come hame
always waiting in the dark
color to none to nothing
and then the steps
the quake
as adjudicator swollen one
tears with light and breaks
form emerging from
know we see the gleam they felt
now we burn and holler glee
the voiced dread sounds
there are no wordsworks
drag, drop, cut, paste
so=silence=so
hater
egret
sleep
Tonight I was watching my wife play this sequence in Bayonetta. It starts you in front of a short cut scene which then transitions to a platforming segment. The platforming segment is, if we break it down to its most basic elements, mostly pushing forward while pressing x(a) intermittently.
Immediately afterwards, there is a Quick Time Event (hereafter QTE), which takes you into the boss fight, but which amounts to the same thing – press x(a) and forward at the signalled time. It seems like a small thing, and I will admit that I may be making a big deal out of nothing, but I like to read statements into gameplay experiences as a way of understanding a designer. QTEs get a bad rap from a lot of hardcore gamers these days, in many cases suggesting that games which utilize them are somehow akin to Dragon’s Lair.
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However, if I may be permitted to read into the gameplay, it almost looks like a statement of equivocation. On the one hand, there is a justifiable backlash against having “Advent Children” fight scenes that have little to do with player input, but on the other, this can be overstated and extends baseless criticism to QTEs that aren’t doing anything different from what might be considered a pretty standard platforming element.
Undoubtedly I am reading into the game to some degree or another, but I think elements like this are another measure of quality in the sense that they can betray designer consideration even on tiny details.
Another valid point that my wife brought up was that it’s only unexpected QTEs which tend to irk. In the God of War series and other games like it there are often QTEs which occur at expected times: the halfway or end points of the health meter. This feels rhythmic and gives spectacular endings to boss battles. However having random QTEs in the middle of a boss fight with little to no signalling (and which force you sit through a loading screen over and over), as occurs in Bayonetta is taking it a bit too far. It’s clear that Bayonetta is rooting for the mechanic (as am I), but what isn’t clear is how many QTEs are too many.
Fugidono
The darkness rang three times. Again!
As I sat on the toilet and the shower wept.
The rainbow creep and the cyanide theft
Were planning a day at the beach for Din.
unperkified
Have been depressed lately due to financial situations, but trying to keep things together. Unemployment didn’t pan out, so I’ve been looking for work again. Craigslist is unhelpful here. Job listings in this area seem to be a bit fragmented between various websites. I feel completely lost as to where to turn next. In the meantime, all there is to do is to keep afloat.
I, Golgafrinchan
Ah the setback, leaving you so far behind, which is only where we’ve always been. Help us take a stand here, do it cheaper, faster, better. Refine, and cease ceaseless engraving, no new channels, just new content. Better content. Made by all of us. The best will still rise to the top without the middle managers.
UPG?
UPG, unverified personal gnosis, is a term that strikes me as funny because it’s mostly redundant. Gnosis, as I understand it, is usually both unverifiable and personal. Jung seems to have blessed us with the idea of a collective symbolic canon, which has evolved into the notion that only dreams and visions that line up with books are true. This leads to all sorts of tomfoolery, most of which just leads to people missing the point as usual. UPG as a term, in it’s main effect, only serves to shield people who would otherwise be drawn out of being literal interpreters of symbolic truths. How so? By setting the focus on the text as arbiter of canon, we are limited to two choices, reject or accept the book. However, when the focus is pulled back from historical concerns, perhaps by recognizing that spirituality and/or faith are equally useful in their social and moral functions, we can see that there are gradients of belief, beyond mere acceptance or rejection. In summary, I feel the very term UPG puts the focus of the gnosis experience on the source of verification and decouples it from person-hood, making it a somewhat problematic meme.
Letter Sequencing
I’ve been pondering this question for quite some time, so I want to emphasize here that I’m very excited to have come up with an answer, despite the dry nature of the medium at hand. Indeed, I’m struggling not to trip over my words even now, although I doubt this will seem in any way exciting to you, my readers.
One of the questions that Sefer Yetsirah raised for me was the question of how to read a word. Now, to clarify, I mean that in SY, each letter becomes a dense unit of information. This information is processed by us as gnosis. There are two states that usually are common when processing gnosis, the realization and the recollection. When realizing a unit of gnosis, an epiphany, there is an initial rush, a sense of muted, but potent euphoria that occurs – Ezekiel’s gleam of amber (there is a four stage process that occurs en route to that state but that’s another story). Later recollections are typically not as strong, but are capable of expanding the conceptual container more easily. When contemplating the letters individually in this way, I use books like this one to create an array of meaning in my mind, thereby opening up the unit of gnosis as a container, from which I can draw information or store it. But a word? That’s not so easy.
Our letter arrays seem to be two characters, and we’ve only dealt with one: “Weigh them and transpose them, Aleph with each one, and each one with Aleph; Bet with each one, and each one with Bet. They repeat in a cycle.” So how do we discover the relationship between the two letters in sequence? We can hold both gnosis concepts in our minds, but how they should interact isn’t specified.
Or is it?
Kaplan talks about the concept of ‘thesis-antithesis-synthesis’ which can be derived from the ‘pan of merit, pan of liability and the tongue that decides’ phrase at the beginning of chapter two. This is how one is to derive meaning from two letters – first see the concept of letter 1 as the thesis, look at how letter 2 opposes it, then how they can be resolved. Then reverse the order and repeat the process. So if we are talking about the two letter sequence Alef-Beit, then we have a 4 step process.
- Consider Alef as a concept.
- Consider Beit as it is different from Alef.
- Consider how those differences could be resolved.
- Switch Alef and Beit, then begin again.
A word then, simply requires you to resolve each letter pair in sequence, like this: Alef-Beit, Beit-Gimel, etc… So that’s how you do a word. However, the conjoining of all of these states into one fulfills the last half of chapter two: “Therefore, everything formed and everything spoken emanates in one name.” The one name is the information container (kli) derived from the assimilation of all combined letter states, like a sword that has been strengthened by alloying. This is the Golem of legend. It is a lower resolution imago of the One Name (Baruch Hashem!). I believe that once the Golem has been created, it is possible to create effects simply by pronouncing a single word – because when all words spring forth from the supernal Torah, the law becomes a staff in the hand of the prophet.
Best Bad Food Ever!!!
Del Taco has new cheesecake bites. I should not eat these, but they are amazing, so I do.
My mama taught me…
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
YIKEZ!
Your hands, My perspective
Four watchmen entered PaRDeS — Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Ozymandias, and Nite Owl. Dr. Manhattan looked too deeply and departed forever; Rorschach looked and went mad; Ozymandias destroyed the shoots; only Nite Owl entered in peace and departed in peace.
