Rambling - Face Character Where

Yep, my wizard uses a katana.

I've been playing a metric fuckton of Diablo III, lately.  That's a scientific measurement.  As part of my recent subconscious effort to avoid actually making any progress with my work, I've become more deeply fascinated by games than usual.

For several weeks prior to this week, it was The Old Republic.  I progressed more during those weeks than in the previous two months, and my two main characters there are each at the peak of their power.  I've also explored more areas than I even knew were available to be found, mapping them with stubborn precision.

This week, though, it's demon-smashing.  I'm not really certain why, to be honest.  I do like the game, it's fun in a kind of non-brain way, but I've never been the biggest fan of the Diablo franchise.  For one thing I loathe that people actually call it an RPG, but I'm not going to bother getting into that subject (it's stupid).  I've just never found that the Diablo series has much in the way of gameplay depth.  That's not a crime, by any means, but for whatever reason it ended up diminishing the series in my list of interests.  I didn't have any real problem with the game, but neither did I have any great interest.  It was just there, and fun sometimes.

Wouldn't know it to look at me this week, though.  When I first got the game I beat normal difficulty with my wizard, and played around with each of the other classes.  I made a hardcore monk, of whom I'm strangely fond, and when she died due to a fucking random mob in a random fight due to a simple computer stutter I said fuck it and stopped playing.  Now that I'm back though, I've gone kind of crazy.  My wizard has beaten both Nightmare and Hell difficulties, and has spent a bit of time futzing around in Inferno.

So why am I rambling about Diablo III today?  Because I think it's an interesting example of a previous post I made, wherein I talked about characters being Vessels, Masks, or Personalities.  You can read the whole post if you want, but a brief summary doesn't help.  A Vessel is a game character that is devoid of personality or motivation, and has very little history if any at all; they are an empty space into which the player steps to play the game.  A Mask is a character that carries some personality or motivation, and has a bit of history that's likely vague so the player can fill in details; they're someone the player can experience the game through, but they provide more emotional investment than a Vessel.  Finally, a Personality is a character that has their own motivations and personality (hence the title), and they usually have some type of history to them; they're someone that the player can watch.

I'm bringing this up again because Diablo seems to me an interesting mix of both the Vessel and Personality character types.  There are literally no choices to be made during any point; your character makes decisions which determine your next objective or, more often, other NPCs simply give you instructions to which your character automatically agrees.  This would seem to lean toward the Personality archetype; you're just going through the gameplay elements while your character pursues their own agenda.  At the same time however, the character's complete lack of any real agency in the story leans fairly in the direction of Vessel.  There are very, very few moments where the character actually makes a decision about what to do; nearly every time there is a new objective, it's because one of the NPCs gave instructions.

All that's left of my monk.

This presents an interesting combination; a character with personality and motivation that doesn't direct the story by their own choices.  I'll use my monk as an example.  The game presents the monk as a character in her own right; she has a history, motivation, and a personality.  I can watch all this as I play the game.  Yet at the same time, her lack of decision-making, her part as a simple agent in the story rather than the one who drives it, allows me to interpret her personality and motivations as I see fit.

As presented in-game the monk is dedicated to the pursuit of her studies and furthering the goals of her gods.  She is quick to help the innocent, and is good-hearted, but she expects people who are capable to act accordingly.  Beyond this however, there isn't much to go with.  There are some interactions with the game's NPCs, but I was free to decide who my monk was as I played her.  She was Montesi; raised in a particularly harsh environment where only the strong and the brave survive.  Of particularly strong faith even at a young age, she took to the study of martial arts with a fervor and energy that bordered on the fanatic.  Yet her dedication paid off when, just as she was coming into her own, a star fell from the sky.  So she pursued her destiny, and that began to shape who she was just as much as her training had done already.  Before, she had simply been a servant of her gods; now she was a servant with a very specific purpose, and she would see it done at any cost.

Maybe I'm just having too much fun with it, but I think it's an interesting mix.  Characters with personality who are not the primary motivating agents of the story being told.  It allows for the character to be someone with whom the player can identify, yet frees them to a point where the player can personalize them to a fairly large degree.

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Copyright 2012 by J.L. V'Tar
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Rambling - German Pop Clipper Reference

Not sure who I'm stealing this image from.

Fear of everything, that seems to be my problem.  Not saying that I'm all too different from anyone else in this regard, but it's pretty fucking aggravating that I have allowed it to push me this far into inactivity.

I've written a novel, and I even managed to find the courage to publish it.  This was a terrifying act, of course.  The idea that it might sell well was utterly horrifying; as in such a case I would be subject to attention that I detest and criticism of a kind that only the internet can offer.  Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, selling absolutely no copies of my book was an equally horrifying prospect; to put my efforts out there for inspection and to receive no response would seem to be an indicator of my work's complete lack of any intrinsic value.  Somehow though, I managed to get it done.

As it happens, things turned out more the latter than the former; the book has sold a staggeringly small number of copies.  More frustratingly, its time in the Kindle Select program moved exactly zero.  That's right, in Kindle Select, wherein they quite specifically promote my book for me and aim it specifically at people who might be interested, exactly zero people found it interesting enough to actually get a copy.  It was free.

Now, I've managed to get to the point of having an audio book ready to go.  Late last year I put out a call for voice actresses on reddit and received a good number of interested messages.  Of those interested people, a fair percentage of them even sent readings of the book's first chapter for submission.  I could only pick one of them of course, and I decided to work with Rebecca Bedford.  She's been wonderful to work with, and her enthusiasm for the book has been incredibly helpful.

Yet I'm at a point now where fear brings it all, once again, to a grinding halt.  If I throw the audio book out there and it becomes popular, that's horrifying.  Yet of course, if the audio version doesn't move at all that is equally horrible.  See, if I do nothing, then neither horrifying event can ever occur.

I have specific individuals in my life to thank for this over-riding fear that dictates so many aspects of my life. Fortunately, I've also got a tremendous amount of anger and arrogance to push through the fear.  It takes a lot, mind you, but I think at the moment I'm reaching a point where I can manage to make some progress; that happens every once in a while.  It's my failure, of course, to allow this fear to keep me from seeing my goals become reality.  Why I'm afraid is less relevant than the fact I choose not to overcome it.

Still, at least I've managed to get this far, and I'm going to go further.  By the time this blog entry posts, the audio version of my book should be up and available.  It had damn well better be, anyway.

Rambling - Fuck Tick Disc Wall

Caesar is one of my greatest heroes.  Not the title, or the family line, but the original.  The man himself; Gaius Julius Caesar.

Other great conquerors, scientists, and artists are people whom I place on pedestals as well, but none quite as much as Gaius.  Alexander the Great, Alan Turing, and Frédéric Chopin all stand high within my personal sphere of delusional and likely over-bearing reverence.  There should be some females in there as well, and my preference would be an all-female list of all-stars such as that, but history and the writing thereof has not been kind to the feminine aspect of our species.  Suffice that, for purposes of my own particular cause and style of reverence, females do not stand high.  Not for what I revere.

Revere isn’t even really the right word.  Hero isn’t even appropriate if I'm going to be honest.  I don’t have heroes in the standard sense of idolization, imitation, and glorification.  Gaius Julius Caesar was a man of his time and, thus, he was a brutal unforgiving mass-murderer that used the politics and wars of his era to make a name for himself.  Yet that, right there, is what I find most powerful.

Every single human being from now back to the day the first and earliest version of us ever thought the words “I am” has been searching for some way to remain an “am” instead of becoming a “was.”  We’re all going to die, and we all know it.  We pretend we’re not going to, or we try to think about other stupid shit that lets us forget we’re going to die, but it’s always there.  Everyone has ways of coping.  For some people, the silly little idea that they’ll get to live forever in some form of afterlife is enough (though I’ll not get into the massive ego-fuck that entails).  For others, they intend to live on through the memories of their children and friends…which doesn’t last any longer than their equally short lives.

Yet for just one man that I have ever read about, there came the closest a human being has yet come to immortality.  He didn’t just get himself written into history books; many people have done that, some even with greater accomplishments.  No, Caesar made himself unforgettable in practically every way possible, even if we don’t know who we’re talking about.  There’s a method of birth that, if not actually named after him, bears the idea of having been named after him.  Those of us in the English speaking world (and much of the western world in general) frequently refer to the month of his name.  The entire western calendar is based off his own calendar.  His name is a fucking title.

Many people get their names written down in the history books, but I don’t personally know of anyone else whose name became a title.  There was no one named Pharaoh, or Tsar, or King.  No John S. President ever existed for whom the position was named.  Gaius Julius Caesar reigned for a very brief period and was murdered by those who built their success on his…and then his successors took his name as their own.  They continued to do so, until it became simply a matter of fact that anyone in that particular position of power bore the name Caesar.  Eventually, it became a title.  The name Caesar is not viewed as a family name, lineage, or even a dynasty.  It is a title on par with Pharaoh, Tsar, King, President, Emperor, and more.

I don’t look up to Caesar because he was a conqueror; there were greater warlords (though, in defense of my self-professed hero, there aren’t many on that list).  I don’t revere him because he was a tremendous politician; that’s a dubious title at best, and one claimed many times over throughout history.  No, I call Caesar my hero because he did what every human wants.  We remember him, well over two thousand years after his death.  More importantly, since we also remember other even older people, we still use his name in everyday conversation, and he is still a figure that means something to Joe Fuckshmuck on the street.  You can name Genghis Khan, Mozart, Hannibal, Einstein, or any other legendary historical figure, and the person on the street will know who they are.  How many of their names are used in daily conversation?

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Copyright 2012 by J.L. V'Tar
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Rambling - Non-Orbital Entertainment Dragons

Easily one of my favorite cinematic moments.
Powerful, memorable, and few words to muck it up.

Emotion, from the perspective of a writer, is an interesting thing; at once inescapably critical to most kinds of fiction and simultaneously impossible to actually describe.

The kind of fiction I’m talking about, of course, is narrative fiction involving specific characters and intended to make the reader feel certain ways and possibly think about certain things.  More vague, broad, or meta-based fiction might not involve emotion, or might only hint at small amounts of emotion; it might simply describe a fictional world, or the ever-famous mid-millennium book which describes fictional flora and fauna.  Yet nearly any book which tells a story about characters must inevitably involve emotion at some level, most often at its core.  We can’t be fully invested in a story if we don’t care about the characters in its telling, and we can’t really care about them if we don’t understand what they’re going through.  Without emotion, more specifically without the reader’s emotions in empathy for the book’s characters, a fictional narrative is stripped of any power it might have had.

Yet at the same time, emotion is impossible to actually describe.  I can describe what a character looks like to the last exacting detail.  I can describe their environment far and near.  I can detail every political, economic, and cultural movement of their world.  I can even describe every last second of a character’s background if necessary.  None of that, however, has any way of ever describing the emotions that a character, or any other character in their world, goes through.

An emotion is not actually a thing which can be described.  When I feel anguish I know exactly what it is and I can identify it, but I can never describe it to someone else.  I can, of course, say “the anguish was crushing, I barely ate for days,” but that doesn’t describe my anguish.  It only describes my reaction to my anguish.  There is no set of stimuli that I can point to and say “that is anguish,” there is no physical representation of anguish with which other people can identify, and therefore nothing for me to describe.  It’s the same principle as color, really; I have no way of knowing whether or not the color purple I see is the same color that you see.  Just like I can never describe purple without saying “it had a dark purple hue that shimmered bright violet in the right light,” or just “it was purple,” I can never describe an emotion.

So what is a writer to do?  For starters, a character’s reactions are literally everything.  If emotion is the core of a good piece of fictional narrative, yet we can’t describe the emotions themselves, then each character’s reactions to their own emotions are the most important tool in any writer’s skillset.  To overdo it makes the emotion unbelievable or perhaps gives the impression of the wrong emotion.  To underdo it leaves only bland emptiness, and lack of emotion is what kills a story.  Yet if I do things correctly, if my characters react just right, then I don’t have to be able to describe an emotion itself.  If everything is right then a reader will understand the anguish being felt by a character or, in a perfect world, feel an echo of that anguish in response.  When my words work correctly, I don’t have to describe joy, hate, love, fear, anguish, curiosity, depression, or any other emotion that a character goes through; their reactions should tell my reader everything.

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Copyright 2012 by J.L. V'Tar
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Rambling - Cut Tong Relaxing

It happened, finally.  After more than three decades of thought, the vast majority of which was spent dreaming and wishing and scheming and flailing and failing, I got paid money for my words.  The Amazon deposit hit my account.  Thirteen United States dollars, and fifteen cents.

No, it isn't much.  It's practically nothing, and yet it's everything.  Thirteen dollars is everything I've ever wanted.  Some people tell me I shouldn't care about whether or not anyone likes my work, buys it, or even reads it.  They tell me I should write for myself and everyone else be damned.  I say that, with all due disrespect, everyone who has told me that can go sit on a spike.  Sit on it and like it.

Because I don't write for the money.  I write so I can write.  So I don't have to do anything else, because everything else drives me to death.  When I write I feel everything, I'm happy and excited and sad, I'm overjoyed, I'm terrified, I'm everything necessary for my books, because I feel my characters.  It's a strange place when I write, in my head, where I can be terrified or enraged and enjoy every second of it, because it's the moment of framing a story that I can see so clearly, the joy of trying to put it to words in a way other people can follow and participate in their own telling.

Writing code, and designing games, give me the same sense of satisfaction and glory (sure, that was a bit hyperbolic, but I'm allowed to indulge right now).

They're different from how I feel when I do anything else.  Any so-called "productive" activity that I am expected to perform for one reason or another.  Because I need to earn money, because I'm worth less if I don't, because I've been given responsibility.  It's all part of a silly little mass-mind machine we've created for ourselves and I want no part in it.  I can feel it around me when I work a day job, any day job.  I can see the wheels turning, the gears grinding, the oil slicking it all to work with such imperfect motion.  If a machine could be a zombie, it would be our current society.  I want no part of it.

Well today I was paid money for my creativity.  It isn't much.  It's pathetic, unhelpful, and it won't go very far at all, but I got it for my words.  I didn't get it by smiling at people I hate, doing things for people when I'd rather spit in their faces and tell them what I think of their ridiculous little expectations.  I got it by telling one of the so very many stories in my head.

Looking at my bank statement, it's painful to see that little deposit sitting there, sandwiched so inconveniently as it is between a deposit from my day job (2,122% of my writing money) and one of several bills that I have to pay every month (725% of my writing money).

It's not a start.  It's not even the starting line.  That happened about fifteen years ago, and I've been in the thick of it ever since.  I just didn't know it until now.  Didn't know that this is what I do.  Everything else is just a maddening, insulting thing that must be endured.  My writing money will equal the money from shit day jobs, eventually.  Then it will exceed.

I don't write for validation, or because I want people to like me.  I write because I can't tolerate what the rest of you seem perfectly content to tolerate.  I'm not built like you.  Sometimes it burns, and I hope you enjoy that enough to buy it.

Feeding Crystal Proven Circles

Several seconds before beginning writing this post, I uploaded my second book, my first full-length novel, to amazon.  The book is now in review, and we'll see if anything actually comes of it.  I'm assuming that someone reads the book, which means I get to find out whether or not they will allow some of the content within the book itself.  Which is, of course, one of the two primary issues about which I am currently fretting.

The first and most immediate worry, I have no idea whether amazon will actually allow my book through whatever screening process they have in place.

My book was written with several goals in mind, and among those is the goal of addressing what I see as a problem in the portrayal of female sexuality in fiction.  Now whether or not my own portrayal of the main character's sexuality is in any way offensive to some people's idea of what female sexuality, is not, or should be, I am more concerned with attempting to make my book say something about the problem as I see it.  The sexuality of women in fiction generally follows a particular pattern.  Good women are as close to virginal as possible and are generally not interested in anything that the mainstream might consider "weird."  Only evil, crazy, traitorous, or otherwise "not the good girl" are promiscuous and/or interested in sexual activity outside the primary "norm."  I find this incredibly stupid.

As such, two of the characters in my book are each of a particular bent.  The villainous female is as monogomous and rather straight-laced (at least sexually) as she could possibly get.  By contrast, our heroine is very sexually active with multiple individuals throughout the book, and she's also sexually deviant in several ways.  This manifests itself in the presence of two sex scenes.  My book does not "cut to the curtains," "fade to black," or anything of the sort.

The presence of these sex scenes is where I see the real problem coming into play.  One of the other problems that I wanted to directly address with my book was the ridiculous way in which my country views and treats sexuality in contrast to violence.  Gunfire, swordplay, torture, brutal beatings, explosions, fiery deaths, drowning, and all manner of other violent activities are regularly portrayed and even glorified.  Yet what happens when we get to the sex scene?  We cut to the curtains, fade to black, and many other methods of glossing over the intimacy of human beings.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the violence.  I love me some explosions, and I am as big a fan of violence in movies and video games as the next person, for many reasons.  Yet I'm equally a fan of the opposite side of that equation.  Violence as depicted in fiction is pain, suffering, and misery.  Why is it perfectly acceptable to show that, but not acceptable to show the opposite?  People enjoying their sexuality, enjoying another person, whether it's romantic or not.  So, I deliberately included both in my book.  Violence because it's a fantasy action adventure.  Sex because I think to show one end of the scale and not the other is quite literally the definition of imbalance.

To be clear, it's not porn.  I didn't write anything overly graphic.  The action scenes in my book are detailed, and occasionally the scenes are pretty brutal, yet the sex scenes are treated with delicacy and not nearly the same level of detail.  Whereas fight scenes stretch for a whole chapter more or less, the sex scenes are each several paragraphs.  Still, even with this, because of the way in which I know my society treats sexuality, I find myself wondering if that will be too much.

I've been told, by people who publish on amazon regularly, that I have nothing to worry about.  Specifically, I've even spoken to a writer of erotica who assures me that her books are published without incident.  So I likely am worrying about nothing.

Yet the second (but most important) worry, assuming amazon does allow my work through their filters it's not them I'm actually submitting my work to.  I'm submitting it to the public.  I am presenting my work to the world to be judged.  I poured my heart into written form, and now I will soon hold it out to the world and ask them to judge it.

If people love it, that will be horrifying in and of itself.  I will be amazed and overjoyed, of course.  Yet at that point will come the abject terror of repeating the process.  Writing another book that people enjoy.  It is possible to accidentally make something good.  Doing it on purpose is something else.

If people hate it, of course that is a major terror.  I'm the kind of writer who can't write something that isn't me.  My stories are very personal, and so when some Anonymous declares my work a bunch of amateurish crap or otherwise rips it apart, I'm not sure how I will react.

Of course, the worst possible terror is that there will be no reaction at all.  No one will read it.  Nothing at all will happen.  Just as nothing has ever happened, and my work has never been noticed.  Everywhere.  Every time.  It becomes rather crushing.

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Feeling That Punch in the Gut

It's been about three months now, just a day over I think, since I finished Mass Effect 3.

The end of the Mass Effect trilogy has completely thrown me for a loop.  Enough even to affect my writing schedule and the progress I make on creative works in general.  Yes, this is completely pathetic.  I understand that, and I admit it.  Doesn't make it any less of a reality for my overly-attached psyche.  I grew to love the Mass Effect franchise right to its very core.  I was excited and eager to see the end of Samantha's story (I'm calling her Samantha, not Shepard, it's my blog, eat it).  I was equally excited and eager to see further adventures of other characters within the wider narrative.

That, when everything is said and done, is what it all comes down to.  At least, for me.

I love Sam's story.  Her interactions with the crew of the Normandy, and all those wonderful characters who circulated in and out of the broad story spanning the trilogy, are what made those three games so powerful.  I won't bother going into the specifics, since I'm hoping anyone who might read this would understand completely.  Even now, if you're who I hope you are, you can easily think of at least a dozen touching, funny, badass, horrifying, or sad moments involving any of the characters.  So we don't need to go there; we've already arrived.  The story of Commander Shepard and her friends is what it is.

Yet, as I said, I love the setting as a whole.  The technology, cultures, even the politics of the setting fascinated me from the very first few hours of Mass Effect.  I was excited to see the stories of other people throughout the galaxy.  It's one reason the multiplayer of ME3 is so exciting to me; other heroes doing their part to fight the Reapers.  I was eager to see the exploits of soldiers throughout the galaxy go on their own adventures trying to bring things back under control after the Reaper invasion.  I wanted to see bounty hunters with their own rough-and-tumble ships chasing batarians through Alliance space.  I wanted an intricate murder mystery set entirely on the Citadel.  I wanted legends of the great Commander Shepard to inspire young heroes throughout the galaxy, sending them on their own adventures across uncharted regions of space on unexplored planets.  I wanted more!

But now, we won't get more.  Sure, according to Bioware, there will be more Mass Effect games.  They've said from the beginning that the trilogy would be the entirety of Shepard's story, but that they would make other games in the same setting.  What they didn't say was that the end of Shepard's trilogy would bring an end to the entire setting as we know it.

Soldiers now can't bring things under control, because they have no Mass Relays to go anywhere.  Bounty hunters and young would-be heroes suffer the same problem.  Mass Effect, as we know the setting, no longer exists in any form.  That, of course, assumes the destruction of each Relay didn't obliterate all life in its respective star system (as they are demonstrated to do upon death).

What I'm trying to get at, and using far too many words to do so, is that the ending of Mass Effect 3 didn't bother me for any story, choice, character, or plot reasons.  Those all exist, and are bothersome.  Yet I could have overlooked them.  They'd have angered me as much as they do, but I could have gotten past them.  The real kick in the gut as I watched the credits roll, I've come to realize, was the understanding that there is no more Mass Effect.  We can't have more.  If there are any more games set in the franchise, they'll have to either be set during the existing trilogy or, if post-Reaper Invasion, be completely unrecognizable to the Mass Effect we know.  Neither of these are satisfying.

The former option doesn't satisfy because we now know exactly how hopeless any struggle for hope really is.  It's one thing I keep hearing from other Mass Effect fans.  Some are perfectly able to replay the trilogy without a hitch but many others, myself included, are unable to do so.  My enjoyment of the moments within the games aren't diluted in any way, but I can't find any hope in them at all because I know that, in the end, Mass Effect will die completely.  It will end.  There is literally no hope.

Not to mention, of course, the problem of piling story after story onto the same frame of time.  The Star Wars franchise has seen its share of this problem.

The latter option doesn't satisfy because if we play a Mass Effect game, we want to play a fucking Mass Effect game.  I know I do, at least.  A setting where synthetic and organic life are one type of super-being sounds really interesting, but it isn't Mass Effect.  A setting in which all synthetic life has been obliterated sounds boring, and isn't Mass Effect.  A setting wherein synthetics have been mind-controlled to do....something....is ambiguous, and it isn't Mass Effect.  A galaxy without Mass Relays is not Mass Effect.  Fuck, the Relays have been one of the primary identifying images of the franchise since inception.

So there.  That's what my problem really is with the ending to Mass Effect 3, as I've come to identify it.  I suppose I owe Bioware some kind of gratitude, in a strange way.  I've been developing my own settings, of course, with the intent of ending the setting itself in a final and unalterable way.  This, I feel, is no longer something I can do.  When I first thought of it, I thought it sounded like a really fascinating idea.  I imagined it would stimulate dialogue about possibilities, shock and delight people who thought it wouldn't really happen, and shake my readers out of complacency in an interesting way because normally the heroes always save the day.  I can't do that now.  I've felt what they would feel.

I want to think that the Bioware team thought, as the built ME3, much as I did about my setting.  I really hope they've seen what I now see.  Ending a beloved franchise doesn't spark debate, shockingly delight, or shake from complacency.  It just damages any enjoyment of the franchise because...well, fuck, it's all already over, isn't it?

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Rambling - Ignorance, Love, Pain

Well, it's over.

I generally like to stay informed on the gaming hobby as a whole; the movements of various developers, corporate actions of publishers, innovations and concepts, plus a whole general slew of things that generally won't appeal to anyone who isn't interested in the design of games in its own right as an activity.  As a result, I tend to be fairly well-informed about upcoming titles.

For some reason, in the summer and fall of 2007, there was a hole in my knowledge of upcoming events.  I honestly wouldn't be able to say why.  Maybe I was distracted by other things (I was living without a roommate at that point and pulling extra hours to cover rent), maybe I simply rolled a bunch of 1's and missed every relevant article, but somehow I ended up being completely unaware of an upcoming title called Mass Effect.  By all rights, I certainly should have been.  Baldur's Gate was and is one off my favorite games, and KotOR stands high as one of the best games ever made.  Given my distaste for the standard ideal for Japanese-made RPGs, as well as games that focused on gameplay in place of story, here was Bioware as the champions of story dictating gameplay, and choice being given a prominent place.

My first indication of this thing called Mass Effect didn't even really ping my radar.  A friend of mine mentioned the game being made, and I even saw a teaser trailer leading in to a special showing of a BSG special on the big screen (I think it was Razor, but my memory could be off).  For some reason, none of it stuck.  The game just didn't settle into the "GET EXCITED, GEEK!" part of my brain.  As a result, I was not ready.  I genuinely wasn't excited for Mass Effect when it was released, and can't even remember the impetus for which I bought it, other than "it is a game, therefore I must play it."

So I made my first character.  Being that the vast majority of RPGs tend to favor hack-n-slash combat over tactical, and thinking that this strange "biotics" the character creator talked about sounded an awful lot like magic, I went with the assumption that the gameplay would be easier for a soldier than an adept (being that, in most RPGs, a wizard gets killed right and left while a fighter can barrel through most of it).  I figured a soldier would be an easy-mode way to get the story on an initial playthrough, and went that route.  Messing around with things, I ended up with a female soldier, earthborn because it sounded gritty, sole survivor because it sounded harsh.  Figuring she was a career-minded girl dedicated to her job as her only escape from a harsh earlier life, I gave her a shaved head and pale skin (doesn't see planet-side much).  I named her Samantha, and went off to adventure in the galaxy.

The artifact that gave her a vision, the adorable little quarian in the citadel, the silly asari scientist I met in a dig site, giving that dramatic speech to my crew, leaving a friend to die on Virmire, that conversation with Sovereign, falling in love with a geeky blue girl, that final end-run with Sovereign ever imposing and ever closer.

When the credits rolled, I sat in shock.  Nothing had prepared me for Mass Effect.  I hadn't pored over pre-release interviews and dev diaries.  There was no foreknowledge of anything at all; not gameplay, not story, not characters, not thematic elements.  Nothing.  After the credits finished, for three days I was at a loss.  Some people might give me shit for this, but for three days I couldn't play other games; they weren't good enough.  I couldn't watch movies; they weren't good enough.  Couldn't read books, either.  I couldn't even start a replay of Mass Effect, because I didn't want to lose the tremendous high on which the game had left me.  Later, when I did try subsequent plays, I found I had a very unexpected problem.  So attached had I become to my character, that I couldn't playthrough as anyone else, nor could I make different decisions.

Samantha Lynn Shepard.  Grew up on the streets of west-coast North America.  Did what she had to survive, even ran with a gang for a while, and got out at the first opportunity.  Joined the Navy with a fake ID (she's three years younger than her service file would suggest), discovered she liked soldiering and had a talent for gunplay, and promptly saw her unit on Akuze get wiped out.  Sam survived, thrived, and found herself in the right place at the right time to be the savior of the galaxy.  She's a good person, to her core, but she's also harder than anyone she's met; she'd put a bullet in your head to save the rest of your family.  Do the horrible things that must be done, because that's what a hero is.

I waited for Mass Effect 2.  I practically frothed.  Realizing that my lack of foreknowledge about ME1 had been part of why the game hit me so hard, I deliberately avoided anything and everything I could.  Yet still, I frothed.  I chomped my bit like a raging animal, and I couldn't get my hands on that game soon enough.  The day before it was released, my friend Kris and I stayed up all night watching our package track from Amazon, chattering at each other via Google Wave.  We pulled hair out when our package seemed to not be moving, or went in a direction that indicated it might take longer to get here.  We wondered what might happen, how the story might progress, and how characters might react.  Then the package finally showed up at my door, and I asked my roommates to provide food for me the next few days.

That horrifically glorious opening scene, Joker's return and the SR2's reveal, realizing Garrus is Sam's best friend, hugging Tali when she finds her father, Jack holding her own against the swarms and then hurling a wave of rage and hate at them to clear the room, that reaper baby, defeating the Shadow Broker, wiping out an entire star system.

During the final segments of ME2, I was literally on the edge of my chair, face less than two feet away from a 47" television.  I knew that ME2 was touted as a suicide mission, and I was terrified for my beloved companions.  Every time Tali begged me to hurry and open the next vent, I couldn't shoot collectors fast enough; they had to die now now now and I had to hit that next switch and Tali was burning and I had to get them the fuck out of my way this very second.  Sam even progressed and had a bit of an arc in this one.  She grew her hair out (since she's not in the Navy anymore, why bother), and realized she's in it for her crew now.  It became less about "I wanna be a badass because that's how I survive" and more "I wanna be a badass and stand between my crew and the enemy."  She remained the silver-hearted badass; wiping out the batarian system is entirely what she would have chosen to do, and in my mind she watched the wave sweep across that system not because she had to, but because she chose to.  She makes the hard decisions, and then doesn't let herself ignore the consequences.

I waited for Mass Effect 3.  It simply could not come fast enough.  I devoured every tiny morsel of information that Bioware sent our way yet, as before, if anything even felt like it might hint at story elements I flung it away from me like a chunk of living disease set to infect me.  Despite my own misgivings about story spoilers, I even played the demo because I just couldn't wait for another ounce of Mass Effect.  Kris and I again fretted, via text this time, going into near panic when it seemed our games wouldn't be delivered in time.  When they did, we began playing in earnest, texting away like teenage girls as we gushed over the gameplay, the story elements, and wonderful moments as they came one after another, after another, and another, and another.

That opening scene of reapers on Earth, shooting Mordin in the back and betraying all krogan and crying to gain salarian aid, saying goodbye to Garrus in a wonderful way, saving the quarians to hear Tali so joyful, saving the geth and being so proud, shooting Wrex and crying when he learned the truth, that failure at Thessia, making the assault on Earth and knowing I'd die in the process.  That ending.

My gut still twists when I think of the ending.  Everything about Mass Effect has been glorious from the first moment of character creation in the first game; when it thrusts you into the world by turning the character creation screen into an Alliance database error.  Everything about every game was amazing, engaging, and wonderful.  Right up through the desperate, ugly battle in London.  Right through that glorious charge down the hill toward the beam, reapers tearing apart everything and everyone around you.  Right through slogging along with no strength left, just a pistol to force your way to a Pyrrhic victory.  Right through talking The Illusive Man down, or at least shooting his delusional ass right the fuck off.  Right through Shepard dragging herself, bloody and hopeless, to that last console.  But not past that.  Never past that.

I do not understand, and unless some major revelation comes very soon, I will never understand.  Bioware carried my emotions to greater heights than any video game of any genre or platform has ever done.  They made me care about my character more thoroughly than I can care about any protagonist of a movie or book.  They made me care about my character's friends, who are her family.  By the time of ME3, Sam had let loose just a bit more--primarily influenced by her relationship with Liara, but partly because she had stopped caring so much about the military as a way of life--and even gotten a bit more sun.  Her world fascinates me, inspires me, and excites me.  I love the species, the locations, the history, the technology, I even love the politics of Mass Effect.  And then....and then that ending.  The ending that literally undoes all of it.  The species become irrelevant, the locations become unavailable, the history is made pointless, the technology is rendered useless or outright destroyed, and the politics become entirely nonexistent no matter which of the so-called choices I pick.  The decisions I made through three games which, granted, shaped my story in a wonderfully personalized way, have no bearing on that so-called ending.

I had planned, as anyone who scrolls down this blog might notice, to write some Mass Effect fan fiction as an exercise to get myself writing on a more regular basis.  I decided to hold off on it, considering I didn't know how ME3 ended and I didn't want to jump the gun.  Figuring I would wait until after playing the game, I put my writing on hold until I knew how the story unfolded; I wanted to be sure my fiction didn't conflict with the state of the galaxy once the reapers were defeated.

Never, not for even an instant, did I suspect that Bioware would completely undo everything.  The entire setting.  It was said they were setting up a franchise.  Well what kind of franchise did they leave?  There is nothing left of the Mass Effect I might recognize.  Depending on which of the three staggeringly different endings become canon (which in itself is a fucking insult to the idea of my choices being important), the Mass Effect franchise that continues in the future will be nothing like the one with which I have fallen in love.

Everything about Mass Effect was perfect.  Right up until that last tiny little bit.

Now I don't know what to do.

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Rambling - High Counter Shown Words

So I just read an article on Kotaku about a meeting held by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) about whether or not to apply the rules of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to video games (full article here).  This strikes me as silly on a superficial level, and dangerous on a much more fundamental level.

...the [ICRC] says they may ask developers to adhere to the rules themselves or "encourage" governments to adopt laws to regulate the video game industry.

The silly aspect is fairly obvious, in that an international organization founded in the 1800s to regulate the way in which nations conduct war is now looking at the content of video games.  Silly, only insomuch that merely saying it sounds ridiculous.  I mean, seriously...

While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL...

Virtually violating IHL?  Really?  Just saying that is ridiculous.  Gamers have virtually won countless sports games, virtually saved countless lives, and virtually repelled innumerable extra-terrestrial invaders bent on wiping out our entire species.  So where are the international organizations looking to award gamers with mountains of awards for athletic accomplishment, Nobel Peace Prizes, and undying adulation for preventing our destruction at the hands of the Combine?

Oh....oh, there aren't any?  No one is going to be given an award by the President for Most Crops Farmed in their facebook account?  Well, shit.  They why is this being applied?  That's just silly.

Yes, before you say it, I understand that there is very little real correlation between war, farming, and sports.  I'm not trying to compare the two.  What I am saying is that video games are not the real world, and no real world law should be applied to the way in which they function.

Sure, ban or restrict all the content you want.  Ban kiddie porn, restrict the sale of violent and sexual games to minors, ban and restrict all the things that make perfectly logical sense to keep out of the media in general.  All media; books, television, movies, comics, and games alike.  Which is a small part of my point.  Where is the cry from the ICRC to apply IHL to movies?  If there is, or ever was, such an event then I never heard of it.  If you know of one, please do inform me.

The thing is, even if there was one, it wouldn't change very much of what bothers me so much about this.  As stated at the beginning of the article, and reiterated near the end...

One possible course of action could be to encourage game designers/producers to incorporate IHL in the development and design of video games, while another could be to encourage governments to adopt laws and regulations to regulate this ever-growing industry.

That, to me, sounds like  a very direct threat.  In the same article Brian Crecente (the author) goes on to describe how effective the ICRC has been at "encouraging" government action behind the scenes.  Which is all fine and dandy; they're the ones who are charged with keeping mortars out of schools, mines out of public streets, and hot pokers out of the asses of POWs.  I'm all for that, believe me.

Yet what that quote above amounts to, in my opinion, is the ICRC saying "the video game industry better do this, or we'll get the government to fucking make you do it."  In what way is that not a bad thing?

I'm already angry, lately, about S. 1867, and the last thing I want to hear about is the possibility of government dictating the content of my video games.  I mean, really?  Should there be a government committee past which every developer in the country should run their ideas?  How about an actual government employee on the staff of every authorized game developer (horrifying in itself) whose job it is to say yes or no about every aspect of the game?  Either idea is equally troublesome, and I personally wouldn't tolerate either one.

Now there is something to be said, I must point out, about the idea of applying IHL to the content of some games.  Personally, I find the idea fascinating and I would really love to see someone explore it some time.  Imagine a game like CoD where, instead of the usual uber-pretty yawn-fest "shoot ever'wun, wooooo!!!!" it usuall turns out to be, we had to pay attention to what we were doing.  It might suck ass.  It might elevate the game to a whole new level.  I'd love to see it explored.  Yet in no way should the government step in, or an international organization, or even anyone's Uncle Fester for that matter, and dictate to any game developer what will be included in the game.

Hell, even applying this idea would be ludicrous.  As stated in the article, in 2007 a group called TRIAL studied the 'virtual violation' (that term makes me cringe now) of IHL.  They studied games like CoD, BH, and R6, and to me that makes perfect sense; those are the types games I would expect them to look at when studying the possible violation of IHL in video games.  I don't know whether or not they looked at other games or genres, but I highly doubt they looked at very much.

Did they look at games like Mass Effect?  Do I violate some form of the IHL every time I shoot a Geth in the face?  What about Fable?  Can I be charged with war crimes if I slaughter a farmer's entire flock of chickens (do chickens flock?  I'm not sure.)?  How far would something like this go?

The entire idea is ridiculous, insulting, and dangerous.

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Rambling - Sky Beat Dancing

Bringing my average posts per month down yet again, I have decided that I will not make my usual Thursday posts for the past few weeks.  I decided this just now, and will utilize my not-yet-invented time machine to make this decision reality.

There, done.

So I've decided to go for this whole NaNoWriMo thing.  I got a late start, being that I didn't discover it until about 23:00 on the 2nd, so I didn't get to writing until it was technically the 3rd.  This doesn't seem to be much of a problem from a "total number of words you have to write each day to succeed" thing.  Starting on the 3rd instead of the 1st, their stats calculator helpfully informed me that I would need 1700+ words per day to reach the 50k goal by end of month.  Being that I just now busted out 1800+ words fairly easily, I should be good to go.

However, it is evidenced by simply scrolling through my (shockingly regularly updated!) blog that my problem is not word count.  It is reliability.  Can I reliably work on the exact same project for a month straight?  (The two days lost don't count, fuck you).  I tried doing daily writing when I first set up this blog, and that clearly didn't work very well.  But perhaps it will  be different if there is a specific end-point.  The project ends on the 31st of November, when I have 50k+ words written.

[I need vodka.]

I like the character that I've decided to put in the project though, I'll say that much.  She's interesting, at least I think so.  I've long had a broad concept for a protagonist and antagonist pairing that I've yet to actually develop until now, and she falls nicely into the protagonist side.  Now I just have to develop an antagonist to fit her.

See it has long, long aggravated the living pissfuck out of me that sexuality is used to define heroes and villains.  In particular, women.  The "good" women are "virtuous" and "pure" while the "evil" women are "sluts" and/or sexually "deviant."  This is a bunch of horse shit.  Sexually deviant people are not evil, sexual deviance has nothing to do with evil, and I do not appreciate the two being equated.  Just because a person likes to give it up to anyone with a pretty smile, or likes chains, whips, wax, leather, or even shit during sex doesn't mean they are evil.  Similarly, just because a person is monogamous, refuses to indulge in anything other than vanilla sex, and decries all forms of "depravity" doesn't make them virtuous or good.

Thus, the hero of this piece is kind of a slut, and she likes freaky things.  Her adversary will be, conversely, somewhat of a prude, much like most female heroes I've seen portrayed in fiction.  This is just my own club-handed attempt at social commentary.

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Rambling - Olympic Sound Discs

To push gaming boundaries, or not?

Personally, I think this is a question that must plague all the top game development studios on the market today.  It is a problem that I think can make or break a studio, in both directions.  They might decide to push the envelope and do something never before seen in the genre of the game they make, earning the ire of fans who fear change and demand games that are more like others.  Or they might decide to play it safe and make their game quite similar to others of the genre, thereby angering the player-base who accuses them of being lazy.  In essence, I think it becomes a gamble on which side of the player-base they are more likely to rile depending on which path they decide to follow.

On one hand, the players who become angry when a game turns out to be drastically different from another in its genre are, I think, the vast majority of the player base.  They are those I referred to in a previous blog; gaming doesn't mean the world to them, but it's something they do and so they want it to be enjoyable.  Yet since they don't surround themselves with all things gaming, every time they play a game they have to relearn how this new game plays.  They are not interested in the nuances of different game mechanics, all they know is that when playing a game that is too different from others in the genre they have to spend time just learning how to play.  Learning the way a new game works is boring and annoying to these people, because they just want to have fun shooting, adventuring, flying, or what have you.

On the other hand, I think those players who crave innovative gameplay, the ones who chastise game companies for doing the same thing that other games of the genre have done before, are at the heart of gaming.  I, for one, count myself among this crowd.  Gaming is something to which I devote the significant majority of my time, effort, and resources.  When I play a new game I genuinely want to see new game mechanics because I find it entertaining to think about how those mechanics work with others, and how they're different from the way games of that particular genre normally do things.  For us, learning how to play a new game that's different from other games of its genre can often be part of the fun.  When we encounter game mechanics too similar to those other games of the genre, it appears to us as if the developers didn't care about their game enough to experiment, and just pushed out "another clone," to use a derogatory comment.

So to which group should the developers cater?  The first group is, in my estimation, the one to which is generally deferred in the vast majority of situations.  By simple virtue of their greater numbers, the casual gamers and hobby gamers carry enough monetary weight that either developers have no fiscal choice but to listen to their wishes, or the production studios that own said developers make it a requirement.  If they don't keep the majority of the customer base happy, a studio might simply wither away and die.  They are, after all, in the business of being in business.

Yet the second group is one I believe remains important to the developers simply because, in a sense, they're the same.  I don't doubt that there are some game developers who are only in the business because they see it as a burgeoning industry where fortunes might be made.  Yet I fully believe that most people who get into the gaming industry do so because they love games, they love gaming itself, and they want to be a part of it.  For this reason they can identify with those of us who crave new and innovative game design, because they want to see it too.  When they play new games from other studios, and when they make games themselves, it's more fun if the game mechanics are new and interesting.  So to avoid developing new mechanics for their games risks angering and alienating the core of the player-base that is, frankly, more identifiable with the development team.  They're the ones who follow specific careers, who genuinely care about the work the developers are doing.

So what you do?  Do you aim to please the people who genuinely love your work and care what you do, but whom are not numerous enough to support your business?  Or do you aim to please the people who don't really care about the love you put into your work and just want to play a fun game, but without whose money you cannot remain in business?

There are studios that manage to walk such a fine line, angering the smallest number of players possible.  I am continually impressed with, proud of, and happy for them.

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Rambling - Crumbling Banjo Bombs

I will endeavor, while writing this, to refrain from descending into fanboy ranting and raving.  I have specifically striven to avoid blogging about Mass Effect before specifically for that reason, but this time I can't not write about it.  Mostly because this time, rather than flailing my arms in excitement and screaming the glories of this game, I have something specific to say (I'll try to keep the flailing to a minimum).

I have a bone to pick with Bioware.  By far one of my very favorite development studios, Bioware has had their money in my pocket since I first played Baldur's Gate.  I have happily played each of the Baldur's Gate series, Neverwinter, KoTOR, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age.  With Mass Effect, Bioware absolutely stole my heart.  It is a setting that has struck more than one chord with me; I love the characters, the technology, the history, the themes, the races, I even love the politics of the Mass Effect setting.  Yet most importantly, I love Mass Effect for its refinement of the type of game that KoTOR first hinted at.

Like other RPGs, Mass Effect allows you to craft your own version of the story that Bioware wrote.  They form the setting, create a broad narrative, and allow you to choose the details of that narrative.  Yet Mass Effect went farther than other RPGs in the creation of Commander Shepard, in a way I talked about in a previous blog, and the result is fantastic.  Commander Shepard becomes the personality you want them to be as you play.  There is certainly a broad framework of character already developed, but like the broad narrative in which Bioware lets you choose the details, the character of Commander Shepard is a personality that you can shape to such an extent that he or she becomes your own version.  Often, this can vary quite significantly from other peoples' versions of the character.  Gender, race, and class aside, Commander Shepard's variations exist, throughout the course of the game, on a range from murderous to beneficent.

At the risk of being That Gamer, I can tell you a bit about my Commander Shepard.  Please, bear with me for just a little bit here.  Samantha Lynne Shepard (yes, I gave her a full name, I do that I'm a storyteller) is two years younger than her service file indicates, since she joined with an altered ID to get away from a difficult life on the streets of Earth.  She had no family there, just a small group of friends, and she did what she had to survive; even killed her first person at the age of twelve.  The Navy was her escape.  She made good as soon as she was possibly able, and hasn't looked back since.  Not long after joining, her unit was wiped out on Akuze, and she survived through sheer tenacity, natural ability, and a big mountain of luck.  She's a good person, always ready and eager to help out people at the bottom rung of society, with whom she identifies.  At the same time, she's got a mean streak a mile wide, and never hesitates to make bloody calls in the moment when necessary.

Sorry to put you through that, but I just wanted to specify what Bioware did when they formed Mass Effect in the way that they did.  My Commander Shepard is a specific personality when I play that game.  To me, this is one of several ways to make a game, and it is among my favorites.  I am quite fine with playing a game such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution, in which Adam Jensen is a defined character with a specific history and personality.  I like Adam, I thoroughly enjoy that game, and I like the way Adam is presented.  At the same time however, Samantha Shepard is as much a legitimate character to me as Adam Jensen.  And I'm not the only one.  I have met many other fans of Mass Effect who have specific visions of who Commander Shepard is to them, and their version of the character is as legitimate to them as mine is to me or Adam Jensen is to any of us.

Then I read this.  Most of it sounds great; specifically that it's an original story and not a rehash of the games' story.  Yet where they fail, on a staggering level, is when they specify that the movie will focus on Commander Shepard.  The specification that Shepard will be male in the movie is entirely irrelevant, even if I wasn't already a member of the FemShep fan club.  This is a bad idea on a level so much larger than the FemShep fans struggling against the BroShep majority.

I don't know the details about who decided at what point to make Commander Shepard the main character of the Mass Effect movie.  It may have been Bioware, it may have been Legendary.  In either case, the end result is the establishment of a "canon" Commander Shepard.  Since the game's inception there has been that short-haired BroShep glaring sternly at us as he went about his adventures in the game's advertisements.  With that I am absolutely fine; it's difficult to sell a game, especially an RPG, without an identifiable character that people can recognize and associate with said game.  Yet every single aspect of the Mass Effect universe has been carefully built to encourage us to develop Commander Shepard as our own character.

The books don't specify anything about Shepard.  The comics don't specify anything about Shepard.  The Galaxies game didn't specify anything about Shepard.  Beyond the use of an identifiable face with which to sell the game, Bioware has specifically avoided saying or publishing anything that would impinge on the character that customers have created in their own playthroughs.  Each time they did so, they strengthened the legitimacy of the character each of us has created.  Every instance in which Bioware specifically took efforts (even making their own work more difficult) to avoid specifying any details about Commander Shepard, they specifically validated our own versions of the character.

Throughout the Mass Effect games, we are given choices.  Each choice shapes the character we are playing, specifies who they are and makes the story more our own.  It could be argued that this is simply a game mechanic meant to provide us with a bit more of an interactive and therefor entertaining experience.  That argument fails however, as soon as you carry a save game from ME1 to ME2, and subsequently to the upcoming ME3.  Your choices span an entire trilogy of games, a feature largely unseen in the entirety of the video game industry.  This elevates the choices from a simple entertaining aspect to a fundamental feature of the series, perhaps even the setting, as a complete whole.  It makes those decisions important.  Now, with the introduction of a single specific version of Commander Shepard our choices are being made null.  You chose to save the council?  Too bad, FilmShep killed them.  Yet you killed the Rachni Queen?  Irrelevant; FilmShep kept her as a pet.  Who died on Virmire?  Doesn't matter, FilmShep already made that choice for you, the decision you made had no effect.

On a different level, using Commander Shepard in the movie is also a disservice to the setting, and the character, in their own right.  The threat that Commander Shepard faces in the existing trilogy is a very specific, well-crafted saga with a beginning and an end.  To stretch that story beyond its intended length just to put it in a movie would cheapen it.  To invent a whole new story for Commander Shepard to be involved in would risk making the whole idea ridiculous.

Yet most importantly, there is a larger aspect to this decision.  Beyond my hurt fanboi feelings that they're nullifying my character, beyond the ridiculousness of giving the galaxy's savior yet another galaxy-ending threat to defeat, is the fact that Mass Effect should not be about Commander Shepard.  Not if they want to make the setting last.  The Mass Effect setting is rich, intricate, and has the potential to become a Science Fiction setting on par with Trek, Wars, or B5.  Yet this cannot happen if the only thing with which the general public identifies is one specific character.  The setting must be presented as a setting itself, not a story about one individual character.   If too much emphasis is placed on Commander Shepard, then if Bioware ever does attempt to make the setting into a legitimate sci-fi franchise the public will be much more reluctant to accept it without that character.  They won't see it as "that sci-fi setting" but "those movies and games about that one dude."  Much like the reaction that many people had about Halo: ODST.  "How can you call it a Halo game?  There's no Master Chief."  People identify such an iconic and central character as the setting itself, rather than as a part of that setting.

I'll stop rambling now, I just had to write this.  I doubt anyone at Bioware or Legendary will see it.  Even if they do, I really don't think it will have any effect whatseover.   I wish it would.  I wish they would see it, understand my point and the place of genuine love it comes from, and agree with me.  That won't happen, but I just wanted to say my piece.

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