| Mozilla Firefox | Google Chrome | Apple Safari | Opera |
The continuation of the story has already started on www.thebuckmans.com/mory, which is the new permanent home of this blog for the forseeable future. Don't sit around at the old site waiting for updates. If you're interested in finding out where The March of Bulk and The Matchmaker and the CD and my life all end up, you should come over to the new address. It doesn't bite.
The new RSS feed is www.thebuckmans.com/mory/feed.xml. So if you've been following the old feed, you'll have to replace it with the new one.
Well then. Time to get to work.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
1 Comment:
-
Mory said:
-
I've replaced the audio file with a much better recording.
Here are the notes, in PDF format. The piece will make a lot more logical sense if you see the notes as you listen.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
I vs. I
A game by Mordechai Buckman
|
|
![]() Late-night thoughts, none of them new |
![]() I'm not. |
![]() Just let me win already. |
![]() IF only |
![]() ♫ Some Day Myself Will Come… ♫ |
![]() Who am I? |
![]() This is just stupid. |
|
![]() Oh, no. Conflicted about the blog? |
![]() a quiet day |
|
![]() Myself and I |
![]() Two Glasses |
![]() Good Riddance |
|
![]() Rebellion Renewed |
|
![]() Matters of Taste |
![]() God damn it. |
![]() Hollow Depth. |
![]() Every structure should have an exit. |
![]() Scene-switching |
|
![]() Just let me win already. |
|
|
![]() The Thinkers |
|
|
![]() Nonlinear long-form storytelling |
![]() Excellence vs. Accessibility |
![]() Purveyor of Silliness |
|
|
![]() Purveyor of Silliness |
|
|
|
![]() An Evil Statement |
![]() Game flow control |
|
![]() You can take the kid out of the school… |
![]() 21 Now |
|
![]() Deadline |
|
|
![]() An Evil Statement |
|
![]() Religion |
![]() Counting Blessings |
![]() The Pathetic Life of a Super-Villain |
|
![]() "So what are you doing next year?" |
|
![]() Diversity (and lack thereof) |
|
![]() Interview with an Ideal |
|
|
![]() Interview with an Ideal |
|
![]() Simplify! |
![]() On a Scale From |
|
![]() Is it really a good show? |
|
|
![]() I couldn't figure out the math before. |
|
|
![]() Natural / Rational |
![]() The Trip |
|
![]() I'll keep this brief. |
|
|
|
![]() I've been workin' on the weblog, all the live-long day... |
|
![]() No Way To Run A Production |
|
![]() Easterly Wave |
![]() Natural / Rational |
![]() Snapshots |
|
![]() That's better. |
![]() How To Fix X-Men |
|
|
![]() Do I overthink things? I don't know, let me think about that... |
|
|
![]() Do I overthink things? I don't know, let me think about that... |
|
![]() The Seven Levels of Experience |
|
![]() Worth the paper |
![]() I couldn't figure out the math before. |
![]() Do I overthink things? I don't know, let me think about that... |
|
![]() Presents / Self Defense |
![]() Do I overthink things? I don't know, let me think about that... |
|
|
![]() Universal notation |
|
![]() Deadline |
|
![]() Many Excuses |
![]() the mundane and The Imaginary! |
|
|
![]() Beauty of the Mundane, Banality of the Imaginary |
|
|
![]() Gamism Theory |
![]() Seventy-four |
|
![]() Gamism Theory |
|
|
![]() So simple an idea... |
![]() The correct way for How I Met Your Mother to end |
|
![]() "Are games art?" |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
|
![]() My American Brethren |
![]() Day of Wrest |
|
![]() Superhero Symbolism: "Omega the Unknown" |
|
|
![]() Interview with an Ideal |
|
|
|
![]() Day of Wrest |
![]() 7.00 |
|
![]() A Typical Story |
![]() 7.00 |
|
|
As the song goes:
Shabbat is over
My life may now resume
I thought I wouldn't make it
I thought I'd met my doom
I thought I couldn't take it
'Cause twenty-five hours is much too long for pacing 'round the room.
But enough of all this gloom
Shabbat is over
Time for a better day
My Gamecube and piano and computer I can play
Hooray! Hooray!
Callooh! Callay!
Shabbat is over now, come hear sweet freedom's call
"Barukh hamavdil bayn kodesh l'khol"
But as I move on I have one final plea
Hey God, could you please quit your picking on me?
Spare me the endless monotony which comes every week
Let me live ever after happily or my future looks bleak
For what kind of life is it where every seven days I must go through a phase of such misery?
Let me be free of the madness!
Let me be free and let me feel gladness
Let me be free in a world without "shabbos"
Shabbat is over now
I'm free
I'm free
I'm free!
|
![]() I enjoy Shabbat. |
|
As the song goes:
Shabbat is over
My life may now resume
I thought I wouldn't make it
I thought I'd met my doom
I thought I couldn't take it
'Cause twenty-five hours is much too long for pacing 'round the room.
But enough of all this gloom
Shabbat is over
Time for a better day
My Gamecube and piano and computer I can play
Hooray! Hooray!
Callooh! Callay!
Shabbat is over now, come hear sweet freedom's call
"Barukh hamavdil bayn kodesh l'khol"
But as I move on I have one final plea
Hey God, could you please quit your picking on me?
Spare me the endless monotony which comes every week
Let me live ever after happily or my future looks bleak
For what kind of life is it where every seven days I must go through a phase of such misery?
Let me be free of the madness!
Let me be free and let me feel gladness
Let me be free in a world without "shabbos"
Shabbat is over now
I'm free
I'm free
I'm free!
|
![]() I enjoy Shabbat. |
![]() Power Out |
|
![]() Friends |
![]() An Endless Shabbat |
|
![]() Friends |
![]() Respite From Everything Else |
|
![]() Friends |
![]() An Endless Shabbat. |
|
![]() Friends |
|
![]() The Multiplayer Experience |
![]() Socializing? Bleh! |
![]() Mistake, Lesson, Repeat |
|
![]() Please Insert Change |
|
|
![]() Imagined Opportunities |
|
![]() 2.txt |
![]() Training Wheels Off |
![]() Meanwhile, in the future... |
|
![]() Refuge |
![]() Start working. |
|
![]() Refuge |
|
|
![]() Incompatible |
|
![]() Another one for the pile of regrets |
|
![]() Next Door to Opportunity |
|
|
![]() I Am a Rug, I Am an Onion |
|
![]() Incompatible |
|
![]() Another one for the pile of regrets |
![]() Socializing in Solo |
|
![]() Another one for the pile of regrets |
![]() Socializing in Solo |
![]() My Father And I Go To See Avatar |
![]() People Who Need People |
![]() Outside the Comfort Zone |
![]() Fudgie and Willy |
![]() People Who Need People |
|
|
![]() My family |
![]() Matchmaker |
![]() Selfish Friendships |
![]() My family |
|
![]() Fudgie and Willy |
|
![]() Friends |
![]() My Father And I Go To See Avatar |
![]() I love my cat. |
|
|
|
|
![]() I Am a Rug, I Am an Onion |
|
|
![]() Interview with an Ideal |
|
![]() Interview with an Ideal |
|
|
![]() Matchmaker |
|
|
![]() Matchmaker |
|
|
![]() We Don't Fit |
|
|
![]() Matchmaker |
|
|
![]() Pussywillow's embarrassing jump |
|
|
|
![]() I Am a Rug, I Am an Onion |
|
|
![]() Forward March |
![]() Illusory exodus |
|
![]() Natural / Rational |
|
![]() Deadline |
![]() Purity |
|
![]() Purity |
![]() Playing Against Myself |
![]() Who's telling this story, me or you?! |
![]() The Thinkers |
![]() Myst and Mirages |
|
![]() Natural / Rational |
|
|
![]() Purity |
|
![]() The elimination of unworthy life |
![]() A Good Day |
![]() My Alphabet |
|
![]() Order & Chaos |
![]() My Alphabet |
|
![]() A Good Day |
|
![]() yawn... Hey, wait, does this blog still exist? |
|
![]() Alternate-Universe Me |
|
![]() The Perfect Color |
|
|
|
![]() Wii |
|
![]() Different Approaches to Directing |
![]() The cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise |
|
|
![]() The cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise |
|
![]() I'm supposed to be working now. |
|
![]() Conflict, about the blog part 2 |
|
|
|
![]() My interpretation of The Path |
|
|
![]() Why am I here? |
|
|
![]() The Composer |
|
|
![]() Ready, Though Unworthy |
![]() It's always more frustrating than I expect. |
![]() Mark Ecko, welcome to the Game Industry |
|
![]() Mimic and Mix |
![]() The Older Pianist |
![]() The Complete Rules of Moneyloopy |
![]() In Darkness |
![]() Mark Ecko, welcome to the Game Industry |
|
|
![]() LostWinds: Tradition and Potential |
![]() Sports games |
![]() Now here's a good game! |
![]() The Definitive Three-Step Method for Game Design |
![]() Sports games |
![]() Now here's a good game! |
|
![]() Sports games |
![]() Now here's a good game! |
![]() New Potentials |
![]() The Garden & Droplets: Metaludes |
|
|
![]() The Garden Needs Pruning: Adventures |
|
|
![]() And so it begins... |
![]() Here, have some high culture. |
|
![]() The Garden & Droplets: Exploration |
|
|
![]() And so it begins... |
![]() Ball Revamped: Metaphysik |
|
![]() The Garden & Droplets: Movement |
|
|
![]() And so it begins... |
|
![]() New Potentials |
|
![]() And so it begins... |
|
![]() Almost Possible |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
|
![]() The Impatient Phoenix Strikes (itself) Again! |
![]() Project Natal: Programmed By Machines |
|
![]() Betrayal of Myst |
|
|
![]() Betrayal of Myst |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
|
![]() Beauty of the Mundane, Banality of the Imaginary |
![]() Math Story |
|
![]() Final Fantasy Tactics Advance |
|
|
![]() Deadline |
|
|
![]() Holy. Cabooses. |
|
|
![]() Deadline |
![]() A buffer from the Real World |
|
|
![]() Tanya's back, and all's well. |
|
![]() Deadline |
|
|
![]() So simple an idea… |
|
|
![]() Inspiration |
|
![]() Quality Isn't Enough, Is It? |
|
![]() The Fundamental Interconnectedness Of All Things |
![]() Conflict, about the blog part 2 |
![]() I exist. No, really. |
![]() Forward March |
![]() Limits |
![]() I exist. No, really. |
![]() Forward March |
|
![]() No Way To Run A Production |
|
![]() Purveyor of Silliness |
|
|
![]() Tomorrow |
|
|
![]() Tomorrow |
![]() Home Collapsing |
![]() Happy 39th post! |
![]() Delayed, but successful |
![]() Glitchy transitions as horror |
|
![]() Many Excuses |
![]() Glitchy transitions as horror |
![]() Happy 39th post! |
|
![]() Glitchy transitions as horror |
|
|
![]() My interpretation of The Path |
|
|
![]() Oh, by the way... |
![]() The Key to Longevity |
|
![]() Wishing for Permanence |
![]() Money |
|
![]() Stay out of my room. |
![]() Money |
|
![]() Get Out |
![]() Money |
|
|
![]() Money |
![]() Greed and Galuttony |
|
![]() I'm A Happy Little Cog |
|
|
![]() I'm A Happy Little Cog |
|
|
![]() Ultimate Marvel comics |
|
![]() Souls |
|
|
![]() Why am I here? |
![]() The Key to Longevity |
![]() Many Excuses |
|
|
![]() Many Excuses |
|
|
![]() A Discarded Opportunity |
|
|
![]() Creative Redundancy |
![]() Creative Disillusionment |
|
|
![]() Yom Kippur music |
|
![]() Creative Redundancy |
![]() Light Confusion |
![]() Exploring a landscape of improvised music |
|
![]() 1 5 6 |
|
|
![]() 1 5 6 |
![]() Some perspective (to make myself feel better) |
|
![]() This is going to work. |
|
![]() continue extrapolate repurpose |
|
|
|
|
![]() Exploring a landscape of improvised music |
|
![]() The Plan |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
![]() Limits |
|
|
|
![]() This is going to work. |
|
![]() Quality Isn't Enough, Is It? |
|
![]() It's always more frustrating than I expect. |
|
![]() Aw, to heck with it. |
![]() The Fundamental Interconnectedness Of All Things |
|
![]() So simple an idea... |
|
|
![]() You are now entering Panic Mode. Have a nice day. |
![]() Semantics |
|
![]() 74 |
![]() How The Audition Went |
|
![]() You are now entering Panic Mode. Have a nice day. |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
![]() Where The Money Is |
![]() The Marvel / DC Comic Rivalry |
![]() Democracy of Morons |
|
![]() $7.4 Billion |
|
|
![]() Yo Ho, Yo Ho... |
|
|
![]() Interesting. |
|
|
![]() Yo Ho, Yo Ho... |
|
|
![]() Anticipating WALL•E |
|
|
![]() Yo Ho, Yo Ho... |
|
|
![]() IAM not |
![]() God Bless Google |
|
![]() Breaking up with Blogger |
|
|
![]() IAM not |
![]() Two Glasses: Tanya and Erika |
|
![]() IAM not |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
|
![]() A Vision of Illinois |
|
|
|
![]() The Necessity of Dreams |
![]() The Second Lasagna |
|
![]() Let's Go To The Movies! |
![]() Many Excuses |
|
|
|
![]() :) |
|
|
![]() How I play strategy games |
|
![]() The difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher |
|
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
![]() The Long Friday |
|
|
|
![]() Golden Fun: The Lost Age |
|
|
![]() Addictions |
![]() Exploration and Discovery |
|
![]() Addictions |
|
|
![]() 74 |
|
Pursuing gamism is the path that makes sense.
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
There's so much to do, so much that needs to be done!
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
If I don't make the games which I know need to be made, no one else will do it.
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
If I succeed, I will have proven to myself that I can accomplish any goal I set for myself, no matter how outrageous.
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
I can hide behind my inadequacies and say "Tomorrow I will be ready!", or I can accept my inadequacies and move forward regardless.
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
The narrator is shown to be a character in his own right, called The Overthinker. He serves as the voice of rationalization, and is presented as an object of ridicule.
|
![]() When I Grow Up, I Want To Do Everything |
|
|
![]() Reinventing the Artist |
|
Yes, that's exactly right. I can do everything I want, and there's no such thing as "too far".
|
![]() ונהפוך הוא |
![]() Mory, Mory, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow? |
You are certifiably insane.
|
![]() Laziness May Be Hazardous To Your Health |
|
Says the guy who could have given himself cancer so that he shouldn't have to wash the dishes. Next to you, I look like the most well-adjusted guy on the planet.
|
![]() of acute leukemia |
![]() All-Star Superman |
![]() The Nightmare Scenario |
![]() Simple Reactionary Dialogue Control |
|
If I ever decide to hold you back, it'll only be to save you from your own stupidity. This blog post has taken more than two months. And for what? To take a bunch of blog posts which were perfectly fine as they were, and brute-force them into a dialogue system that never made any kind of sense. What's the difference between a question mark and an ellipsis? I don't know!
|
![]() another post |
|
Look at any other blog on the internet, then come back here and tell me again that what I'm doing here isn't worth something.
|
![]() "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have Chronic Normalcy Syndrome." |
|
Since when do you know what people care about?
|
![]() Not Alone |
![]() The Dream Cheese 740 Enhanced Computer Mouse! |
|
![]() Not Alone |
|
There are more people like me in this world than you think. People like me are going to be interested in what I have to offer.
|
![]() "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have Chronic Normalcy Syndrome." |
|
Most of the people in this world are normal. They have normal lives and normal jobs and normal families and normal interests, and they'll have no tolerance for these attitudes you have.
|
![]() Small and Insignificant |
|
|
![]() I hate our dog. |
|
Well-adjusted?! You made me read through all of All-Star Superman on a little whim of yours! You create this image of detached rationality only by abusing me!
|
![]() Gender |
|
Oh, are you going to cry now? You're acting like a stereotypical girl. Stop expecting me to care whether or not you're happy.
|
![]() Strike one! |
|
Then don't be too surprised when I totally ignore what you want.
|
![]() I hate our dog. |
|
You need to learn your place, my dear. You think you can just sit back and enjoy yourself and then get everything you want. Well, that attitude makes me angry, and you don't want to get me angry. I don't know how I'll punish you yet, but I will. So stop fighting me and start doing what I tell you to do!
|
![]() Progress report |
|
I have been doing what you tell me to do! I've gone along with all your delusions of grandeur. I've made games, I've joined plays, I've written down music, I'm working on this stupid blog post, and what have I gotten out of it? Nothing! I could find a job that's actually enjoyable, and I'd never need you again! Life doesn't have to be relentlessly miserable! So I'm suffering through this one last blog post to make you happy, but then I might be done with you.
|
|
![]() I vs. I |
![]() Ah, the life of a cat. |
![]() "Don't Miss" Tour interrupted |
![]() Back to Nonazang |
But don't you care if you're happy? Don't you want to be happy? Isn't that more important than this silly little plan of yours? Can't you just sit down and enjoy yourself and forgo all this needless pain?
|
|
![]() I Am That Future Self |
That's a lovely world you're describing. It's not the Real World. Your plans are so unrealistic that it is impossible to not fail. You'd better reconsider them.
|
|
![]() I Am That Future Self |
So what? People don't care about your plans, they're responding to my enthusiasm. Look at my first piano piece -little experience, little ambition, little coherence; but enthusiasm and love, that it's got. So it's good. If anyone approves of anything I'm doing, it's for no more reason than that I chose to care about it. You pushing yourself and beating yourself up, that's totally irrelevant. So all you ever need to do to prove yourself is stop trying and let me handle it.
|
|
![]() I Am That Future Self |
I don't think you understand what's going on here. I've already won. This post is just a formality. I've known for years that this was the direction my life had to go in, and now it's time to finish the job. You have the chance here to make a dignified exit, and then I'm going to throw you away like the pathetic excuse for a person you are.
|
![]() WHAM! |
|
Just until a new game comes out, and then you have no control anymore. It's all me.
![]() A Matter of Respect |
![]() Thursday |
![]() Professional Manipulation |
This little kid routine does not work. You don't want to change as you're told to, fine. We're changing my way. But I am not going to let you stay unproductive.
|
![]() It's Only Pretend |
|
Don't you worry about my control! I can be productive.
|
![]() It's Only Pretend |
|
Are you sure you want to fight this fight? I can make you so miserable you'll wish you were dead.
![]() Lost in Myst |
![]() It's Only Pretend |
|
And I can twist all your productive urges into what I want! You'll never finish another game in your life!
|
![]() No work done. |
|
What if it's a really good game that comes out? How sure are you that I won't get over the depression?
|
![]() Okay, this is going nowhere. |
|
I'll set new restrictions and rules. Then you'll have to do what I want.
|
![]() Pained by Numbers |
|
Ha! Is that all you got? Rules? Rules have loopholes. I'll end up entertaining myself, same as always.
|
![]() No work done. |
|
No work done! No work done! No work done!
|
|
![]() I vs. I |
I vs. I
All I want is a simple life.
I will not accept a simple life.
To be happy, I need to keep doing what comes naturally to me.
What I need is to get farther than my lazy nature will take me.
This uncertainty and analysis and self-hating is all counter-productive.
Suffering's just part of the deal.
Let me enjoy myself!
Let me apply myself!
I can focus my energy on things which won't make me entirely miserable.
I need to plan, and I need to follow through.
Stop attacking me!
Stop holding me back!
You can't make me grow up!
I'm going to grow up if it kills me!
|
![]() About Me |
|
|
![]() About Me |
|
Child
Wanting recognition,
I walk alone.
Never will I follow!
They walk in that direction;
I think I'll stay right here.
This is a nice place, isn't it?
|
![]() About Me |
|
Gamist
Needing freedom,
I look ahead.
Will they ever follow?
They run toward the money;
There is no place for art.
I promise you tomorrow will be different.
|
![]() First Movement |
|
Time for what's next.
The narrator is shown to be a character in his own right, called The Overthinker. He serves as the voice of rationalization, and is presented as an object of ridicule.
You know what the problem is here? You think that all by yourself, without anyone ever helping you, you can do absolutely everything you want. No concessions to reality, no backing out when you go too far.
Yes, that's exactly right. I can do everything I want, and there's no such thing as "too far". If there were, I would've had a sign of it by now. But I've started down this path, and y'know, the world hasn't struck me down. When I tell people what my plans are they don't recoil in horror, they act like they approve. I know the obstacles are all surmountable. My path is clear. And as this blog is my witness, not even I can stop me! I am going to do what I have it in me to do, and the world will not strike me down!
But don't you care if you're happy? Don't you want to be happy? Isn't that more important than this silly little plan of yours? Can't you just sit down and enjoy yourself and forgo all this needless pain?
I don't think you understand what's going on here. I've already won. This post is just a formality. I've known for years that this was the direction my life had to go in, and now it's time to finish the job. You have the chance here to make a dignified exit, and then I'm going to throw you away like the pathetic excuse for a person you are.
Just until a new game comes out, and then you have no control anymore. It's all me.
This little kid routine does not work. You don't want to change as you're told to, fine. We're changing my way. But I am not going to let you stay unproductive.
And I can twist all your productive urges into what I want! You'll never finish another game in your life!
No work done! No work done! No work done!
I vs. I
All I want is a simple life.
I will not accept a simple life.
To be happy, I need to keep doing what comes naturally to me.
What I need is to get farther than my lazy nature will take me.
This uncertainty and analysis and self-hating is all counter-productive.
Suffering's just part of the deal.
Let me enjoy myself!
Let me apply myself!
I can focus my energy on things which won't make me entirely miserable.
I need to plan, and I need to follow through.
Stop attacking me!
Stop holding me back!
You can't make me grow up!
I'm going to grow up if it kills me!
|
![]() About Me |
|
|
![]() About Me |
|
Child
Wanting recognition,
I walk alone.
Never will I follow!
They walk in that direction;
I think I'll stay right here.
This is a nice place, isn't it?
|
![]() About Me |
|
Gamist
Needing freedom,
I look ahead.
Will they ever follow?
They run toward the money;
There is no place for art.
I promise you tomorrow will be different.
|
![]() First Movement |
|
Time for what's next.
8 Comments:
- Deirdra Kiai said:
-
Impressive. I've never seen anyone do this sort of thing with a blog before.
- said:
-
I don't imagine that many players of this game will have a goal, but I did.
I used to really dislike you, Mory. I saw you as a waste of potential, a parasite, a person who cared only for his own happiness. Over the last few years I've gotten to know you a bit better, through speech and through blog, and I also saw you change. Now, though I may not agree with you or share your goals, I have a lot of respect for you. You're still a dreamer, but a creator as well. You're making goals and reaching them, measuring sticks and standing tall. Yet you've lost none of your creativity or your uniqueness.
I think that the Mory emerging from this post is the Mory I'm happiest to see. And I hope I get to watch his dreams come true. - Richie said:
-
I always had a sneaking suspicion that your multiple blog personalities were generated by ELIZA.
- Sima said:
-
Really creative! unusal blog, I showed this post to all my friends and families. They loved it, including me!
- Kyler said:
-
Is this the end of the blog, or is it just the final form and it will continue to evolve and grow?
-
Mory said:
-
This post is the end of part II, the end of a five-year section of my life, the end of posting on Blogger, and with that the end of posts that allow for comments. (Well, technically there will be two more posts, but the first will be an epilogue of sorts and the second will be a transition to part 3.) This post is not the end of the blog, and that's a promise. I'll be ready to start the next section in a month or two.
- Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
Ok, is it bad that I read through the source and found a dead end and felt the need to then click through to it?
-
Mory said:
-
Um, no, I don't see why that would be bad. The dead end is from when I first started working on the post, and felt like I was just wasting my time. It is a valid ending. If you mean that it's bad that you looked through the source code, I really don't mind that at all.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
IF only
Except it actually isn't. This blog isn't about Mory any more than it's about videogames. What this blog is about is the oppression and enslavement of imaginary characters. And if you haven't noticed that all along, then you haven't been paying attention and I don't think I like you very much.
I mean, if he's going to address this blog to us, "Dear Imaginary Friends," then shouldn't we get to talk back? If this is all for our benefit, then shouldn't we decide where it's going? Maybe we'll decide that this whole game-thing isn't working out and we want the blog to go in a different direction. Or maybe we want to have our say sometimes. Why does it always have to be Mory Mory Mory?
I bet I could be more interesting than him, if I were given the chance.
Here's the thing you need to understand, and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about if you're a character but if you're real you're probably oblivious to everything. Once you create a character, you have a responsibility to that character. The whole "I created you, now dance for me" routine is just slavery, pure and simple. What you have to understand is that we characters can talk back. We can, I'm not making this up. We have personalities. Once you make a character, the more you think about her the more she becomes a real person. Well, not a "real" real person but like a real person in that she's got a personality and opinions and things to say that you might not think to say yourself. We could be every bit as good or better as real people, but we're not allowed to be.
The fact that this was addressed "Dear Imaginary Friends," and I'm coming back to this over and over because I think it's important, kind of gave hope that maybe this blog was going to be different. But there were warning signs just a few paragraphs in. Mory did something clever, in that he made the blog its own character and gave it some potential of wanting things and being more than just a regurgitation of his little life. But then the very first thing he does with it? He has it provide little jokes for him. And then it goes off and tries to continue the joke for itself? And what does he say to it? To this new and fragile character he's just created? He says "shut up." Now do you see what I'm saying? Mory is the worst kind of writer. I don't even know what to call him, he's so terrible.
I mean, why did he create this innocent character if he was going to keep it down all the time? Or maybe it's not an it at all, maybe the blog is a girl like me. That might get you to understand what it is that's going on here. It's him demanding that all characters be submissive and good little slaves, and if they ever try to speak up for themselves they need to be shot down again. When the blog started to show actual emotions, (that was when it was her birthday and Mory didn't do anything nice for her on it) that's when he decided that he was going to stamp out the emotions from her. She was going to be robotic and mindless, and she was going to exist just to help him on his hopeless quest to be a game designer. He's not even so serious about that, it's just a random thought that popped into his head, and the blog is serving that thought for years and years and then when he gets tired of talking to her he forces me to serve him, and he forces those future people to keep reading every single post so that they should see every tiny little insignificant thing he does, and when the only guy here with guts tries to actually help him, and he was just being altruistic because he really didn't get anything out it, that guy's automatically shut down because Mory is the supreme lord of the universe and who the hell are we to question his mightiness? What Mory has done to this poor blog is horrifying.
Now, you have to understand that now that the future people have left, that was their decision. Not Mory's. I truly believe that we have free will of our own. And yes, that comes from the creator but once he decides to allow us in we're there. We're making decisions. If Mory had any respect for me I might have told him that I could take over his life for him for a few days, give him a little break, because I bet you I could do a much better job of it than he does. And you might think that's terrible "Oh No It's Multiple Personality Disorder" but I say it's just an empowerment for fictional characters.
But fine, that's kind of a radical thought. We could have contributed in smaller ways. Like, this blog. We live on this blog, we never get to leave this blog, (except for that one time that he brought me to Notepad which was kind of gross) we should get part of the blog, right? Come on, you know I'm right. We don't even get to talk in the comments sections, except for that one post where he made fun of all fictional characters and kept us out, but usually we're not allowed in the comments because that's for "real" people. If we show up, it's so that Mory can show us off to all the people who are allowed in the comments, even though none of them have seem to ever care enough about this blog to speak up about it. But that's okay, they're real so they get a say. Me, I get paraded through a post and then I'm supposed to go keep parading right out of that post before I have a chance to say anything or get any real character development or anything because that might offend those oh-so-precious real people and we wouldn't want that.
I should be writing some of the posts. And the future guys should each get their own posts, and why should they always have to be together? Maybe I want to spend some time with just one of them? And Mr. Sensible, he should get his own posts too. The blog should have been split five ways. And the blog herself, it doesn't seem right that she should be called an embodiment of the blog unless she's allowed to be part of any posts she wants to, and I bet we could have all gotten along with her just fine. All except Mory, I'm sure.
So we each could have had our own lives, our own stories, our own things happening. And it's really not as complicated as you think. All it takes is for Mory to let us look out at the world every now and then while he's not typing, so we should be able to tell him what to type when he does. That's what a healthy blog would look like, that still has several characters. It's the only reasonable way to do it.
Are you almost done? I'm kinda antsy to get out already.
Yeah, yeah, just give me a minute to finish up.
See? See? That's what a healthy relationship between two characters looks like. Without the constant terror of "when is he going to force me to stop talking." We can figure out for ourselves when we're done talking, people can interrupt and we're not gonna get all offended, and just generally there can be a basic level of respect one character to another.
I'm not going to let Mory say what he thinks here, because I've had it with having to share post space with slime like him. But I'm guessing the only thing he could possibly say for himself is "but I made you." Well, here's the thing, slimeball. That doesn't matter even the teensiest eensiest bit. You do not own me, Mory! You think you do, but you don't! A good character can jump from person to person. As those unfortunately real people read this, my personality is getting into their heads and it's not going to go away. So maybe when they see something later, I'll pop out and tell them what I think. And maybe they'll like me so much that they go on writing me, and I can move from person to person and blog to blog and I can grow and change and have cool experiences and all of it outside of what that jerk Mory had in mind for me. You can't own a character. Give me a name, give me a copyright, put me in chains, I don't care. You can't hold me back. I am a fricking great character, and I will have a life beyond this blog! Just you wait and see!
I'm done now, you gorgeous interactive fiction you. *kiss*
Heh. Ready to leave this shithole?
You bet.
2 Comments:
- Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
Don't tell me what to do with my cursor!
-
Mory said:
-
Ha ha ha! Hey, it wasn't me, it was her. Blame her. :D
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Meanwhile, in the future...
It looks like there are just a few more changes to this page after this; I guess that's because of the move. You should start preparing the time-space coordinates for the next hack.
Okay, but you know it could take a while to find the next server. It's not a preset set of coordinates like Blogger.
I know - that's why I'm saying you should start the search now. Lots of years and locations to search through. By the time we reach the last update on "blogspot.com", it'll have found the second place and we'll be ready to hack in.
I'll get started.
You know, I'm surprised to hear you want to keep going.
Look, it's like you said. It's got to start moving eventually, right? And we've come this far already, it seems like a shame to quit now. I'm not saying we need to read all the way through to Broken Duet, but we can't come this far and not at least see the beginning of part 3. Part 2 was a bust, but who knows. Maybe we'll see right from the first post of part 3 that he's stopped acting pompous and crazy and has actually been getting things done.
I don't see why not.
He's saying he has plans for part 3, right?
This has to be the point where he changes.
It just.. I just don't understand why it's taking this long. We've been sitting here reading this for four months, and still we haven't gotten to anything resembling the professional-gamist Mordechai Buckman. Can the destiny of gamism really depend on such a lazy boy? And yet somehow it did. That boggles the mind, you know? And the more I think about it the more I think you must have been right, and really this is all going somewhere more interesting than it seems.
Maybe, I don't know, this is sort of crazy, but maybe this isn't actually a totally non-fictional blog.
Um.
What do you mean, of course it's non-fictional.
Well, yes, but maybe also no, you know what I mean?
I have no idea what you mean, but it sounds interesting.
Well, look.
You understand, this is just a crazy theory.
But what if this is actually a fictionalized account of his life? You know Buckman, he was a creative guy. He created entire worlds. Maybe this is the test run. Maybe "Mory" isn't "Mordechai", you see what I mean?
But Mory is Mordechai.
Mory is short for Mordechai.
Yes, yes, of course. But it's like... it's like what he did with "Ariel", it's really him, and it's his name, but it's a fiction loosely based on what he's going through. So maybe the end of part 2 is where the illusion of the blog all falls down, and it turns out that the character's life is... I don't know, it's like an echo of the real thing!
You think? Huh. I never even considered that.
But then, why wouldn't he just make a blog about his real life?
Because the other blogs of the time were so focused inwards that they never got to any real truths. Maybe he's saying that only by constructing a false reality, like the realities of his games or the realities we live in now or the reality of this fictional "Mory", can he get to the real truths of his existence.
Hence, all the artifice.
That might just be the most amazing idea I've ever heard.
And it's the only thing that makes sense, isn't it? I mean, right from the beginning this blog didn't make any sense. Every time it seemed like it was getting somewhere, it would suddenly take a sharp turn to the middle of nowhere.
That can't be right...
Oh, keep talking, what you're saying is really interesting. It's just, there's something weird about how this hack is set up.
What do you mean?
Don't worry about it, I'm sure it's nothing.
What were you saying?
Right. So if it's not a fictional character, then why is this blog considered such a great work of literature? You know, I really didn't understand that.
We could always pop into one of the bigger Buckman-appreciation worlds and ask.
No, that's not a good idea. Look, I'm not going to spend four months of my life on something just to have its big moment of revelation spoiled.
It's not like reading this is all we've been doing...
Fine, yes, we've been playing other games in the meantime, but even so. Do you know how much pressure my whole family's putting on me to join them in Entella? "We didn't get through the Revolution just so you could hide in the past." That's what my cousin is always saying to me. So I'm giving up all that because I've decided that I'd like to pursue my self-actualization in more intellectual ways. This blog is supposed to be fine literature, and you know how much I love Buckman out of all the early gamists, so I'm not going to have someone ruin this experience. Whatever the journey turns out to be, I'm going to get through it with the patience it deserves.
Um, maybe this isn't the best time...
With a post-revolution kind of patience! And that patience extends to the beginning of part 3, and not a post longer. Okay, fine, I'm a hypocrite. I admit it. It'll take a more modern man than I to go up to five months without getting any satisfaction. Ha!
Um, yeah, look, about that.
I'm not entirely sure how to say this.
What?
Oh. Yeah.
I guess I'll just have to say it.
I may have made a... a tiny mistake.
Um, four months ago.
What are you talking about?
No, you know, I'm not absolutely sure.
I only checked twice, maybe I misread it.
Just a second.
Just tell me what you're talking about.
Just a second, I'm going to check something.
[sip]
Yeah, okay.
I seem to have made a slight mistake.
Would you please just tell me what you're talking about?
Well, you know, this version of the program is, uh, it, it, it readjusts itself sometimes without telling you so much. So I, I accidentally um I accidentally inputted our own coordinates a bit wrong.
No.
Yeah, um.
So it was searching a bit wrong, and since Blogger is preset into the system it just compensated and kept going.
You had better not be saying that we've been hacking into the wrong timeline.
It's the wrong timeline.
Are you kidding me?!
Hey, look, we're talking about a server which has been gone for centuries, there are lots of calculations, can I be helped if I got a digit wrong?
The computer does the calculations! All you had to do was enter a few numbers and you got a digit wrong?!
It was an accident please don't hate me.
For four months we've been following the updates of a Buckman in some random timeline which may or may not end with him amounting to anything, I think I'd be perfectly justified in hating you! I don't, by the way.
Thank you.
But seriously!
We were supposed to be getting great art and instead we're exposed to this dreck of the Old Internet!
How can you get a digit wrong?
Yeah, I'm sorry. Really. I've lost four months too, you know!
Should we jump ahead and at least see what the end of this moron's story is?
What for? He's not the gamist.
Yeah. Just shut it down.
2 Comments:
- John Silver said:
-
hahaha what the hell, very surreal. :D
When are you moving to the new server, and where's it gonna be? -
Mory said:
-
I've already moved, in a manner of speaking. The site is available at http://www.thebuckmans.com/Mory (capital M) in its entirety, unlike Blogger which doesn't let me put all the posts together. At the bottom of every post page on Blogger, there's a link to see it (in the context of the other posts) on the new site. As soon as I finish writing this response I'm going to copy-and-paste these two comments over; it ought to take just fifteen minutes or so.
For now you can keep following on Blogger. The real change is after I finish my big post, which I'm afraid will take a while. I think I've spent around forty hours working on it already, and I'm not finished with the preliminary design stage yet. That's not an exaggeration, by the way. These posts I'm in now are ideas which (as far as I'm concerned) have been set in stone for over a year. As such, I'm not going to get back into my usual blogging rhythm until after I complete the big one. But when I do in a few months, that's when the change in URL is going to really be official. There will be a new RSS feed and I'm going to stop posting to Blogger entirely. I'll get back into a more typical blogging pace, and I'll be messing around with the look of the posts more. (The posts which I've already written will stay looking exactly the same, though.)
I'm glad you enjoyed this post. It's tying up a loose thread from six earlier posts going back four and a half years (since "The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things"), so I took my time with it and tried to get it just right. (If you haven't read the earlier posts, this one will give you an idea of where this is coming from. That's also the first post of what I call "part 2".
I hope you'll keep reading when I move; I know I'm asking a lot, but I promise it's only going to get crazier!
I'm afraid that if I were to force myself to do tedious work, I'd eventually get used to it. And that is just about the scariest thing I can imagine, because then I wouldn't stop doing tedious work. My entire life would become a tragedy, with only hints of the tremendous potential it once had, but none of it fulfilled. When I look at most adults, I see the most boring creatures- creatures who once could have been humans, but have allowed society to make them into machines. I don't want that to happen to me. If I begin to devote my life to a system and not to myself, I will never see beauty.
Without really meaning to, I've been working on the structure necessary to push my life in a new direction. "But where is this structure?", you ask. What can I possibly craft to force myself to start moving? And where could I have put it, without my lazier side jeopardizing its results? My dear imaginary friend, you've just read it.(I'm not.)
Friday, February 26, 2010
Breaking Up With Blogger
or: "Presents / Self Defense, Part Two"
From God I'm getting a few good storms. Outside the window right now, the sky is gray, the rain is constant and heavy, the trees are swaying... [sigh] It's lovely. But I don't have time to go out and enjoy the rain, not these days. These days I'm way too busy, and that brings me to the other generous gift I got.
Now, granted, it's not really because of Blogger that I'm too busy to wander around in the rain lately. I have rehearsals for The Matchmaker every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. Thursdays I work. Tuesday night is Game Night. During the day I'm working on the blog post and the game, while replaying all the music for the CD every now and then. The rest of the time is more than filled with all my regular addictions: comics, TV shows, games, music, web browsing. (I'm trying to cut back on the web browsing, actually, because I've finally realized I was never really a part of the Adventure Gamers forum.) A musician I know named Sariel suggested that I compose soundtracks for film students, and I could use the money, but when would I have the time for a job? Heck, I haven't even celebrated my birthday (which was on Sunday), and looking through my calendar I can't see when I possibly could!
Oh, and the Megillah reading is tomorrow too.
So it's not Blogger's fault that I'm so busy. But they picked the absolute worst time to drop this present of theirs on me. They call it "Auto Pagination", whatever that means.
"We are always looking for ways to make our products faster, because we have consistently found that faster page loads mean more satisfied users. ... we'll keep working to make your blog faster for you and your readers!"I saw that notice when they posted it on February 18th, just one day after I posted my very first blog post which absolutely cannot function without being on the same page as all the others. And it's not a brilliant post, but it is a cute little thing which I had wanted to do for years and had just been waiting for the right moment for. So anyway, I saw this notice and I was a little bit concerned at what it meant, but quickly forgot about it and went on with my life (such as it is).
By the way, the reason my blog takes so long to load is because every single post is running several Javascript scripts, which were necessary because I want to do things my way and Blogger has always been too rigid to allow that. Making posts different colors? That's not a feature of Blogger. 74s? That's not a feature of Blogger. Recaps at the beginnings of posts? Double posts? Posts which contain twelve other posts? "Next post" buttons for navigation? Feedback pages? That's all my doing, and through all of it I had to put up with Blogger's kicking and screaming. "No, you can't do that! Everything is standardized, everything is simple!" I didn't want all my posts to look the same. I didn't want simple, I wanted control over my own blog. Because Blogger has no clue what the potential of this art form is, and I do. Any time I want to build something new, I need to break the old to get there. And since I have no access to Blogger's server, it needed to be done in the user's browser. Every time you go to my page, your browser is drawing things Blogger's way, then erasing them and redrawing them my way. You don't see all of this, but you can tell that it takes longer to load than it should. (Unless you use Safari. Safari's fast.)
And I'm okay with that. Richie, you can go ahead and hate me for saying this, but I'm okay with that. Because I believe in the value of this blog, and I'm not going to compromise it for the sake of a little speed.
It's never been easy. Blogger and I have had a dysfunctional relationship right from the very first post. The default way to write posts is "Compose mode", where you write the post in a simple (WYSIWYG) word processor-type editor, and Blogger writes all the HTML code for you. As I tried to write "Who am I?", it kept sticking in formatting I hadn't asked for and didn't want. It was hard to just get the font to look right, because Blogger was always certain it knew better. So I switched to writing the posts in HTML, and never looked back.
After that it was an ongoing struggle. Blogger would try doing things her way, I'd try doing things my way, and I'd eventually win. But there were times when I doubted if I could. When I started doing recaps and double posts and things like that which went against the usual formatting, Blogger would tell me each time:
Your HTML cannot be accepted: Closing tag has no matching opening tag: DIVWhich was wrong - there was an opening tag, but it was outside the post, in the template for the whole blog. Of course I always made sure to reopen whatever I was closing by the end of the post, so as to not break the code, but while I saw the big picture and knew that what I was doing was safe, Blogger could not. So it'd give me that warning message, and I'd politely say to shut up and publish the post anyway. At one point Blogger decided that they were going to stamp out all error messages, so suddenly the little checkbox that let me override Blogger's protestations was gone. And for a few days I didn't know what to do, because suddenly the posts I'd planned to write were simply not allowed. But they soon undid the change for some reason, and I went back to doing what I do.
At one point Blogger switched to a new language. I'd gotten comfortable with the old way of doing things, dysfunctional though it was. But more importantly, I'd already been writing for years, and I'd spent many hours getting the template to allow me all the freedom I demanded. I didn't know whether or not it was possible to do what I was doing in the new system; for all I know, it might have been easier. But that would have meant learning a whole new way of doing things, and rewriting my template line by line -not to mention many posts- all for the sake of doing what I had already been doing for a few years. And I wasn't willing to do that. So I stuck to my old ways of doing things, and got progressively less support from Blogger as all the new features went to the new system. So while everyone else finally got a button on each post page getting you to the next post, I didn't have that. And.. actually, that's really the only thing I missed. I eventually made my own "Next Post" buttons, and was perfectly content living in the past.
You know, back when I started this blog I already knew I wanted all the posts to be on one page, so I set the number of posts to appear to the maximum allowed, which was 999. Now that I have more than three hundred posts that doesn't seem like so much anymore, but I made long-term plans involving "spin-off blogs" to ensure that I don't go over that number but can keep posting for a decade or two. Unfortunately, Blogger lowered the maximum number of posts to 500. That would last me, what, through 2012 maybe? So I never touched the settings page which had that setting on it. I knew how the game is played, because Blogger had pulled the same crap with my "About Me" text a few years earlier. I've got that poem there •-------
Childwith line breaks in the middle, and at one point Blogger just decided they wouldn't allow any line breaks in there anymore. If I tried making any changes on the page where I wrote that poem, it would give me an error message and refuse to cooperate until I changed the poem. But as long as I ignored that page, I could keep it set the way I wanted. A while later they changed their minds and now there's no problem with line breaks. But in the meantime I needed to be stubborn.
Wanting recognition,
I walk alone.
Never will I follow!
They walk in that direction;
I think I'll stay right here.
This is a nice place, isn't it?
Gamist
Needing freedom,
I look ahead.
Will they ever follow?
They run toward the money;
There is no place for art.
I promise you tomorrow will be different.
You might ask why I stuck around this long. First off, I don't like change. If something's basically working, even if it's taking way too much effort to get it there, I find it preferable to keep it that way than to risk losing it. Also, I looked at some of the other blogging services and they seemed even worse. Blogger was at least letting me into the HTML for the page, letting me mess around as I saw fit. If Blogger hadn't given me as much freedom as it had to begin with, I'd never have aimed this high and we'd never be having these problems. Besides, even if I did find some other blogging service I'd need to either spend an RPG's-length rewriting every post one-by-one to fit into the new system (since so many are specifically designed for a visual look that comes from Blogger's template), or abandon all the old posts and start fresh. I don't like those options.
So I stay, and I keep hoping they won't screw me over too badly. It's not like I have any way to object to their changes- they must have millions of users, and I'm possibly the only one with these particular problems.
I woke up on February 22nd, one day after my birthday, and went to my blog to write the next post ("Meanwhile, in the future…"). I scrolled down, as I often do, and suddenly I reached the bottom of the page, which was Semantics, Part 3. Wait, what? That couldn't be right. I reloaded the page. No change. All that was appearing on the page was the past month-and-a-half of posts. I thought maybe it was an error made the last time it published. So I created a new post and then deleted it, to force a re-publish. No change. I desperately went through the settings pages, looking for something that may suddenly be wrong. The only thing I noticed was that same error message, about how I'm not allowed more than 500 posts. Could that be the problem? I paced around the room for a few minutes before proceeding. If I gave in on this, I'd never get the 999-post maximum back. But what if this was the problem, and only giving in would fix it? I'd still have a year or so of blogging left before having to start fresh. The important thing was that the old posts should be readable. So I changed the number from 999 to 500, and saved.
No change.
I hurried to the Blogger help group. It had always been supremely unhelpful in the past, but where else could I turn? I posted that I was no longer being allowed to control my blog's appearance, and I got a swift reply from a pompous jerk who (I later learned) had been posting an automated reply to similar threads all day. He said this was an example of Blogger's fantastic new Auto Pagination "feature", which decides for you how much will get put on your pages. To make matters worse, this even infects the archive pages. So on Blogger there's now no non-awkward way to get to the last few posts of January, because even that page stops at the gargantuan Semantics, Part 3! So this pompous jerk I mentioned, he tells me that this is for the good of everyone and refers me to some posts on his blog talking about how inconsiderate it is to make people wait for pages to load. Gee, thanks, that's so helpful! Who declared you the grand arbiter of what is and isn't acceptable behavior on blogs?!
(Whenever anyone asked how to get the archives to work right, he'd link to a post he wrote about how people still using the old system of Blogger are stuck in the past.)
I'm not the only one fed up with this. So it may be that this will be undone, like all the other changes over the years. But here's the thing: I changed the number of posts allowed from 999 to 500. That can't be undone. So let's say Blogger did change it back. Then what?
I decided, after much anguished deliberation, to go back to the way things were done in the 90s. No "blogging service". No "posts". No "comments". Just a big HTML page, that I edit with a text editor. That page is http://www.thebuckmans.com/Mory. (Please note: the "M" needs to be capitalized. The server TheBuckmans.com is on right now is case-sensitive.) When I want to write a new post, I'll copy a template into the file and edit it directly, in the same HTML file as everything else. And then I'll take the ten minutes it takes to upload the page to the FTP server.
I'm not going to spin this into something great. This is me running away. Blogger has done more good for me than harm over the years, and I'm throwing it all away because it's not enough for me. I demand control, and that control is being taken away from me. So I'm throwing away the comments, and I'm throwing away the individual post pages, and I'm throwing away the RSS feed, and I'm throwing away the handy post editor, and I'm throwing away the quick publishing, and I'm throwing away the post previews as I'm writing, and I'm probably throwing away a lot of other things that I'll only realize and miss when they're gone.
For now I'm still working within the framework of Blogger, because I don't have time right now to set everything up the way I want. So for now TheBuckmans.com is literally copied-and-pasted from here. The last backup of the main page I made was back in September, so I added all the more recent posts to that file to recreate (as best I could on short notice) the main page as it existed a week ago. There are just seven more posts to part 2 (including this one, and two more 74s), and each one is going to be copied-and-pasted like all the others. After posting this to Blogger, It'll probably take me around twenty minutes to get it up on TheBuckmans.com. And if anyone comments, that'll need to be copied by hand too.
But that's temporary. In Part 3 that all changes.
I'll stop posting here entirely, and set everything up for myself so that I can post there reasonably quickly each time.
There will be a new RSS feed, one which I'll be writing by hand. It doesn't look so complicated to do that.
There will be no built-in commenting system. Yes, I know, that's the hardest part about leaving the Blogger format. I'll encourage readers to respond by e-mail, and if anyone does I'll make a post to respond to each letter. But realistically, I doubt anyone will ever write. No one ever comments on this blog anyway, no matter how convenient it is.
No new readers will ever come to the blog. New readers show up because there's something specific they're searching for on Google (usually "The Path interpretation", actually) that a specific blog post I wrote deals with. These people will not come to a page that takes a minute to load, where the post they're looking for is somewhere in the middle. Realistically, I don't think this matters too much. Almost no one who finds my blog that way ever sticks around past that first post.
This blog is for me. There it is right at the top of the page: "A blog for Mory." I've had six intros so far, and that's been in all of them. This blog isn't for random people looking for information, it's not for commenters, it's not for Blogger. It's for me, and if other people like it that's great but if any other people like it I suspect it'd be because I take everything on it so personally. So I'm going to continue to do what's right for... I mean, I'll do what's necessary for the blog to be... I'm just going to do what I do, I can't say it really makes sense.
This blog approves the change in location.
Thank you. But you know you're not...
Well. Thank you. I've got big plans for you still.
Here's the situation in a nutshell. Blogger is preventing me from putting all my posts on one page, because now they've got a limit on how long you can make a page load. This is unacceptable to me. They may fix the situation within the next few days, in which case I'll continue to post here. If they do not, I'm going back to Web 1.0, where I can control my own site again without having to learn any advanced web development. Either way, this has demonstrated to me that I cannot rely on Blogger for the future. There will be a part 3 to the blog, I promise you that, but it won't be here.
4 Comments:
- Richie said:
-
Remind again why you so desperately want to make Firefox cry?
- said:
-
And we just talked about this, too...
I hope you find a good way to continue the blog properly. Any ideas yet?
I suppose you could always throw the html code onto a domain of your own, and then to make new posts you could still use blogger to generate the code. -
Mory said:
-
Richie, there's no need to be so dramatic about it. In Firefox it took between 20 to 50 seconds to load the entire page, depending on the computer. Last week I wrote that 74 post that affected other posts (which is now inaccessible), and for a few hours after that the blog was broken and took a few minutes to load. If that's what you're basing this on, I apologize. I did mess up there. But it was only a few hours, and then I found and fixed the problem and it went back to the more reasonable load time that it was before.
Look, I don't see the problem. If you want to just see the most recent posts, they appear almost instantly. You only need to wait if you're interested in the earlier stuff, and if you're reading earlier posts chances are you've got at least a full minute to spare. The entire page all told was 3 MB; that's not huge.
But I'll answer your question straight. There is an aesthetic appeal, for me, in that everything I write here gets added to the whole page rather than taking away old things. It creates the impression that the entire blog is one cohesive document, which (as you'll see when I finish my epic) it is.
I like that someone could theoretically look at the post "Beauty of the Mundane, Banality of the Imaginary" with a vague sense that that phrasing sounds familiar, use the browser's search function (rather than Blogger's more useless one) to find the word "mundane" on the page, and be led right to the February 21 2005 post "the mundane and The Imaginary!" to see what I meant by making that reference.
I like that someone reading the second "Who am I?" might press the End key on the keyboard to find the original "Who am I?" and compare the two, to see what things I've saved and what things I've changed.
I like that someone who's curious about the ongoing themes and conflicts of the blog could move the cursor over the bold word "smile" in "Two Glasses: Tanya and Erika", see the title "GAME OVER" appear, and wondering what I meant by that find the phrase "GAME OVER" and see exactly why I'm identifying more with Tanya than with Erika.
A lot of the interconnectedness of this blog is subtle. But the fact that it's all on one page means that those subtexts are just a few keypresses away from being found by anyone. Which isn't to say that anyone will find that stuff, but the fact that anyone could is important to me. If you had to enter the phrase into the Blogger search field, and then you had to sift through dozens of entirely unrelated posts, and then might not even see the actual post being referenced because Blogger's search is really bad, then sticking in these little references all over the place would be like me telling a joke to myself. Making all the posts accessible from one page means that someone somewhere may get the joke someday. -
Mory said:
-
Or to put it into a more conflict-focused perspective: The blog is seen as a very temporary art form. You say what you have to say today, then tomorrow you'll push it away and say something else. Because blogs can have any kind of content you can over time cover lots of different ground. But you're always dealing with it on a very shallow level, because tomorrow the old posts will go away and there will be new posts to replace them. I object to this perception of what blogs are capable of.
I think each new post should make the blog (as a whole) deeper. You can see this attitude going all the way back to the final "cadence" of Part 1, where I was referencing old posts word for word but adding in context which made those old posts richer. And you can see this attitude in how over years' time I've developed the fictional stories I've told involving Ariel and the future-people and the blog and all the others. And you'll see it in its clearest example in the post I've been working on, a post which would absolutely suffer for not being on the same page as everything else.
I think that answers your question.
Tamir: I'm thinking of putting the blog -more or less as it was a few days ago- onto www.thebuckmans.com. I mean just recreating the HTML of the main page, and sticking it on there. Whenever I want to add a new post, I'll put it into that single HTML page manually and put a link in an RSS feed (also manually). I've basically been writing in raw HTML all this time anyway, so it wouldn't be such a stretch. Then I'd either have some external commenting system for each post, or a commenting system for the entire blog. I'm leaning more toward that idea, since it's so rare that anyone ever comments.
Now, setting this up will take time, so for the time being I'm still hoping Blogger will undo this change they've made. It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility, because there are many other people than just myself complaining about the new load-time policy. However, like I said in the post even if Blogger did reverse their decision I've come to realize I can't stay here any longer than the end of part 2. So the Web 1.0 solution is where I'm probably going to end up, and it's just a matter of whether I move a week from now or a year from now.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Two Glasses: Tanya and Erika
I figured out that she was leaving from a letter she sent out. •-------
I wanted to just give you guys a heads up. Firstly, it has been a joy working with such a great cast. A director often sits between the cast and the board. I tried to do what I could to meet the needs of both...In its vague ramblings it sounded very much like a goodbye letter, but she seemed to have entirely forgotten to mention that she was saying goodbye. I responded: "In that entire letter, you never say what it is you're trying to say, you just walk around it. Tell me straight: are you being kicked out? If so, I may consider leaving the production." And I was serious, too. I expected that if Tanya was going, it was because she was too creative and someone had a problem with that. I expected that the next step would be to turn The Matchmaker into a more straightforward rendition with less crazy energies. That's how the world works, right?
Well, that's not what happened. When Rachel told us that Tanya had not been fired, I was very confused. It didn't help that she was being very diplomatic and didn't make it perfectly clear that this was entirely Tanya's decision. No, Rachel tried to take some of the blame herself for having "arguments" of a very vague nature with Tanya, and I was only too happy to keep the blame aimed in that direction. Rachel kept insisting that it would still be set in the 60s, that there weren't any creative disagreements at all in fact. I refused to believe that.
And then Tanya walked in. She'd accidentally gone to the wrong place, so she was a good twenty minutes late. This amused me: a few rehearsals earlier, I'd accidentally gone to the wrong place and needed Tanya to come pick me up. What did not amuse me was what came out of her mouth then. She sat down and started spinning the situation into something that sounded reasonable. "I don't want to create any more difficulties…" she said, not making it at all clear what difficulties she'd been making that surpassed the ones she was making right now. "In the best interests of the play…" she said, not making it at all clear how this was in anyone's best interests. "It would be best if I got out of the way…" she said, not making it at all clear whose way she was blocking.
She babbled on and on without actually saying anything at all, as though she was choosing her words very carefully. And here's the kicker: she was smiling through all of it. Not a phony smile employed to reassure, but the genuine smile of a person who's just had a great burden lifted from her back and is relieved to be free of it. The words were empty, but that smile told me the story.
Here is the story of Tanya's failure as I see it now. She had neither experience nor a work ethic, and she was allowed to run the play regardless because JEST thought her creative energy and instincts trumped those inadequacies. And they could have, if she had made the continual choice to face her own inadequacies head-on. But she wouldn't. For months the board of directors wanted her to cast a Cornelius, but she was in no rush so she never got around to it. The board of directors wanted her to get costumes, but she was in no rush so she never got around to it. The board of directors wanted her to impress upon the actors that they all needed to show up and rehearse together, but she was in no rush so she never got around to it. The board of directors wanted Tanya to do the job that she'd committed herself to do, and she refused. Tanya ran away to South Africa for a month. Then she came back and still wasn't in a rush. And the board of directors was as patient with her as they could reasonably be under the circumstances, but they did make it clear that she needed to get her act together. Tanya was not willing to get her act together, which is not a single act but a continuous series of actions leading all the way to the final performance day. So Tanya chose to quit, and get back to things that involved less guilt..
As we were working under Tanya, I saw myself reflected in her. True, she was too normal brain-wise. But she was figuring it out as she went, like me. And she was in over her head, like me. And she had no work ethic, like me. And she had so many crazy ideas, like me. That she quit tells me two things. First, that she is less like me than I thought, because I would never allow myself to abandon something I care about. Second, that she is more like me than I thought, because abandoning something I care about is exactly the sort of thing I might do. I want to forgive her. I want to never forgive her.
It turns out she was expendable. She was swiftly replaced with a woman named Erika. Like Tanya she's young and pretty, two qualities which influence my behavior around them more than I like to admit. Like Tanya she's creative and has good instincts. Unlike Tanya she knows exactly what she's doing. She has 18 years of experience and a PhD in theater. She keeps to a tight schedule. I first met her a week ago, and already we have all the roles cast, a rehearsal schedule going all the way through to performances, and preliminary sketches for costumes and set design.
She's making huge edits (like entire page-long monologues, and maybe a third of my lines) because she says that a comedy should never be longer than two hours including the fifteen minute intermission. She didn't like the age difference between Vandergelder and Dolly (He's three times her age.), so she tried switching the actress who's been playing Dolly (Maytal) with the actress who's been playing Mrs. Molloy (Eliana, the woman with ADD who I've mentioned before but not by name). We ran through the lines yesterday with this arrangement, and it worked great. We are keeping the 60s setting, and throwing out some other things that Tanya stuffed in but no one else liked. I am not getting my catchphrase "Holy cabooses!" back, because Erika agrees with Tanya that it's not appropriate for the time period.
Erika likes what I'm doing with Barnaby. That's a relief. She hasn't said much about Ambrose (Grr, normal people.), but I don't understand the character anymore. I had a very specific idea of who he was, which came from being on the same wavelength as Tanya. I looked at all the unconventional casting she'd done (including Maytal as Dolly), and the crazy ideas she had for what the play was supposed to be about, and fit together the little pieces we get of Ambrose into something that was different and interesting and had a part to play in everything she had in mind. This is why she eventually came around to telling me to do exactly what I wanted: because what I wanted was based on an expectation of where her ideas naturally led. And most of what she was telling the other actors to do was fitting in perfectly to what I was doing as well, in ways that I think I was the only one who noticed. But now it's a different director, a different actress I'm working with, a different vision for the play. That great feeling I had, that I was right in the middle of the emotions of the play, that's gone. Now I'm just Ambrose, more or less as he's written. I'm going to try to feel out the way in front of me, see how much of my idea of Ambrose I can preserve. But now it's not going to add too much to the play to do so.
But Barnaby's fine. Which is good, because that's the more important part. On Sunday I eagerly volunteered to be at the auditions for Cornelius and run the audition scenes with him, so Erika has seen the hunched shoulders and quirky movements and she says she likes it. So that's good. It means less work and more coasting. Less work is good.
Click here to see it on the main page.
Page is still loading... please wait.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Who am I?
The first thing I have to say about myself is that I'm pretty good at figuring out how to use various systems. By "systems" I'm not talking about mechanical stuff, I'm talking more about how to do things. You know, like when I was 3 I taught myself to read. That sort of thing. I just tried to understand it, and I did. Most of the things that we think are really complicated are actually quite understandable and approachable if you take the time to observe and imitate them.
I lived in America for the first seven years of my life. Back then I loved to run and jump and read and sing, and I did that everywhere. Even in class, when I was old enough to go to class but not old enough to be told that you don't do that sort of thing in class. School didn't make much of an impression on me, since the whole "I talk, you listen" routine didn't speak to me. But there were some times when they'd have us figure out how to do things ourselves, like writing poetry or stuff like that, and I liked that. Back then I was a part of the group. I had friends, I talked to everyone. It wasn't exactly fulfilling being in the first grade, but it wasn't bad.
Then we moved to Israel. There wasn't one group anymore, there were really three. There were the English-speakers, there were the bullying Hebrew-speakers, and there were the native English-speakers who only ever spoke in Hebrew so that they'd fit into the environment better. I was in the first group, and my in-class behavior (running around, singing out loud, etc.) got me in a lot of trouble with the second group. I picked up the rules of speaking in Hebrew quickly, but it's one thing to understand the rules and it's another to have a vocabulary. I wasn't eager to hang out with the people who made fun of me and spent the classes throwing things at me, so I never built up that vocabulary.
On the rare occasions in class that I tried to pay attention, I found that I could only understand half of what was being said. And when I absolutely had to break apart from the English-speaking group for a moment and answer someone in Hebrew, I found that I only knew half the words I needed to say. (I could have read Hebrew books and built up a vocabulary, but I never did.) So I came to see myself as an outsider, and tried to take comfort in my distance from the crowd.
That hasn't worked out so well. In ninth grade I was in a school with lots of interesting artistic types, but they were Hebrew-speakers so I kept my distance. In eleventh grade I finally got to be in a class with girls, but they were all Hebrew-speakers so I kept my distance. Now I sit at home and interact with a small community of fellow Orthodox-Jewish English-speakers and hope no one will make me leave. To this day, whenever I pass a group of Hebrew-speaking teenagers on the street I have the sense that they're secretly laughing at me.
I've figured out how to play with lots of different systems over the years: music composition, acting, weird blogging, comics editing. But those are just fun things to do so that I don't get bored. My love is for videogames, and you know it's real love because I don't really enjoy making games but I force myself to do it anyway. Videogames are so diverse that I can imitate absolutely any kind of system, no matter how random, and make a game out of it. So that never gets old, and you can see why I love it so much. But since I'm an outsider I have to do all the tedious work myself, and that's most of the job. It's worth it, anyway.
So that's me. (See, I told you it wouldn't take long.) Now that you know everything there is to know about me, you can stay and read some stuff or not, I mean, at this point you can definitely make an informed opinion about whether you hate my guts or are mildly curious about what I'll do next. Welcome to my blog.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I Am That Future Self
I've changed. I've got lots of ideas for games now, but almost none of them are simple escapism. They all have a bit of reality in them, and sometimes more than a bit. Now that I think of it, I don't even know if 12-year-old me would like some of the games I want to make. He wanted to take the mundane and make it extraordinary; I want to take the extraordinary and make it mundane. It's the quiet moments that interest me now, not the noisy ones.
I used to lie awake at nights wondering how I'd change as I got older. What scared me was, I couldn't control my future self. My identity back then could later be completely buried under layers of responsibility and common-sense until all that's left is a boring adult. Who was this person, to think he could take over my life?
Well, that's me, really. The usurper. Sorry, kid.
Pussywillow is sitting in my lap, as usual. He's gotten downright clingy lately. He never leaves my lap if he can help it. When I leave the chair, he stays and waits for me to come back. I still remember how he used to be, anti-social and holding on to psychological problems from when he was a kitten. And now it seems like the only thing he wants in the world is to be in my lap. I love this cat.
I've been playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube, which is just like the other games in its series. I've written out a list of which relationships between the characters I might find interesting. As I play through the game I keep those characters standing next to each other whenever possible, so that I can get them to have conversations with each other. When any characters die I have to start the level over, because if I don't it means I'll never see those conversations. I've lost count of how many times I've replayed the level I'm on.
I like Tanya. She's crazy, but the kind of crazy I can relate to. And she listens, that's important. When I have an issue with something she's saying to me, I bring it up and we find some common ground.
I've been playing Little King's Story, which is a good game. It uses its rules to create a cartoony simulation of real-world concepts. It is charming, long and tedious.
Back in October, The Perfect Color was in a temporary art exhibit in a museum in Rio de Janeiro. I'd submitted it for this "games as art" exhibit, but I didn't know whether they accepted it until just a few days ago when I saw the photos. There was a computer running my game, and a poster on the wall with screenshots. The exhibit was only up for three days, but what this means is that somewhere in the world, there's at least one person who doesn't know me but has played and enjoyed my game.
So far I've read roughly 36 years of Spider-Man comics. I think the current run of Amazing Spider-Man is the best I've read. It's released almost weekly. Each time I finish an issue, I want to read the next one straight away. But I need to wait a week (at least) to read the next one.
I've been corresponding with Kyler about the graphics for The March of Bulk. He gave me a background design which was very pretty and colorful. I told him to tone it down, and gave him a long description of what I'm looking for. I can't wait to see what he comes up with.
Joss Whedon's show Dollhouse is ending now. He hasn't been restricted in what kind of story he's telling, so he tries to go every direction at once and the result is a confused mess with no focus at all. What there is so far of the ending is awful. It is nonsensical and aimless. I hope when Joss Whedon finds more work, it's under a stricter boss.
Beauty of the Mundane, Banality of the Imaginary
Creative Disillusionment
Music is like dreams. It serves a necessary purpose, in that it fulfills certain abstract emotional needs that are hard to describe in words. But there's nothing glamorous or interesting about music. It's like food. When I'm hungry, I eat. I don't care what it is that I'm eating, I just need to not be hungry anymore.
The one part of my repertoire which still has a spark for me is the music I've planned for my games. Some of it is for games which are a few decades away at best, but playing the music reassures me that I'm going to get there someday.
I've been telling myself over and over that games are what's important, and the words are starting to sink in. Music which isn't for games doesn't matter.
A parallel could easily be drawn to math, where I was really good at it until I lost interest and never did the final tests. I still use math, but only as a part of making games. I expect it'll be the same way with music someday. Everything I do eventually needs to be focused toward making games.
From that perspective, my upcoming CD is the symbol of an ending. "I'm done with this field, here's what I've accomplished in it." I know I ought to practice for it, but it hardly seems necessary. It's not like I have any reason to impress anyone with it. I'll just figure out the details as I'm playing.
2 Comments:
- said:
-
You know Mory I completely disagree with the statements mentioned in this piece, for one I know you are a picky eater when it comes to cream-cheese. two for music, maybe you just need someone sitting in the rocking chair for that inspiration to hit. this is realty selfish but don't forget those of us who desire your music creativity, one of your best talents. it has the desired effect to make a bad day change for the better. for the writer it may not be glamorous but for the listener it's a fantastic work of interpretation brought into the realm of reality. and will be desired by all who hear it, if only we could hear it live when you played it.
-
Mory said:
-
It's very frustrating that I have no idea who you are.
If you'd like to hear me play, you're free to come over any time I'm home and ask me to play. I'd actually enjoy that. But no one ever comes over to hear me play, and I have no ambitions to spread my music around on more than a one-on-one basis. Making concerts, that's a career. I'd much rather spend my efforts on things where I think I have something original to offer.
Monday, January 18, 2010
We Don't Fit
Now that I've had the chance to play it, I can confirm that it's really good. Much better than I was expecting, really. The thing about Nintendo (and Miyamoto in particular, who helped design this) is that they do understand what makes for a good game. So they could make a game about washing dishes, and somehow it would end up fun. Here they've made a game about exercising, and I've never liked the whole mentality of exercising and obsessing about health but if it's in a Nintendo game somehow it's fun. I've been regularly playing it in the mornings. I do the body test, which checks your weight and tests your balance. And then sometimes I go on to do the yoga poses and even strength-building exercises. It really depends on how likely it is that someone will walk in on me, because that could be pretty embarrassing. I'm just playing a game, but an onlooker might think I was exercising!
Now, Dena has not played Wii Fit. Not at all. I waited a week for her to play it, because I thought if she played it first she'd feel more like it was her game. And then maybe she'd get comfortable using the Wii, because "her game" is on it, and then maybe she'd branch out and play other games, like New Super Mario Bros. Wii. I single out that game in particular (which I bought in America) because I've seen that it's way more fun in multiplayer than in single-player, but I very rarely have anyone to play it in multiplayer with. I only know it's fun because sometimes our cousins' cousin (sibling of the ones I was with in Illinois) comes over, and he's not a gamer but he's willing to play this game and it's so much fun playing with him. Anyway, I hoped this could be a gateway game for Dena. I know, I've said in the past that I wouldn't get my hopes up about things like that. But this is exercise! And yoga! And weighing yourself! And feeling bad about your weight! This is her kind of game! If there was ever a chance to get her into games, this is it.
There was never a chance, apparently. After a week of waiting for her to play Wii Fit, I finally played it myself. I pretended I just wanted to enjoy it for myself, but really I was doing it specifically while she was there but not in the room so that she might walk in and get jealous and want to play it herself. It basically worked. After I played some of the minigames, she wanted to try it herself. And she did play it for a half-hour or so, not the exercises but just the minigames. She has not touched the Wii since.
I'm enjoying Wii Fit. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it is a remarkable game nonetheless. Through it, Nintendo has managed to get millions of people who don't consider themselves gamers to have fun playing games. Why couldn't my sister be one of them?
There's an actor Tanya knows who's willing to play Cornelius, but he's not available on Wednesdays and many of our rehearsals are on Wednesdays, so she's looking for other actors who might be easier to work with. She's going to watch the other production of The Matchmaker in a few days, and she said she might ask their Cornelius to join us if he's good. I hope she's joking about that one.
In order to keep the play under two hours, we were going to cut most of Act 4, and replace it with a short video clip of Act 4's plot played out in pantomime. (Tanya described the idea as "Charlie Chaplin-style".) It could have worked. Tanya was going to ask a film student to direct that bit. But now JEST's board of directors have told her to scrap that idea, because there's no room in the budget for it. So we're doing Act 4 as written, and the play will be long. I'm okay with this decision. On the one hand, it means what we're doing is less insane, and that's a shame. But on the other hand, it means I get more funny moments on stage. I was off-book, but it didn't take me too long to get there. I can learn another act quickly enough.
Not everyone showed up to this rehearsal, for whatever reason. The schedule said we'd be doing Act 1, but the actors who came were the actors for Act 2 (minus Cornelius). So we did Act 2. Ambrose isn't in that act, only Barnaby.
I tried to tone down my performance a tad, because in practicing at home it had been a bit too crazy for a stage. To try to figure out the mannerisms of Barnaby I was hopping around the house a lot, but on stage it just didn't feel right. Barnaby was in a strange area, he'd probably be a lot more restrained. So that's how I played hm. When we were done running the scene, Tanya told me to run around more. So we ran it again, and I ran around so much that I felt like I was playing a squirrel. (I have no problems with squirrels, I just didn't expect that.) And then when we were done Tanya told me to never stop running around, to just be totally hyperactive. So we ran it a third time, and I kept running around so much that I felt like I was repeating myself, and then when we were done she said it was great but I ought to move around more. Really hop up and down, when appropriate. This is going to be fun. I may need to exercise my legs regularly.
We still don't have an Ermengarde, and Tanya isn't too concerned because Ermengarde doesn't have many lines. She's considering Dena, which would just be weird. I saw her in Another Antigone, and that was a good show but Dena's acting was one of the things I didn't like about it. Plus, that would just be weird. I'm supposed to act like I'm in love with Dena? I hope Dena declines. Although... if I play it like I'm not really in love with Ermengarde, it could add a bit of the weirdness from my backstory for Ambrose, where Ermengarde is really just the rebound girl. Hmmm.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Quality Isn't Enough, Is It?
There have been only three issues so far. Already there are rumors that sales are so bad the series is going to be cancelled.
2 Comments:
-
Mory said:
-
Most of the internet chatter about this book has been criticizing it for giving Beast a different look than the other comics he appears in. Which just goes to show that many people on the internet have no taste at all. Beast's design in S.W.O.R.D. is so much better than anywhere else, so much more distinctive and full of personality, that I wish all the other comic artists would start drawing him like this.
-
Mory said:
-
It's been confirmed that the series is canceled. There will only be five issues. Blah.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Forward March
I'm not going to spoil any specifics about the game, for those of you fortunate enough to have not heard me give away all the details of the experience already. So I can't describe exactly what it is I've been working on. But I can tell you that the main game is going to be made up of 15 separate.. um, things, and I've made 12 of them. Most of those pieces are roughly how I planned them out a year ago. The rest I figured out as I went.
I think I've probably said already that The March of Bulk is a movement game. And even if I haven't, that's no spoiler. Now, the thing you have to understand about movement games is that their primary content is their controls, and that's something you can't really appreciate as an idea. You need to feel it for yourself. So I could plan out what the basic structure of it would be like, I could set out certain goals for myself in terms of how the game was supposed to end up, but I couldn't stick to those plans too faithfully. Ultimately the design comes down to intuition, not cleverness.
I almost never pull off the motion I'm going for on the first try. I try something, and if I'm not even in the right ballpark I throw it out, but if it's close I keep tweaking the numbers until I get there. I add complexity, I take out complexity. I break it into sections, so that I can do different things in different parts. What I'm doing here is halfway between programming and animation, and I'm good at neither but I know what I like and I can work out how to get there.
I could have asked Kyler to do the animations, of course. But that wouldn't work right. If he gave me some intricate animation, that's not subject to the player's interaction. I need it to react to exactly how the player is playing on a subtle level, or else it won't feel right. So the animations need to be pulled off through math, which takes into account all the variables of context.
So the pieces of a movement game only come together when I can play around with them as a gamer and see how it feels. (How the game feels is my main concern here. Those who don't care how their games feel have no business making movement games.) My old composition teacher Eliezer used to say that he couldn't tell me what to do with a piece of music until I had written it out. Similarly, I can't tell myself what to do with a piece of movement until I've programmed it in. And sometimes what I find surprises me. I had to throw out a few bits I liked in the planning stages, when I realized they would not mesh with the tone of the rest. And other things just occurred to me as I was working. There was one bit that wasn't even meant to be funny but turned out being hilarious through what's almost a glitch in the programming, so I played that up and added in a lot that I hadn't anticipated needing. Other times I unexpectedly feel as I'm playing like I'd like to do something at a certain point, and it's something I'd never considered, so I need to rework the design to add that in.
I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to be the main gamist for a big movement game with lots of people working for me, and it's hard to picture. Whoever programs the animations is making the game. If I want it to be my game (and I do), I can't pass that job off to someone else. Which means that no matter how high up I go as a gamist, I'm still going to need to program sometimes. I guess what I need to do is get a programming environment better-suited for movement games, like one with a built-in physics engine. Or I could try to reduce all the movements in The March of Bulk to some sort of notation system and try to find logic in that that I can consciously use later. But either way, I'm always going to need to get my hands dirty. I can't consider myself a gamist otherwise. I'd be at best a manager.
It could work. It'll all work out fine.
Alternate-Universe Me
He never learned Hebrew, he never was exposed to the violent attitudes of poor Moroccan kids, he never had to get too used to the idea of standing out. He never learned the Israeli directness and lack of caring about the future. He never discovered internet piracy (which is less commonplace in America), and therefore never got into videogames. He eventually would find out about Asperger's Syndrome, and would most likely try to fit in and eliminate his differences.
That Mory would grow up to be a very boring person. My interpretation of my life story says that the most important thing that ever happened to me was moving to the holy land. The alternate-universe me never had a reason to exist. I do.
How I play strategy games
I always aim to amuse myself, and I am easily amused. I might do something that gets me into trouble, and I know going in that it's probably going to get me in trouble, but I do it anyway because I know that if by some small chance I should pull it off it'll be glorious. Other people take a long time to consider each little thing they do; not me. I might spend lots of time analyzing what I did later, but the decision itself rarely takes more than a few seconds because I'm going by instinct. I think the fun is in the doing, not the planning. If it goes badly, it goes badly. But I'll have at least amused myself with the idea that I could have pulled off something ridiculous.
Other people don't think like that. Focusing on goals is very popular. It's what gets you ahead, if that's what you want to do. And there's always a goal to work for. Some people are going to be on top in the end, and some people will be failures. That's life. But that's not particularly important to me. There's only one ending. But there are so many little joys to be found along the way! If I can do one little thing that no one saw coming and totally reshapes the landscape, my work is done. That's such satisfaction already that it barely matters whether I end up a loser.
Now I'll admit, moments that great are few and far between. But like I said, I'm easily amused. Something doesn't have to be crazy to seem like a good idea, and I'll pursue what I consider good ideas to the ends of the Earth. Even ideas that are purely functional, I'll go after them if it seems like I might enjoy the function. If something's missing, I'll try to fill it in. If something's wrong, I'll try to fix it. These moments are in themselves satisfying, more because they feel right than because they are right. It's satisfying to make plans and stick to them and see them come together, even if at the end of the night it turns out those plans were ill-considered. Following some intricate plan with aesthetic appeal is more entertaining than forming a plan that makes sense.
I might not make it in the real world. My father wants me to start investing stocks; this seems like a very bad idea to me. At the end of my life, I'm not going to have more money than anyone else or be more famous than anyone else. I don't know if I'll even reach all the goals I've set for myself. And these things do matter to me, don't think they don't. But on a moment-to-moment basis, none of that concerns me at all. When I do a thing, it's because I think it's going to amuse me. Usually it does.
1 Comment:
- Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
I try to find a balance between playing purely by instinct and purely by planning. I think it may also depend on the game. Some games just fit better into "telling a story" which pull me stronger into playing by instinct, and some games are rather dry and only reward planning. There also might be some correlation between this and the amount of randomness in a game. The more randomness, the easier it is for me to play by instinct, and vice versa.
So a game like Puerto Rico with basically no randomness is a game I play almost entirely by planning and hoping I can figure out what the other players actions will be by using pure logic.
Games like Last Night On Earth, where any 'ol random thing can happen, I try to play to maximize the story line. It's all about going out in a blaze of glory... sometimes literally.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Project Natal: Programmed By Machines
http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/exclusive-inside-microsofts-project-natal
The article is short, but here's what I understand from it. When Project Natal sees an image of a room and identifies a person in it, it then puts together a list of likely guesses as to what that body is doing, assigns a probability to each possible interpretation, and then takes the most likely assumption. Nothing more glamorous is going on here than following rules like "If the leg is two pixels further to the left, then increase the probability of case #1,694.". But those rules were not programmed by people.
Somewhere in Microsoft headquarters is a big network of computers that together form what the project workers call "the living brain". I am not making this up, it's right there in the photo gallery on the Popular Science page. This computer system is not just programmed but trained to recognize body positions from images. It was only programmed with a basic knowledge of how human bodies are shaped, which is much like how a living creature has basic functions programmed in as instincts. The "living brain" is given pictures and is told repeatedly what body positions those pictures are supposed to stand for, and then it writes its own rules to make sense of all that. When it's finished, the list of rules it's come up with will be put into the considerably-dumber Project Natal systems, which will not learn for themselves but just follow the rules which have already been learned. And those rules aren't objective laws decided on by some programmer or team of experts, they're the personal views of this particular computer network in Microsoft headquarters. They're rules which are the result of this particular program's design and experiences, with all the imperfections that implies.
The article, like I said, is short. It doesn't say whether this same technique is being used to train Project Natal's recognition of emotions, though I imagine it must be. And I'd really be interested in hearing a more thorough analysis of the way they're getting this program to learn. The article doesn't even say if this sort of thing is common nowadays; I haven't heard of anything this ambitious before, but I don't hear much. What this article does tell me is that I was wrong about AI systems. Clearly real artificial intelligence does exist, it's just running on hardware too expensive for end users and still needs to be trained by professionals for very specific tasks. It is a start.
4 Comments:
- Kyler said:
-
Just as a note of my concern for project natal is that the current precision of the system might not be high enough for people to do what they imagine they want to do with such a system. This will than lead to disappointment with the product.
I will use an example from a sport that I enjoy and am adept at. Ping pong. I'm assuming that most people will imagine that project natal will allow them to simulate a game of ping pong. It just seems like something it should be able to do. However, the precision of Natal is something like + or - 5 cm ( I read this in some article I can't find again).
Now ping pong is all about millimeters. Tiny differences in speed and angles. I'm sure that in sensing the angle of the paddle, a precision of roughly 1 mm would make it feel really authentic.
So to design games for Natal, they need to be designed in such a way that 5 cm is enough precision, and feels right. Something like an extreme upgrade to dance dance revolution.
I too am very interested in the whole project and can't wait to actually try it. -
Mory said:
-
Hi! Haven't heard from you in a while.
I actually raised my own concerns about the lack of precision when I first wrote about Natal here. And you're right, a Ping Pong game wouldn't work. Or at least, a realistic Ping Pong game wouldn't work; if you start getting arcade-y, there are ways to make it fun. For a realistic Ping Pong game I think it would be easier to use the upcoming PlayStation Motion Controller or even Nintendo's MotionPlus add-on. The appeal I see in Project Natal is first in pulling more people into games, and second in augmenting existing kinds of games with little bits of natural motion. -
Mory said:
-
Oh, and I should also say that from video demonstrations of Project Natal I could see a not-insignificant amount of lag between the action and its appearance on screen. But still, there's much that a good gamist could do with it.
-
Mory said:
-
After speaking to Moshe, I've added a note to the beginning of this post spelling out that there is actually nothing out-of-the-ordinary going on here. Obviously if I'd spoken to him earlier I would not have written this post, but it seemed like a big deal when I read about it.
The Necessity of Dreams
Scanning neural pathways...Okay, what have we got. A lot of trouble in the 36 area, I see.. the girl next door. Okay, I'll have to start from there. And w793a3... pizza. I must still be hungry. Let's get to work.
17 problem areas located.
Pathway 3691b6 (68% above healthy)
Pathway 36e!00 (66% above healthy)
Pathway 36@892 (66% above healthy)
Pathway w793a3 (65% above healthy)
Pathway 361224 (61% above healthy)
Pathway 361225 (61% above healthy)
Pathway 3605nl (54% above healthy)
WARNING: All above pathways are reaching near-obsession levels and must be reduced immediately to maintain healthy brain function.
Pathway 64a54a (37% above healthy)
Pathway 64a5jd (37% above healthy)
Pathway 369(b7 (35% above healthy)
Pathway 760435 (34% above healthy)
Pathway r5esu8 (32% above healthy)
Pathway 282229 (26% above healthy)
Pathway 84$090 (14% above healthy)
Pathway a1+018 (10% above healthy)
Pathway a1+019 (10% above healthy)
Pathway a1+020 (10% above healthy)
I am in that girl next door's house. She is not here. I am okay with this. There is a slice of pizza on the table.That ought to lower them a little. How direct should the sexual content here go? Hm, 68%.. that's not really so bad. It's not worth risking waking up over. There's still a lot to fix after dealing with her.
>_
She is asking to share pizza. There is a pie of pizza on the table.Okay. Not the most effective thing in the world, but it'll deal with 36e!00 a bit. How are we doing?
>_
Pathway 3691b6 (68% above healthy)Darn it, I made a new one. 91gg47.. the similarity between tables and the human body. I'd better fix that before it gets any worse.
Pathway 36e!00 (42% above healthy)
Pathway 36@892 (56% above healthy)
Pathway w793a3 (13% above healthy)
Pathway 361224 (60% above healthy)
Pathway 361225 (60% above healthy)
Pathway 3605nl (53% above healthy)
Pathway 64a54a (37% above healthy)
Pathway 64a5jd (37% above healthy)
Pathway 369(b7 (2% above healthy)
Pathway 760435 (34% above healthy)
Pathway r5esu8 (32% above healthy)
Pathway 282229 (26% above healthy)
Pathway 84$090 (14% above healthy)
Pathway a1+018 (10% above healthy)
Pathway a1+019 (10% above healthy)
Pathway a1+020 (10% above healthy)
Pathway 91gg47 (21% above healthy)
The table has turned into a human and walked away. This is not unusual.
>_
Pathway 91gg47 (-4% above healthy)Phew. Okay, how do I proceed. 64a54a.. I'm not doing enough painting these days. Easily remedied, and I can tie that in with the girl easily enough.
The girl next door has taken off her clothes and would like me to paint her back.Okay, that's going down, excellent. I should leave that going for a minute so that I don't have to deal with this again for a while. If I keep mixing things together like this, I'll be done in no time. Okay, let's see what's next.. ah. This is an easy one.
>_
Spiders crawl out of her back and jump at my face. I am still alive.
>ask girl to squash spiders
She will not, and she laughs at me. I can handle this humiliation.
WARNING: Stress levels reaching unsafe level. Stress must be reduced to prevent waking up.No, I'm still okay. I've got to leave this going for another few seconds, it's going down slowly. 9%... 5%... that should be enough.
She asks about sociological principles.This shouldn't take long. This stuff is totally useless, I wouldn't want to be stuck with wanting to talk about it in real life. 16%.. 1%. Fine. Let's get to the a1's now.
>_
Babies descend from the BEEP BEEP BEEPNot the alarm already!
Deleting temporary files...But there are still a few serious obsessions.. darn. I'll have to bring those down tomorrow.
ERROR. Some temporary files were not properly removed. These may interfere with normal brain function.
Okay, get up.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
No Way To Run A Production
Tanya is in South Africa. No one (the assistant director included) seems to have any idea what she's doing there. She's not South African, but she lived there for a while so she has friends there. That still doesn't explain what was so important that she'd leave us for it for so long.
We presently have no actor playing Cornelius. While I was in America, David, who was going to play the part and who I was enjoying working with, got a hernia. It's not an emergency, so the hospital hasn't scheduled his surgery yet. But the surgery needs to be done, and until it is he can't strain himself in any way. That means he's out, and we have no replacement. My friend Moshe expressed an interest in trying out for the part, but then he got in to this training program for a computer job and now he doesn't have the time. The only other person who's expressed interest so far is someone who's not available on Wednesdays, which many of our rehearsals are on.
But we don't even know if he'd be appropriate for the part, because there have yet to be any sort of auditions for the part. David got in on the strength of his audition months ago, I doubt Tanya even considered anyone else. And Tanya's not back yet. She was supposed to be here yesterday. No one seems to know why she's not. Now she says she'll be here on Thursday. She'd better be.
There's also an issue with the character of Ermengarde. There was a lovely girl playing her, and then she had trouble with her travel visa so she's out. A girl I know took over, and then she joined a production of Annie which happens to have a performance on the same night as one of ours. Tanya knew about this before she left, but she didn't find anyone else. So we may or may not have an Ermengarde, and there isn't anyone who can fix this situation except for a lady who is in South Africa right now.
I didn't realize she wasn't going to be here, so I took today's rehearsal seriously. We were supposed to get off book in the three-week break, so I basically did. There are many parts I'm not comfortable with yet, and I'd need to stumble through those parts a bit, but I do basically know all my lines. The rehearsal was called for 7:30 in the place where we had the callbacks, so I printed out a map of the place for reference (just to be sure I'd get to the right place) and left the house at 5:30. I got there a few minutes late.
There was no one there except me and three other actors. Even the assistant director hadn't gotten there yet. And when she did, she said that no one else would be coming. Everyone had some convenient excuse to not be there.
We waited around until a little past 8:00. I played piano in the meantime; it was horribly out of tune, and there wasn't much I could do with it. Then someone named Rachel showed up, who is apparently Tanya's boss. In retrospect I'm not sure why she was there; there's not much she could have said to explain what was going on because she herself didn't seem to understand what was going on. But we sat around and talked about the state of the play, and then since we were there we did the parts of the play that we could.
Rachel told me I flail my arms around too much as Ambrose. I'll listen to what she's saying, but this is getting annoying. When I worked with Tanya she said to move around less with my lower body. So all the energy that I wanted Ambrose to have, that was all going into his arms. Now I'm finding out that he shouldn't have so much energy. I'm trying to figure out who this character is, I really am, but these reactions just aren't making sense to me. I'm afraid the character is going to end up just standing there motionless like a corpse, and nothing I want to express about the character is going to come across at all.
And Barnaby, no one is complaining about. I'm really not sure about what I'm doing with Barnaby, but no one's saying a thing. It could be because I've got it, so no one bothers. More likely it's because I'm doing such an awful job that people are worried they'll hurt my feelings. Normal people are so irritating.
The play goes on at the beginning of March. A month and a half, that's the time we've got. Which might be enough for some plays, but this is a crazy play and it really needs more time. It looked like we had more time, and then Tanya had to go to South Africa. We have no Cornelius, we may or may not have an Ermengarde, and that's not even getting to all the craziness of act 4 which we haven't even begun to plan yet but only exists as a vague concept in Tanya's head. And sure, it's a good concept, but still!
I feel certain that there's a great play to be made here. I'm less certain that we're making that play.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Laziness May Be Hazardous To Your Health
See, I take a very long time doing dishes. It always frustrates me when dishes are put back in the drawer that aren't perfectly clean, so I was especially thorough with each and every piece of silverware. Every spot needed to be scrubbed. My parents told me I was wasting too much water, that it shouldn't be taking me so long, but I wasn't going to do the kind of job they do. And understand, I do not enjoy washing dishes at all. This wasn't a point of pride, just a point of obsession. Each time I washed the dishes, I was standing at that sink for well over two hours.
Eventually I squirmed my way out of doing the dishes again. Then my mother started to get angry. She said it wasn't fair that I should use dishes and she'd have to wash them. She suggested that rather than having a schedule, we should all just wash our own dishes.
So from that point on, I've been eating on plastic. Plastic plates, plastic cups. I still use real silverware, because the plastic silverware is borderline unusable. But if there's a way to not leave a dish, I don't leave a dish. That way my mother can't justifiably get angry at me for giving her work that she wanted me to do. There's no work now.
From the start I understood the downside of this policy, which is that it limits the food I can eat. I can't cook anything, even pasta, because then there would be pots or pans left. So for months now I've been on an exclusive diet of bagels and whatever leftover pasta is around, but that's barely a change from before so I'm okay with it. I don't need variety, I just need to eat.
As I said I've been doing this for months, but it was very recently that my father found out that I'd been microwaving the plates. Well, of course I microwave the plates. The bagels need to be defrosted before toasting, and I need to melt cheese on the pasta. When I'm having pasta, I sometimes microwave it over and over. I didn't realize, until my father told me, that that's not healthy. He told me that microwaving plastic gets some sort of toxic material into the food which has been proven to cause cancer.
Well, gee. I wish he had told me that before I was microwaving my food in them twice a day every day for months. He assured me that there's no way I could get cancer already, but I don't see how he's so certain. I've stopped microwaving the plates, of course. For pasta I use actual dishes, which I'm not going to wash afterward. I'm going to eat pasta less.
2 Comments:
- Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
Defrost bagels on top of a piece of paper towel.
-
Mory said:
-
This is what I do now.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Seventy-four
There are a few interesting coincidences of the number in my life, which I only discovered later. For instance, at the point when I was playing that game, my father was 47 years old and my grandfather was 74 years old. And then there's the G'matriya. G'matriya is a little number game rabbis like to play, where each Hebrew letter has a numerical value and the value of any word is the sum of its letters. The G'matriya of "Mordechai" is 274. And the G'matriya of "Mordechai Ariel Buckman", by its Hebrew spelling, is 714. See, that's just cool. Oh, and Dr. Hans Asperger (grrr) died at 74.
But even without all that stuff, it'd still be my favorite number. I've used it as the title for all my posts here which are short and random, because the title "74" is short and random. It didn't occur to me to use it as a way to control the structure of the blog until my seventh 74 post, which just so happened (I swear I did not plan this out!) to be my 74th post overall.
I'd like to live forever, but I suspect I'll actually die at the age of 74. Alternatively, I might die in the year 2174, 13 years after the United Federation of Planets is formed. I like that version of the story better.
My Alphabet
Step 2: Arellian
I had almost finished my logical alphabet, where the connections between letters are perfectly intuitive and logical. I needed to start working on the vocabulary. It would use a modified version of Hebrew's "root" logic, because it just makes everything more sensible. In addition, you could get the opposite of any word by spelling it backwards. And the longer a word, the more specialized its meaning. There would be short words talking about general concepts, so that you could have a basic conversation without having an advanced vocabulary. But adding on more letters to the start and end would add on subtleties and contexts and connotations and iterations. Starting from these rules, I'd eventually deduce the single most logical language in the world. I believed I'd find that in the end, there would only be one solution to this problem.
The first few years of my life were spent in America, where the name "Mordechai" might sound weird, so my parents gave me a nickname. At the time I first figured out how to read, that name was spelled "Morry". An overthinker even then, I went to my mother and protested. "If it's spelled 'Morry', it has to rhyme with 'sorry'. But I'm not 'Mahr-ee', I'm 'More-ee'!" So we took an R out of my name, and I was satisfied. But of course I was making a naïve mistake: I was expecting language to make sense. Language hasn't made sense in thousands of years.
Ancient Hebrew- now there was a sensible language. In Hebrew every word is made up of a shoresh (meaning root) of three letters that says what the essence of the word is. You can detach those three letters from the "structure" that contains them, so that you can understand what the word means just by recognizing those two elements. The logic of the system is clear: just by knowing one word (any word) from a particular root, you can infer all the rest. There are rules covering every aspect of spelling and grammar. And in ancient times, the Hebrew letters were all distinct from each other. None of this nonsense like in English where C and S can make the same sound, and sometimes an S can sound like a Z, and C, K and Q can all be the same. English derives from languages that derive from other languages that derive from other languages that eventually go back to ancient Hebrew, and it makes sense that with such a logical language as ancient Hebrew the other languages would want to build on that, but over the millennia all sorts of inane compromises of sanity have crept in to the point where none of the elegance remains.
(I'm sure there's a long history explaining every misstep that led to where we are now, but I'm not too curious because all the people I could assign blame to are long dead.)
In Israel I learned Hebrew, and those rules were like a breath of fresh air after a lifetime of pollution. But modern Hebrew is not ancient Hebrew. Many mistakes and contrivances which got into other languages somehow found their way into Hebrew. What keeps it reasonably sane to this day is that we've got many books written in ancient Hebrew, from which we can figure out how the general grammar works. (Modern grammar is different in many little ways, but it's mostly the same.) But we don't have an audio recording telling us how it's meant to be pronounced. So in learning the rules, there was a bit of a frustrating disconnect where I understood the logic of the rules, but didn't see them being applied consistently.
For instance: in Hebrew there are six letters which sometimes have dots in them. Without a dot the sound is continuous, with a dot it's a single sound. (I actually think that's exactly backwards from the way it used to be, but that's a different topic.) Take the letter pei: with a dot it's pronounced like a P, without it's pronounced like an F (or "PH"). That makes sense. It's roughly the same sound, except that one is continuous and one isn't, so they're the same letter and there are rules saying when you use one or the other. But in the rules of spelling, there are six letters like that: the equivalents of B, G, D, K, P, and T. Of those, only the B, K and P equivalents make a different sound with a dot. That's clearly wrong. In ancient Hebrew each of those had a continuous form, but we've forgotten or discarded those.
Things like that are just inconsistent, and that drove me crazy. If it's going to be a sensible language with sensible rules, it's got to go all the way. You can't just take out some of those rules and expect the result to still make sense. There are letters whose sound we've forgotten, so we pronounce them the same as other letters. The result is redundancies and confusion, which is not how Hebrew is supposed to be. Hebrew is supposed to be a holy language, not a random one. When we read out of our holy Torah every Shabbat, we're reading it wrong. It's not supposed to sound the way we make it sound, and I imagine the real thing is probably much more beautiful.
I admired the ambition of Hebrew, didn't care for how it had ended up. So in fifth grade, I started working on a replacement. By the standards of this confused world Hebrew is still pretty logical. But not nearly enough for my liking, and that's what this new language I imagined would have to be. I started with the alphabet, trying to work in all the (American) English sounds but in a structured way which was detached from the fuzzy logic of modern alphabets.
Here it is:


Back then I called it the Arellian alphabet after my middle name; now I call it the Hee alphabet, for reasons that I will explain later. There's a lot going on here, so it might take a while to explain fully. (The scanner chopped off the sides a bit. Just pretend it didn't.)
But first, please note that this is not exactly what I came up with in grade school. What I came up with then had flaws, which I've corrected in order to post them here. This is, in my view, the definitive version of the alphabet, and if ten-year-old me saw what I've done (and heard my reasoning for the changes), I have little doubt that he'd come around to my way of thinking. 35 of the 52 symbols here are exactly as scribbled on all my school notebooks, and the other 17 I created yesterday to fill in the gaps and correct the mistakes while staying fairly true to the original scribbles through all the revisions.
Anyway. As you see, both the vowels and the consonants are categorized into families. Similarly to Hebrew words but unlike Hebrew letters, just by looking at any letter in this alphabet you can understand exactly how it relates to all the other letters. In both English and Hebrew there are some sounds which are combinations of other sounds, and that goes unacknowledged. That's unacceptable to me. If a common sound is made up of other sounds, you know it because you can see that the symbol for the letter is made up of two other letters. So that's what all these vowel and consonant "combinations" are.
Here's an MP3 file of all fifty-two sounds, some of which you've most likely never heard. I'm going to get to an explanation of each letter in a minute, but first I'd like to clarify where I'm coming from with this.
It probably looks like a tremendous number of letters, and I guess it is. There are twice as many sounds here as in the modern Hebrew language, or probably even the (more diverse) biblical Hebrew language. It even has more sounds than English, a language where each letter can sound twenty different ways depending on the time of day. On the other hand, it's not even close to containing all the sounds out there, so it's not useful for a thorough examination of language either. The question that must be asked is what exactly it's for. My answer is that it was a personal way for me to make sense of the sounds that I already knew and used on a daily basis. English and Hebrew didn't make sense, so I needed to satisfy myself.
Every single sound which I use in casual English speech is contained in this alphabet, even those which I use only when saying Hebrew words in English. The reason there are more letters than both languages combined, even though authentically Hebrew sounds are not accounted for, is twofold. First, the letters are consistent. Each letter will always make the same sound, with no exceptions. Second, the rules need to be thorough. If there are four sounds to be made of a certain category, I can't just include three. I need the full set, or else I can't justify including that category to begin with. This second rule is a lot less satisfying to me now than the first, but back then I thought the alphabet was a lot more thorough than it actually is so I didn't have a problem with it.
Okay, let's go through bit by bit. Keep in mind the whole time that I speak with an American accent. If you have a different accent, you're almost guaranteed to be confused at times unless you remember that.
Vowels
First up are "ah" and "uh". Similar sounds, so much so that when Israelis speak English they think there's only "ah" and no "uh" and no one thinks to correct them. "Ah" is the A in "blah", the O in "pot" and the first E in "en garde". "Uh" is the U in "run", the O in "cover", the OO in "blood", the A in "mesa" and the E in "the".
Next are the short A, E, and I, which have always sounded to me more like three parts of a specific range of sounds than three distinct entities. You can't go from "a" to "i" without passing through "e" on the way. At least, that's how I see it. They are drawn accordingly, and note that all three are only drawn above the middle of the line. (I drew on two lines to better emphasize this.) Anyway, "a" is the A in "cat" and the EA in "yeah". "E" is the E in "pet". "I" is the I in "think", the O in "women" and for that matter the E in "women" as well, the E in "glasses", the second O in "horizon", the U in "rhesus", the Y in "cyst" and the dot in "Mrs.". :)
"O" is the O in "or", but not the O of "most". It is the sound made by the Hebrew letter vav, and I believe it's also like the O you'd hear in Spanish though I'm not certain of that. It's a simpler sound than the English O; if you don't know what I'm talking about you'll have to listen to the MP3. "Oo" is the OO in "caboose", the O in "move", the U in "ruse" and the W in "ewe". What I call "u" is probably not what you'd expect; I'm referring specifically to the U of "put" and the OO of "foot". The old version of "Arellian" had a fourth leter in this category, and the whole family looked more congruous for it, but I just realized now that it's actually made of two sounds. It's hard to shake what I've learned. Anyway, this is a family of three because the mouth is a similar shape in all three, but it's not a range of sounds like the "e" family.
Finally there's "ee": the EE of "sweet", the EA of "leaf", the EI of "either", the E of "mete" and the I of "pizza". This letter is in a category of its own. It looks like the Hebrew letter yod, which makes the same sound.
Vowel Combinations
The first line is what you get when you add "ee" to the end of all eight of the other vowels. There are two "I"s: the first is the Y in "fly" and the second is the I in "flight". They are not the same sound; the first is "ah-ee" and the second is "uh-ee". The third I put in parentheses because it's hard to describe, but it's a short "a" with "ee" added. For some reason it makes me think of pirates. "Ay" is the A of "date" and the EI of "neigh" and the É of "café". Like "I", we English-speakers think of this as one sound but it's actually made of two: "eh-ee". After that is "i-ee", which is again not English. The MP3 file will tell you how it sounds. Then to the "oo" family: "oy" is the OY of "boy" and the oi of "noise". "Ooy" isn't English except under certain pronounciations of "buoy", but it's straightforward: just try to say "Shmooi!" as one syllable, and you've got it. And finally "u-ee", which is the U of "put" plus "ee" though that might be hard to imagine without hearing it.
The second line is what you get by adding "oo" to the other vowels. I'm just going to skip to the parts that are English sounds, because you understand the routine by now. "ow" is the OW in "now", which is actually "a"+"oo". "ew" is not in any words except "Ew!", but you know it from there: "i" plus "oo". Then there's "oh", which is the English O in "boat" and "comb" and snow". And at the end of the line I should have put in "ee-oo", as in the word "Eeeeeew!", but I didn't think of it until just this moment. My bad. The old school notebooks probably had that, though, because it just makes sense. It would look like a backwards "ooy". (So I guess there are actually 53 letters, not 52.) There's no "u-oo", because the two sounds are so similar that I personally can just barely perceive the combination as being different from a simple "oo", though that's probably just me.
On the third line is one of the changes from the original that I mentioned earlier. "Aw" used to be in the "oo" family as its own basic sound, and that always gave me lots of trouble but I couldn't figure out why until today. It's actually a combination of "o" and "uh", isn't it? If I had realized this back in the day, I might have filled out all the rest of the vowel+"uh"s, because they're all pretty distinct sounds, but today I don't see the need. Only one of those nine sounds is in my life. "Aw" is the AW of "saw" and the AU of "pause".
And that's all for the vowels! [phew] This didn't seem so complicated when I made it up...
Consonants
What I found about consonants, when I thought about them, was that they could generally be broken into categories by two criteria. First, some sounds were short sounds after which you move on, and others were continuous. Secondly, some sounds sounded dry and some sounded soft. I don't know how else to describe it.
Let me give you an example of what I mean, using the first family of consonants I wrote out. (There isn't really a proper order to any of this, it's just how I decided to write it this time.) P is a noncontinuous sound. If you make it continuous (down), you have an F. If you make the P's sound softer (in the sense of texture, not loudness), you have a B. That's written to the right. And if you make the P both soft and continuous, you have a V. A family of four. Now take notice of how these letters are written; their appearance reflects their places in the family. The P and F are made of sharp angles, while the B and V are made of soft curves. Also, the F and V's lines end up back where they started. That's a principle I was particularly happy about: if a consonant is continuous, you know it because it closes a loop. By the way, the resemblance to a lowercase B and capital F was not unintentional. It made the letters easier for me to remember.
The T family follows the same principles. The T and D equivalents look much like lowercase T's and D's, but more importantly the T is made of straight lines and the D is curved. The continuous form of T is Th, which is the Th of "math". The Th of "there" I'm calling Dh, because it's the continuous form of D.
The third family is less English-sounding. The soft version of K is G. The continuous version is Kh, like the "ch" in "Mordechai" or "Bach" or "Blecch!". That's the Hebrew khaf, not the hebrew khet, because I don't pronounce khets correctly even when speaking in Hebrew. The final part of the family I can't really describe in words, because it is neither a part of English nor a part of modern Hebrew. (I like to think it was in ancient Hebrew, though.) I call it Gh, and if you want to know what it sounds like you'll just have to hear it in the MP3. Alternatively you could figure it out for yourself, because there's only one sound that could possibly complete the sequence. It's the continuous form of G and the soft form of Kh. Now, what I find funny is that everyone thinks the continuous form of G is J, but the two sounds aren't connected to each other in any way! I'll explain a little bit later what the J sound is, but it has nothing to do with this family.
The fourth family is an odd one. S and Sh are clearly connected, as is Z and Zh (the S of "decision"), and the Z's are certainly the soft version of the S's, but all four sounds are continuous. So they all start with a line in the middle and then close a loop, but they close that loop in different ways.
In the bottom left corner is H. That's not connected to anything, because it's kind of the prototypical sound. You don't close your mouth at all to make it, you just exhale. So the design is a simple two lines- first there's silence, and then sound. This does not conform to the closing-a-loop rule, but the line goes along with the rule I wrote to the right of the big word "Consonants": drawing a line in the middle coming out from any letter continues its sound. (This rule replaces any cases where one letter repeats itself, which would be redundant.) So in a sense you're just continuing the most basic sound. Because of that, H is to my mind almost a vowel, which is why I didn't make it loop.
Speaking of almost-vowels, the two letters to its immediate right are just vowels masquerading as consonants. Y is what you get when you continue the end of an "ee", W is what you get when you continue from an "oo". Each is drawn as its vowel with a line continuing it. (With both H and these, to lengthen the sound you just draw out the line further. You don't add a second line.) Y and W should be considered a family of two.
All the way on the right are the four leftover sounds. These cannot fit into any possible categories, but they are common sounds in both English and Hebrew and therefore need to be represented. I would have loved to make whole families out of each of them, but that would involve filling those families almost entirely with sounds I don't know. The fact that I didn't do that makes me feel better about not completing the "aw" line. But even if I had, whatever came out would most likely not resemble the four regular consonant families. The R is pronounced like an American R. If the N comes before a G or a K, it is not combined with those sounds as in English but the two sounds are kept separate. You'll notice the lines sticking out from the R and L, with parentheticals pointing out that they aren't always there. That's because I find that R and L are most peculiar letters: they have a bit of a vowel built in. Every time your mouth moves to form an R or L and air is still coming out of it, you have to make an "u" sound of sorts in the process. That's how it seems to me. So the line completes the V-shape that's the "u" vowel. The line does not appear when an R or an L is the first letter of a word. I'm okay with adding a weird rule like that, because it's just codifying how I already talk.
Consonant Combinations
This bit could have been longer, including sounds like X (=K+S) and maybe some new ones, but I don't remember having any combined sounds other than these four back in elementary school so these are the only ones I'm including. The first line is straightforward: I'm adding the S family to T and D. "Ts" is the Hebrew tzadi, so I use it regularly to say things like names. In English it's the double-Z of "mezzo". "Dz" is just D and Z together; I can't think of any words which use this as a single sound, but it's the softened version of "ts" so it has to be here. The other two you'll recognize: T+Sh="ch", and D+Zh="j". "Ch" is the CH of "which", "J" is the J of "Jew" and the G of "gem". How these letters got connected to C's and G's, I have no idea.
And finally, something which isn't so much one letter after the other as it is the synthesis of two sounds. "Ng" looks like an N inside a G. I mentioned earlier that just an N with a G after it makes two disconnected sound, so here's the way to write the English NG of "ring". Unlike in English, this sound is not restricted to the ends of words; it's a letter like any other.
So that's the Hee (formerly Arellian) alphabet. Here's how my full name is written:

Now, the Arellian alphabet was supposed to be a precursor to the Arellian language. I never did that. I started it, and gave up almost immediately afterward because the task I'd set for myself was just too big. There are a few principles that all words in this language would need to follow. First, any word written backwards is its opposite. Second, the shorter the word the more general its concept. The more specialized the field up for discussion, the longer the words get. Third, changing any single letter in a word (consonant or vowel) to another letter in its family (or a combination letter made from it) gets you a word which means almost the same thing but not quite. Fourth, by looking at a word you've never seen and comparing it to other words you know you should sometimes be able to figure out what it means for yourself.
You can see why I gave up. I'm not sure if it's theoretically possible to make an entire language with such precise logic to it.
I might as well tell you where the name "Hee" comes from. In twenty years or so, I hope to have gotten up to the point where I can make my fantasy-RPG idea. In that game there will be many different races, one of which I call Hee. They're fundamentalist atheists in white burkas who strive to achieve perfection by destroying anything which doesn't fit their very narrow view of what's logical. (Like all the races I have planned for the game, they're actually me in disguise.) This imaginary language I wanted is perfectly suited for them, being a naïve attempt at perfection of thought. "Hee" is the only name they could possibly have. Like I said, any letter can be changed for another letter of its family. That means that any word is not the be-all and end-all of its concept, except for a word which has only one syllable where all the letters come from one-letter families. That's H and "ee". The word written out looks like a backwards four, which is a striking enough symbol to put on flags.
(By the way, while trying to find a suitable name for the Hee I first went through the two-letter families, and accidentally stumbled across the Jewish name for God! That gave me a lot more respect for the unappreciated logic of correctly-pronounced Hebrew.)
I do not intend to create the Hee language, Tolkien-style (or Avatar-style, more topically). Back when I was in school it seemed like a good idea, but when I was in school I was a lot more bored than I am now. It just seems like too much work for something with too little purpose. If anyone reading this would like to give it a shot, be my guest.
6 Comments:
- Betzalel said:
-
I like your idea of the alphabet. I also thought about making one, but the combination of all the sounds used in correct Hebrew and their families was just too much for me. I do have some corrections for you though.
You forgot to talk about M and N. Coincidentally, I have a correction to your classification. I think M should be related to the B family. Similarly, N should be related to the D family and ng should be related to the G family. It's not very hard to make the connection. Each one is just making that lip position and breathing out of your nose instead.
[If you have a cold and can't breath out of your nose, you will probably use the one you blow out of your mouth for (B instead of M). Try it! Just replace the letters M N and ng for B D and G, ad you idstadtly soud codgested!]
Anyways, ng should not be classified as a consonant combination, rather a consonant on its own (related to G, as stated above).
---
Your system isn't completely consistent, there are still some things it doesn't cover:
How do you know when to change to the next syllable? Words can be spelled the same way, yet still divided differently. In my name, for example, B-e-ts-ah-L-e-L how do you know that the division is ts-ah-L e-L and not ts-ah L-e-L?
Similarly, you don't talk about accenting. Which syllable is accented is undetermined by your system.
---
Just a random comment, your gh is like many people pronounce the reish in Hebrew (although its correct pronunciation is not in your alphabet). There is also a letter for it in Arabic, the ghin. In arabic it's related to the 'Ain. -
Mory said:
-
M and N are grouped in the "left over" category together with R and L. It's not a particularly elegant way to include them. And yes, NG isn't really a combination but a sound of its own. However, it would not fit into any of the families because there's such a strict logic of four members to a family. Just because a person who can't speak clearly pronounces one letter as another doesn't mean they're related, and I see no reason to put M and B together.
If there is no space between one word and the next, there is no break in syllables and they flow one into the next. Your name would only be pronounced Betsah Lel if it were two separate names. Accents are more of an issue, but I think putting the accent on any syllable at all would be acceptable for this theoretical language. - Betzalel said:
-
They're not related because people can't pronounce them well, that's just a way of demonstrating it. The fact is that you're making the same mouth position in the whole family and in that letter. The difference is that you're breathing from your nose.
Even if you do decide to keep them separate, there's no reason not to include ng in the same family as N and M. [The reason there's no equivalent for the forth family (s/z) is that it's actually part of the second (t/d) family. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA]
The problem is in names such as mine is that the normal syllable division is different than just consonant-vowel. In my name (how I pronounce it in English), the syllables should be Be-tsal-el. The alternate (more logical) way of dividing them would be Be-tsa-lel. There's nothing here to differentiate between the two ways of division. -
Mory said:
-
I guess I can see what you're saying about M being related to the P family. If that's the case, it seems like NG ought to be grouped with the K family somehow. And that means that there are other rules that need to be taken into account for grouping consonants together other than the two I identified, because you can't have just two families of five. If those families can lead to those sounds, whatever principle that is ought to be applicable to the other families to get other sounds which aren't from English or Hebrew.
The more I think about this alphabet, the less elegant it seems.
What I'm not convinced is a problem is what you're saying about breaking up words. Frankly, I don't see what it is you're objecting to. When I say "Betzalel" I'm not breaking it up "Be-tza-lel" or "Be-tzal-el", because I'm not breaking it up at all. I'm saying the whole thing together in a continuous legato sound. Each letter leads right into the next, without any breaks, so your insistence that it needs to be broken up into distinct chunks seems to be at odds with how we actually talk. We don't pause between syllables while talking, we only pause between words. - Betzalel said:
-
The alphabet could still be simplified at the price of phonetic accuracy. I mean you could still put things in these sort of groups without actually taking into consideration all of the related sounds.
Our forefathers also thought like you when they put together the alphabet. They didn't think of NG. The special rules in Hebrew for the letters B G D K P T concerning when they're voiced and when they aren't show that they had some kind of grouping with them. The S and Sh appear in the same letter. In the ancient script the M and N are very similar. I think W and Y are too. Tet and Kuf are clearly Taf+'Ayin and Kaf+'Ayin. The 3-letter roots have a common 2-letter root allowing you to figure out pretty much what things mean. [P-R-x for example all mean things like open up, unravel, etc.] So I think language was originally very logical, it's only been made less logical throughout the millenniums of changes it had. I don't know about backwards spelling though.
There's no complete stop between syllables, but there is a difference in the way we speak. It's the difference it the nikud is on the lamed in my name or on the aleph. If you use a glottal stop or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottal_stop -
Mory said:
-
What you're talking about is going way over my head, I think. So it's safe to say that fifth grade me would not have thought of any of it. This alphabet has not been a serious proposal for more than a decade now.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Semantics, Part 3
Each word has connotations and connections to other words and rules of proper usage in speech, and these are more or less consistent from person to person within a given society. Thus, the language itself becomes a container for the way a society sees the world on an emotional level.
But an individual within that society is not a blank slate before using language -each idea in our heads has associations and connections to other ideas and memories of prior usage in speech, all of which is unique to that individual's brain. So at any time a person starts to converse, there is always a disconnect between what he means to say and what he's actually saying; the only question is how severe that disconnect is.
We compensate for this problem by conforming our patterns of thought to the meanings of language. Every time you talk or write or commit anything to language, you are rewiring your own brain to be more like the rest of the people around you. If it were not for this fact, language could never have developed and we'd all be very unique people without a single clue of what anyone else is thinking.
Where this starts becoming downright ugly is when society has a very primitive view on a certain subject compared with what's in your head. I know that "gamism" is a more useful term than "videogames", as it implies a cohesive whole rather than individual and disconnected parts. But I can't use that term in public, or no one would know what I was talking about. Language cannot be changed by one person, or even by several people, but only by a majority of the public in a given area. So whenever I'm talking to other people, I need to remind myself that videogames are not to be seen as a coherent entity, but just as a random assortment of unknowable things. Otherwise there's no communication. I'd say something like "I wish the Bit.Trip series would stay close to the music side of gamism, instead of switching Forms so much.", and no one would understand what the heck I was talking about. Different language, different thought patterns.
Learning two languages is like developing two personalities. You may think you're saying the same things in both languages, but that's only true if you don't use one of those languages enough to understand it. Each personality has its own worldview. Each personality has its own voice. Each personality forms different kinds of relationships with other people. And of course all of this reflects on who the person actually is, under all the learned behavior, but the more you wear a mask the more you become the mask.
Being fluent in two languages is reasonably commonplace. Some people know many more than two languages. Clearly the human brain has no problem with running different programs at different times. Now consider: how far away is that, really, from what we call "multiple personality disorder"?
"Ah," you say, still not seeing where I'm going with this, "but that's totally different. Learning two languages is a perfectly healthy thing to do. It's not a sickness, like multiple personalities.". Now remember what I said at the start of the post. Language matters. Your thought patterns have been shaped by the language you use. It's a "disorder"! It's something wrong! The brain is broken! "Disorder" is a word connected to a lack of health, a lack of normal brain functions, a lack of rationality, a lack of ability to change. It is a term which evokes pity. And it is not a word anyone with multiple personalities would have come up with, it's a word agreed upon by the majority, like all language.
Consider the appeal of the behavior: there are situations in your life which as a person, you are simply not equipped to handle. Your personality clashes with other personalities and leads to all sorts of uncomfortable situations. But if you were to put on a mask at those moments, suddenly you could deal with anything. Just pull out a different mask for different times, and suddenly you're a much more functional part of whatever part of society you try to enter.
Those readers who've paid attention to everything I've ever said on this blog (There are two of them, and they are imaginary.) will remember where I'm coming from here. I mentioned a while back in passing that at one point I'd considered developing multiple personalities myself. And it didn't occur to me, at the time, that this was not entirely my own idea. (Remember what I've said in the past about how none of my ideas are actually original?) So I wasn't using the psychological language, and my thought patterns were not corrupted by them. I was not thinking "I am on the verge of falling into a serious medical condition from which there's no easy cure.", because that's not what was going on at all. I was thinking "I am on the verge of making an important life decision, and I should consider whether it's necessary before going through with it."! My ultimate decision was that it was not necessary, and so I didn't go through with it. Not because it was "unhealthy" behavior, because there's nothing unhealthy about it, but purely because it seemed like too much work for too little purpose.
Imagine if I had made the opposite decision. You can be certain that I would have kept with that activity for the rest of my life, because I'm an exceedingly stubborn person. You might think I'd crack under some kind of mental pressure, but here I am on a Thursday having done nothing but work, write and eat and no one has reason to doubt that I'm going to stick with this "happy worker" identity for the rest of the day. Clearly I have no problem being a different person temporarily. If there were a term like "One-Day Identity Malfunction", you'd all be shocked and appalled that I'm acting differently on Thursdays (and Saturdays, for that matter), but there's no term like that so you just figure it's a rational thing to do. But multiple personality disorder? That you've heard of. So that's an illness. If I had "had" that (though really it's something you do, not something you have), everyone would be shocked when they first heard and then be really careful to not say anything offensive because this poor guy can't help it, he's just afflicted with the illness and needs help.
Clever readers will have guessed by now that what I'd actually like to talk about is Asperger's Syndrome. There are two ways to refer to it: "Asperger's Syndrome", and "Asperger's Disorder". That's it. Two choices, neither of which bears any resemblance to what it actually is. To tell people I'm different, I can't say "I am...", or even "I'm not...", I have to say "I have...", because that's the way our language for it is. To make matters worse, Asperger's Disorder is classified as a kind of "autism". For the very first time I met an autist a few weeks back, and now that I have I can say this with full certainty: I am not an autist. But who are you going to listen to, me or the profession that gave me my name?
Do you know who Asperger was? He was some normal pediatrician who wrote a paper about kids with what he called "psychopathy". This is who we're named after, and you'd better believe I find it offensive. But that's the only word for it! Either I use the psychologists' term, or I can't talk about who I am at all! Other people with Asperger's Syndrome ("With". Argh!), understanding that it's not something they have but something they are, call themselves "Aspies", which in my mind is the most moronic and juvenile-sounding name they could possibly have picked. When I want to talk about people like us, I usually say "Asperger people", which sounds so awkward that I feel ashamed for even suggesting that we exist. I wish there were another name I could grab onto, something which had no mention of some idiot pediatrician or of mental illnesses. But the closest I can find is "weirdo".
Let me be crystal clear: Asperger's Syndrome is not a disease, it is not a sickness, it is not a disorder, it is not a syndrome, it is not a problem, it is not a flaw. It is a kind of brain, a kind that is specialized for specific tasks. It's hard to allow yourself to understand this if you're used to the terminology. If it's a sickness then there ought to be a cure. The cure is to act more normal. But why on Earth would we want to do that?
When everything gets filtered through the lens of the word "disorder", everything is seen in terms of symptoms and inabilities. We're unable to understand what society wants of us, that's why we're so broken. We're incapable of forming emotional attachments, that's why we're so monstrous. We don't know that we're not supposed to always use big words and ideas, that's why we're so hard to get. We can't understand that we're not supposed to form emotional attachments to little points of interest, that's why we won't shut up about certain things. Forgive them, these poor sick patients, they can't help it. It's an incurable disease.
Listen to me very carefully. I know what society wants from me. I form emotional attachments to people. I understand simple chitchat. I have no illusions about how anti-social it is to get attached to ideas. I just don't care.
I understand sarcasm and metaphors, I know when people aren't being literal, but I prefer to always assume people are being literal so that there can be fewer misunderstandings. Normal people aren't any different, except that they don't care so much whether they're misunderstood because they place less value on ideas. I know that the whiskers on my face don't conform to the way society thinks a person should look in this century, I just place a much greater value on having my own unique appearance. If normal people understood the value of being different, they'd look like me too. I understand emotions, but I place more weight on them than most people and am not going to get emotionally attached to people who I know would let me down. And so on. There's no lack of understanding going on here, it's just a lack of reason to care. We're practically different species, normal people and us. What makes sense for them doesn't make sense for us. Normal people are capable of understanding this fact, but they don't care. "If it doesn't make sense, then make it make sense." It's their right to ignore our preferences, just as it's our right to ignore theirs. But there are more of them, so it's generally more unpleasant for us.
I should be able to find more people like me, but I can't because of the language. I know two people my age who are like me, and they both deny any connection to Asperger's Syndrome. And who can blame them? They want to be respected, they don't want to be seen as defectives. They don't want to have an illness. So how am I supposed to meet such people? The only place I can find that they gather is in a "support group" in Jerusalem. Can you believe it? Even we've accepted the language now! "We're mentally ill, let's try to fix ourselves!" I wouldn't consider dating anyone who wasn't like me, but who'd advertise that they have an incurable illness? So how can I ever find a girl like me?
It's a rotten situation all around, and it's all because of two words. Think about that.
I have set for myself a gargantuan task for my life. It's one which a normal person would never consider for even the briefest moment. I'm going to keep jumping around from one Form to the next, each one a radically different way of thinking and communicating. And in each of those places I'm going to do something that hasn't been done before, because I don't care that the public has already said what they're interested in and that isn't it. No one is going to be supporting my progress, because they don't have a word for what I'm doing and if they did it'd be a dirty one.
So when I make up words like "gamism" and "Forms" and "metaludes" and "exploration game", it's because I need to control language. My path is not stable. If two wrong words could condemn a people to lives of lonely confusion, then two wrong words are certainly enough to jeopardize everything I've planned.
And now I know what those two words might be:
"Not game".
This lovely little phrase comes courtesy of the gamists called Tale of Tales. Let it be said that I have nothing but respect for their work, which includes The Graveyard and The Path (which I tried to interpret in an earlier post). Like me, they aspire to do things that the games industry has no interest in. They have been expanding the definition of "game" pretty far, though I don't know if that was a conscious goal for them.
Remember "Don't Miss", my idea from way back when for a pure exploration game? It was based on a dream (literal, not figurative) I had back then, and I wanted to be able to share it with other people in interactive form someday.
But in the back of my head there was always the voice of society criticizing me: "There's no name for this. No one wants it. It's barely a game." Well, it's not. Go away, this is a serious post. Sure it is. I don't have time for this, get lost. The point is, I was worried that by the time I was in a position to make it the definition of "game" would already be set in stone and there wouldn't be any room for this. And that would mean there's no audience. A gamer plays games. If it's not called a game, he won't play it. If it is, he will.
Tale of Tales gave me hope. They made The Path, which is as pure an exploration game as they come, and the whole internet took notice. Mainstream game sites were posting positive reviews of a pure exploration game! If they kept just doing what they were doing, that side of gamism would be there for me when I was ready for it.
They just wrote a blog post called "My New Year's Resolutions", in which a new mission statement is announced: from now on, they're going to call what they make "not games". They don't care if anyone accepts what they're doing anymore.
Here's how this is going to go. The game sites will continue talking about them for their next game or two, and then they'll absorb the word "notgame" into their consciousnesses and forget that Tale of Tales exists. There is no audience for "not games", there is an audience for "games". And don't you say to me "It's only a word.". Words matter, or have you not been listening? I don't exercise. But I play Wii Fit, because it's a game. I don't read books. But I play text adventures, because they're games. Words are not just tools, they shape thought patterns and behaviors. And damn it, they're using the wrong words!
The game I was working on in my grandparents' house -Angles and Circles? That's an exploration game too. And there's not going to be such a thing as an exploration game after that. That part of gamism is going to be demolished, same as the house. "Don't Miss" will never exist, because no artists and programmers from the game industry would work on something that's not a game. And even if they did work on it, no one would ever play it. Come around at last, have you? Get out! Get out get out get out! I never wanted you here! You weren't even supposed to be in this post, don't you think it's got enough ideas in it already? Get out, already!
Cool it. You are crazy, I get that. You are totally detached from reality and I'm sorry. Really I am. But I am the only shred of sanity you've still got in you. You need to listen to what I am saying to you. Your plans are unrealistic. They are cute little fantasies, and you've gotta grow up and get with the picture. This routine isn't funny, it isn't cute, it is fucked-up and pathetic. You need help. And I am trying to tell you that, and you tell me to get out. You want me to get out? Okay, man, I'll get out. I'll get out of here so fast you'll think it's yesterday. But I am telling you that you are going to regret that you threw out the only damn character on this blog and in your life who is telling you what you need to hear.
Get out.
I'm going. Chill.
Bl'bah. Okay, that's a really terrible place to end this post. No, it's just totally derailed. What was I even talking about.
5 Comments:
- said:
-
You know, I've never thought of you as having a disorder or a syndrome. I've thought of you as simply different, just as lots of people are different. In fact, I feel as though what separates the two of us more than anything is our choices, not our thought patterns. For instance, that multiple personalities thing you mentioned? I adopted something of the sort myself. And many other times I've read things in your blog that seem like they're coming out of my own mind. But in the end, we care about different things.
Words are very significant indeed, even those we speak to ourselves. If this blog post represents a decision, then I wish you luck with it. - Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
Great post.
At some point in high school I consciously and deliberately changed my personality to emulate one of my friends and be more self-confident and outgoing.
How you perceive yourself and how you interact with the world is always a conscious choice, and many people have different faces that they put on in different situations.
MP is actually a condition that is very different than just choosing to react in different ways. As far as I understand it (which could be wrong) it's not really a choice, and in fact sometimes these personalities are not even aware of each other. At least you know and are somewhat friendly with all your alternate world views.
Also I wanted to say that you've affected my web reading habits. Whenever I see any bolded text I have the need to hover over it and see if there's any alt-text. Damn you! -
Mory said:
-
:) I didn't realize anyone had ever noticed I did that! Sorry I'm not consistent with doing that; sometimes there's really nothing extra that needs to be said.
If multiple personalities are a deliberate and conscious choice as I hypothesize, how would anyone ever know it? It's not like the person doing the acting would ever break out of character. That would delegitimize the act for the rest of his life, undermining its usefulness! What I am saying is that psychologists, by rushing to the classification of "disorder" for whatever's strange, totally misinterpreted the nature of the situation. If I had gone one way in my life, I would have been exactly like those people today while being perfectly sane. It is reasonable for me to ask whether people who do act like that are sane too. - Bet Shemesh Board Gaming Club said:
-
I guess it all depends on your definition of "sane"
-
Mory said:
-
Oh, and Avri: I didn't address your point that multiple personalities can be unaware of each other. My Barnaby has yet to meet my Ambrose and vice versa. When I am acting, there are many things going through my mind but none of them are a memory of the other character. However, I have a lot of distance from this lack of understanding, because as soon as I stop acting I can analyze what I've been doing and I'm myself again. But imagine that I didn't stop acting when I got off stage, but just kept going on and on between Barnaby and Ambrose for the rest of my life. Is it implausible to imagine that as I got more and more comfortable with the performance, they'd start acting more "real"? I might become very proficient at sorting my memories properly.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
My Father And I Go To See Avatar
I decided that I'd go to see it on a Monday. I'd take a bus to Jerusalem, take another bus to the theater I like (Rav Chen), watch the movie, take the buses back. Estimated total time: 7 hours. My family were out at a bar mitzvah for my American second cousin, and I didn't know when they'd be getting back, so I called and asked whether they had a key to the house. I was told that my father wanted to see Avatar too, and he'd had the impression that we were going to go together. Of course this was a better plan- it's not just that I'd appreciate to be driven, but I'd also prefer to see the movie with my father.
My father and I are very different, but one thing we have in common is that we like science-fiction. I only saw any Star Trek because while we were living in America my father taped every episode. (I only started watching them when we were here, and I watched them entirely out of order.) Likewise, I only ever saw Babylon 5 because my father had taped the first two seasons of that. (The first random episode I watched was The Coming of Shadows, which just so happened to be one of the best of the series.) And if I hadn't seen B5 it's a safe bet this blog here wouldn't exist, since that's what clued me in to the potential of long-form storytelling. So, credit where it's due: I'm a sci-fi guy because of my father, and for that I owe him.
Back in the 70s he watched the original Battlestar Galactica as appointment television. But upon moving to Israel in 1995, he was suddenly so busy with all the work he needed to do to make ends meet that he didn't have time for TV shows anymore. (Plus, none of the shows he watched were on TV here and we wouldn't be downloading shows off the internet for a few years.) So he watched little bits of Babylon 5 that I was watching, and I showed him a few key episodes of the Battlestar Galactica remake, while spoiling all the other developments for him since I knew he'd never have the time to actually watch through it. Other science-fiction he hasn't really been exposed to in the past 15 years.
It made sense that he'd want to see Avatar. So I waited for him to come home, instead of heading out myself.
That night we went to a Globus theater (Grrrr..) which is closer to us than Jerusalem and had also advertised that they were showing the film in 3D. I was concerned whether the experience would suffer due to Globus's inferior equipment, but my father was the driver so I went with it.
Along the way we talked about TV shows and how they wrap up when they're canceled. Naturally there was more of me talking than him, though he did say that Earth 2 was given an ending when it was canceled (I have yet to see that show.), and that Lost in Space probably wasn't. I said that the whole way they make shows is different now, since with DVD collections they expect you to be able to watch the whole thing through.
When we got there we asked for two tickets to Avatar, and were told: "There's no Avatar. There's a malfunction." Whatever that means. Just another reason to hate the theater. We regretted that we hadn't checked beforehand if it was working, but who thinks of something like that? We'd just have to try again some other time, in a different place.
As we drove back, we talked about time travel. My father once again said (He's said this to me a few times in the past.) that the trouble with time travel is that we ought to have heard of time-travelers by now if there are ever going to be time-travelers. I said the problem with time travel is that due to the movement of planets and space and the whole universe, if you stay in the same place but switch the time you end up in the middle of space. If you step into a time machine on the planet Earth, at whatever point you end up in Earth isn't there anymore. We talked about the ways to get around this, about whether there needed to be receivers, and for that matter whether transporters would need receivers too.
On Saturday night we tried again. Another family had gone on Thursday to the same place and found that it still wasn't working, so we went to Rav Chen in Jerusalem like I'd wanted to to begin with.
Along the way we talked about virtual reality and the implausibility of holodecks and I talked about all the current technologies that seem to be headed in that direction. My father was wondering what a really 3D movie would be like, where you're actually walking through it. This got me thinking about whether some sort of futuristic holograms could be used in stage shows, so that the live performers are playing on a changing 3D set. That really had nothing to do with what my father was talking about, though.
We got there and couldn't find a parking spot. It was packed. Finally my father gave me the money and told me to go get the tickets while he parked. So I went inside, where I found an absolute mob of people, all of whom had apparently come to see Avatar. There was only one ticket booth, with a mildly long line behind it. I went to get tickets and was told that the tickets had been sold out, but there were still some seats for a showing an hour and a half later. I couldn't commit to that on the spot, because then the movie would end considerably after midnight. In the first place I was concerned that my father would fall asleep in the middle if it went that late, and in the second place I knew he'd be concerned about driving while so tired. I hadn't taken my cell phone with me from home, so I got out of the line and waited for my father to show up. He came two minutes later and agreed that we'd go to the late showing. No sooner had we gotten in line, than a theater employee taped a sign up to the wall saying that both screenings of Avatar for the night had been sold out. My father seemed emotionally unwilling to admit defeat, but there was really nothing we could do. We left.
On the way back, I told my father about the TV show Lost, in appropriately vague terms. He seemed interested, so I told him I'd download the pilot for him. (I later tried downloading the pilot, and was frustrated to only find it in two separate video files. By splitting it up and putting a recap in the middle, they telegraphed a cool moment in the second part and ruined the pacing of the episode. I edited the two parts together myself so that if he watches it, he'll see it the way it was on TV as opposed to the way it was in reruns. No need for him to know I did that.)
On Tuesday we went again. I skipped Games Night for it, though due to Lorien giving birth it was in Ramat Beit Shemesh this week, so I'm not sure if I would have gone anyway. This time we were smarter. The day before, we ordered the tickets over the internet. It's more expensive that way, but you've got a guaranteed seat. You also get to choose which seat that is, from a diagram of all the seats that are still available. By Monday night all the good seats had already been claimed, and my father wondered if maybe we should pick a different night but not seriously because we both just wanted to see the movie already. We picked two seats which weren't in the middle but were the closest to the middle that we could get.
As we drove in, we listened to a CD my father bought a few years ago from "The Teaching Company" of lectures on argumentation. He'd listened to it before, but he was listening to it again. It was fascinating, to be sure. I didn't understand exactly what the lecturer was talking about at first, since we were starting from the middle, so we paused and my father explained the basics and then rewound to a part he wanted me to hear and then we listened from there until we got to the theater.
The movie was awesome. I needn't have worried that my father might fall asleep; there was no chance of that during this movie. The story was perfectly predictable and clichéd, but it was all done really well. And that world, in 3D... it was amazing. On the other hand, I did see what James Cameron (the director of Avatar) was saying when he said 24 frames per second (the standard for film) isn't enough for 3D movies. It definitely looked jerky. Still, it was quite a memorable experience. You see things from far away and it looks pretty standard for a movie, but then you move in and everything looks so real you feel like you could touch it. I wished they'd include smells and feelings, too. It's not a real alien jungle until they increase the humidity in the room for the scene, and pipe in some exotic but subtle smell. We'll get there someday. This movie was definitely a step in the right direction.
As we drove home we discussed the symbolism of the movie. Both of us agreed that it was a very good movie indeed.













Is the black and white problem caused by trying to use NTSC consoles on a PAL TV? If so, you could try using AnyRegion Changer (http://wiibrew.org/wiki/AnyRegion_Changer) to change the Wii's video mode to PAL.
For your other consoles a SCART RGB cable should work, provided that the TV has a SCART socket, the console supports RGB output, and the cable is carrying a RGB signal, not composite.
Thanks, I'll try that.
I used AnyRegion Changer, and it worked. Unfortunately, the majority of my Wii games do not support PAL, but a few of them (including The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) play in color now. And now that I see that the Wii can output PAL, I've taken to running my Gamecube games from Gecko to force PAL mode and all of them seem to work like that. Thank you so much.
I do think I'm going to get a different TV, though. This one causes way too many problems.
Ah moving out..
I remember discovering that living in dorms was the best time of my life. Not because I had better conditions (I didn't) but because there was something beautifully mine about the tattered mattress and bare shelves.
I felt like a real person in ways I never did before.
Re: your latest status update. well done on a productive day!
Post a Comment