- Endorph
- Jul 22, 2009
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LP's are a forums treasure but not for the reasons some people think
It's like 'where do people like Shepherd come from?' He's a video game character with 2 behaviors. Behavior one is getting npcs to give him missions/join his war effort/engage in low impact sort-of romance, and Behavior two is shooting aliens. In the history of the game, the Rachni were a threat so potent that the Turians, Asari, and Salarians united to try to fight them, but weren't able to. So they uplifted the Krogan. The krogan became heroes for it, but then became tyrants. Then Humanity gets in the picture, and over a misunderstanding or whatever, they end up in a war with the Turians which we lose. Humanity gets assimilated into galactic culture, but is kept at arms length because of what happened with the Krogan, and the possibility that humanity is that volatile. Also we're primitive, which doesn't help.
The krogan race is like humanity's older brother, and you're going to the same school he went to. Everyone thinks you might be a troublemaker because *he* was a troublemaker. The relationship between the enemy Rachni and the Krogan is partly nurturing and partly disfunctional. The Rachni provide the reason for the Krogan to be uplifted. But they're also the reason the Krogan 'went wrong'. They're family in the sense that they share genetic traits; krogan can make kids rapidly, so can Rachni. The rachni war and the council coming together is what creates the Krogan. It's the decisive experience in the council's history which brought them together and shaped everything that came before ME1. When humanity enters that arena, before you ever hear about a Reaper, you're being told constantly about what the Rachni war was and what the outcomes of it were. In comparison, the Geth are little known. Krogan identity is founded on why they were uplifted. Human identity and desire to join the council revolves around the council's desire for another strong ally (because of the Rachni war) and their fear of what a primitive race with too much support might become. All the male authority figures in the Shepherd's military career are always talking about the council and what's important about it. It's an entity that's composed of completely separate characters and events that come together to form a parental presence. The Rachni are the Ur-story seed. They represent all the chief parts of the overarching story; allying against an enemy, desperate measures, and forgiveness or reconciliation.
Mechanically, as a purely video game thing, the Rachni queen is perfect for the video-game shepherd, because she makes infinite aliens for you to kill, and they are drones that have no moral quality whatsoever. But, whereas the Reapers speak with a male voice and ultimately seem to want to defeat you (ostensibly), the Rachni queen speaks with a female voice (and in ME1 it's through an Asari, which is like, holy poo poo a little bit), though it becomes kind of grandma-horse-with-cigarette-smoking in ME3, and when you encounter her directly, you have the option to spare or help her. She teaches you a lesson, and sacrifices to help you (get experience points! and have fun shooting aliens--mechanically shooting games don't have a lot of hooks to have ludonarrative, it's basically who're you're shooting, and how or when you die).
The development of your character is both literally and figuratively tied to killing aliens, and the Rachni queen is the only example of an enemy which tries to nurture you whatsoever. Only later do you get the Geth arc, and arguably, they are a lighter mirror to the Krogan Cain and Abel conflict you encounter in ME1. Even given that, you are not facing an existential question with the Geth. The good geth will survive regardless of your choice--it's really about whether you give them the keys to a potent empire or not (and as it happens, this choice is meaningless in terms of the development of the Geth as a race).
If you don't save her, and later 'save' the fake rachni queen in ME3, she'll send help for a while, but then withdraw it, and cause an inconsequential penalty. The lesson isn't moral outrage. It's that, having spurned her, she won't be there to help you when you need her. Much of ME3 is spent going door to door trying to resolve the Rachni/Krogan/Salarian/Turian shitshow, and convince each member in the value of what you're doing.
Your 'real' mom is completely absentee. And pretty meaningless. The symbolic mother of Shepherd--the reason this character in this game was created, was to fight the monsters in the game. The Rachni queen isn't symbolic of motherhood to shepherd just because she's a big mother thing--it's because she's the source and cause of so much of the narrative to begin with, and she provides a story arc that's a microcosm of the total story, but in a gentle way. I say gentle because, whereas the Reaper arc is 'we destroy all intelligent life, because intelligent life is inherently dangerous. If you expect to destroy us you have to solve that problem', the Rachni arc is 'we just love to swarm, please don't destroy us forever. We'll swarm over here instead, and nobody has to get hurt'. The reapers are a stick, the Rachni are a carrot. They even have names that are the same number of characters and start with Rs. If you take the letters from Reaper and Rachni together, and use some of the letters to spell Repair, then with the remaining ones, you can spell 'Reach'n', which is what I'm doing right now.
Anyway, the whole experience of the player in game is like that of a child. The artificial choices--the frustration when you don't get what you want. The conflict between parents, siblings, and generations--the gradual maturation of the combat and dialog mechanics... In a weird way the transition from a skill and point based requirement for renegade and paragon options for having an assumed skill in persuasion and intimidation in ME3 is like the socialization of a growing person who gradually comes from experimenting in interacting with others to developing a personality which affects their interactions with others as part of deliberate behavior.
So what I meant was, yeah, it's not like she's the figure of motherhood all by herself. Or that she accounts for all the nuances of a mother's relationship with a child in interacting with Shepherd. More that it touches on these issues, and, in a way, when your game is about shooty-space-mans the alien-shooter-guy, then how would you mother that. Well, give him something to shoot. But gently encourage him not to shoot too much.
It sounds infantile, but if you think about it, as simple as it is, that's the entire game's premise. Life conflicts with life. The natural inclination of things is to survive and become predators. The tricky role of parenting is to try to temper a child's desires so that they learn how to face larger challenges than just being frustrated with their parents. The krogan are the older brother who got kicked out of the house after they were arrested one too many times. Your Reaper dad offers to let them back in if they'll help their younger brother (you) not to go the wrong way.
Even the way the Asari and Turians are more strongly identified with the Reapers because of Saren and whatsherface's indoctrination in ME1, kind of reinforces the symbolism that ties together the Rachni threat with Shepherd and the Krogan. Here are these figures that have been punished for their hubris. As the protheans are punished by becoming the Collectors. When you rescue the Rachni you take them in reverse from living weapons to free and helpful contributing bug monsters. It's totally nurturing.
Bug monsters are totally nurturing.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure the Salarians and The Krogan aren't actually meant to be the same person. Like a sweet smart lizard that was catalyzed into becoming a big dangerous gangster lizard. The sweet smart lizard inside every killer is still trying to fix their mess of a life, but they're trapped. They're faced with sacrificing themselves to try to move on. They want to start over--when Wrex/Wreav deny that a salarian had anything to do with fixing themselves, that's someone who's personality has become heavily callused denying the more innocent person they once were, even as it helps to put them on a better (or worse) path. If you let Wrex help to teach you in ME1 (by not shooting him in the face--and not sacrificing yourself to do it(Edit: Now that I think about it, it's possible that you are supposed to kill your human companion instead precisely because they represent a more immature version of yourself--someone driven by self-centered outlook, and you have to destroy that selfish person to take a real risk and help someone who's caught in a cycle of being troubled and dangerous)), then he's there in ME3 to symbolically turn over a new leaf and put both the Salarian fear and hubris as well as the Krogan anger and resentment behind him.
In a way the humans are what a well integrated Salarian + Krogan halves of a personality would be. Cerberus is kind of your turn at flirting with becoming one of the badguys, and their forces dog you because they're a skeleton in your closet just like the genophage dogs the Kroglarians.
Also Kitsumi represents death and being a rock star because she's a ninja hacker who's got a hoodie and that's cool.
Joker is like, the idea of jokes. And how Bioware can't write them well.
Alright so maybe you know. Not his 'mom' exactly. But a mom. And it's still a little weird to have a mom plead with you for her life. Even if, at first glance, she appears to be a giant hideous worm bug who makes infinite amounts of soldiers to swarm you with.
yeah thats the one, was wondering why i couldnt find it
 Welcome on this beautiful summer's day once more to the SA forums; Even in death, we still post. It's truly an exciting day, bobby.
 It sure is Tom! We're witnessing a new era for this sport, and frankly, the world as we know it.
I am in awe of these competitors, bobby, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Our regular viewers will recognize that there's something a little different about our telecast today.
That's for sure, Tom. We're here for a very special exhibition match between rivals who've traditionally played in completely separate leagues. They're meeting here today under the new Death Pool thread, which promises to be a really exciting venue for, well, just the sort of action we haven't been able see in intrathread play, lately. The SA Forums: truly the cutting edge of sperg. Fear the wrath of the sperger.
Bobby, I'm very excited about this matchup. A little background here: some of these contenders were in the same league at one time, weren't they?
Indeed Tom. This is an allstars match, and coming to this thread are such 40k thread alumnus as Fix and SJ. They are noted posters combining flexibility, succinctness, enthusiasm, and content in, well, just an unbeatable all around combination. We're lucky to have them here.
Absolutely. Fear the wrath Bobby.
Fear the wrath Tom.
There's no question that would be a lot of talent on its own. But this is why I'm really excited. Today, we have Tekopo and Broken Loose!
Tom, you can't see me now, but I am throwing my hands up in the air. These. Are. Juggernauts.
A little history here for the viewers Bobby, Broken Loose swore off the shitfest of GW products, never to repent, and Tekopo, it's safe to say, has written blog posts about board game mechanics...
...and when Broken Loose, broke loose, so to speak...
To be fair, the 40k thread couldn't contain him, Bobby.
Oh absolutely, Tom. This contender is too big for one TG thread. Indeed, for one gaming subforum. In any case, when he broke loose from the 40k thread, it wasn't just a career jump-starting move. To the goons in the 40k thread, there was a real rift that formed. After all, contentious at times though his drafting in the 40k thread league was, Broken Loose became a big part of that town.
No question. In a way, when he left there was more controversy than when he stayed. Love him or hate him, I think it was safe to say that Fix and SJ respected him as a poster, and it hurts to watch people move on in this league.
Feelings are complicated Tom, as anyone with asperger's can attest.
But we're here now, and these gentlemen have come to play. I don't know if I can do a play by play or if I just have to skip ahead...
I know what you mean. I think you should just let it out.
Bobby, these gentlemen took a ballsy first move to criticize excessive randomness in GW design philosophy, and converted it to an existential crisis about the nature of joy.
It. Is. Amazing.
Posting like this is what you pray for in FYAD, but never comes, and what you imagine should happen in every TG--or no, you know what? I'm just going to say it. Every games thread.
Fear the wrath of the sperger, Tom!
I'm in awe. The way this developed; who could have predicted it? The question was, is it ever alright to roll before you roll, and before SJ could say 'slow your roll', we were catapulted into a discussion about if Necromunda was nothing but randomness, is that ok; then, whether any rule with a roll is a bad rule, and that's when...
That's when league play took a quantum leap.
I just. I just don't know.
Tom, ask yourself the question. What does the word 'fun' mean? Does it mean anything?
Bobby, I swear, I thought I had fun once, but now I'm not sure. If it doesn't help for me to tell anyone else, in what sense am I sure it happened?
Here's why I'm rock hard right now.
Lay it on me. what? ew. Put that away. I mean... make your point... talk about the thing
oh sorry, I thought you meant... I'm rock hard right now because Broken Loose, with Tekopo's staccato of succinct interleaving of counterpoints, has turned the discussion into a living representation of what is wrong with GW's rules.
Now it's my turn to throw my hands in the air, Bobby. This is incredible. In a GW game, you're likely to have to roll to see how much you roll, and then your opponent will roll some more. On any given Sunday, the odds are pretty good: it's rolls.
Rolls aplenty.
And you have to ask, what was the result? Is there a way to bring that all together? Even if the randomness is key, are all those rolls necessary, or could it be streamlined.
When, BAM. It hits you. Why does anybody talk about fun? I mean, objectivity, subjectivity, those are clutch plays. You can lay down that smoke screen any time you want. But Broken Loose is laying it out like a monster who's immune to fear.
How do you talk about anything. Ever. You have to use words. But wouldn't it be *better* to use as few words as possible?
Tom, it's incredible. By taking on the structure of a GW rule--arguing about how to argue, he's making an incredibly vivid assault on the idea that GW's rolling to roll to roll model is the same thing as randomness writ large. He's demonstrating it. Arguing how to argue is not the same as discussions, in general.
But not to be outdone, Bobby, Fix took the only approach he could here, and he's dividing his force. On the one hand, he's going after fun, because let's face it, if you don't like fun, you lose--and meanwhile he's analogizing through deft maneuvers, the idea that 'all you get out of a discussion' is what really counts in the end.
He's saying it's all about models removed. Minds changed. Stars blinking out of existence. Fix is bringing the very bleakness of a universe in which there is only war to a thread about the demise of the company that spawned the concept in order to defend the game designs of that company going down in flames!
Bobby, he's literally the black101 emoticon right now. At the keyboard. He's typing with his axe.
Tom, I just don't know how this second half is going to turn out. But, as a fan, I'd say we all win.
Indeed, Bobby. Indeed.
Fasicsmtalk on the internet is always really annoying, because on one hand its the internet where the national sport is acting like an obtuse dunce lawyering the application of terms to avoid engagement with core premises.
On the other hand, fascism really is poorly understood and misapplied when a more in-depth discussion and application of the term would allow for some better discussion, so the exercise becomes being juuuuuuuuuust pedantic enough up until the point where discussion becomes insufferable.
ME isn't "not-fascist" because of anything its digetic political and social entities do or do not do, its not-fascist because it's not an anticapitalist subsumption of individuals into a militarized state motivated against a clearly delineated outgroup. The narrative is fiercely worshipful of the individual over the effort of the generalized group, the only possible fascist reading would be a really abstract three-steps-back one where the player is subsumed into worship of hero figures as they, IRL, willingly and pleasurably allow themselves to be molded into a series of predetermined gameplay, genre, and character tropes to be motivated against an unreasonable antagonist, by extension castigating most to all of AAA gaming for using those same processes to the point of creating an ideology of what an AAA game should be/is. And I totally would! But will not because:
a) its really boring because ME3 doesn't subvert those ideas so much as embody them real, real hard.
b) in embodying them it does so in a fundamentally capitalist way for capitalist motivations which *IS* pretty emblematic of Capital's propensity to deterritorialize and commodify with some pretty interesting linkages to The Reapers, but does leave the matter under discussion fundamentally not-fascist.
c) it's not even noon and effortposting about ideology in pop media is thirsty work.
I'm trying not to make an rear end of myself, but I actually am bipolar(runs in the family) and that's either poorly-researched or willfully ignorant. I feel like I'm starting to come off as a SJW-y jackoff at this point but gently caress it; That's really, really not what bipolarism is like at all. Furthermore, The Cat Lady isn't about being bipolar. It's about being depressed. Depression is a component of bipolarism, but it's a different disorder on it's own, so that's not valid criticism and oh god I sound like such a loving dork.
The Cat Lady is a pretty good depiction of depression, though; Sometimes, just keeping yourself fed and cleaned, even when you know that things only get worse if you don't eat and you need to shower, can be -really- loving hard.
I'm not trying to be a twat about this; I just feel like you're misreading the game a bit, so apologies in advance.
As an aside, I love how everyone admits that the gameplay is servicable at best...
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The Quarians are the story of Battlestar Galactica. Maybe not verbatim, but it's close. There's obviously other stuff in there--you point out they've got some kind of shame thing going on, because, obviously, they look like humans underneath, basically, but nevertheless all wear suits that obscure their faces. They're out roaming and plotting their revenge with their scavenged battlecruiser. There's minor drama about finding a new home vs returning to the old one and arguments about being reckless in pursuit of revenge vs concentrating on survival. The biggest missing piece is the clone leadership, but I've never been convinced that part of the BG series wasn't just a concession to FX budgets from the time period, and then got carried forward because why not.
The story has potential to payoff in a few ways, but in the end just comes to them showing up in orbit at their planet, and having it out with their former slaves. In terms of effect on the rest of the race stories, there isn't a lot going on.
The geth are a mysterious threat that, in ME1 gives you a hint about the Reapers before you see them. In ME2, Legion starts to foreshadow the idea of possible reconciliation, or even some kind of allure that biological life has to synthetic life. That angle is something I particularly like, because I enjoy the kind of Matrix Agent Smith style character where a synthetic life has an anima that can be whistful and jealous, rather than having such alien thoughts that they're unsympathetic. I tend to imagine that Skynet in the terminator series isn't just exterminating humans for the sake of its survival, but is a bitter, angry entity that resents its own creation and the flaws of its creators.
Anywho. So the geth are a very useful plot element in the ME series. Even if their background material doesn't have a huge effect on the world. The krogan/rachni/council relationship is huge because it's everywhere. It even pervades the underworld locations where batarians and the vermin cannibal things who's name I forget hang out. Because it's reinforcing this idea; Krogan are utterly humiliated. Turians occupy respectable positions. Krogan do whatever dirty work they can. Every time you see a turian, krogan, or salarian, you're getting some kind of post-rachni flavor in there. Even down to the Krogan poet who's trying to get an Asari to fall in love with him. That's not just a weird little whatever moment, it's symbolic of the fragile hope that the Krogan have of improving their lot. The human element is the affordance that gets you hooked as a player, and brings the unfamiliar surroundings a little closer.
Then there's the Quarians. They aren't part of the underworld. They're related to the Geth in as much as they're... you know... literally related with plot points. But they don't contend with the Reapers personally as a major set piece. Tali is not full of a grandiose plan that's thwarted by the Geth--she's listless and unsure of her allegiances or what's best. She kind of just does whatever you want to do. She's Kasumi without a face. Or an 'insert imaginary hot dork here' face. The Quarians are introverted, which is another way of saying they have no hooks in the larger story. In a way the Quarians are a face to the Geth's troubles, not the other way around. And the Geth are the ones that are tightly involved in the story--but they don't even get ramped up until the 2nd half of ME2. They're a loose thread before then at best.
So that's what I mean when I say it's a sub plot. You could have a whole Quarian drama composed of their ongoing exile, desire to return, internal political wrangling, unexpected disasters with Cerberus, Reaper-Geth, or even just motley raiders, folded into one or more DLC chapters with Tali as a totally optional character, and it wouldn't affect or diminish the narrative that binds all the other races together. It's like they enjoyed the *Design* of the suits so much they didn't want to get rid of them. Even that to me is weird, because I see no reason that Salarians couldn't wear those suits while in the field or whatever. Do away with them altogether and leave the 'creators' of the geth as an unseen boogey man that the Geth are haunted by. Rather than a people undergoing exodus and trying to decide to come home.
It confuses one of the elements of the plot that I find interesting as well. In terms of similar characters/groups, the 2 that come closest to having something in common with the Quarians is the Batarians after you blow up their planet, and the Reapers, in the sense that, for all we ever see, the Reapers are an itinerant race who wander until they decide to come home and clean house. In their case it's forceful and threatening. In the Quarian's case it's an anticlimax.
Battlestar galactica, the original series, is just a weirdo latter day star trek. BSG the modern series is more of what Lost should have been; an allegorical attempt to show how the soul determines its own punishment, and purgatory is a reflection of moral indecision, not necessarily a punishment. Not that I buy that premise per se, but at least the show is fairly sophisticated, and has some idea of the 100s of years of writing on the intracacies of judeo christian philosophy and myth.
Quarians don't really touch on any of that. In part because all of that doesn't fit into the larger more interconnected narrative about generational uncertainty. It's not like it isn't important, either! They could serve as the tail end of the maturation process. Children become adults, and then adults get old and die, and have to face that. The quarians stay in an unexplored purgatory until they throw themselves on their own spear out of lack of ideas. The Prothean you pull out of the ancient refrigerator is a better view on repentance and purgatory than the Quarians; at least he *connects* to the web of core relationships.
The quarians, to me, are about the same as the frog assassin who worships jellyfish. It's fine as flavor. But it's a wasted opportunity and, whereas the frog doesn't directly relate at all, and therefore is *just* flavor, the Quarians not only manage to be in purgatory canonically, but their whole subplot is, itself, in a purgatory between being meaningfully tied into the goings on of the galaxy, and being just flavor for flavor's sake.
God of War LP?
Better record myself saying the entire greek alphabet.
So I went and did this recording I promised, after being riddled with a bad case of hiccups all afternoon.
This is how they are pronounced in Modern Greek. The υ is pronounced as i (like in fish, for example), not as u nowadays, but in Ancient Greek it was apparently closer to a u sound, as Sleep of Bronze did in his own recording, although opinions do differ (and I personally was never informed of that until googling it now).
So, Ancient Greek had a bunch of vowels that all did very very similar things. These are all the Greek vowels, and vowel diphthongs:
α, ι, η, υ, ε, ο, ω and αι, οι, ει, υι, ου. In order, they are pronounced as follows: a, i, i, i, e (as in energy), o (fog), o, e, i, i, ee (kinda like reed), u (Utrecht).
As you can see, we have about 5 ways to write very similar sounds. Vowels are further separated into three categories. Long, short, and 'mixed' (a more direct translation would be bitemporal, but that sounds kind of odd), which were either short or long according to the word, what came before/after, etc.
Long: η, ω
Short: ε, ο
Mixed: ι, υ, α
This did matter to intonation and tonal marks (mentioned just a bit lower).
In Ancient Greek, vowels could also carry a tonal mark, or a spirit (or both). These marks go on top of the letter (think of the dot on i and j, or umlauts in German) if it's lowercase, and in the top left side if it's a capital.
Spirits are the easy ones, and there's only two of them ψιλή ( ᾿ ), and δασεία ( ῾ ). On my screen the difference is miniscule, and I cannot fix it, but basically the ψιλή has the curve to the right, the δασεία to the left. Their rule is pretty simple: Every vowel that is at the beginning of the word, or the second vowel of a vowel diphthong gets one. Also ρ (pronounced like r) always gets a δασεία. That's pretty much it, they matter more when conjugating verbs in various tenses, other than that they change the pronunciation a bit.
Tonal marks, there's three of them: βαρεία ( ` ), οξεία ( ʹ ), and περεισπωμένη ( ~ ). Their rules are a bit less ultra-simple than spirits.
The big one is that all short vowels get the οξεία, including mixed ones which are short in that particular word. Long vowels in syllables before long vowels also get the οξεία. The best rule I've found regarding the βαρεία is that it replaces the οξεία in the final syllable of a word. So for example the article τό (neutral article) would get one but τὸκος wouldn't. The most commonly-used rule regarding the περεισπωμένη is that it goes on a long vowel in a syllable before a short vowel. There are many more rules regarding which tonal marks become other tonal marks (including vowels changing as verbal forms change), but those are a baseline without going into the clusterfuck that is conjugation.
I would like to mention that the above is all based on a 'translation' of Ancient Greek, to make writing and reading it more understandable for later audiences, considering how (for example) Ancient Greek had no lower case letters. Also, the marks mentioned above were still used until 1982, when it was replaced by the monotonal system (no spirits, only οξεία), and a lot of the information here is from a site about restoring the polytonal system, as well as what I remember from school at the ages of 12-16/17 or so.
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Sep 30, 2014 22:10
