, the clay wants to flare out. This means you need to apply differing pressure on each side to achieve the shape you want. In the case of a tall product like a mug, you almost need to overcorrect and pull towards the centre to get that wall height.

As you can see in the photos below (taken at week 2 after they had dried a bit), it took me a few tries to get the technique of pulling the walls so that the base wasn't too thick and the walls had some height.

Taking each pot off the bat also required some technique and finesse. In some cases, you can see where my hands misshaped the pots as I was taking them off. As we kept saying in our class, it made for an “organic” look.

Week 2 – Trimming & Attaching

Aside from the skill of attaching, I didn’t really know what to expect for this class. Going in, I was under the impression that nothing more was needed to be done to our pots. Unless of course, we wanted to add handles and other attachments of that nature.

Our instructor informed us that trimming your pots is a crucial step, and some pottery guilds won’t even fire your pots in the kiln if they are not trimmed. Pots that are not trimmed have the potential to explode in the kiln and damage others’ pots.

When you trim your pots, you place them upside down on the wheel and shave away the bottom to get rid of excess clay. Additionally, you make them smooth and level so that you do not damage the surfaces you place them on. You can also take the opportunity to further shape or add grooves into your pieces at this stage. I opted to trim excess, carve out some rings, and attach a little flower for my pieces.

Week 3 – Glazing

For this session, we had a separate instructor to go through glazing with us. We started the session by reflecting on what we had learned in weeks 1 & 2, and how we felt about the process. A lot of us recounted how wheel throwing was much harder than we expected, but also meditative in a way.

This instructor also said something rather profound that I wish I had been able to write down in that moment. The sentiment of what she said was that often times in art, things might not turn out the way we were planning in our heads. Sometimes we just have to lean in and accept that the art may have a better plan for itself. She said it more eloquently of course, but it is something I’m carrying with me coming out of this experience.

To start, we took some wet sandpaper to our pieces and filed down any sharp or rough spots on our half-baked pots. After tidying that up with slightly damp sponges, we went in and marked rings around our pots in pencil. The point of this step is to create a ~1cm margin from the bottom for the glaze to stop at. If the glaze runs too far down the pot, it can cause it to stick to the kiln shelf and potentially break when removed. Any areas below the pencil line were covered in wax that we painted on to prevent the glaze from running too far. In the kiln, both the pencil and wax will burn off or melt away.

Next, we were introduced to underpainting. This is where you would do any detailed colouring of your pieces that would go under the general glaze. In my case, I painted the little flower I had attached to one of my bowls. After this, I protected the flower with a layer of wax.

From here, we moved on to learning about the glazes and the techniques that can be used. When it comes to the glazes, they actually intermix in unexpected ways. Unlike how you would mix paint using colour theory to get what colours you want, glazes come with an element of surprise. Although they provided us with chips to show how colours might come out depending on how you layer them, you may still get an unexpected result.

For example, there was a glaze called “celadon”, and one called “oil spill”. My tallest pot is dunked in the celadon glaze, and partially dipped in oil spill. On the colour chips, celadon and oil spill are bright cyan and black, respectively. However, you can see that the pot came out more blueish-teal with a cobalt crackled detailing on the rim as a result of this layering combo. Moreover, if I had reversed the order of the glaze layers, I would have gotten another look entirely.

In the case of my flower bowl, the exterior was meant to come out a cream colour with a maroon interior. Even though it didn’t go to plan, I don’t mind how it turned out.

Final Thoughts

I’m really glad I gave this a try! Although I played it safe, I’m quite happy with how my pots came out. I have already employed them to hold a variety of items.

I think I would take another workshop or two before I got a membership and went at it alone. Despite there being a decent learning curve and a lot of risk involved, I enjoyed the process and it taught me a lot about myself as well.

Pottery wheel throwing is something everyone should try at least once if they have the means to. However, it has a higher price point to entry than most hobbies, and can be physically demanding in an unexpected way. For this reason, I rate it a 9/10.

(i) Been thinking about trauma and pain and doing things. Been thinking about the mystery of being a child and also trying to be mindful. Been watching the way waves ripple through my nervous system. I couldn’t always do this. Been reverse-engineering what I can and trying to watch what I can’t. Have you ever focused so hard you had a headache, been so sad you feel sick?

(ii) Infants don’t know anything. In a very literal sense, they are helpless. Exiting blank quiet of the womb into sound and light. Who could have a chance? Mother feeds them. Much has been written on this. Read Freud. Personally, I think Winnicott did it a little better, but that’s a digression. Either way, we’ve built models, formally or casually, of how this goes. The models tell us that the infant knows nothing of symbols and the logic which directs them. Blob of ineffectual id. Then it learns somehow — movement, language, mastery. It becomes an adult; a neurotic adult, maybe, but a real adult who can talk and walk and chew gum all at the same time. This doesn’t really answer the biggest question: how?

(iii) Chomsky wrote about a ‘universal grammar’. We’re hardwired for something like language. There’s just no other way we could learn something like that so quickly, so robustly. Anyway, this piece isn’t really directly about that, but it’s a good staging ground — what does it mean to implement the universal grammar? That’s what I’m thinking about. Some kids learn mandarin and some kids learn english and some kids learn sign language. Sometimes, adults also learn new languages. It takes them a lot longer. Why can’t they do it the same way?

(iv) Some people have a little voice in their head. Some don’t. When I talk, or when I write, it’s usually an echo of what’s in my head, it’s a few moments behind this voice, the ever-present microphone of the ego. Where did it come from?

(v) So everyone can’t use language at first, then they learn it. During that quiet period, during a time none of us remember, there’s a process of trial and error, single words and broken sentences. The incentives for the child are immense. Every new word is mother’s delight, ever new sentence is a spell, the ability to speak will into existence. The world is still soft and malleable, without distinction between inner and outer. The child wants language, the child needs language. What tools do they have to work with?

(vi) Consider habits and conditioning. Wake up to the sound of an alarm clock every day, a pleasant chime from your phone. That pleasant chime, heard midday after four months of waking to it, will not sound pleasant. The body will react. Call it cortisol, call it bad energy, call it small-t trauma, you’ll know it when you feel it. The nervous system, the bodymind, the soma, the broader space of individual phenomenology — I will call it the nervous system, but I am not picky — has routines. Think about something you didn’t like as a kid. Why didn’t you like it?

(vii) Well, you probably thought it felt bad. Something happened, in/on the nervous system, which you would rather didn’t happen again. Taste of broccoli. Feeling of water on skin. But if the tradeoff was worthwhile enough, you’d do it anyway. You don’t want to take a bath, but your mom will let you have dessert after you take your bath. Maybe that’s worth it. Primitive economics of valence. What is the valence of language? You may protest: language doesn’t have a feeling. I ask: how would you even know if it does?

(viii) Assume language could hurt. Every time you employ the ability to use words, experience nausea in the stomach, mild. You’d still talk. Less, perhaps, but you’d still talk. The tradeoffs of being able to communicate are worth mild discomfort. But your life would be worse. Having to pay that price, small as it is, is worse than not having the upside for free. Consider again, the alarm clock nervous system routine. You have hijacked a part of behavior, the time of waking, at the cost of painful association. Pleasant chime is now stress-spike. You believe this is a good deal and chose to pay it. How are children supposed to make those choices?

(ix) Children are naive and do not know the price they’re paying. Again, the world is fluid to them. In this blind stage, they arrange the basic economics of phenomenology. What was once noise, gibberish, is shaped into an ineffable net of associations. It becomes language. As established, the incentive to learn to do this is strong. But the cost is unknown. You know, as an adult, that mild nausea is probably a fair price to pay for language. Alarm chime causing stress is an inconsequential price to pay for a regular waking time. A child has no idea how much language is supposed to hurt, but they will almost certainly pay that price for it. Soon after, they will not remember what existing felt like before that price was constantly being paid. How many times a day do you use language?

(x) If language does hurt, I don’t think you’d even notice. The pain would just be background noise. Life would be worse in a vague, ineffable way. Children don’t have the capability or foresight to intelligently assess tradeoffs. They have a blank-slate nervous system, a massive continuum of sensory experience to organize and package into symbols. They have countless things they need to learn, things that will become foundational long before conscious adult memory begins. I am talking about things like movement and language. Do you see where this is going?

(where it's going) I think that it’s very possible that variations in individual-to-individual hedonic baseline is connected to the pre-symbolic, pre-memory establishment of routines and skills. I have used language as a toy example because it’s obviously foundational to thought and experience, but it can still be intelligibly discussed. Movement would be a similar example. Children receive massive reward, both externally-granted and innate, for developing these sorts of skills. There are countless overlapping “foundational” skills like this; an intuition for passing time, acknowledgement of height as dangerous, ability to perform mental math. There are likely more that are impossible to speak of clearly. All of this will be learned, foundation established, before the individual can reflect on how they’re going about it, if the tradeoff is worth it or if it’s worth delaying this skill such that it can be learned in an alternative, less-painful fashion. Does adding in my head have to be this difficult, driven by an engine of stressful clenching and clinging? Am I coming to associate language with playful joy, or am I desperately trying to figure out how to communicate I don’t like that decoration I can see from the edge of my crib? These are not questions children can ask of themselves or of the world. The suffering inflicted by “painful implementation” becomes the lowest, most established grade of trauma. The adult never knows that these things are not supposed to feel this way; the dampening effect that painful implementation of foundational routines has on their psyche. The pain does not even register as pain, less alone pain from a specific, identifiable source. The pain is just a feature of the lens through which they experience phenomena, reality. They may be intelligent, effective. Painful implementations are not necessarily poor-performing. But they hurt, and I do not know how to save infants from them. How can you tell an infant to be careful when learning to speak? Does it hurt you to ask?

In this demonstration, I will definitely prove that “Free Falling” is about the 1897 novel titled Dracula, and that [redacted].

Lyrics

• She's a good girl loves her mama Loves Jesus and America too [”she” is obviously referencing Lucy Westenra who has a close relationship with her mother. Lucy is also a devout christian like most people at the time, and enough of a friend with a texan (Quincy) for him to ask for her hand, therefore she must love America if only by proxy]

• She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis [Obviously referencing St Elvis, the pre-patron Saint of Ireland — she probably has some irish origins]

• Loves horses and her boyfriend too [Lucy has been depicted as being an animal lover and she also loved Arthur Holmwood, her fiancé/boyfriend]

• It's a long day, living in Reseda [The count is trying to throw us off, but his child brain is no match for my man brain, and I have two believable theories; 1. Reseda is a famous plant native to Europe and the Carpathians 2. This is a reference to the book Vampire Mademoiselle Reseda, a bit more obscure reference, but that book came out in 1891; it must still have been fresh in the count's memory]

• There's a free way, running through the yard [Being a bit cryptic here, but nothing too ambiguous. The free way must refer to a way that is free, way as in manner. And the yard is obviously the graveyard/Chapel from the Castle where the count and his mistresses rest. So here he is simply saying he languishes the times when he was — in a carefree way — strolling through his castle. I will explain the timeline when we look at the refrain.]

• I'm a bad boy, 'cause I don't even miss her I'm a bad boy, for breaking her heart [If you have read the novel, the count is indeed a bad boy. And everything indicates that he did not miss Lucy; after he turned her he did not preoccupy himself with her. Furthermore, turning Lucy into a vampire most likely broke her heart — she had to be stabbed in the heart as a result. Here the count may be showing some remorse; it will be explained soon.]

• And I'm free, I'm free fallin' Yeah I'm free, free fallin' [All will be explained here. This free fall happened when the crate that the count was in was thrown off the carriage, right before he was slayed. He is in a free fall and he is reflecting on his past actions, showing remorse, which are in the verses of the song.]

• All the vampires, walkin' through the valley Move west down Ventura boulevard [This is referencing his wives, who went down the valley to meet Van Helsing and Mina. The second part moving west is an obvious reference to the sun setting, and Ventura with a capital V can only be a from the old italian meaning of fate/destiny. Putting both together we have the remarkably poetic metaphor telling that his wives “set down the boulevard of fate/destiny” a euphemism for their deaths. Here he is clearly saying that he regrets the passing of his wives.]

• And all the bad boys are standing in the shadows And the good girls are home with broken hearts [This solidifies my theory, he himself is standing (or lying depending on the frame of reference) in the shadows of his box, falling, while his wives are at home — in the chapel of the castle — with wooden stakes through their hearts — quite literally broken hearts. You've had my thoughts on the chorus, so let's move on to the last verse.]

• I wanna glide down over Mulholland I wanna write her name in the sky [Here the first part is about the count in his box gliding down the numerous rivers leading to his Castle. Why he refers to it as Mulholland is a mystery; the specifics of his inner workings escape me. Maybe a private joke. The second part is probably a delusion of the count; he expects to repent from his crimes against Lucy by writing her name from the heavens; he will go straight to hell.]

• I'm gonna free fall out into nothin' Gonna leave this world for a while [This is plain obvious, after his free fall, he is to be slayed and turn into dust; into nothin'. The second sentence is either a euphemism for being gone for good, or prophesizing that that was not the end for the count, and he is still alive...]

Instrumentals

This part will be quick, if the count is still alive, then I might be in great danger writing this article. I cannot believe what I might have uncovered. I need to settle down... Let's first look at the chord progression:

As you can see from this high-quality pic, there are only three chords in this song. D, D4 and A. D is just D. D4 is a misnomer it is either D_sus4 or D_add11, in any case, we can group it in the D family of chords using the solmization system and have it be R_e. A is just A. Putting everything together we get D-R_e-A. Impossible! That's the guitar part, the bass part roughly follows it but a whole step down, in C, but with one less chord change. This becomes C, follower by an inverted C_sus4add6. As D4, we'll group C_sus4add6 in the C chord family and call it Do or Ut. In the beginning, the guitar plays without the bass, and after a rest the bass joins, we shall put the guitar part first. We then have D-Re-A-C-Ut. Then the bass repeats. But writing that first bass part in another manner — composed of F-G-A^# — for instance with A^# as the tonal center, we get A^#_sus6, we'll group it in the A chord family (A^# belongs in the family) and call it La, again using the solmization system. Again since the bass part repeats before the guitar part we'll just put it at the end of what we already have and get: D-R_e-A-C-U_t-La. I cannot believe it... I need to leave this place and hide from him, if he still is...

---

Disclaimer: In an effort to combat misinformation, I must come clean: The first bass chord, which is of course arpeggiated, is not a simple C major chord, but a C_{sus4omit1dominant}. I had to simplify it to C because it would not have spelled Dracula otherwise. All the other chords are technically correct though, but are usually (read: always) written as part of another scale for simplicity, so emphasis on technically correct.

The first part of this article is written by hand. I have included a typed version as an appendix for those that cannot read my writing.

I recently found an old fountain pen I used to have and thought it would be fun to write my next article draft with it. I've always had trouble focusing on things that had a crappy tactile feeling (like writing with a generic ballpoint pen). I can get in the zone easier with a very tactile keyboard or a scratchy mechanical pen. Therefore, I thought it could be beneficial to go back to using a fountain pen again. Go back? It may bewilder you to learn that in school, I was forced to only use a fountain pen, from the French equivalent of grade 4 to grade 10. It was a semi-widespread practice in France in my days. I was kinda surprised to learn that in North America, most people my age have never used a fountain pen or know how to operate one. That those are seen as antiquities or obsolete devices; if you use one, you must be into calligraphy or a rich eccentric person. It is thus my duty to inform the good people of the café on fountain pens, and quickly present a little hobby of mine.

What is a fountain pen?

[drawing with legend]

The handle and barrel —however important— are the least interesting; they only matter for aesthetics and comfort. Then comes the cartridge/cartridge converter; it holds the ink. A cartridge is just a plastic shell holding it, non-refillable and meant to be disposable. Cartridge converters are meant to be refilled using ink bottles. To do so, simply dunk the nib into your ink of choice and activate whatever mechanism is proprietary to your converter. On top of being more eco-friendly, cartridge converters allow you to use as many different inks as your heart desires. Here is a collection of a few of mine :

[Different inks]

The nib

You might have noticed above that other than the colour, the thickness of the lettering also varies; this is where the nib comes in. The nib is arguably the most important part of the pen; it determines the thickness of the line, the style (you can even get italics nibs!), the feedback from the page, flex, ink flow and probably other things I don't know of. There are also different nib materials (steel, gold alloys, titanium, palladium) which might affect all the above. Those things are purely subjective; there are no characteristics that are considered better than others. I like a smooth pen with a fine, medium-fine thickness, just a bit of flex and moderate ink flow. Here are a couple of thicknesses demonstrated below:

[thickness showcase]

As you can see, all three “medium” nibs have different thicknesses; it is similar to clothing, every brand has there own definition of what a medium is.

Common issues

[showcase feathering, ghosting, bleeding]

The issues above can be caused by a couple of things, but the main culprit is usually the paper. If you start using fountain pens, then you will most likely also need to change the type of paper you are using. A couple of recommendations would be anything Rhodia or Clairefountaine and [black red something], usually 80g/m^2.

There are reasons that fountain pens have lost popularity, and it's not just the above. Cost is a big one, pens can get costly, then you have to get the ink, then the cartridge converter... Speaking of ink, refilling is another one: it can get quite messy. Convenience is another big one; fountain pens can be quite fragile, one bad fall and the nib could be damaged. You also have to learn to write with one, but that's easy. Just keep the nib at a consistent angle with respect to the page, avoid rotation and don't apply too much pressure on the page.

The but

But writing with a fountain pen is a very satisfying experience, and having different colours, styles, thicknesses... options is unmatched by regular old ballpoint pens. Your writing will also look sick as hell, and you will also look cool writing — yov mvst fvlfill yovr scribe monk fantasies. I think it gives character to the writing, more so than a ballpoint pen/pencil would. So go out, buy a cheap one and a cartridge, try it out and have some fun.

I've started a lot of printhouse articles, writing thousands and thousands of words. Only two ever made it to publication. Here's excerpts from and information about three unfinished pieces—what inspired them, what I was trying to do with them, and why I didn't complete/publish them.

Musings on Meditation

“It's unfortunate how the term “meditation” has come to signify little more than a vague, self-attending good.”

“approachable corporate mindfulness and ineffable ascetic spiritual gurus create a vague, unexciting definition of meditation. It might be “good for you”, but it's still something your boss wants to you to do off-the-clock, or the project of dedicating your life to keeping your eyes closed. Neither are appealing.”

Background

For the last nine months or so, I've been meditating somewhat regularly, if not quite as diligently as I'd like. Think ~50% of days, split into weeks-long stretches on and off, usually for 10-25 minutes. Disciplined meditation is incredible; it's had the highest time-investment to life-impact ratio of any habit I've picked up. My phenomenology is noticeably more pleasant when I'm on a solid meditation streak; 30+ minutes of meditation substantially softens the tone of the rest of the day. However, it's hard for me to meditate when things aren't going well, and my mind is racing. It get frustrating when I'm in a downswing, where my sits aren't as productive and soothing as they were last week. These frustrations make it harder to regularly meditate—something I want to overcome (writing this out explicitly is helpful, honestly)

What I was trying to do

This essay was going to be a reflection on what meditation means to me, personally, because it's such an overloaded term. My perspective on meditation is heavily informed by Nick Cammarata, Rob Burbea, and Culdasa, with a smattering of other influences and my own beginner insights. The thesis was “Meditation is awareness for the sake of awareness”. Being aware (conscious, alive, having qualia) is the fundamental constant across anyone's existence. To me, meditation is about looking at this awareness, and becoming more skillful at managing it. Look beyond its content, toward its shape—where is your attention? How did it get there? How does it move? How much control do “you” have over it? In the space of your phenomenological experience, where are “you”? What's the dividing line between content and shape? By developing the mental tools and insights needed to explore these questions in a pre-verbal fashion, meditation can enable somebody to profoundly transform their phenomenological experience/inner life.

What went wrong

I tried to start by looking at popular western conceptions of meditation—a dichotomy between new-age mindfulness corporate productivity sludge and inscrutably boring eastern religious practice. I got bored writing this, and it felt like too bold of a claim, one that I couldn't fully pin down and defend. I thought I needed it to back up the validity of my own perspective; but my own perspective felt too amateruish to defend. I don't even meditate every day myself, I rarely sit for more than 20 minutes, etc. Self-doubt. I still do love meditation, and hope to work through the obstacles that can pull me away from it. I'm happy to discuss it whenever with whoever.

Coffee with a Friend, Apple in your Mind

“Even while considering the 'same thing'—an apple—his phenomenological experience of is profoundly different from yours. Extending the skeptical implications, you must suspect that the entire conversation you've shared that morning, the friendship you've shared all those years, the memories you'll carry forever, have been processed, experienced, and remembered using different frameworks, different techniques, different methods. All of it has been, on a phenomenological level, very different. Yet in spite of that you continue to speak—you're completely intelligible to one another, you have a theory of mind for each other, you believe you're doing the 'same thing'; having a conversation about topics you're both familiar with. All somehow in the shadow of the fact that your internal worlds are alien to one another.”

“You and your friend can both entertain the 'information' of 'apple', but you organize and operate on it in profoundly different ways. The phenomenological experience of engaging with the abstract concept of 'an apple' differs between you two.”

“To be human means being subject to external sensory input and internal emotional feeling; having access to subjective-but-generally-reliable memory and introspective power of thought and calculation. We all know this, intuitively, and we have a mental model of it—'what it means to be human'—intuited from our phenomenological experience. This model is the expected form of an arbitrary moment of experience; we'll call it our phenomenological frame. The information within the frame varies from moment to moment. Sometimes we're happy or sad, warm or cold, tired or wired. Memories and associations are constantly being created, reinforced, and forgotten. We can consider simulations of arbitrary moments we’ve never experienced, like being a pirate hundreds of years ago or living on mars in the future. Phenomenological frame is the structure underneath all the possibilities variety of information—it's not 'the way you are', but 'the way you are the ways you are'.”

“a common communicative mistake: using our individual phenomenological frame, or even a subset of it, in the place of the space of all human phenomena when communicating with another human. The reason for this seem intuitively obvious: we can model and use our individual phenomenological frame. By definition, we cannot model and use the space of all human phenomena. If we could, then it would be included in our own phenomenological frame. When working to communicate, of course we're more likely to err on using what we can rather than deferring to what we can't”

“If you protest this by saying “no, of course I don't think my phenomenological frame can be applied to all humans” you're probably defining phenomenological frame in a more precise manner than I am. Do your casual-conversation theories of mind for everyone you meet account for the variety of possible ways they visualize an apple, or any other arbitrary concept? The variety of possible phenomenological norms by which your words travel from their eardrums to their conscious mind, and by which they muster and respond with a spoken phrase of their own? Almost certainly not. When you conceive of their experience, you almost certainly use a frame almost exactly like your own. You have no other choice.”

Background

I'm very interested in phenomenology and consciousness. I think the difficulty of objectively studying these topics has left them woefully under-explored—it's frightening to address how little we really know about the fundamentals of our existence. This essay was my first serious attempt to write an essay on phenomenology.

What I was trying to do

You may have seen a image floating around, asking what you see in your head when asked to “picture an apple”. There's a range of six images, from completely blank to a photo-realistic apple. The point of the meme is to expose who has 'aphantasia'—the inability to generate mental imagery. If you don't have aphantasia, you might be shocked to find out others do. Similarly, some people (including myself) have a strong, loud, ever-present internal monologue, while others never think in language. In this paper, I wanted to use these known, highly-obvious phenomenological differences—the ability to generate mental imagery vs the inability to, the habit of thinking in language vs not—as a jumping-off point to consider what other sorts of phenomenological differences may exist between individuals. I marvelled at humanity's ability to communicate in spite of known phenomenological diversity, and hypothesized that phenomenological diversity may be way broader than we know; by the nature of being subjective and pre-linguistic, it's extremely difficult to accurately assess how your phenomenology compares to somebody else's. Most of the body of the paper was developing a concept I called “phenomenological frame”; the hypothetical moment-to-moment constants of an individual's phenomenology, independent of content. For example, if you think via an internal monologue of English language, this would be a part of your phenomenological frame—the actually words being thought at any given moment would not. I proposed the idea that many miscommunications are caused by individuals implicitly assuming that the space of possibilities in their phenomenological frame is equivalent to the space of possibilities across all human phenomenological frames.

What went wrong

I had a lot of fun writing this one, but couldn't pull it all together. Every paragraph opened up new questions, many without obvious answers or even obvious places to do research. “Phenomenological frame” seemed too loose. I didn't feel like I could articulate clear distinction between the “frame” I was describing and the “content” therein, or explain how phenomenological frame evolves and expands. I worried that I was just clumsily, accidentally plagiarizing ideas, since I hadn't rigorously studied mainstream phenomenology. These doubts were magnified when I started reading Andy Clark's (brilliant) Surfing Uncertainty, a very technical book about predictive processing and embodied intelligence. Clark's book explored similar ideas to what this essay was talking about, but with much greater rigour—decades of research and a robust, consistent language that avoids the ambiguity of my 'phenomenological frame'. All that said, I had a lot of fun thinking about these ideas. I didn't finish Surfing Uncertainty, as it moved into deeper discussions of neuroscience, complexity and nuance I wasn't motivated enough to deal with. But if I get around to it, I'll definitely come back to take another look at these ideas. Phenomenology is a topic I can't seem to pull myself away from.

I'll Meet You in The Middle of our Language

“There's nowhere correct to start, so I'll ask you pause for a moment and take a deep breath. Feel it in your nose. Think about your day. Think about waking up tucked under the covers of your bed, the morning light streaming in through a nearby window. Dust floating in the sunbeams. Hold the image in your mind. Re-read the statement above. Then we'll try again. I'm talking about a room, maybe ten feet by ten, painted in a cool blue. The bed is queen-sized, mattress atop a bare black metal frame tucked into the corner across from a two-door closet. It's made up with a fitted beige sheet, a top sheet, a fuzzy navy-blue polyester blanket, and a heavy white comforter wrapped in a tartan-patterned comforter cover fastened by a series of small white plastic snap buttons each spaced several inches apart. You're tucked between the sheets, on top of the fitted sheet and underneath the top sheet and the blanket and the comforter wrapped in its comforter cover. Across from the bed and visible is a desk, black, Ikea. The desk is speckled with chips and cracks, pinpoints of damage where the cheap particleboard construction, underneath the paint is visible. Next to the desk is a bookshelf, five feet tall and eighteen inches wide... I could go on. But at some point, I'd return to the light, to the dust in the sunbeams—and no matter how closely I guided you, you wouldn't be in the same place I am.”

“This essay is paradoxical. It attempts to articulate the insufficiency of language in language. To succeed, it must fail. I haven't convinced you of anything unless you come to understand you're not reading what I'm writing. More optimistically, this essay is an attempt to reach out, as far as an essay can. It will strain to stretch over an unspeakable chasm, till something breaks. It hopes that you will see a pattern in the scattered pieces.”

“Everything we experience takes place in the context of our own ineffable internal world, and everything we experience is our primary source of truth [...] words are not fungible with experience. It doesn't matter how many words I give you, I can't give you my ineffable internal world—and you can't give me yours, either. We can only give each other words.”

“Every sentence that comes out of your mouth is a JPEG file crushed into oblivion, a smeared mess that only vaguely gestures toward the form of the image it wants to represent. This isn't your fault, of course.”

Background

In writing the last essay, I found myself more and more moved by the way language bridges gaps between idiosyncratic phenomenology. It seemed miraculous. At the same time, I know that language doesn't map perfectly onto phenomenological experience—it's a social technology, lossy compression. What does this imply about our linguistic culture, and the intellectual work done within it?

What I was trying to do

Much of what was intended for this paper was eventually expressed in my published “Why I'm Skeptical of Language”. I recommend reading that if you haven't. This paper opened up in a personal and subjective fashion, very self-aware of its paradoxical position, using language to express the limitations of language. I wanted to display how I reached the worldview i'm at now, in part to convey how miraculous it is that we can communicate at all. This was going to move into my own theory of theory, which is something I'd like to save for another essay, or when I return to this one.

What went wrong

Not having written “Why I'm Skeptical of Language”, I struggled to develop and clearly express the ideas included there. Even after getting those ideas on-paper (much of what I have reads like a longer-form version of “Why I'm Skeptical of Language”), I felt a lot of pressure when theorizing about theory. Moving up meta-levels seemed to demand greater rigour. To comment on what theory does, how it works, I felt I better really understand it. To make this worse, I wasn't sure if my ideas were original, or just retreading old ground. I got lost going down rabbit holes, trying to make sure all of my implicit assumptions were defensible, terrified of leaving some naive hole in the middle of such a vulnerable, ambitious essay. I'm saying less about this one because out of all of these, it's the one I'm most interested in completing. Writing this summary, reflecting on what I was able to express in “Why I'm Skeptical of Language”, I feel more confident I could wrap this essay up nicely. It might not be perfect, but blog posts don't have to be.

...

Did I say three? There's one more. This last one is about video games. It's a bonus. No excerpts are included because the “What I was trying to do” covers the intended content better than the original essay did.

Guiding vs Piloting

Background

I love fighting games, and I've played a lot of them. Recently, I've been playing some Marvel vs Capcom 2, an extremely broken high-octane classic. MvC2 allows for a massive amount of strategic freedom, but this depth is realized through lighting-fast, highly-precise inputs. Most fighting games are moving away from demanding that players master this level of technical complexity, hoping to attract a larger audience.

What I was trying to do

I was trying to argue that lowering execution barrier, while good for accessibility, has had a bigger impact on fighting games than many want to admit. I wanted to argue that older games, like MvC2, had an execution ethos I called “piloting”—the characters are manipulated through small, discrete, unforgiving actions. Since fighting games were still a new-ish genre, the developers had comparatively little insight into how players would choose to link these actions together. Since games couldn't be patched, bugs and exploits existed everywhere. This resulted in games with a high degree of freedom, a sandbox potentially full of incredibly powerful, nuanced tools, gated behind high execution demands. The character is “piloted”, like a fighter jet, demanding high precision to achieve amply deadly results. Modern games, by comparison, simplify execution a lot. Devs are more aware of how tools will be used, and understand the full space of their game better. Powerful strategies that aren't a part of the dev's vision will inevitably be patched out, and both balance patches and input handling will guide players toward a playstyle that is at least approved by, if not downright designed by, the developer themselves. The character is “guided”, employing pre-meditated strategies with less room for flexibility. However, “guiding” can never achieve the nuance of “piloting”, because the precision intrinsic to piloting allows for a huge range of subtle strategic decisions employed via highly-precise execution requirements. The primary example I was thinking of was resets with Magneto in MvC2—intentionally dropping a combo, giving the opponent a chance to defend, but immediately following up that dropped combo with an incredibly fast, difficult-to-stop mixup, and being rewarded with a fresh combo if it hits (the first few hits of a combo do a lot more damage; two 5-hit combos will do way more damage than one 10-hit combo, making resets a worthwhile risk). Magneto's resets are celebrated part of the game, but many of them emerge from extremely tight execution windows in the middle of his already-difficult ROM infinite, and they're most effective when the opponent has no idea where they could be coming from. This is to say, a “guided character” design philosophy could never replicate the deadly drama of Magneto resets; if resets opportunities were easier, appearing at pre-determined, developer-approved times, a well-studied defender could be much more well-prepared for them. Contrast this against somebody trying to defend against a talented Magneto pilot who can reset them in obscure ways, seemingly at any moment, through frame-perfect execution followed up by viscous combos.

What went wrong

I love fighting games, but I suck at execution, and couldn't really back this argument up as cleanly as I'd like. While there's a clear difference between old games like MvC2 and new games like DBFZ, I'm not actually good enough to meaningfully explore the execution space of new games and defend this take, or draw a clear line where the genre changed. I had some muddled ideas about buffer systems I couldn't really defend or incorporate well. Honestly, the section above ended up being a distilled version of most of what I wanted to say. At least some of this article was just me wanting to convey my internal aesthetic view of MvC2 Magneto—imo, the coolest character in the history of fighting games

I

here are good movies, and there are bad movies. This is generally agreed. Film, like all art, is a subjective medium. This is also agreed. But this leaves us with an obvious contradiction. What makes a movie good or bad?

When we say, “That was a bad movie,” we are really saying, “I didn't like that movie.” This seems like a reasonable translation to make. However, why is it that we behave as though we are speaking to a universal set of axioms and precise, exact criteria?

When we leave the movie theatre, we immediately need to pass a judgment; was that good, or bad? We might try to come up with some reasons why, but they likely won't be easy to articulate. We want to know if our time and money was well spent.

One could argue, that a movie's value can be derived from its ability to engage you, interest you in the imagery being shown, and keep your attention. If this were the true, then most pornographic films would have equal, or more value than the average Hollywood production. I think not- we intuitively understand that there is more dimension to a film's value than this.

Another possible explanation is that a film's value lies in the value of the information being communicated to the audience, in other words; what is the takeaway? What is the moral of the story? How does will this information inform my behaviour? This approach quickly collapses into the political, and I don't think we want to enter that realm either.

There is no one true use-value to any given movie. There is a utility to the idea of a rating system of averages which attributes value based on the average opinion of moviegoers/reviewers, but anyone can attest that this is at best an unreliable metric to seriously make your own purchasing decisions on.

Instead, we ought to accept that 'good' or 'bad' is a nonsensical judgement and that what you determine to be good or bad is not based on any universal set of axioms. A person is just as likely to enjoy a movie as you are to dislike it, the only real factor being previous lived experiences.

It is a perfectly comprehensible statement to say, “This is my favourite movie.” You are not making a value judgement on anything, but expressing that you favour this one thing, for reasons implied to be specific to you. However, it is blatantly inane to say seriously that any one movie is the greatest to ever exist or the worst of all time.

II

his is all to say, of course, that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny does not need to be evaluated under this metric. It does not even need to be evaluated as an artistic work, but rather evaluating it only as a communication will suffice.

Before I continue, here is a basic version of communication theory. It will become important in a moment;

                                  (Noise)
Source -> Encoder -> Transmitter -> Channel -> Receiver -> Decoder -> Destination
                                   (Noise)

Somewhere, a source contains the information that will be sent. The information is encoded into a specific format (a language, for instance,) and is sent by the transmitter into the channel. A receiver then takes the information, which is then decoded for the destination, and a message is received.

A communication is successful when the information delivered to the destination is functionally similar to the information which originated at the source. However, the process is often risk-averse. The channel can be filled with noise that might distort the encoded information or the information might be encoded or decoded incorrectly. When this happens, the destination could contain a functionally different, or incoherent set of information from the source. This is a communication failure.

Does this object succeed as a communication? This is a mode of evaluation which exists outside of artistic interpretation or personal preference and thus, we can come to a confident conclusion on this question.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is definitely a motion picture, and that at least can be said. There is continuity in the sense that it can be understood that this is a story where characters move from place to place, (sometimes) obey laws like gravity, and are meant to depict human beings like you or I. However, when the credits roll, you are left turning to your fellow and scratching your head. “Huh? What? That's the end?” In the context of communication, this is generally considered to be a bad sign.

The movie has characters with accompanying character traits, and this much is successfully decoded. The Whos and Whats of this scenario are clear. The Whys and Hows, however, are essentially incoherent.

The villain's plan is less than stupid, it's nonsensical. From beginning to end, there is no clear reason for any of the events that unfold. Our brand new sidekick / female lead has character development, but what that development is seems entirely unclear. The story itself is so unclear that it leaves you feeling stood up, balls blue, and confused in the rain. Traditionally, Indiana Jones movies have been morality tales, yet this movie has managed to turn even that fundamental part of the series into gray, secular and uninteresting slop. It is simply lacking in nutritional value.

We are reaching the point that we are not asking if a movie is worth seeing again, but if it is coherent at all.

It would seem almost meaningless to point out my distaste for this newest sequel, the third send-off for a series so close to my heart. If it were only a bad movie, I could let it be. After all, movie reviews are little more than a rambling, shallow sort of rhetoric that speaks only to personal preference, a wildly variable sort of thing. On the matter of this movie, my rage is so hot that I would rather provide a more concrete verdict: That it is a failure in its most fundamental ideal, not as a quality film, but as a communicated expression of thought. It fails to justify itself in any way, or communicate anything of substance, and it leaves the viewer not only upset but with a million questions. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a communication failure, and I am objectively, logically correct in not liking it.

I am always looking for an excuse to turn work I did into work I won't have to do, like coming up with an article for the printhouse. A more altruistic reason for this article, and the ones that will follow on this blog, is that people who couldn't make it to one Bookclub session will have the opportunity to read about my contribution to it. For the first Bookclub I took part in, I read one of the more accessible books in french contemporary philosophy: L'existentialisme est un humanisme – Existentialism is humanistic. This is the transcription of a presentation that the author, Sartre, gave on his previous work, L'Être et le Néant – The Being and Nothingness, in which he explains his own doctrine, existentialism in great, great detail. The book we will look at today is only the broad strokes of his doctrine, and is aimed at replying to the critiques that were made against it.

What is Sartrian existentialism?

His doctrine can be summarised by the following sentence: Existence precedes essence. He says that this holds true for the human and is the reason why we are cursed with absolute freedom. To explain it, he explains the antithesis – Essence precedes existence – that he says holds true for the rest of things. He gives the example of a letter opener: before creating it the artisan already knows what a letter opener is: its function, form, qualities; in other words its essence. Therefore for the letter opener, and other objects in general, essence precedes their existence. Not for the human; for Sartre, there is no preconceived notion of the human being before it is born, its function and qualities are not predetermined. So we have absolute freedom; we are free to construct our own individual essence.

Critique of existentialism: On freedom

One critique of Sartrian existentialism is that there are many factors that limit our freedom; Sartre calls this bad faith. By freedom, Sartre means the ability to act. Therefore, by absolute freedom, Sartre means that ultimately the human is free to choose his own actions and has total responsibility for them. He rebukes a couple of “bad faith” arguments. “Passions contrive our behaviour”; for Sartre that is untrue, we are still the master of our passions, they do not absolve us of responsibility or freedom towards our actions. He goes a bit further and says it is the same for feelings, as feelings are built upon action, felt feeling and manufactured feelings are the same. He gives the example of a young man during the war who has the choice between going to England to be part of the Forces Françaises Libres (French Liberation Army) or staying with his mother and caring for her. He loves his mother and stays to care for her, or, he doesn't love her but still stays to care for her which is an act of love; for Sartre this is the same. Therefore that young man is still absolutely free, his feelings do not dictate his conduct.

“Character traits also influence our behaviour, also restricting our freedom of action.” A simple rebuke for Sartre; character traits are a result of our actions and not the other way around — a coward is a coward because they act cowardly.

On a different angle, Sartre says that “signs” and advice given to us also do not do anything to impede our freedom. You are free to see any sign in anything and to derive any meaning from any sign you encounter. As for advice, not only are you free to follow them or not, but you also choose who you are going for advice; you most likely already know what you will be getting.

“Our past experiences dictate our actions.” Here, Sartre says that we are free to derive any meaning we want from our past experiences — if we are to consider it at all before doing actions in the present. We can draw what we want from our life and background and we are responsible for what we draw from it.

“Human nature constrains our freedom.” Sartre argues that there is no such thing as human nature; there is no predefined essence for the human as existence precedes essence. But he concedes that there is such a thing as a human condition, which is defined by all the limitations imposed on the human, whether physical, technological, historical... However, they don't take any freedom away from the human, those limitations do not define us and our actions, but we can choose to define ourselves and our actions with regard to them.

Critique of existentialism: On Quietism, Absurdism and Individualism

One critique of this doctrine is that it is ultimately one of inaction – what Sartre calls quietism. Absolute freedom, which comes with absolute responsibility for our actions would lead us to choice paralysis/inaction. This is wrong for Sartre, as not choosing is a choice in itself which we are also responsible for. Another angle is that since the human is nothing more than their actions — hopes, dreams and potential are not to be considered — the human has to act to define himself, otherwise we are nothing.

Some of his critiques touch on the subject of absurdism, since there is no human essence, there are also no human values (Sartre's doctrine is purely atheistic); the only thing that matters is our actions. Therefore we are free to act however we please as there is no predefined meaning to our existence or morals guiding our actions. Here Sartre responds that we humans create our own morals and he also simply reminds us that we still have total responsibility for our actions.

Another critique brought forward is that this is a very individualistic doctrine; since we have absolute freedom we are free to do as we please, with complete disregard for the others. This is reinforced by the fact that we create our own moral. Sartre has a bit more trouble replying to that but says that we have to choose others' liberty on top of our own. But also that we have to act as if everyone else was going to act like us.

Humanism

The most simplistic definition of the term humanism is: a system of thought placing the human at the center of everything. Sartre claims that existentialism is inherently a humanistic doctrine since it rests on human subjectivity. For him, every truth and action implies human subjectivity and environment. “The human is its own legislator” is a direct quote from Sartre when linking existentialism and humanism, we decide for ourselves what we are to become. In this sense, it is an optimistic doctrine based on actions and at its centre lies the human — and therefore it is humanistic.

My critique: On individualism, human definition and “human condition”

I believe that Sartre's rebuke of the individualistic nature of his doctrine is very weak and inconsistent with the rest of his argument. If we are to choose our own moral as an individual, and are to have absolute freedom, then there is nothing stopping us from disregarding others' freedom and well-being. If, like Sartre says, we have to choose other's freedom — and limit our actions to what we think would be ok for everyone to do — then we do not have our own absolute freedom, and do not get to define our own morals. That would mean that there is a predetermined moral conduct that all humans must adhere to, before being born and making their own, which completely contradicts the foundation of L'existentialisme est un humanisme. Staying consistent with the rest of his doctrine, and ignoring this poor rebuke, existentialism becomes an extremely individualistic doctrine; not only are we alone to choose our actions with no regard for anyone, but we also cannot be judged; there are no universal morals to be judged on since we construct our own. This is not very humanistic, as we are putting the individual, and not the human (in the broader sense of the term) at the focus of our doctrine.

His definition of the human is also deeply inhumanistic in my eyes: humans are more than just the sum of their actions. Actions, without words, are just what others can see of us and define us on. We are more than what others perceive of us; our reality is more than the reality of the others of us. We are to define ourselves with more than our actions; our hopes, dreams, feelings, needs, wants... They are all very real and contribute to our being.

I also find his views on the human condition very naive; for him, the only limiting factors are physical, physiological, historical (going hand in hand with technological and geographical). And apart from that we are free to act and define ourselves as we please. No. The limiting factors in his definition of human condition are only the ones we could define as universal; the ones that completely hinder one's freedoms during their whole life are of a socio-economical nature. It is easy to see that even at the youngest age, the kids of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat will both evolve in very different worlds and have very different freedoms. This is not by free conscientious choice of the individual, in this case the kid. Saying that this ultimately doesn't matter and that those different individuals both have absolute freedom (remember Sartre's definition of freedom is the freedom of action) is extremely naïve. More on this in another book analysis.

Budding reflection on absurdism

I am not convinced by Sartre's response to calling his doctrine absurdist. He says that since we create our own morals and also since we still bear responsibility for our actions, then his doctrine is far from absurdist. Since we define our own moral, as an individual, then they can arbitrarily take whatever form they want; since we have absolute freedom it doesn't matter. In this sense that part of the rebuke is ineffective. The second part says that we are responsible for our actions, so we can't do whatever we want. There cannot be responsibility without morals; since there is no universal moral for Sartre, then we must be responsible with respect to our own moral, which we established above as being potentially arbitrary and meaningless. Therefore this argument against the absurdist nature of his doctrine doesn't stand. Does the fact that we are free to act in as irrational and meaningless manners as we want to make existentialism and absurdist doctrine? To be honest I do not know enough about absurdism (yet) to deliver a final opinion. I believe that since in Sartre's doctrine we are to create our own meaning, as existence precedes essence – and meaning would be in our essence – at the very least it can be an absurdist doctrine. More on this in (yet) another book analysis.

Closing remarks

It would be more appropriate to judge Sartre's doctrine in the book presenting it, L'Être et le Néant but I cannot be bothered to read 700+ pages on Sartrian existentialism. This is why my own critique of the absurdist nature of existentialism is not a definite judgement. I can only judge on what is in this book; the response to other's criticism and the claim that existentialism is humanistic. As I have shown, his rebuke of other's criticism is quite weak and his argument for existentialism to be inherently humanistic is even weaker. However, this is not the only work of his defending existentialism; Critique de la raison dialectique is an 800+ pages book trying to conciliate existentialism and Marxism and in broader strokes solidify existentialism. I am also not reading that. Right now, I am more interested in getting a solid basis on many different concepts, rather than dedicating 8 months to just studying one thing in extreme depth. That will come later.

I have much to learn to be able to make more insightful commentary on what I read. This is in the works; I am stocking up on more or less obscure philosophical works (for the anglo world) while in France; I will become an academic weapon.

For some time now I've been grappling with the idea that, despite the fact that while many of the things I enjoy are created by large groups of people, the final result is typically attributed to one single person. I'm certainly not the first person to notice this, but this dilemma has been brought to the forefront of my mind after watching this brief presentation in which each person's contribution to a game is described in detail. That in conjunction with watching an extremely long investigation into the theft of Disco Elysium from its original creators (a term much more ambiguous than it first seems), as well as another video essay on the real creator of the Roblox “oof” sound. These three things in recent succession crystallized this issue in a way that provokes confrontation.

Despite subconsciously knowing this phenomenon to be true, it didn't stop me from associating names with works as if they were the singular force behind their existence. Cases such as: Hidetaka Miyazaki – Creator of Dark Souls, Masahiro Sakurai – Creator of Smash Bros, Todd Howard – Creator of Skyrim, John Romero and John Carmack – Creators of Doom(1993). Even the indie beloved Undertale is not the sole creation of Toby Fox but also includes significant art contributions by Temmie Chang. In fact, this iconic quote from IGN sums up the problem better than I ever could:

“There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,” says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.

— IGN Staff

In a tasteful irony, not even that quote is properly accredited, but instead is attributed to “IGN Staff”. Only after scrolling to the bottom of the article would one find the true author of those words, Steve Butts (who, as an aside as I was looking into this, was fired from IGN for sexual harassment, yayyyyyyyyy).

I illustrate this not to disregard the likely significant contributions these people had on their respective works, but rather to highlight that the perception is skewed significantly in favor of the individual as opposed to the collective. Indeed, single-person projects do exist, the iconic indie farming game, Stardew Valley, serves as an example of just that (ignoring ports and later updates).

I know a certain reader of the printhouse dislikes when issues are bought up and not definitively solved in the same piece, so what can be done about this problem? The answer might lie in a personal favourite first-person shooter of mine, ULTRAKILL.

Pictured above is the ULTRAKILL's credits section, also known as the “Hall of Shame”. It is an in-game virtual museum depicting every person who has contributed to the game in some capacity. Almost every contributor has a little virtual plush/portrait depicting them or their avatar and a plaque that states their name and role. Should the player be interested to know more about a member of the team, they have the option to pick up a little book in front of them and read a brief blurb further detailing their work on the game.

This little museum is leaps and bounds ahead of any credits roll as far as recognition goes and has done more to transition my perception of the game from a “one-person project” to a larger effort from many people. While it would be easy to simply point at this example and say “Why doesn't everyone do this?” that'd be too naïve even for me, because it would have to conveniently ignore one small issue with this whole endeavor.

Effort. The entire sphere of accreditation takes a consistent effort across the board. Effort to recognize, effort to document, and effort to present. A part of me feels like this is a weak excuse, but I also recognize that to make a video game (or anything really) takes a mountain of effort already. For a game like ULTRAKILL, a museum of virtual opulence may be difficult, but still feasible given the size of the team. On the other hand, for a AAA game with an ever-swelling number of team members, such an idea would be laughable. In fact, the credits roll for Street Fighter 6 is a staggering twelve minutes long.

Despite this complication, some games persevere regardless. Even though Undertale has garnered a reputation as a one-man project, the credits at the end of the game clearly show who worked on the game. Undertale goes as far as to take all the Kickstarter backer names and turn it into a bullet hell minigame. Smash Bros turns the credits roll into an on-rails shooting segment. This may not inform you about what each person did the way ULTRAKILL does, but you do recognize that each of these names holds a notable weight in the final result.

I wasn't really sure how to end an article like this, but I came to the conclusion that what all these 987 words are trying to say is that people make things. Therefore, it'd be best to try and appreciate that very fact. So I sent a message to one of the artists for ULTRAKILL, thanking them for their work on the game. If there's an artistic work that resonates with you for whatever reason, maybe try to reach out to someone who worked on it and thank them too.

If the title didn't make it clear, this article is about the author Michael Crichton and his work. This article contains spoiler that are blacked out, highlight the text to reveal the content.

Dragon Teeth

This whole investigation started when I re-read Dragon Teeth. There we follow the adventures of William Johnson who, after losing a bet to one of his student peers at Yales, has to accompany a paleontologist to dig dinosaur bones in the Wild West. The year is 1876 and the war is raging between the Natives and the American “settlers”; roads are traitorous and so are the people. Will he come back from this expedition alive? Although enjoyable, albeit a bit simplistic, there were glaring flaws in this story that no author should ever have left in the final version of their book. One example I will give, and this happens many times during the book, is defusing any future tension a couple of chapters ahead. To be more precise: “The heroes were walking for days without water and in scorching heat. One of them always stopped the group telling them he saw someone following them in the far-off distance. He was delirious, the rest of the group said, given the current conditions it wasn't surprising. Every time he yelled, they would all turn around and look in the distance, none of them saw anything, any of those times. So they didn't worry about it. They would soon realise they were wrong” or “This man seemed trustworthy and from studying him from afar, looked kind and honest. He would soon realise his first impressions were wrong.“. Those are paraphrases of some events happening in the books, the worst part is that the subversion of expectation they are advertising either happens half a dozen chapters after or never for the second example. Every single event or reveal is defused chapters ahead. That and having obvious plot holes and character arcs that are given up on made me feel like the guy writing this book was an amateur. But he isn't, he is allegedly an accomplished author. Or he was an accomplished author; he died in 2008. This book came out in 2017: the math ain't mathing. This is a “found manuscript” from him that was published with little change. I can only assume this was a draft and all the flaws and all were things we would correct. That explains everything – how awful was I to judge the man's work on a draft. So I picked up some of his other books and tried to get a better idea of his work.

Jurrassic Park

I won't make the affront of giving you a synopsis for this book; I will assume everybody has heard of, if not seen, the movie. Although the synopsis is the same as the movie, the content of the book ranges from mildly to wildly different. The tone is also more serious and tense here. I will not hide the fact that I was never a fan of the movie which I found pretty boring, but here, the tension and the goriness keeps at the edge of your seat, at first. Spoilers ahead. There are no issues for the first half of the book, and the author takes his time to place the setting and sell us on how this park came to be. It is interesting to read about what was considered super-high-tech in the 90's. However, most of the time is spent describing things that are a bit useless, instead of the characters. The characters are usually archetypes without much depth, which I thought was a shame, since more development may have explained some of their decision further down in the book. And god the kids are annoying, and so is Malcolm. The latter suffers from “scientist written by non-scientist” syndrome; his opinion of science is very naïve and immature, he's just a mouth-piece for the author. Even picturing the glorious abs of Jeff Goldblum while he was on scene (in the book) did not manage to make me like the character more. Grant is the most present, but he still doesn't get much more development, and the secondary characters unfortunately go through an even rougher treatment. But this book's reputation doesn't hinge on its characters, but on its action, so let's take a look at that. I think that the betrayal by that one employee (the guy who gets spat on by the dinosaur) is much better done here than in the movie. Events unfold in a satisfying manner and in the end, we see why/how so much chaos was caused by his actions. The scene with the Jeep and the T-Rex is also very well done here, with a caveat, it is super tense and the fear of the characters, and their illogical actions caused by it, is well conveyed. The caveat is that despite all the carnage, almost everyone survives. You were in the jaws of the T-Rex? T'is but a scratch. Were tossed down the side of the hill, while being in a car smashed by the T-Rex? You just need an Advil. Worry not though, there is plenty of death going on afterwards, just not the main characters. Action scenes in general were pretty effective. Overall, the story was interesting up till the end where it falls off in a catastrophic manner; I think the author didn't really know how to end. Despite the grim picture I have painted (for dramatic effect), the book is actually quite good if the lack of character depth is not a deal breaker for you.

The Lost World

The follow-up to Jurassic Park was brought about by the success of the movie from Spielberg. This was the first time that Crichton wrote a sequel to one of his novels, which lead to some issues. First, he brought Malcolm back from the dead, second is that he had to create another dinosaur island, the first one having been obliterated by the Guatemalan government. This did injure my suspension of disbelief, as well as let a “well isn't this convenient” sigh out of me. We are not off to a good start. Let's move on to the synopsis: A guy in Ian (Malcolm)'s class thinks because of cHAoS tHeORy there must be an island with dinosaurs on it that was never been discovered by humans. Ian is like: bet, if you give me proof that dinosaurs still exist I will go with you on an expedition to that island (even though I know of an island that had dinosaurs on it that actively tried to escape). The guy prepares the super secret expedition helped with two kids (of course) a mechanic and other people that I don't recall. They find where the island with the dinosaur would be, and luck would have it the guy finds a dinosaur carcass and gets a sample to bring to Ian, forcing him to go to the island. Before they depart for the island all together, my man decides to scout the dinosaur island himself with another hunter dude who immediately gets rekt by raptors. The guy makes the very rational decision to go deeper into the island to save him. The rest of the crew, Ian, the mechanic and his minions and a scientist have to save both of them. Of course, the kids hide in the back of a car and are transported to that island. The disdain I have for this book probably transpires through this half-asses preview and I didn't read further than that. If there is one thing that I cannot bear and will not stand for is people doing stupid things that are completely out of character just because we need the story to move on. Malcolm would never have agreed to go on that expedition, no matter what proof he was given; he literally died during the last one. The guy who spend years carefully and meticulously preparing his expedition would not just rush ahead to “scout”. After they get rekt, Malcom would just tell the rest of the team that they got murked by dinosaurs, so no need to try to save them; they're dead. The super prepared and smart team would have checked the back of the cars/trailers for the kids who begged to go on the expedition with them and who, after being told no, were suspiciously obedient. Everything feels contrived, nothing matters and I don't care for any of the characters; they all deserve to die. Crichton did not write a proper sequel, nor should he have. It is clear from the last book that he didn't know how to end it, let alone plan for a sequel.

Timeline

A group of students and their supervisor are conducting research in the ruins of castles in France along the Dordogne River. Digs are going as planned until their supervisor is sent to the HQ of ITC, the big secret corporation funding them. After their supervisor being gone (missing?) for a few days, his students start digging up some strange artifacts; a pair of modern glasses and parchment paper with the word 'HELP' written in contemporary english. After sending it to the lab they are bewildered; both of them date back hundreds of years ago. They have no time to ponder on their discovery, and still without any news from their supervisors, they are being summoned to ITC HQ. I did have to force myself to finish this book, maybe because I read it right after La Passe-mirroir: Les fiancés de l'hivers & Les Disparus du Clairedelune, which, as I mentioned in my previous article, I found to be masterpieces. There is no comparison in the character development here; it is as lacking as in Jurassic Park, some choices are even a bit weird with characters doing a 180 on their very under-developed character. The pacing is also very strange, I found it to be kind of a snooze-fest in the beginning and very rushed at the end. There are also constant switches between past and present which break the pace, especially when usually nothing of substance is being said in the latter. The insistence of the author on explaining how time-travel works, and trying to make it believable is also a waste of time. He tries to ground it in “science” (he invokes the all-mighty quantum mechanics) going into really intricate details. It will bore people that aren't physics savvy and the ones that are will easily realise that it is at the very best pseudo-scientific garbage and that he hasn't the slightest idea of what quantum mechanics is. This is not only referenced once but appears throughout the book, every time making me roll my eyes so hard that I believe I have tied a knot with my optic nerve. Story-wise (spoilers ahead): I honestly couldn't be bothered to keep track of everyone; they were introduced once under different names, with bare minimum depth, and then mentioned again 50 pages later – did they expect me to remember who they are? I did understand enough to see that our protagonists are in general mary-sues: guy from the present whose only training with medieval weapons is self-teaching with immobile mannequins; he will not only be able to hold his own, but best five trained guards at once in the past. Other (weak) guy from the present with no training; he can also best professional swordfighters from the past. Gal who does rock-climbing in the present with all modern-day equipment and safeties; without that equipment, she's spider-girl in the past, climbing whole towers and churches alike. I am a bit bad faith here, but it felt like that, even if I am taking it to the extreme. I did not care for any character, or what happened to them, and neither should you; don't read the book.

So, Crichton bad? Well, Crichton not for me. I have read the synopsis of his other work and the premises are usually very interesting and creative, but it doesn't seem like his writing can carry them really far. A huge flaw of his in my eyes is the treatment of characters, it is very minimal. I enjoy character-driven plots and all the Crichton has to offer is usually action-driven plots, where characters are contrived to do stuff because the story demands it, with little regard for their own character motivations. So, although not bad (who am I to judge), not for me.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

SPOILERS

• Story spoilers: minimal
• Gameplay spoilers: major
• World/Exploration spoilers: medium
• Breath of the Wild spoilers: fair game

I would bet that at least half of the people reading this are playing the latest entry in the Legend of Zelda series: Tears of the Kingdom. If you're not and don't plan on it any time soon, I'd appreciate the read anyways but the rest of the article will most likely be lost on you.

This article is aimed at the early to mid game player. Perhaps you've done a couple of the main temples, got an extra stamina wheel, a bunch of extra hearts, etc. I will try and keep the tips free of things which the game would teach you at some point or things that should be figured out on your own. For example, I won't tell you how to find a specific boss, but I may share tips on how to fight one. This list is in no particular order since I'm just sorta pulling all of these from my memory.

I also kinda messed up the GIFs situation just a tad. Accidentally made all the GIFs massive in file size, and there's like 20 of them. Hopefully by the time you finish reading these intro articles, the GIFs will have loaded. If not, oh well. I'll figure it out next time.

1. Repairing your gear

One of the most prominent complaints from the community about Breath of the Wild was the weapon durability system. In Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo introduced a way to repair your items through Rock Octorocks. These monsters are typically found in the Death mountain region.

A Rock Octorock

To repair an item, drop one item that you would like to repair in front of the octorock. Take a couple steps back and wait for the octorock to inhale the item. The octorock will then chew on it a bit, and after a little sparkle effect, spit it back out at you. You will find that the item is now fully repaired.

A Rock Octorock repairing an item

This comes with the added benefit of the octorock applying a random modifier to the item (better durability, damage, etc.) but note that it will also overwrite any modifiers on it. Do note that this includes how many arrows a lynel bow will shoot. I remember feeding a 5 shot lynel bow to an octorock, and it spitting back out a 3 shot bow.

You should also be careful of not getting hit by the returning weapon. Depending on what it is, it may hurt a lot.

Getting hit by a returning weapon

Each octorock can only repair/modify one item per blood moon, so it may be prudent to mark the location of each octorock you come across, and kill the ones you've used so you don't run into it again.

2. The Air bike

Horses quickly become obsolete due to the amount of verticality that the map of Tears of the Kingdom introduces, especially when exploring the depths. Due to this, the need for a method of movement that can navigate any or all terrain becomes highly desirable. Enter the Air bike.

The Air bike

The Air bike is an incredibly popular design in the community as of writing this due to it's many advantages over other methods of transportation. This includes it's cheapness, flying properties, ease of use, and more. Autobuild allows you to make one using just 9 zonaite, but I still prefer to supply the actual parts. I encourage you to look up a guide on how to make one of these, as creating it initially can be quite tedious.

Autobuilding and using the Air bike in the depths, with a light attached

Controlling it feels really good. Keep the stick still to go forward and gain/lose no height. Pull back to go up, push forward to lose height and go faster, and left and right to turn. Quickly exit and enter the vehicle to lose a lot of height. Since it uses only two fans, it's quite light on the battery as well, but don't be afraid to use zonaite charges to go that extra distance.

Flying the Air bike

3. Shrines and Lightroots

This is a shorter tip, but very useful nonetheless. If you're having trouble finding lightroots in the depths, or shrines on the surface, remember this: for each shrine on the surface, there is a corresponding lightroot directly below it. This relationship between shrines and lightroots is made even more apparent when you realize that the lightroot's name is simply the shrine's name reversed.

Shrines and lightroots share relative locations

4. Fighting a Talus

The Talus returns from Breath of the Wild in almost the exact same form with one key difference: Link no longer has the Bomb rune. Previously, fighting a Talus was quite straight forward: hit it with a bomb or two until it was stunned, climb on it's back, then hit the nodule until it was defeated. With bombs becoming rarer in Tears of the Kingdom, an alternative method to fight the Talus without bombs is desired. For myself, I use these two ways to deal with them.

Ascend

My go-to method when I engage a Talus is to simply run up and ascend straight through it. It gives me a decent amount of time to get a good number of swings in before it shakes me off, to which I just do it again.

Ascending through the Talus

Recall

While standing far away, the Talus will attempt to throw one of its arms at you. When it does this, you can simply recall it back at the Talus, stunning it for a while. You could then attempt to climb it normally to get at the nodule.

Using recall to fight the Talus

5. Interesting shield fuses

I was on the fence on writing this section since most of these should be discovered on your own, but I decided to include them anyways since these aren't entirely obvious.

Fusing a shield with any type of cart allows you to shield surf on almost any surface.

Shield surfing with a cart

Fusing a shield with a bomb allows you to rocket jump.

Bomb jumping

The Animated series predicted this

Fusing a wing to a shield gives you extra height when initiating a shield surf.

Using a wing shield to get to higher places quickly

6. Using the Wing

The wing device is great for traversing long distances in the sky. You can even attach a steering stick and some fans to create essentially a controllable plane. I'll discuss some techniques here that will help you use the wing in more situations

Link on a wing

One of the weaknesses of the wing is it's inability to take off from solid ground. Typically, you'd need the help of some launch rails or a cart, but this is not very desirable. A good way to circumvent this limitation is to simply glide off the edge, summon the wing midair, then hop on. It takes a bit of practice to do consistently, but definitely does work. The best way I've found to doing it is to glide stationary for a bit, summon the wing, then move forward and fall. This method is great for when your initial wing expires.

Boarding a wing midair

If you don't find success in the above, the following method works just fine. Simply take a wing, use Ultrahand to lift it off the edge, then pull it back above you for a couple of seconds, and then set it down. After that, recall the wing and ascend onto it. When it starts hanging off the edge, stop the recall, and you're on your way.

Alternative boarding method

You could also just use a rocket to get the wing off the ground

7. Various ways to gain height

For this last section, I decided to forgo the whole taught by the game or discoverable on your own restriction of this article on the sole premise that gaining height is simply too useful in any open world game, this one included. With the lack of Revali's Gale from Breath of the wild, we are forced to find ways other than climbing to gain height. Here's a list of useful techniques that can be leveraged to do just that, arranged from least to most expensive with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Ultrahand, Recall, Ascend

By using ultrahand, recall, and ascend, the player can hover an object above their heads, recall it up there, then ascend through it. Can be a little tedious but gets the job done, and you can do it with anything large enough to ascend through. You can also forgo the ascend step by just standing on top of the object before recalling, but with ascending, you could make a tall pillar and ascend all the way to the top.

Ascending through a recalled object

Pine cone in a fire

One of the cheaper methods. Requires only tossing a Hylian Pine cone into a campfire.*

Tossing a pine cone into a campfire

Fan

Simply pointing a fan up creates a wind current which you can glide up with.

Rising with a fan

Springs

These devices were pretty much made for this express purpose, and they can be stacked and reused if you can recover it. Great for entering bullet time.

Using two stacked springs

Shield Fuses

Using a shield with a rocket or a spring will send you up, but is only a one time use. There's also the bomb and wing fuses discussed in tip #5

Gaining height with a rocket and a spring

Building a flying machine

Definitely the most expensive on this list, but also the most effective. Whether it's using a hot air balloon, the Air Bike, or just hopping from one floating platform to the next, using zonaite devices seems to be the easiest or only way to access certain areas. Especially useful if you can find the parts in the environment.

Using a hot air balloon

Sometimes, you can just find a flying machine in the wild

Hopefully you've found at least one of these tips helpful in your play through. This is my first article here, so please excuse any errors or general weirdness. All the GIFs and images were recorded/taken by yours truly. If this article is received well, I have plenty more tips and tricks in mind to make a second article, one that would carry major story and world spoilers. If there is demand, I may consider making a purely beginner version, filled with many basic tips for absolute newcomers to the game. If you know of anything to add to this list, send me a message and I will probably include it in the next article.

Now stop stalling and go save Hyrule, hero O

Preface

This paper is a hasily-edited adaptation of an overzealous reply I wrote in a slightly-heated online discussion. I'm choosing to adapt and publish it here because it covers 70% of an article I've been trying and failing to write for weeks. The argument within it functions as a “bootstrapped explanation” of why I've been failing to write that last article, or any article, really. No sources are provided because I originally wrote this one message at a time over discord. If that makes you mad, read Saussure yourself and tell me if and why I'm wrong.

Funnily enough—I probably had to write this much, in a casual fashion, to grasp that it's impossible to write a perfect formal paper about why the words I'm using to write it are an imperfect, informal system.

Take any commentary to the cafe bot comments, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Why I'm Skeptical of Language

I did my first degree in english lit, mostly because I was depressed and flunking out of compsci at the time. I wasn't that interested in literature, I just did well in it in high school and figured I could stay in school that way. But I did end up taking every course my school offered in literary theory—the study of methods of reading and interpreting texts. A lot of this gets pretty fuzzy, mingling with the rest of the humanities, and it took me directly into philosophy, gender studies, psychoanalysis, and semiotics: the last of which I'm gonna talk about at length for a minute. Studying semiotics, even to the limited degree I did, left me with strong opinions on how language operates. What I'm gonna talk about is related to semiotics, if not totally orthodox or comprehensive or 'objectively true'. It's what I believe, what I took away. Make of it what you will.

Casually, let's start with a definition of a definition, from merriam-webster: “a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol”. Alright, let's do the definition (“a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol”) of meaning: “the thing one intends to convey especially by language”. Ok, let's look at the definition (“a statement of the meaning of a word or word group or a sign or symbol” (meaning being: “the thing one intends to convey especially by language”.)) of language: “the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community”. Now, onto words, pronunciations, combining, community...

Sheesh, we're gonna be here all night.

The notion of a “objective definition” is effectively impossible. Diogenses kinda got to the heart of this when he responded to Plato's definition of man as “featherless bipeds” by holding up a plucked chicken and saying “behold! I've brought you a man”. You can define the term as precisely as you want, but corner cases will slip through for basically any term. You can add more rules to patch up the corner cases, but then you start to exclude things which also match the definition, in a similar fashion.

Even if you could patch up every single corner case, the definition you create is written in more words which require their own definitions, which all suffer the same fate. If any of these definition-words have corner-cases where similar diogenses-style misunderstandings can occur, the original definition is compromised by extension. At some point, use of language is a process of subjective, probabilistic interpretation, not objective linguistic forms.

A word is only a linguistic sign. A linguistic sign is only an arbitrary mapping between a “thought-concept”, (casually: a pre-verbal, probabilistic mental process of understanding or classifying some category) and a “sound-image” (casually: a class of possible/recognizable spoken sounds or visual writing). The relationship/mapping is arbitrary, because both components are arbitrary. Linguistic signs only gain their meaning relative to other linguistic signs, in a social context. I can say that “trehrke” is a word that means “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge”, but unless I'm saying that to somebody else who's familiar with the mapping between sound-image “trehrke” and the thought-concept of “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge”, it's a useless linguistic sign. And even if they do share that linguistic sign with me, if their mapping of sound-image “stale” doesn't include the thought-concept “moldy”, and mine does, then we're actually using two slightly different signs, because we're mapping sound-image “trehrke” onto slightly different thought-concepts. And beyond that, “pizza that's gone stale in the fridge” is also arbitrary. It's not some divinely established category, on which we bestow an arbitrary label. I could create infinite arbitrary signs just like “trehrke” (see: the German language) Our words, even extremely important ones, don't correspond to objective, pre-linguistic ontological categories. Different languages have different words for different things, words that can't be translated directly and that map onto different subsets and supersets of each other. The english word “love” could encapsulate countless different emotions in other languages, emotions which native speakers of those languages would never think of as “the same thing” in the same, very loosely-connected fashion that english speakers think of all possible variations on “love” as being “the same thing”.

More formally, what I'm calling a thought-concept would be called the “signified” and sound-image would be called the “signifier”. I prefer these descriptive terms because I'm slightly dyslexic and stumble over the similarity of the formal signifier/signified.

Controversy also totally shatters these mappings. A militant maoist maps an entirely different thought-concept onto the sound-image “socialism” than a lifelong Republican does. Casually, to the former, it's utopian affect; to the latter, dystopian. When they have a discussion with or around that linguistic sign, they aren't talking about the same thing, because they conceive of it so differently. Same sound-image, different thought-concept: asymmetric mapping. They can attempt to clarify this misunderstanding by hedging it against their shared understanding of other signs—like “government” and “freedom” or “money”, other words you'd use when talking about this stuff—but it's likely there's some asymmetric mappings going on with respect to those words too! Clear communication and consensus becomes extremely challenging.

For a more fun example, “is a hotdog a sandwich” is a clear example of an asymmetric mapping.

In this sense, language is lossy compression; the pre-verbal, rich, analog, probabilistic thought-concept understanding of the world we have has to be compressed into discrete sound-image symbols to be communicated, and then decompressed by the other individual in the context of all the other signs involved and their idiosyncratic mappings. Usually, for day-to-day stuff, this is done pretty successfully. Shared social context goes a long way. But it breaks down at times, particularly on controversial and advanced topics (like the socialism example above).

We don't live in a world of language, we live in a world of ineffable, idiosyncratic, fluid, probabilistic thought-concepts. I'm interested in phenomenology because I hope one day we might be able to communicate without the restrictions innate to language: the tragic loss involved in compression and decompression. I don't want to tell somebody I appreciate them, I want them to feel what I feel when I appreciate them. And I appreciate you for reading this.

Footnote on scientific communication

While I have a lot of skepticism around communication, I will freely admit the scientific method, and standards are reproducibility, are one of humankind's greatest communicative accomplishments. Scientific literature is clear and formal enough to avoid many of the pitfalls of casual language-use.

But it doesn't fully solve the problem. Ultimately, it's still taking a phenomenal analog world and trying to chop it up into little digital linguistic signs, running experiments on those categories. When an abstract says “this paper is on dogs” it assumes a clear delineation of what a “dog” is vs a “wolf”. Sure, that's an easy enough distinction to make with 99.9% accuracy – but when you have to do that for every single word, every single category, every single communication, the notion of true, clear-minded objectively becomes a lot less tenable. Any “measurable category” is a measurable category of some “X”—and “X” is, sadly, just a linguistic sign.

I don't have ample words (well, other than this expression of “I don't have ample words”) for how I feel about the beauty and understanding we might get out of a post-linguistic science.

In an effort to bolster my printhouse contributions, this blog will serve as something less structured and analytical than Ghost Notes. Like when a YouTuber makes a second channel to throw their garbage on. With that in mind, I thought it might be interesting to, in no particular order, explore some of the many game and game related projects I've kept a keen eye on. In particular, ones that feel as though they have been in progress for an especially lengthy amount of time. Alongside each entry will be a rough estimation of how long I've been waiting for each project. Enjoy!

Momentum Mod –

Waiting time: At least 3 years

This project in particular was probably the main inspiration for this article. My typical approach when it comes to extremely long-term projects I am interested in is... to forget about them. Only when I remember they exist do I check in to see their respective status. But for whatever reason I cannot seem to keep this thing out of my head for more than a month at a time.

“Source” is the game engine primarily used by Valve Software, creators of renowned games such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. A noteworthy quirk of its physics allows you to slide along sharp slopes by strafing into them. This minor detail has snowballed into an entire community of creators who make maps designed to exploit this phenomenon in order to make a giant course for you to slip and slide around. These maps have been dubbed “surf maps”.

The issue is that to play these surf maps you need to open them through a game like CS:GO, then join a community server hosting one of these maps, or download the map yourself and configure the physics settings of your game to accommodate it. While not necessarily the most cumbersome process, it is inconvenient enough for me to avoid doing it in favor of something else.

This is where the Momentum Mod comes in. As a standalone client, it'll become trivially easy to open up the game and start sliding around to my heart's content. It is that exact ideal that I pine so intently for. Unfortunately, as is common for its breed, it is a mod that is supported by a small but dedicated group of developers, who work on it in their free time. So any estimation of its day of completion is a fruitless endeavor.

Hollow Knight: Silksong –

Waiting time: At least 2 years

It's no secret that I have a particular fondness for Hollow Knight. The developers at Team Cherry have taken the levelheaded approach to the hype by keeping the community blind to their progress on its highly anticipated sequel. What's more amusing is seeing the feral reactions from the fans whenever even the most minor of informational scraps are thrown in their general direction regarding the game or its release date.

Like many others I found Hollow Knight to be a beautiful game in all aspects. Its visuals invoke rich atmospheres of varied landscapes. Its soundtrack, often haunting, yet whimsical. Its gameplay, potentially very challenging but with an equal sense of reward when mastered. Judging by what previews we do have, Silksong exhibits the same excellent attention to detail as its predecessor.

I may be cursing myself to more years of waiting by saying this, but I actually think this one might release soon. Despite their tepid desire to indicate any potential release date for the game, they did allow Xbox to post on their Twitter that Silksong, among many other games, will be “playable over the next 12 months”.

So you’re telling me Silksong is out within the next 12 months

— That guy (@1xandermander) June 12, 2022

That's exactly what we said.

— Xbox (@Xbox) June 12, 2022

Assuming no delays, that puts the checkered flag sometime in June. If it doesn't release then, I will have no choice but to do the exact same thing I've been doing for the last 2 years.

Continue my wait, as long as it takes...

Pepper grinder –

Waiting time: At least 6 years

Ori and the Will of the Wisps was a game justifiably commended for many things. One aspect in particular was a section of the game where you drill through some sand and launch outwards when you surface. Now imagine this section expanded to the scale of an entire game on its own, that is Pepper Grinder.

A trend you will notice is that I have stumbled onto many of these games through Twitter, and this one is no exception. Had I not found it on Twitter I would have nonetheless discovered it through a Dunkey video talking about his experiences with it PAX 2017.

I imagine Dunkey saw the same potential in this game as I did, being charmed by its lightly abrasive pixel art and its captivating hold on momentum and flow. Looking through it again for this article has shown me it has matured quite a lot since I last investigated it in earnest. The once-solo developer has now partnered with a musician and a porting company. In addition, the game seems to now be published by Devolver Digital so it's certainly in very good hands.

Like everything else on this list, I await its release with great anticipation.

OTHER: Her Loving Embrace –

Waiting time: About 3 years

The release of Undertale in 2015 prompted an explosion in the “Earthbound Inspired” RPG genre. These games tend to focus on quirky characters and dialogue, in addition to having amazing soundtracks. Something else Undertale revitalized was the idea of turn-based combat but with some twists to make it more engaging for a broader audience.

With these aspects in consideration, OTHER: Her Loving Embrace is a quirky RPG with engaging characters, catchy tunes, and combat that opens up a 2d arena to briefly fight in for each turn (as opposed to Undertale's bullet hell segments). Safe to say it wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Despite this, the game has successfully forged its own identity, and I tend to have a soft spot for goofy guys.

A came across this game through a pretty deep rabbit hole I will explain in more detail later in this article (see: Magus Array). I have no idea how far along it is in development, and I am left with no choice but to forget about it for a couple of months and come back to it later like I often do.

I have a lot of faith that this game will turn out well. So much so, in fact, that I actually own a few pins based on the characters of the game. Pins from a game that as of right now, has not yet been released. So here's hoping things turn out well.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk –

Waiting time: About two years (Since August 11th 2021)

From Team Reptile, the developers of Lethal League comes Bomb Rush Cyberfunk Jet Set Radio.

No, seriously it's basically Jet Set Radio, they even have the original composer (and funny Twitter guy) Hideki Naganuma in this as well. This is a huge boon because a major part of JSR's identity was its banger soundtrack.

I haven't yet played Jet Set Radio, because if I did, it would have to be its now abandoned remake on the Original Xbox, Jet Set Radio: Future. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to experience the rail grinding, public vandalism, and wacky art style that is Jet Set Radio. What I can do instead, is wait for Bomb Rush Cyberpunk. Which, judging by brief snippets, comes very close to its inspirations not only in music as mentioned previously but also in art, gameplay, and just general vibes.

ADDENDUM: Ok so as it turns out I've taken so long to write this article that the release date for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk was announced, August 18th, making it an eventual 3 years total of waiting.

Deltarune –

Waiting time: Little more than a year since the last chapter

It's Toby Fox.

TF2 Heavy update –

Waiting time: 5 years now, ∞ to go

Team Fortress 2 still sits at the #1 spot of my most played games on Steam. Its last update, Jungle Inferno, released in October 2017 came with a promise for at least one other update down the line, the heavy update. The update promised to revitalize the game's titular fat man as it did with Pyro in Jungle Inferno.

Since then my hope has slowly dwindled as a game that I love decays before my eyes. Even with the knowledge that Valve does not get anything done in a timely manner (very relatable, I mean, I've been writing this article for almost a month now), there has been very little indication that a major update is on the horizon, or even in the same solar system.

I still hold hope that it might happen one day, but I am not holding my breath. TF2 is still a playable game, and I do on occasion hop on to play it. However, the writing has been on the wall for years, nobody wants to work on a 12-year-old piece of software when flashier, newer things like Counter-Strike 2 exist as an alternative option to contribute to.

Night runners –

Waiting Time: At Least 3 Years

In me, there exists a desire to drive dangerously down dimly lit streets in gaudy tuner cars. Ever since Need For Speed: Most Wanted, no other racing game has successfully eclipsed its greatness. Nowadays, most racing games commit to full simulation or full arcade, which NFS existed as a nice medium between. Even Need For Speed itself has fallen from grace after brushing against the heavens with Most Wanted. On top of that, it's extremely rare to find any amount of car customization in any of these games. My feeble attempts to fill the steering wheel-shaped hole in my heart with a modded version of Need For Speed: Heat just doesn't quite capture the vibe and gameplay that I wish for. Until now.

From what I can tell this is also a solo development effort but with an extremely deep understanding of the exact kind of experience that has been neglected for so long. All of the menus look like VHS recordings and the showcased depth of customization will allow one to personalize their car to such fine detail that it surpasses even modern Need For Speed games.

My only worry is in the handling model, which can really make or break a game like this. Most Wanted had a very weighty physics system that was challenging without requiring you to know how to actually race a real car. On top of that, it's difficult to discern the feeling of driving just from preview videos alone, so the final judgement rests on when this game finally releases. Regardless, what has been shown so far is really promising and has only gotten better with time.

ULTRABUGS –

Waiting time: Around 4 years

There are few development teams I hold in such high regard as I did for the 2-person studio Vlambeer. All of their games have this hyper-focus on “feeling” that can be difficult to describe in words but is immediately understood when you actually play them. This unspoken language is what set them apart and I've played and adored almost every game they've made.

My eagerness for their upcoming game ULTRABUGS comes from that aforementioned “game feel”. However, it is sullied by the announcement that Vlambeer games has shut down and that ULTRABUGS will be their final game ever.

It's hard to say if this game will ever release, the first of the two developers has gone off to create their own projects such as “Minit” or “Disc Room” and the other has focused on fostering independent game development efforts in underrepresented regions of the world (while also becoming a pilot).

A part of me doesn't want it to release. Its completion will mark an end of an era for indie games, and my experience of playing this game will be bittersweet in its finality.

UFO 50 –

Waiting time: At least 5 years

Speaking of indie game titans, UFO 50 is a collection of 50 mini-games developed for a fictional 8-bit console. The people behind it include Ojrio Fumoto, the developer behind Downwell and POINPY (two games I intend to write a Ghost Notes article about), as well as some other names I don't immediately recognize. The project is spearheaded by the legendary Derek Yu. Derek and the team at Mossmouth are the minds behind one of the greatest roguelites of all time, Spelunky, which people are still making new discoveries in 10 years down the line.

There's really no telling what to expect from a project such as this one. 50 games is a pretty heavy undertaking, no matter how big or small each of them is. It also means that one could expect a huge variety of different ideas executed by some very talented people. I am also very curious to see how the lessons learned from developing Spelunky carry over to this.

In many ways, UFO 50 is quite enigmatic, but overall I think that only adds to the excitement.

Hytale –

Waiting time: About 5 years

Much like Undertale, Minecraft also sparked a wildfire of games that could be considered under the umbrella of “indie survival game”. However, Minecraft's survival mechanics are pretty simplistic and progression is more of an inclined hill than it is a curve. Minecraft is also no stranger to competitors, many attributed Terraria as a “2d Minecraft clone” which while not really true goes to show Minecraft's dominance in the space it occupies.

All this to say, when the team behind one of the most popular Minecraft servers, “Hypixel”, pledges to make a game that intends on going toe to toe against the goliath that is Minecraft, it's bound to garner some attention.

What's interesting to me is Hytale seems to tackle that challenge by creating a foundation that is comparably more developed than its inspirations. It's difficult to say if the sheen coating this game has is simply a thin veneer over an underwhelming experience or if it genuinely advances beyond Minecraft in things like combat and progression. On its surface though, perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a “3d Terraria” as opposed to a Minecraft clone.

Another thing Hytale is doing that really differentiates itself from Minecraft is an extremely high prioritization of modding and custom content. Despite Minecraft having a modding scene comparable to the likes of Skyrim, the relationship Mojang has with its modders is more of a passive acceptance than actual support. Hytale in comparison seems to present something more akin to a game engine that can be modified and shared consistently across all supported devices. This would eliminate the kind of isolation found between console Minecraft players and PC Minecraft players, where PC players get to enjoy the wellspring of modded content available to them while console players are left to make the most of the very limited toolset for customization released for the platform.

Hytale is without a doubt facing a very steep cliff to climb to the top of. However, if executed well, could be a genuinely phenomenal experience the likes of which could only be met with something like Roblox* (unironically). I have no idea if they'll be successful but I don't mind waiting another 5 years to see it polished to perfection.

*I've never personally played Roblox but from an outsider's perspective it looks like GMod for kids, which is honestly insane.

Genokids –

Waiting time: At least 2 years

I forgot about this one so hard that in writing an article about things I was waiting for I hadn't even considered writing about this.

For those of you who were on the old monkey cafe, you may recall a post I made about liking art styles that would go straight to black for shading. The examples from that post were from games like Hades, The World Ends With You, and also this game, Genokids.

Another trend you may notice is a couple of the games I have been watching have a Y2K vibe to them and Genokids looks like an old cartoon from 2005 turned into a hack-and-slash video game. Where these 4 color-coded kids in a band fight against aliens. The game overall seems to be very silly.

Compared to the rest of the games on this list, my knowledge regarding Genokids is fairly limited. Despite that, the art style and presentation have me interested enough to on occasion question how the project is doing. It seems like the initial Kickstarter I found in late 2020 has been taken down (I remember it not being successful), with another one published much more recently getting funded in 24hrs. I'm glad this game is getting the support it deserves.

Honorable Mentions

Cuphead DLC –

Waited for: 4 years

Cuphead is a pretty straightforward concept. Take early 20th-century animation styles and adapt them into a video game. But while the idea is straightforward, their dedication to the craft results in a workflow that can only be described as maddeningly arduous. In the end, studio MDHR braved the gauntlet that is hand animating an entire video game's worth of characters and enemies, and the initial release of Cuphead was met with critical acclaim, and rightfully so. Not to forget scoring the whole thing with a live jazz band.

At the finish line, the question of “what to do next” arises. Much like the straightforward nature of the game comes another direct answer, which was “make more Cuphead”. So in June of 2018, the Cuphead DLC was announced (amusingly abbreviated as the Delicious Last Course).

In June of 2022, it was finally completed and released to the masses. I finished it in 4 days, and then haven't really touched it since.

Those 4 days however were as good as when I played Cuphead the first time. In the end, it was more Cuphead, which is all I ever expected or wanted out of it. The last course was really delicious.

Sable –

Waited for: Something like 3 years, I don't really remember specifics for this

I remember seeing this cool desert game floating around on Twitter. Most striking of which was its comic book art style with thin black outlines around everything you see (Later I learned about Moebius, the inspiration of the art style). As I followed along with its development I learned that this game takes place on a desert planet where you drift along the dunes and explore the world and its scenery.

When the game was finally released in 2021, I remember enjoying it a fair amount. But, because the experience is so heavily based on “vibes”, it quickly soured when the mildly inconsistent optimization made the experience much less seamless. Which is a shame because it really is a beautiful game otherwise. Even now the game is quite stuttery, so unless I manage to swallow that discomfort I will probably not finish it.

What was especially interesting to me about this game was how peaceful it was. You're not really fighting anyone, or saving the world. The entire premise is that it's a journey of self-discovery, traversing the quiet sands and navigating bustling towns. Certainly a rarity among its peers.

Installation 01 –

It's still not out, and I don't care anymore

It's been 7 years since I first learned about Installation 01. Back in 2016 playing Halo on your PC limited you to just the first two iterations of the series, which by that point has had 7 games in its lineup, the most recent of which were released by a different company (called 343 Industries) and were very underwhelming.

This was the niche that Installation 01 was targeting, a modern version of the Halo series, playable on your pc, that stayed true to the classic formula that had since been neglected by 343. I was squarely in that niche, and I wanted to play this game so badly. I subsequently started following their blog posts (where I first learned about ULTRAKILL amusingly), reading their developer updates, and generally invested myself in the progress of this game hoping to see its release one day. That release however... never came.

Where did that leave me then? Fortunately, in the meantime I had learned about another, less legal, halo fan project/mod which I thoroughly enjoyed when it was popular around 2018. On top of that, both of these Halo projects gave Microsoft the kick in the pants to go ahead and port every Halo game to pc starting in 2019. Which brings us to today. If I want to play some good old Halo on my computer, I can do that with no problem, leaving Installation 01 in a sticky situation. Since development took so long, it timed itself into irrelevance.

So now I don't really care about this project anymore. If it releases one day I might give it a shot. In the end, though, it's now obsolete with the current state of the series on PC. A strange case indeed.

Magus Array –

Barely had a pulse to begin with

On April 6th, 2020 a Source Filmmaker animator I follow released another banger video. That video contained a song from a then-unreleased game called Velorum. I really liked that song and investigated further into the artist behind it, who at the time went by the name “brainfoam” (they now go by pngsequence, or Joe). This name lead me to their now defunct website, which also had a list of projects they contributed to including many other “earthbound inspired” RPGs like OTHER, mentioned earlier.

I really felt like I had uncovered an interesting niche, and the general quality of not only their music but their art as well had me feeling as though I had discovered something really special. This was all I needed to start intently watching for any progress regarding whatever this project came to be. At some point the game was rebranded to “Magus Array”, a soundcloud and Twitter page were created and some more minor scraps of music and art were uploaded to each.

Unfortunately, sometime later down the line, the game was cancelled. I don't remember where or when it was announced, but it's been a little while now. This was a little disappointing, as I am quite fond of Joe's art and music, so I was curious to see what game a person like that could make. Fortunately for me, I might be able to do just that. They've been hyping up their newest game, Reflectile, which looks far more like an actual game than Magus Array ever was.

Duel Arms –

Cancelled, and I'm still a little sad about it

In 2018 I stumbled on a little game called Knight Club. It was a fun twist on your typical platform fighter which focused on health bars as opposed to the stamina knockback system found in Smash Bros. I tried it out a little, had a good time, and then put it down for a while. Then, in December 2020 Knight Club had a little rerelease on Steam dubbed “Knight Club+” which polished the game somewhat and also added Steam multiplayer support which made playing online much easier. I bought it for myself and then convinced a few friends to grab some of the free keys they were giving away and try it with me.

Sometime before the release of Knight Club+, I started seeing glimpses of a sequel/remake called Duel Arms. This game seemed to expand on the very solid foundations of Knight Club with a special move system and multiple equippable utility items. However, in 2022 it was cancelled, which like Magus Array, was also disappointing. Sadly, the developer didn't have the money to be able to support themselves while making a game like Duel Arms.

As some kind of consolation, the unfinished build of the game was released on itch.io. I don't really want to try it in the blind hope that the developer stumbles into a million dollars in a ditch and is suddenly able to finish this game properly. So here's hoping for that day to come.

A Fox In Space Episode 2 –

Waited for: at least 6 years

I'm not really a Star Fox fan. I've interacted more with the character's appearances in Smash Bros than I have with the game itself. On the other hand, I really love this 90s-style fan animation of Star Fox. Another solo project, A Fox In Space presents Star Fox as a Saturday morning cartoon, packaged with a meaningful helping of low-fi ambience. As I have no connections to the characters from the games, the renditions shown in the pilot episode were so captivating that I am unable to imagine them differently now.

Animation takes a long time, a long, long time normally. A long, long, long time for one person on their own. This guy, Mathew Gafford, wrote, animated, scored, edited, partially voice-acted, and directed an entire animated episode of this show himself. So I knew that I would be waiting YEARS for the next episode of this show to come out, and years it took, as while writing this article I decided to check on it again and realized that episode 2 finally came out a month ago now. It's 40 minutes long.

Hopefully, it was worth the wait, I'll be watching it soon.

If you are reading this article, you are almost certainly a communist or a sympathizer. An important divide within the communist movement is between those who see a revolution as the only path to socialism and those who believe it to be achievable under the current liberal system via reform. This article assumes you believe a revolution to be necessary and there will be no arguments against social democracy in it. Go read State and Revolution. There is a bad habit among western, particularly North American, leftists. We seem obsessed with ceaselessly antagonizing and alienating soldiers. This comes from a weird hubristic belief that our goals are achievable without them. That simply is not true. There will be no revolution without their support, and the current leftist instinct serves the interests of counterrevolution. The goal of this article is to dismiss any naive delusion that a revolution can occur solely by the rising of the proletariat or peasantry. Organization needs to be done to appeal to the soldiering class or the armed forces need to be outright infiltrated and steered toward the end of achieving socialism.

Case Studies

Socialism is a scientific ideology. In pursuit of our goals, we should consider the material evidence of past successes and failures. Altogether, the evidence is overwhelming: the likelihood of a successful revolution without the support of a significant portion of the nation's soldiery is nearly impossible. Let's examine case studies together and see what we can learn from them. For the purposes of this article, we shall narrow down our list of revolutions with two criteria. Firstly, we shall not examine revolutions occurring before the invention of the modern military structure. Before the 17th century, there was no class of professional soldiers in significant number. The 17th century saw the rise of two dominant military structures: mercenary armies and national armies. Before this, militaries were entirely reliant on drafting peasantry, who spent most of their time as agricultural workers. The superiority of a professional army over a levy army should be immediately obvious but was not logistically possible under feudalism before the technological developments and social changes of the reformation/renaissance period. Secondly, we shall only consider a short list of major revolutions for the sake of brevity. Generally, other revolutions e.g. the Spanish Civil War follows the same patterns established in our case studies.

Revolution	Result	Notes
English Civil War	Revolutionary Victory, British republic established	The army is the only reason a republic was even established after the defeat of the Cavaliers, as the general opinion was in favour of maintaining the constitutional monarchy even among the parliamentarian leaders (See the history of the Rump Parliament).
American Revolution	Revolutionary Victory, American independence secured	Not really a revolution, as the ownership of production within American territory was not changed. Wealthy planters remained in charge of their plantations and the industrial revolution had barely even begun in Britain meaning there were no great industrialists owning American assets on either side of the fight. Many of the COs of the Continental Army were in the British army up to the moment of the conflict, including George Washington and the Continental Army was defeated routinely in cases where they did not heavily outnumber the enemy. If it were not for the intercession of the actual French armed forces, the historiographical consensus is that the war would've ended in American defeat. The British also faced problems that would not be faced by the reactionary side of a domestic revolution, including long transatlantic supply lines and sympathy towards the revolution by a significant portion of the British parliament.
French Revolution	Revolutionary Victory, First French Republic established	Interesting case: reactionary officers vs revolutionary enlisted men. Reactionary officers were forced from their posts by the enlisted men and most emigrated. Revolutionary officers were promoted swiftly and took control of the nascent republican army, Napoleon Bonaparte among them. The French republic became the First French Empire only when the army under Napoleon demanded the change, not because of popular uprisings against Republican rule, all of which were crushed (e.g. the Vendee rebellion).
Slave Revolts	Variable Result (see notes)	All failed except for Haiti. Haiti only succeeded because the army was busy fighting on both sides of the French revolution. The French expedition to restore Haiti to colonial rule was defeated when a significant portion of the attacking army defected.
Revolution of 1848	Variable Result (successful in France, failure in Italy, Austria, and Germany)	The revolution succeeded in places where the enlisted soldiers defected to the revolution (e.g. France) and was defeated in places where they did not (e.g. Austria). Germany should not be seriously considered as an example of either due to the circumstances of the German confederation. The Austrian army managed to defeat the revolutionaries despite critical disorganization, low morale, and broken supply lines.
Russian Civil War	Revolutionary Victory	Although there was an attempt at the start of the civil war to not use tsarist soldiers, the inexperienced proletariat and peasant army was routed soundly by the white army. The Red Army was only able to win after military reorganization by Trotsky, after which it was comprised of an astounding 83% ex-tsarist soldiers and officers disillusioned with the Russian Empire and Kerensky's Russian Republic.
German Revolution of 1919	Reactionary Victory	The demands of the army for the abdication of the Kaiser were the only successfully enforced demand. Anarchist and Communist revolts were obliterated by the armed forces and veterans of the first world war
Chinese Civil War of 1949	Revolutionary Victory	Only successful due to material support from the government of the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party was on the defensive for the entire conflict until the post-1945 period, which was the first time the CCP's regular army (i.e. not militia) was near the KMT army in size.
Cuban Revolution	Revolutionary Victory	Every attempt by the revolutionaries to take on the government failed initially, as the armed forces were totally on the side of Batista. It wasn't until the US placed Batista's government under embargo and Batista's own supporters began to abandon him that the tide turned. Regardless, Cuba provides the model of a successful revolution performed by and large without the support of a significant portion of a nation's armed forces but this was only possible under peculiar conditions (US embargo of Batista, and ironically the arming of the guerillas by CIA agent Frank País), neither of which would be likely to be replicated now and in Canada.

A summary of our case study is that successful revolutions are revolutions supported by a significant portion of those serving in the armed forces in the area at the time. Exceptions to this exist, e.g. Cuba, but that is only due to confounding variables. Attempts to replicate a Castroist style of revolution in Canada or the United States would undoubtedly fail, especially in a world without Soviet support for communist insurrections.

Officers vs enlisted men

A secondary lesson to be drawn from this is that class lines exist within the military hierarchy just like in civilian society. Officers in a modern military are strictly selected through education systems such as West Point and RMC. It is just as important that they adhere to a belief in the project of the state as it is that they are competent commanders. Political education is part of the curriculum of the average military academy in capitalist countries just as in communist ones. Because of this, the officer class is generally far more reactionary than their underlings in the enlisted and non-commissioned ranks. However, just like in the civilian economy, the labour of the armed forces is done by the lowest levels of the military hierarchy. Professional officers act as the foremost oppressor of the enlisted man. The resentment of enlisted soldiers towards professional officers can be exploited and increased with proper outreach and organization. Furthermore, if the bulk of enlisted men were to side with a revolutionary movement, the officer corps would be powerless to stop them as was the case in the French Revolution.

Why is the support of the soldiery so important?

Why is this all necessary? Why should the left even bother reaching out to the soldiering class? Since the invention of the modern army, the arms race between the oppressed classes and their oppressors has been particularly one-sided. The modern army structure is an incredibly efficient tool of violence that is inherently superior to the system of levies it replaced. That levy system is the closest historical equivalent to how many leftists seem to imagine a communist revolution: a disorganized mass of urban and rural poor. Soldiers are trained in combat principles and the use of military equipment in the same manner as the proletariat are trained in the use of factory machines, point-of-sale systems, and computers. A fight between these professional fighters and even a large proletariat militia would be particularly one-sided. Regardless of any reaction of disgust to the idea of sullying one's ideological purity by appealing to trained killers, it is the only way the goal of revolution can ever be achieved.

Clarification on supporting militarism vs engaging the soldiery

It is important that the appropriate lesson be drawn from this. Communists should not become chest-beating psychos supporting the coming invasions of Iran and Mexico. The lesson is not to support unrestrained applications of force by the bourgeois state using the army as a cudgel. When the opportunity arises, we should strongly oppose ongoing and future military interventions and conflicts. What should be done is a concerted effort to appeal to the average soldier. Soldiers should not be talked down to, belittled, or dismissed as seems to be the current leftist instinct. Soldiers should be addressed as potential comrades. Appeals should be made to their sense of self-preservation and humanity. Most of them would much rather collect a cheque and get free college than actually get deployed. Those who actually do fantasize about murdering the state's enemies are victims of propaganda and should be engaged in the same manner as other victims of propaganda in your life. If you are incapable of doing these things, just shut up and do not engage with them at all.

Should leftists join the army?

One instinct you may have on learning this lesson is that leftists should simply infiltrate the armed forces and shift the culture towards socialism. While certainly possible if a critical mass of communists were to enlist, this is not necessarily realistic. Consider that the army is strictly authoritarian. Attempts to proliferate communist sentiment from within would presumably be cracked down upon by reactionary elements in the officer corps. The only potential advantage to this would be to create a corps of revolutionaries trained in warfare and the operation of military equipment.

Conclusion

There will be no communism without the support of the soldiering class. There will be no support from the soldiering class if the left does not improve its organizational skills and basic demeanour. If your goal is not a revolution, this is a perfectly fine state of affairs. If it isn't, a significant shift in the internal culture of left-wing movements is necessary. The growing climate change crisis means we are running out of time to achieve communism. Action must be taken at once.

Future Work

Look forward to the future publications from the Monty division of the printhouse: Rage For The Machine: CIA infiltration of leftism Let's Plan the Economy: critiquing Towards a New Socialism Range Feudalism 2: why do so many farmers support their own immiseration?