Chaos Cosmology

For the past few days I have been reading Thousand_Shinji and it's sidestory/sequel. In many ways it resembles Shinji and Warhammer40k that I read a while ago, but with generally less focus on interesting metaphysical stuff and including more stuff from Warhammer 40k of which the fanfic I read before, despite having it in the name, really doesn't have much to do with besides a few reffrences and ideas.

Thousand Shinji is also a lot darker and violent then Shinji and Warhammer40k in a lot of ways, and while Shinji and Warhammer40k has it's main character more or less care deeply for humanity and strive to be good while occasionally doing monstrous things but refusing to become some sort of god or use his friends as tools, Thousand Shinji's main character is more or less the opposite, being a sociopath who makes it a point to look at people as tools and scum who slowly begins to actually care about his friends and embraces godhood when given the chance.

And while Thousand Shinji is interesting, it's really it's sequel (which is almost more a side story) where the main characters are gods which are beginning to mass their forces and exploring across multible alternate universes based on different TV shows, anime, and other media that I want to comment on mostly, though my comments have to do with the first too.

Really I have three main complaints. The first is that especially in the sequel, and in Shinji and Warhammer40k, or even Warhammer40k in general, there is the kind of silly build up of powers. A kind of thing where all the multiverse is out to get you with these incredibly strong god-like beings who are fought using equally strong god like beings, and armies spanning galaxies, and so on. There is a need to justify brutal war machines and terrible weapons of unimagined power because it's "necessary". With the whole multiverse thing it gets even worse as there are untold many of other universes with beings that can swat even the most powerful of their forces if annoyed.

The second is related to the first in that the sequel tries to, as many stories involving this sort of thing do, make some sort of grand organization or map to every reality. The problem with both is, at least for me, how utterly small and silly it all is. If each work of fiction was included, the size of the whole structure would be so massive that any possible army or being in any one universe is utterly unable to actually do much of anything by force. But more importantly, when you start to develop a cosmology and creation story you run up to all sorts of contradictions and retcons and different ways to do the same thing in other works of fiction. You can't just make up some cosmology when dealing with things because that cosmology just becomes one of many floating around in the literary pool of such things.

And the thing that they never even hint at, and I surely wish stories like this would more often, is that on the whole no matter how utterly powerful a entity or group is, it doesn't matter. Because they are still operating on the incorrect assumption that power matters. I could just point out "their fictional", but that's only half what I am getting at. In a multiverse where each universe has subtlety different rules, gods, powers, energies, whatever, isn't the most powerful being the one who figures out the metaphysical truth that ties them together the most powerful one? Or better yet creates that truth. But do any but a scarce handful of dimension hopping crossover stories actually bother to bring this up? No.

Which is the frustrating bit because all the pieces are there in the story. And maybe they were working to it as some grand final plot twist, but I doubt it and I won't know because there is not and will never be a ending. Some one wrote a alternate version of the sequel seemingly because they weren't happy with the way the "heros" are always found more or less right even if they are monsters, but I never read it so I don't know if that's part of it.

But that's how I would end it, as the new gods of chaos seeing how silly their war is, because all they really need to do is this: Make a new universe. It's easy to do. Just write a new story. The story they want to write. A Universe without evil beings from the darkest depths, not without struggle, or without pain, but without gods or demons or horrors. One that was not part of a multiverse created with these things.

Which brings me to my last complaint. The heroes call themselves Chaos Gods, as do the Warhammer40k gods. And I am sick of chaos being a crazy violent force. One that if not wholly evil, is at least not good or nice. I almost want to write my own self-insert fic with Killo just so he can scold him over that (and the silliness above). I mean, actually I mostly think of Killo in a lot of the same ways, as a mostly a moral almost god-like being who is smarter and more "noble" then he lets on. The difference is Killo is very slow to anger and doesn't particularly enjoy violence, and really doesn't see the point of it. Killo would not make some sort of empire or pass himself off as a god, because he looks down on empires and gods, not because they are inherently tyrannical, but because they are part of a stupid, useless, game. One that's not even very fun. Killo is ultimately only interested in himself, but he knows other people can make him happy, or at least entertain him. And even with the point that order is ultimately part of chaos, which was made often in the story, Killo would point out order can be preserved just as much in individuality as it can in a collective. I guess in short, Killo's Chaos is more like the brush strokes of an artist, the growth of a tangling vine, a fractal iteration function, and most potently, the human soul. Something that seeks to create, to grow, and will only destroy if something gets in it's way. It's life. It's existence. Crazy violent maniacs who shout and holler for the sake of shouting and hollering or gods who raise massive armies and fight tooth and nail for some silly ideal, both are just expressions of it not the end result. You can't make people follow chaos because they already are following chaos. You think they are wrong for doing things a particular way, so be it. But don't you use chaos as a justification for a moral philosophy and even less for a empire. If you understood chaos you would know how ridiculously stupid that is.

Sorry I guess that last bit started into a speech.

I think I kenophobia

The other day I was watching a video of someone playing though LSD and slowly flipping the fuck out and attempting to figure out why the game scares him so much. As it turns out, there is a phobia called kenophobia that pretty much describes what he is talking about.

And I think I may have it as well. As I described in a comment to that video, one thing that always bugs me is looking strait up into the sky, particularity a clear sky, and especially a pure black night sky. Another thing that freaks me out is in games when you find yourself outside the map either though cheating or a bug. Because there is nothing there.

It's particularity bad in Doom and it's clones because rather then simply blackness, parts of the screen are simply not updated causing a rather disconcerting visual effect.

The effect is best described in a passage from the short story "—And He Built a Crooked House":

"Teal lifted the blind a few inches. He saw nothing, and raised it a little
more.still nothing. Slowly he raised it until the window was fully
exposed. They gazed out at nothing.

Nothing, nothing at all. What color is nothing? Don't be silly! What shape
is it? Shape is an attribute of something. It had neither depth nor form.
It had not even blackness. It was nothing."

Okay so visually it really actually looks more like when two mirrors face each other, but it's still creepy.

Anyway this was kind of the point behind this post I made a while ago. Because the entire notion of "Nirvana" seriously creeps me the fuck out. I suppose the fear of nonexistence is also the reason so many religions offer some kind of afterlife, but Buddhism is one of the few that says basically that the afterlife is a bad thing in the end. It runs contrary to a lot of my philosophical beliefs. I am a firm believer in some kind of Horror Vacui though not of a traditional kind. Without getting too deep into it, I think the reason things work the way they do is because everything has a inner need to prove that they exist, and do so by interacting with other things. Existence is something that is everything wants in some form or another.

So, I sort of think this fear of nothingness is a natural and instinctual part of existence. Hearing that this is thought as an actual phobia doesn't necessarily mean it isn't natural (after all I am pretty sure a lot of phobias make sense in there own way), but it does make me wonder if I always had similar fears and if it influenced my philosophy or if it was the other way around. I also have to acknowledge that some people express contrary opinions, and even kill themselves. I could dismiss it as seeking a kind of power over their own existence rather then actively seeking to not exist, and maybe thats what it is, but there still is room for doubt. And really doubt is a good thing to me. It lets me question things in new ways and come up with ever stronger ideas.

Well I certainly don't have a fear of obsessing over silly details anyway.

ROM Slacker

I think it's about time I game a hack progress report. After three going on four years, my hack project still hasn't progressed past some basic ASM and graphic work. And while I sort of like the work I have done on it so far the last time I think I made any significant progress on my hack was over a year or two ago.

This may change soon. Not to drag my life to much into it, but I am in the process of re-obtaining some equipment which may help me sleep significantly better, although last time I had it I was unable to get used to using it for the required time to satisfy my medical insurance. I could have gone to the sleep clinic again right away but I decided to instead see if I could fix some allergy problems which I felt may be the cause of my struggles with the machine, and also a more pressing matter over all. But, although I think my allergy problems are perhaps slightly better, they are not improving as much as I like, so I decided to go back to the sleep center, and after a bit of hassle, I am approved for a new machine. This MAY help. I am honestly not expecting that much from it. Last time I felt a lot better over all when using it, allergies included, but it's terribly hard to get used to, and I think my allergies may have made a lot of pressure build up. But really, any little bit helps, and if I can stick too it, may feel a whole lot better.

But really, I don't expect it to help my hacking all that much. Even when I am more or less fully awake, I just can't really get in the frame of mind for doing work. I can sit in front of a screen and look at code, but I often box my self into a corner and get frustrated or just don't want to bother doing something hard. Basically everything I do is the easy stuff, but now there is no real easy stuff left I can do without tackling the hard stuff. Level design is even worse because I can't seem to get into a real groove where I know what I want to do with a level all that often. There are times when I have, but they are extremely rare, and I usually just look at the screen utterly lost in what kind of thing I should do. I guess I could start pasting things randomly in the level and working out the details, which is exactly how I designed the OW map, but that kind of level design doesn't really fit the linear gameplay-centric style of Mario-style levels. A lot of my designs I have done have been almost exclusively based on aesthetics and not gameplay, and I am still not exactly sure what kind of gameplay I really want.

Perhaps I should take after some things Homestuck has done and have everything be completely focused on narrative with small game segments to allow the player to get a feel for the world instead of my original plan of having 80%-90% of the game almost entirely plotless. After seeing things that Homestuck has done, I am very tempted to do just that. But I don't really want to do that because I have seen romhacks that had heavy narrative focus, and I hated them. Maybe it was more the way the narrative and gameplay got in the way of each other rather then flowing together as one. And even before I got into Homestuck I was already thinking of things like throwing in overhead RPG segments with RPG boss battles, and other very odd subversions of the expected formula for Mario hacks. At first I thought such things would be pipe dreams, but there are tons and tons of patches and more coming every day that may make even my most crazy ideas fairly easy. I kind of wanted at first to use primarily my own asm, but most of the things I really wanted to do ended up being done by other people. There are still a whole bunch of things that would be tricky to do, like Homestuck's elaborate [s] animations, but even that is not impossible, as things like MPU-1 or even a series of stim images can work almost as well. The problem would be doing the art. If you couldn't tell from my pictographs, I kinda suck at art. But I am better at pixel art I guess.

Either way, I long ago set a deadline for myself for this project. That deadline is December 21, 2012. I thought it was a fitting date for a reevaluation of my life either way. And thats only about a year and a half away. Now a lot can happen in that time, and if I really make progress on my hack, I will continue it until it's done regardless.

If not well, there are a few other things I want to work on some day as well. Before I got into romhacking, I was working a bit on a metroidvania game about magical girls and H.P Lovecraft. Yeah, what a combination eh? And despite what you may think I promise I was not going to involve naughty tentacles ... that much. Regardless I still sort of like the idea, and I still have the old techdemo I wrote for verge with it in mind.

I also still have thoughts about doing something with zdoom (which I already wrote about a while ago) One of the people I hang around with on the net sometimes has gotten into zdoom stuff lately, and we both had a similar idea to do a sort of Yume Nikki or L.S.D. Dream Emulator inspired surreal horror thing with it. However I am unable to get Doom Builder to work on linux (though wine or virtual box) and he is very new to level editing and stuff. I think if I am unable to get myself to work on my hack in the near future I may end up working on one of these two things instead. I have tried to avoid any other project that would distract from my hack too much, but at this point I don't think it matters.

Entertainment Tomorrow

I am sure anyone who bothers to read this blog has noticed I fixate mostly on games, and occasionally other forms of entertainment. A lot of my political views and such are also related to things like copyright and consumerism. So I want to take this time to sit down and share some of my views on the subject:

Why entertainment is important:

Entertainment in some form or another has been a important part of human civilization for almost as log as it existed. People may not thing the entertainment industry is a big deal, but if you think about how much time and money is spent by people on entertainment, and how passionately people follow this stuff, you may change your mind. Who tend to be the famous celebrities that most people recognize? Actors, musicians, sports athletes, writers, etc. All entertainers in some form. Sure powerful leaders may have the same fame, and a handful of inventors and scientists, but there are still tons of people who don't do much but entertain.

Along with that, I feel it's very possible that as science and progress grew and religion seemed more and more silly by a lot of people, fiction started to replace myth, and fandom started to replace old religious practices. Where before myths of spirits and gods motivated people to do strange rituals in the woods by the full moon, now fans start elaborate little cults to worship their favorite show, with rituals such as conventions and dressing yup as there favorite character. I am sure a whole essay can and has been written on that subject, and I probably mentioned it before, so I will say no more, except that entertainment is no longer entertainment to most people.

The difference between entertainment and art:

Entertainment by it's self doesn't have a much grander goal then giving a person a way of occupying time without doing actual work. And in fact the reason entertainment even exists is because when building early civilization mankind suddenly started to need to work less and less, and had more free time for which to do things. Entertainment is often treated as an alternative to work, but that's not it's function.

I have said before that "art is about invoking an experience or idea though different mediums. It is an act of reflection of experience or ideas". Perhaps it would be better to narrow that definition a bit, at least in this case. Art also probably was mostly invented to fill a gap, and that gap was meaning. At the same time entertainment started to emerge, art did to. This time the question was not so much "what should I do with my time" as it was "what does what I do what my time mean". By coming up with ideas of beauty and other things, and trying to express those ideas some way, art attempts to come up with a meaning that people can connect to, a drive to do things. I could go on and speculate that science, religion, philosophy, and other things are all also related to this revolution of free time, but thats besides the point.

The point is, entertainment and art are not the same thing yes, but they are deeply connected in a very fundamental way and come from the same root source, that human civilization has long since stopped being driven simply by survival. Thats simply not enough for us anymore.

Why entertainment might not be enough either:

Entertainment is a necessary thing to have of course. Even pets to be taken care of need more then just food, water, and a place to poo. Playing is an important part of a pets life. However few I think would dispute that humans can't be satisfied with such a simple life. Humans need meaning. Humans need art. Or do they? How much on TV and in films can you truly say give you a concept of meaning? Probably more then you might think, but there is a lot of "mindless entertainment" out there that is little more then the equivalent of jigging keys at a baby. Not that that is bad really, it just serves a different function.

Werther or not humans need art or entertainment, probably just depends on the person. If a person has no personal need for meaning, ether because they already came up with a meaning for what they do, or if they simply aren't introspective enough to care, art becomes mostly pointless. We could go into a whole discussion on if people should strive to find meaning or not, but that's not really relevant right now, even though in general, I would say yes.

But even discounting art, the same entertainment can get old and stale. Entertainment is constantly being driven by a need for more. More movies, more music, more games, more books, more everything. And most of it is pretty bad, but it's still worth it to people to do more. But just more of the same isn't enough for people I think, we also want something new, something to innovate and to inspire. If we didn't we would just be satisfied playing pretend with rocks like a small child.

Why the way we entertain ourselves should change:

The thing is, something new and innovative is exactly what the entertainment industry bad at, and they seem to often be even worse at doing art at times. The industry is run in the name of profit not in the name of entertainment or art. It likes safe investments, predictable trends, sequels, genres, and doesn't really care about how good the product is as long as it sells well, and will often meddle in it's own product to get a few extra sales.

Furthermore, entertainment has become way too expensive and addicting. We no longer seem to use it to enrich our lives, but instead let it control our lives. I do think fiction of various forms such as games and films are valuable besides their entertainment value, for artistic merit, or for the spread of cultural memes, but I don't think all our time and money should be spent on them either.

The real problem I guess, is that we live in a culture where entertainment is a big and binding thing, something people flock to in droves and use to define who they are as much as their political or religious beliefs. And the industry pumps more and more money into bigger and bigger things, without really delivering much substance or innovation. Entertainment is to most people no longer something people can do on their own within a reasonable budget.

Things that may help:

First, one thing that is happening already is a number of people are moving away from big budget industry entertainment. People in the "indie" crowd for various media are growing stronger, and entertaining things can be found online for free which are growing in popularity. The internet is full of ways to entertain yourself for nothing or almost nothing. Cell phones often come with free or low cost games, music and other options. The biggest problem is that as these alternate entertainment venues become more popular, the industry will try to get in on it. This has already started to happen on the internet as more and more things become commercial or copied by bigger budget cooperations. Even free ones are often plagued with advertisement and other meddling. In the end, unless we don't stop this trend, we will have changed the medium but not the problem.

There is one way we can attack the industry at it's core, and that is by reforming (or even ignoring) copyright laws. Copyright laws were created to give people an incentive to innovate by guaranteeing a brief time where you could produce the work without competitors. The problem is, that brief time was extended again and again and is used more as a way of controlling something and forcing others to do things the way you want to do it then protecting innovation. If copyright was extremely reduced or demolished, the industry would no longer have an excuse to profit on entertainment as much. Would this mean that no entertainment would be created? No not at all. There are plenty of people who are still willing to create, and plenty of people still willing to donate to have things made. It would simply mean the end of the massive bloated monster that todays entertainment has become.

But really, when it comes right down to it, people don't need to change or break any laws, all they need to do is become more proactive and more choosy about how they entertain yourself. Do you really need to see that new blockbuster movie, get that new album, or play that new game? Can't you write or draw or something? Can't you browse the internet for free things to do? Can't you try dreaming up something, or going somewhere with friends? And I am not saying never spend money or anything either, I am just saying, let's choose how we entertain ourselves more carefully.

Really I guess most people are totally content with the way things are now, but this is just how I feel about it.

Some Assembly Required

I just had a major freak out as a result of lots of stupid things related to romhacking. Although I only really addressed one of them. I am not going to list every example, but if you read the list of my posts on this page and working your way back you may find I do a lot of rather condescending post regarding someone's programing.

Maybe I am just full of myself. But I do think a lot of the ASM done on that site is sloppy and buggy. I guess it really doesn't matter when I usually make my own or modify others for my needs, but there is something, as I said, that often hurts part of "the inner programmer in my soul". I think of everything this is the thing I am most snobby and dickish about, mostly because it's a thing I think is very important to get right. I mean, I am not a professional, but I scrutinize and am effected by all the programing I see. I mean both my other rage topics were also about programing or design related subjects, and I have a lot more I could gripe about for hours.

Then again my semi-perfectionist nature is probably partly (but probably no where near majority) responsible for my ingrained lazyness. If I can't do something right, I feel like I shouldn't do it, and I tend to be over ambitious. So yeah.

Really it's easy for anyone to be a dick about somethings and I was up all night, not that that matters much.

Still I have to say it:
ASM RAAAAGGGEEEE!!!

[S ...illy] Appraise

Lately I have gotten really into a webcomic/interactive fiction/flash movie/game/thing called Homestuck. I suppose if I had to describe it I would call it a nonsensical clusterfuck of egregious sesquipedalian loquaciousness and Weird Time Shit. But in the best (and most intentionally hilarious) way possible. I gave some one a headache to someone just trying to explain the basic plot. I think I got as far as explaining how Kernelsprites were prototyped before she groaned a begged me to stop. And yes, it has it's own wiki that I linked to for those terms. It needs one.

Really though, the plot isn't what really draws me in. I mean it's generally well written, but as I said before time travel is a plot device that I usually despise. Partly because I think fate and predestination paradoxes fly in the face of a whole bunch of metaphysical things I hold to be true, but also it's because this kind of crackpot temporal nonsense is just old and worn out by now. There are only so many clever things you can do with those kind of rules, and really pretty much all of them are already covered by Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and that came out when I was ten.

Homestuck does manage to do some slightly interesting things here and there, mostly related to how two completely different universes with their own timelines that are independent of one another interact in strange non-linear ways, but it doesn't really go anywhere that amazingly surprising with it, but it comes ever so close. I think it would be more clever in the end if the total timeline evolved in the same way the story unfolded, or in other words, make unobserved parts of the future and past unwritten with the characters filling in the blanks by observing across time. Literally, what you don't know, doesn't exist. This would lead I think to all sorts of really interesting stuff, but thats clearly not now it works in the story even if that's exactly how the story seems to be written and told. I am not unconvinced this won't end up being what happens after all. Vriska (OMG spoiler alert!) is the only character that actually seems to be close to doing that. Even then though, I guess it's not at all different form what Bill and Ted did, namely insert there own stable time loops into time.

But again, the plot isn't what really draws me in. What really draws me in are the characters and the style. The characters are really likable, or at least likably hatable. And there sure are a lot of them. Of course the stars are the four kids, the nerdy one, the sarcastic one, the cool one, and the hyper one. Later they are trolled over the internet by some incredibly odd characters who go on to steal the show and have incredible amounts of fanart done of them. Not that there isn't a incredible amount of fanart of the kids too but not nearly as much as the trolls.

I think though personally what I think of as the best part is the style and presentation. It starts a bit slow, and can rely on long text logs at times for most of the story bits, but most every page is at least minimally animated, and every once and a while instead of a image it will have a fully animated flash movie, each accompanied by a nice piece of really good music, and usually with far more dynamic and expressive artwork. Just look at almost any of the pages listed in the sound credits page and you will find a good 90% of them are mind blowingly awesome. Spoilers aside, I think if anything sums up the whole comic in one video it's this (youtube version if you rather watch that). The fact that every single frame is in fact not random cool/silly stuff and builds on the the story so far (with the possible, exception of the part with the squid things that appears out of nowhere, and even THEY are somewhat important over all) is the really telling thing here. Every. Single. Frame. Also they have compilation CDs of all the music ever used, and tons more that isn't but may be someday, most of it all made by fans, and almost all of it completely awesome.

The thing that gets me is, it's really not that different from some of the things I was thinking of doing with my hack. with less psychology and philosophy and more time travel, but still the same kind of style. Something that starts off silly, goes a million directions at once, becomes incredibly complex, but never really stops being silly. Of course I couldn't compare with the scope of homestuck, and I really don't think I want it to. And I can't compare with the production values and fanbase either, not unless I really crack down and start seriously spending every moment of every day on it, and probably change it form a romhack to something else. But lately I have been questioning if I should even bother to try anything as crazy as I had planned, and Homestuck proves if nothing else, it's possible.

It also proves though, that there are inherent problems with this type of thing. Because although I bore though it and became obsessed enough at it to finish and understand it, let's face it, a lot of people won't. And that's fine. Even the author understands that. He also wrote this as a counterpart to homestuck after all, and a lot of extremely silly and simple things on the side.

I think in the end, the thing I can take away from all this, is that sometimes people just like things even if no one else will for their own reasons. And it's a hard thing to admit, because I still like to try to feel superior to people who like stupid boybands and lady gaga, even if I know it's not as simple sometimes as people not knowing any better (but I still think they wouldn't attract quite as much attention if they did).

I Meme It!

I really think that Memetics should not only be thought of as a serious subject, but should taught as part of basic high school or at least collage curriculum. And before you go thinking memes are just some internet thing, they are not. Memes are everywhere. Whenever you run into an idea or opinion, it's basically a meme.

And here is the thing. About 90% of people have no clue what memes are and how they can be used. Not only is memetic engineering a real thing, people have been using it, intentionally and unintentionally, for at least as long as there have been propaganda campaigns and advertisements, and possibly as long as there have been memes at all, which is about as long as humans have been able to communicate with each other.

The reason I think education is important is I think people should learn to be critical of the memes they pick up and spread. That people should learn to examine the consequences of following beliefs and ideas that propitiate their lives. I am not saying memes are bad, I am saying people need to examine them more closely in their day to day lives, and understand the effects of how they change people's lives.

If you ask me, memetics is a lot more important then genetics. The process of evolution may have begun with genetics, but ever since communication is possible memetics has taken over as the primary driving force behind it for us. All of our technology, ideas, art, and so on that humans have developed is passed down memetically and evolves. It has gotten to the point where we are able to manipulate genes ourselves, and all sorts of ethical and moral questions have popped up about if we should or what we should do with it. Thus our memetic ideas are now directly influencing what we do with genetics.

Once most people realize memes exist though, and once most people see how to use them and how to make them spread, I think people as a whole will be a lot more resistant to dangerous or malicious memes, such as maybe ideas like "suicide is cool, kill yourself" or "Big Brother loves you, trust Big Brother". Because by critically examining our ideas we can see more the effect they have on us directly.

And yeah, this article is basically a bunch of memes too. But since no one reads my blog, I think they probably won't spread very far. Maybe if you like this idea, spread it around a bit for me? :3