Stross

Stross is an asshat who writes pure fan-service aimed squarely at a target demographic consisting of a 5 knol radius centered on me.

Games as art

I never wondered if games could be reckoned as art until I saw someone else do it. And when I did, I thought that it wasn't a question worth asking, even if I only considered the "ancient" games that I grew up on.

Here's the logic: What goes into a game? Very few don't include any visual art, music, prose, or acting (or the 3d or voice equivalent). Even that old ADVENTURE was primarily prose! So at the very least, games are made out of art. So of course games are art, right? Some will ask if there is a higher art than what is calculated from the mere components of the game, if it rather comes together to create some experience as art.

Portal is an object lesson in interactive storytelling. We in the media are so fond of shaking our heads, scratching our beards and looking for the "art" in videogames. Well it's time for us all to shut the hell up. This is it. It’s in this finely crafted, lovingly rendered piece of short-story literature.

This is from an article by Rabbit Murdoch over at Gamers With Jobs. It's a good review of Portal (except I think he took the comments by GLaDOS about androids a bit too strongly — and he later almost admitted that in the comments section). But it also discusses the artiness of video games. It's pretty good. Oh yeah: I do believe in the experience-as-art.

After I mentioned Portal and HL2:EP2 on my "normal" blog, I had second thoughts about whether it should have rather been posted to Radical Ideals. It is, after all, about art. But I wanted to get across to my normal technical audience with that one; heck, not only does that blog have a far larger readership than this one, but video games are tech, right? Well, consider this post my atonement.

Half Life 2 has a much wider repertoire of artistic merit than Portal, but I think Portal much better hits one with a fist full of pure, distilled STYLE.

Some recent finds

I've found two interesting sites with pretty good writing recently.

Angus Glashier is an Australian SF writer who posts his work on his site Sleepworker.com. There's some pretty good stuff in there. Thanks to glyph for pointing it out to me.

I'm also amazed at the quality of writing in the Eve-Online "backstory" section, Eve Chronicles. It's surprisingly non-crap for game writing. Some of the good ones are The Greatest Joke, Khuumak, Minmatar Methods of Torture, and The Science of Never Again. None of them really have a full plot, but they are fairly well styled and competently done. There's also a short stories section which I haven't had the chance to read yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I haven't seen any game writing that wasn't crap since Deus Ex, so I think it's worth mentioning.

FuzzWuzza - I'm Dying for Atashi No Inu

FuzzWuzza's latest album "I'm Dying For Atashi No Inu" is an epileptic seizure with an anti-nostalgic trip. Like the pizza party on your 7th birthday, it will make you wish you had the power of resurrection to restore your poor dog Jimbo, who choked to death on a burnt pizza crust. FuzzWuzza's rhythms on the second track, "Crackodemon", effortlessly recall it -- the digitally mutilated snare at 2:48 resembles your coughing dog. By 3:05 the dog has died and your mother is screaming maniacally in the synth-sitar.
Track 6, "Multirhythmic Polyphasic Pornographic Beats" brings to mind quietly losing your virginity to Kristen McGaffigan in her bedroom while her father was asleep at the television in the living room. Your awkward fumbling is represented as a twittering, arhythmic background beat that clashes with the inconsistently intensifying xylophone melody which ends with only a mildly satisfying climax and the listener wondering what to do with the mess at the end. Other tracks on the disc variously evoke the lunar landings, bad chicken risotto, and your failure at college. Recommended for those without a tendency for staying up at night feeding depression with remembered errors.

Emma

So, after having been distracted by Kafka on The Shore, I was able to return to and finish Emma. Well, I'm not sure what to say about it; many have already told us that it's a probably a pretty good book. But I guess there are a few things that struck me, both personally and as someone who wishes he were a writer^[1].

I think I didn't really get a sense of the "country"-ness of the story and setting -- contemporary reviews described the setting as a middle-class town, but to my modern mind many of the main characters were quite wealthy - being able to live without working! Of course, this mostly applies only to certain women in the story, but so little attention is paid to the way people in this small town make ends meet that it seems everyone lives an absolute life of leisure.

Well, that's one of the things I find interesting about the story. I have definitely been on a historic fling recently, whether by historic fiction or historical fiction; I find it a more interesting way to learn about history than stuffy texts -- or at least a good way to become interested enough in a particular historical event or setting to inspire me to read for hours on Wikipedia.

But the other half of my interest in this book is about the style -- indeed, a rather outmoded style that I wouldn't find myself writing any significant amount in, but definitely an inspiration, and something I would love to try in smaller bits^[2]. Austen is really amazing - at first I thought the particular quality that I was impressed by was perhaps not uncommon for authors of her time, but those contemporary reviewers seem almost as impressed as I am. At first, I thought that the pretty language being used throughout the book was so much filler, but I have been convinced otherwise. She describes emotion with such subtlety and accuracy as to clearly indicate every nuance of the mind of a respectable lady in an awkward situation. I think it really shows great strength of logic on Austen's part, to be able to analyze and describe so comprehensively the emotions of her characters.

I've picked up Northanger Abbey, apparently her first work, to read next. I wanted to get a sense of her diversity, so that one seemed appropriate as it seems rather different from her other stories. I will probably get to it after I finish these twenty books on my stack.

1: I might as well give up on being an amateur writer and become an amateur critic. It's way easier.

2: I'm reminded of Steven Brust, whose stylistic diversity I find impressive. He has written a number of books in the seedy perspective of a crime-lord assassin, and I have read some of another book which was written in an awesome historic style reminiscent of Cervantes in the way it addresses the reader. I'm not sure what other experiments he has done, but I am happily working my way through his material to find them.

Japanese dudes

I finished Kafka on the Shore by Murakami the other day (finally). It makes me think that post-modernism was invented for Japanese authors. So many of the stories I've seen out of Japan have relied so little on logic; this one really formalizes that lack of logic. That was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, in case you didn't catch it. Central assumptions are called into question throughout the book, but are often thrown out in a "who cares", logic-is-your-enemy kind of way. It doesn't go totally overboard, though; there's definitely a balance struck between ridiculous subjectivism and the real world.

I enjoyed it in the same way that I enjoy a Neal Stephenson book; the end is crap, but getting to the end is still mostly fun. I enjoyed the huge number of literary, musical and historic references, and how it strangely and persistently references the story of Oedipus.

This is the kind of thing I am talking about.

Wisps of a dream, from The Machine

A wisp of a dream: floating spheres surround you, and a constant groaning is coming from everywhere. A thudding sound accents this, and you can make that it is coming from the spheres. You're moving among them rapidly, because something bad is following you.


***

The dream comes to you again. You've managed to lose whatever it was that was chasing you, and now that you can take a closer look at the orbs, the opacity has turned to a mere smokiness, and you see that each contains a person. They're all completely bald and wearing white coveralls, and some are pounding against their prison's smooth walls. Their plight hits you in an almost palpable wave of sadness, and your heart aches. However, the bad things have found you again: two likewise bald people, but wearing black coveralls. You stumble and run.

***

Again running, you dash behind a low-hanging sphere to hide from the black-clad men. Holding your breath you wait until they run by, then slump to the ground panting. After a few moments you notice pounding coming from the sphere you lean against; looking at it, you see a girl inside, her face telling of terrible longing. She stares at you with piercing watery eyes and presses her hand against the bubble, and you touch the same spot, feeling the heat of her hand through the thin membrane.

You hear the black-clad people again. Your simple hiding place wasn't very effective.

When you woke from that dream, your face was wet with tears.

(Thanks to Bolt City: Bubbles)

Interactive Fiction

Just so people know I'm still trying to exhibit my lack of creativity: I'm working on an interactive fiction game based on the ideas that spawned my post about a dream. I am almost daily producing more content or ideas for it, so hopefully within six months or so (let's not get too ambitious, here), I will be asking for beta testers. I will perhaps do episodic releases, but it depends how much that will harm any attempt at a plot that can go in different directions based on user decision (which I have no ideas for now).

The Card Catalog

You open the box to find...

A fist-sized brass sphere, with a small nail-sized spike protruding from it. A thin, deep groove runs around the sphere, from which the spike originates. Upon closer inspection, you notice the surface of the sphere is a single piece, and the groove runs around it in patterns like a maze. As you pick it up to inspect it, you notice that the spike slides along the groove with a mechanical whirring sound, clicking at every turn. The spike appears to always eventually move to point in the same direction. Currently, north-northeast.

(If the holder utters the title of a book, the spike will point towards that book. If the holder says "absolute" or "relative", the spike will point to the final destination or in the direction the user should walk, fly, or swim to get there, respectively.)

Dream (oh man, is it really about dreams? Dreams are so cliché)

The following is a dream.

You're in a typical setting: the middle of the woods, or your childhood school, or something. Things are going as usual. Your pants are gone, or you're running from a monster. But this time, the script isn't being followed. You trick the monster into falling into a pit and the schoolroom starts turning into a sex dream. Things are going great, and you feel really, really good. Euphoric. Then a pure black human-shape enters the door to the classroom and scans the room. It appears to affix on you, and approaches with a certain intimidating air of purpose. The chasing dream is back, and you are now pursued by the black thing (which is really just black. No depth, no scale of color). You continue running without your pants on, but come on, you know it's no use. The thing catches up to you, but instead of waking up like you normally do at this point, it keeps going on, dreadfully. The shape picks you up from where you've tripped and tortures you. With the pain, it takes you a moment to figure out what it's doing to you. It looks like it's kind of punching you, but its inky blackness is leaking like tendrils into your body. It keeps wailing and wailing on you, and you can feel impacts, but also some horrible pain like your soul is being dragged out through tiny pinpoints in your chest. It's excruciating, but you can't even pass out. After ages of this torture, the black thing drops you, and you gasp. The pain recedes somewhat, and then you finally wake up.

That's how Phil woke. Groaning, clutching his body, he rolled over and over and fell out of his bed, landing with his back on an empty cup, which caused him to wince and come to sense. That day, he wouldn't feel very good. Something clouded his brain, and he called work to tell them he wasn't coming in because he apparently had too much to drink last night and got in a brawl.

Doro

This is the beginning of an alternative ending to Octavia Butler's novel Wild Seed.

Doro was racked with physical pain, sobbing on Anyanwu's breast. She was dying. She was purposefully leaving this world to get away from him. The pain was so unbearable that he knew he would slip and enter a new body, but he was too distracted to care.

When he opened his eyes, he was Anyanwu. His previous body was slumped on top of him with a terrified look on its face.

* * *

Leah was preparing dinner, trying to keep her mind off of what she knew was happening upstairs in Anyanwu's bedroom. She was praying silently, tears running down her cheeks, that somehow Doro could convince Anyanwu not to die. Her husband Kane was sitting on a wooden chair in the corner with a sour look on his face. Leah suddenly started screaming, and he thought that she was being overcome with grief.

"No! I didn't kill her! I didn't kill her!"

"Of course you didn't, Leah!", Kane was bewildered. "What are you talking about. . . Doro?"

"No!", Doro threw the knife that Leah was using for preparing dinner at Kane, cutting him badly, and slipped out of the body.

Doro was in a blind rage. He had killed Anyanwu. She was still alive when he jumped, which means she still could have been saved. But he threw it all away with his childish lack of self-control. He loathed himself in that moment, and again could not prevent himself from jumping out of Anyanwu's body to the nearest conscience, Leah.

As Kane he again screamed, this time with rage overtaking grief. He would go on to kill Anyanwu's entire village. His next victim happened to be Anyanwu's new son, and he immediately left that body. When he landed in Frank's, he vomited, but did not wait to expunge his stomach before jumping again.

He continued this feeding frenzy. Helen died. Frank died. All of Anyanwu's children, lovers, and friends. Even those that Doro favored, he killed without consideration. He did eventually destroy everyone in the village, but he did not stop when he had killed them all. He killed the neighbors, and did not stop there. He killed the neighbors' neighbors, and did not stop there. He killed dozens, and hundreds, and did not stop there. Doro was moving so quickly that he no longer felt like a single consciousness; he was in so many places at once that he was a wave of death across the land. Thousands fell in massive swathes, wherever they were during the instant that Doro entered them and immediately left. People who were in company or crowds barely had time to notice that those around them were suddenly dropping before they were killed as well.

Doro no longer wanted his people. He did not want anybody at all, least of all himself.

Carvings

His name is Tebenkov. I don't know anyone else by that name. He apparently noticed me by chance at a local restaurant, although by his manner I am not sure that the meeting was entirely unintentional. He told me that he was very interested in my work, and that he would like to have a coffee or a game of pool with me some time. He seemed to be very interested in my wood carvings, which I myself am not -- they were created out of random inspiration that had left me as quickly as they had come upon me. I was disappointed that he didn't mention my paintings, which I am actually proud of, except in passing.

"Why, is that Mr. Alverston?"

"Yes. Who are you, sir?"

"I am Mr. Tebenkov. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I am a fan of your work -- your paintings, of course, but especially your carvings."

"Thank you."

"They hold quite a powerful message, as I'm sure you know."

"Ah, they are only the spasms of a lost artist."

"No, no, sir! Oh, but excuse me, I disturb the meal of you and your lovely guest. To be terse, Mr. Alverston, I would very much like to meet you again for a coffee, or if you fancy, a game of pool at the pub next door. Here is my contact card -- I hope very much that you will contact me."

And with that he left me, somewhat confused and partially annoyed, with my date.

Death by Drowning

I pondered whether it would be possible to kill myself by inhaling a glass of water. I'd have to inhale as hard as I could while I had a mouth full, and hope that my lungs couldn't expunge that much water before the lack of oxygen shut down my brain. What led me to this line of thought was the lack of alternatives: I was bound to a chair in a small grey room, my only interaction the meal of bread and water I received once daily. The cyanide pill that my colleagues and I agreed to keep had been taken from me with the rest of my belongings when I was knocked unconscious and bound to this chair. I resolved to try it at my next meal.

Sorcery

The sorcerers of previous generations were old men sitting in dark rooms practicing alchemy without knowing what they were really doing. Through "mystical enlightenment" (that is, randomly mixing things while inebriated and chanting), they found a few interesting interactions in the minerals and chemicals abundant in some parts. Over a few hundred years they developed their art in secret, improving somewhat on their solutions and tinctures, but never reaching the refinement of today's alchemists.