//Begin Week Notes
Preparations for Christmas beginning are (Christmas) beginning. Christmas is an almost hauntological time period where adults get to (re-)enter the childhood world of narativistic life. As an adult, I think it has a lot in common with going to Disney World – one of the only other incursions of the narrative driven kids-world which is on a grand enough scale to reach many adults.
Earlier his week we had an “afternoon tea” at a country house that had been a wedding venue for a cousin of mine earlier this year. The wedding had been green and springy, and it was interesting to see the place reconfigured by winter. Afternoon tea, an activity which if I’m to be honest is (like hiring a country house to have your wedding in) an example of the weirdly aspirational class-deference that British people are so very in-to, was really fun. The food was good, and I enjoyed the opportunity to experience a ritualised social occasion that didn’t pivot around drinking alcohol, which I do not do anymore. It put me in mind of the great falconry experience earlier this year, another activity we were able to get at a vastly reduced cost that is beginning to solidify a category: Things that cost too much but are worth the money, but I wouldn’t pay that much for them, but they are worth the money.
//Fragments
Nioh. It’s funny how you are led through the first stage by a sub-goal to get the full set of Tower of London armour, but the guards still recognise you once you are wearing the whole outfit – it’s weird because this little genre assumption – that you’d steal a guard uniform and sneak out of jail, which is nothing to do with Nioh‘s core gameplay of stabbing-up guys and fretting about having little health, put me right off throughout this whole first segment, distracting me when I need my Souls-game-concentration to avoid getting sent back to the magic egg every 30 seconds.
So I guess I am in the loop of Disney Heroes Battle Mood™ now. I only guess, because while I think it’s fun that the-game-is-the-systems-is-the-game, the world could feel so much more (well) realised, and the conflict between those two things is sapping my will to spend time on it. While the system is essentially the workings of the world (just like real life TM) the world itself isn’t really an expression of the system, at least, rarely explicitly (the friendship missions sort of are). Currently, I am explicitly stuck at a “pay real money now” gate, and my only non-fiscal option seems to be a whole lot of really granular grinding (by which I mean, grinding for 1% increases to stats with 4 digit numbers because more significant power-ups are gated behind level-caps) and I really wouldn’t mind if there was an in-world or in-story justification for it.
Every month I make a Spotify playlist that starts with a David Bowie song (from this year’s Bowie Album of the Year). November’s playlist has quite a lot of straight up pop, largely motivated by watching the MTV European Music Awards at the start of the month, and also features some Hawkwind and Mötorhead via a fantastic birthday present and reading some of Lemmy’s autobiography respectively.
This tweet thread is pretty great if you are looking to buy something less normcore in the Steam sale this year:
once again, as ever, here comes the steam sale rec thread
for the shitload of new followers, i’m telling you upfront i focus primarily on lesser known and older titles that might otherwise get passed over. all the big stuff doesn’t need the help and i like sharing weird shit
— Colin Spacetwinks (@spacetwinks) November 28, 2019
Same.
//Week Notes End
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