The Crowd

 "Right now, I want to throw that word 'escape' out the window. In speaking of these stories, these fantasies, I would like to emphasize instead their contribution toward growth and responsibility, small as it may be. Stories can ony be labeled "escapist" if they solve problems by ignoring or destroying them. Mickey Spillane's characters, for instance, in another genre, shoot first so they will not have to ask or answer questions later.

Thoughtful men find many things in our civilized order worth—not escaping—but growing away from: the preconceived notion, prejudice, bias, dogma, of any kind whatever. Through our creative arts, including fantastic literature, we can return to the raw stuff of environment for re-seasoning, for an understanding of the wilderness, the animal, the death which tempts us to solve problems with annihilation. Seeking help from literary sources, we often appear blasphemous and "escapist" to those still in the temple, political gymnasium, or school. Actually, we are only 'standing off for a long clear look at the human situation, preparing to doff old burdens in order to assume the new.

[...]

Man lives by creating and creates by alternating wonder with criticism followed by new states of wonder."

 

Ray Bradbury - 1956 editor's introduction to the fantasy collection The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories

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When did I buy my copy of The October Country? Early teens, early '90s. The '80s paperback version was still on the shelves. It expanded my understanding of the word "horror" beyond slasher flicks and creature features to those more diffuse fears I had been taught to ignore. Fear of being ugly and despised, subverted by your own body, of being trapped and tethered, of loneliness, of the slow grinding passage of time. Hopes lost and the self dissipated. But though Uncle Einar, The Emissary or The Cistern made more of an impact on me, The Crowd maintained a background fascination for making much of so little.

 

"The crowd looked at him and he looked back at them and did not like them at all. There was a vast wrongness to them. He couldn't put his finger on it. They were far worse than this machine-made thing that happened to him now.
The ambulance doors slammed. Through the windows he saw the crowd looking in, looking in. That crowd that always came so fast, so strangely fast, to form a circle, to peer down, to probe, to gawk, to question, to point, to disturb, to spoil the privacy of a man's agony by their frank curiosity."

 

It was only after moving to Chicago that I learned one of the most infuriating terms in the lexicon of mob stupidity: gaper's delay. Highways bottlenecked not by traffic accidents but by moronic hordes slowing their cars to gawp at the wreck. ("Rubberneckers" they also call 'em - cause even if you hung them from the nearest branch like they deserve, they'd bounce up and down endlessly blocking your way.) More infuriating are those who try to excuse such behavior by saying that "they're just people" or "it's only human" because of course they're right. It is human. Normal human behavior. Reiterated behind millions of windshields. An overwhelming, pervasive tribal ape need to participate in the suffering of others.

 

"It was like a great rainstorm, with many drops, heavy and light and medium, touching the earth. He waited a few seconds and listened to their coming and their arrival. Then, weakly, expectantly, he rolled his head up and looked.
The crowd was there.
He could smell their breaths, the mingled odors of many people sucking and sucking on the air a man needs to live by. They crowded and jostled and sucked and sucked all the air up from around his gasping face until he tried to tell them to move back, they were making him live in a vacuum."

 

I had not appreciated, reading The Crowd so young, why it stuck with me, that it is not a story about traffic accidents at all, its events almost irrelevant when compared to the language in which they're described, the dripping disgust at compulsive group participation. This is a night for storytelling, and to most that means dissimulating and externalizing. The stories we tell ourselves keep us safe from deeper horrors. Chief among these the cozy belief that the monster is an alien thing, lurking out there in the dark beyond the safety of our campfire.

 

Except we killed those monsters a thousand, ten thousand years ago. The Nemean Lion's bones have long since rotted away, and the rest of the biosphere is following. A million species which took fifty million years to develop must die, not so that sapience might adventure to the stars or rise above the limitations of flesh, not for great works of art, philosophy and science, but so that billions of sacks of redundant simian flesh can hold hot-dog eating contests and bow for the ten thousandth time at a meteor or an elephant-headed statue or drawl patriotic songs into half-empty bottles of vodka or praise The Party while it grinds them into five-year plans. And any individual who disapproves of this grand nine-billion-fold pinnacle of creation must be silenced, effaced, erased, unmade, made one with the herd or the ground beneath its hooves. Don't you dare tell them they could or should be better.

 

The monster is ever-encroaching normalcy. It is every subhuman degenerate whose personality is the logo on its t-shirt or purse and the slogan on its throw-pillow or baseball cap. Is that not what every fanged and goggle-eyed mask would reveal if dropped, the very necessity for masks, for costumes, for uniforms and business casual attire? To camouflage the shame, the filth, the degeneracy of humanity? Enforced ignorance.

 

"that's the way it's been since time began, when crowds gather. You murder much easier, this way. Your alibi is very simple; you didn't know it was dangerous"

 

And for the proprietors of the apocalypse, a more refined torture: knowing you cannot escape the unknowing. What use is your prepared folder of evidence and reasoned argument when they have brute impact? They will make you one of their own, clean up your ragged frills of analysis and argumentation, smooth out the wrinkles in your brain, make you happy, make you excited at the prospect of the spectacle of the crash. No wonder, no criticism, just the mob and its appetites.

 

And the crash. 

Day 3 in Disco Elysium

"Du hasst mich"

 

On the third day he rose. Wearily. Achingly. On the third day he descended from on high to speak with the carpenters' guild, only to find two powers of his own distant principality enthroned among the hungry masses. Yet knowing them not and fearing they may have consumed more of the primordial fruit than himself, he spoke "no li me tangere" only and walked on, his sole apostle dutifully trailing. He stepped into the great emptiness of being, and the waters and air spoke to him of immensity:

"At least the world has the decency to rain today" *

Wolf: A pretty self-indulgence. Gonna save the world, are we?

Man: If it asks eloquently enough. But who am I to modulate these echoes?

W: Indeed. If it asks more eloquently than yourself, don't bother answering.

M: If these shadows have offended -

W: - admit that all was already mended, for offense is all you can offer in the shadow of your betters.

M: You paint with a broad brush. There's always room for a bit of detail work.

W: Detail? You? The grandiloquent do-nothing? Reflecting gods make poor acolytes of the machine. They've got you pegged, escapist, awakening into a new world from the stupor of self-destruction. Fine, then. Go on. Feed your head.

M: It's finally Wednesday. Across the pond.

W: High-speed chase!

M: Dead in the water. Anticlimactic.

W: The downward spiral is its own climax, apocalypse cop. Everything's blue in this world.

M: I want to stay here with the seagulls. Let me rust in peace.

W: But you'd disappoint Kim. He praised your police work.

M: Like you'd care.

W: Fine, he praised my unconventionality. Saw us coming a mile away. A little backhanded flattery will get you a good review.

M: Shacks. Corrugated asylum. I always knew the bidonville awaited me.

W: Don't get too cozy. They don't make 'em with matrix decks.

M: Why is it always fishermen though? Nobody grows barley in these alternate worlds. Nobody puts a scythe to its original use. Nobody picks grapes.

W: That can't be right. What sloshed your brain if not hops and half a yard's worth of vines? Besides, fishing and hunting offer a satisfying narrative opposition in microcosm. Man versus minnow. Hitting dirt with a stick just lacks that same tension.

M: Flagellating our dear mother?

W: You patriarchal brute. There, the wistful swords-dame'll teach ya some manners, boyo. Supplied as she is with untold suitors deserving of stabbing.

M: Oh, but she's a kind stabber she is, condescended to marry one of her victims.

W: Conveniently supplying her with a spouse she can look down on. All the way down to the bottom of the sea.

M: Lucky she wasn't actually relying on the fish he'd bring in for her sake -

W: - and lucky it was never her and her stabbing that drove him to drink, lucky it wasn't the fairness of love and war-wounds that lingered and needed dulling, lucky she never profited in his decline or she might've accidentally shared in a hint of guilt for their lifestyle and his demise. Luckier still as she could find no men in the world except a dumb pile of drunken muscle to marry, or we might've wondered at her own life choices.

M: All know such other men do not exist. All averred you cannot kill the bird that makes the windbags to blow. What a poor, lucky gal. So rich in pluck and pathos. 

W: Good thing he's not worth missing. We might've made the mistake of feeling sorry for the element in this equation who can no longer feel sorry.

M: The wrong element. And then we'd be an even sorrier drunk whose better half was right to leave him. The right half, the right element.

W: It's elementary, my dear what's-a-son. Never factored down by that other term, such evil multiplies only itself. Answers your question about the fishing, too. Harder for the requisite stupid brute of a husband to drown in barley -

M: - though some have tried -

W: - even female ones. At least in other worlds. Those worlds not amenable to detective skills. But hark! Another, and this one's old. How many stupid, useless, drunken, violent husbands can she boast, I wonder?

M: Oh, be nice. She called you a black hound, lathspell, which I are. Her babushka is her sword.

W: Lucky she had nothing to do with that man that killed another and had to be dragged away by the police. Twenty years ago. When she was younger and more attractive.

M: And she gives free lodging. Lucky she doesn't need those coins the men tried hiding from their women. From the rightful owners -

W: - of? ...

M: Don't go there. They'll take away your observation license. Just trust Isobel to tell you all the ne-er do wells.

W: Opt out of the free-meat-market mindset though. We bite other things than coins. They're never as real as those claiming them by right. Sniff out the next wrong factor by its ethanol fumes, threefold and... no, wait, beg the story, hear the saga. 'Tis you, the fourth drinksketeer! And now we know your crime. You dared complain about women. 

M: This is getting old.

W: As the man and the sea, and no mention of the women eating the fish brought in.

M: Kim and I both know the alphabet now. Tee is for totaling. See is for child. 'Kay is how the kids are. The twin little boys are useless and stupid and the littler girl is articulate and helps you on your quests.

W: That's how the world works. They'll tell you who you are, before you can talk back. No reason to start drinking. No reason to seek escapism. Just accept your designation, man of war, man of the low brow, man of the bottle. It's official. You can't fight city hall.

M: So let's go to church instead.

W: Where you meet an honest, polite, artistic girl whose boyfriend sold her property, left out in the cold by the three idiot boys wanting to start a drug lab.

M: Inside the church must be something better.

Worship the Great Mother

W: Worship the woman. And the wise woman who first worshiped the woman. So sayeth the bestial man worshiping women.

M: He must be right. He's the only male not stoned, drunk, stupid, murderous, thieving, corrupt, not a complete waste of oxygen.

W: Erasing his own personality, the better to worship at the feet of women. We've heard this song so many times before.

M: Never so eloquently.

W: Yet always so limited. Always so base. All about the political base. Do you have enough evidence, lieutenant?

M: The hanged man -

W: - was a rapist who got what he deserved from a bunch of undeserving brutes whose only good deed in life was championing a woman's honor. Why?

M: Because men are filthy pigs whose only worth lies in beating down other men in a woman's interest.

W: Good boy. Goooood boy. You're learning. How many lessons did it take? How many characters were *man* and *bad* and how many *woman* and *good*? Don't keep count. Awareness would be unseemly. Now what about yourself?

M: I must be a filthy pig who needs to crawl back to his mistress begging her forgiveness, no matter the circumstances, and serve her ever-after.

W: Good boy. You're not like those drunken fishermen, are you?

M: No, no, I'm a good boy.

W: You're not like those bad boys, are you?

M: No, the girl deserves the warm tent and I should work to provide it for her.

W: Gooood boyy, see, the lessons stick after a while. You're not like those men hiding money from women, are you?
M: No, all my money belongs to them.

W: See now, isn't that better, is that not ever the more eloquent?
M: Woof.

W: Poetry and imagination. Conceptualization and an increased pain threshold and the tiny detail of a sensual alien frisson over-riding your logic.

M: Why did they bother with the four winds, I wonder, why bother with a world and a history, with politics and economics, with hopes and dreams, when a simple rolling pin or frying pan upside the head would get their intended message across just as well.

W: Oh! We forgot to save the world.

M: Got a temple to rebuild. Be there any world outside the rusted swings, waves and shore cries, she can damn well save herself. 

Wolf: Are you ever going to look in that bathroom mirror?

Man: I can see you just fine. Anything else would be just what they make of me.

 

 

______________________________________________________

 

* In a depressing development, it seems one is no longer able to find the phrase "At least the world has the decency to rain today" through search engines. It's from the excellent first chapter of the never-to-be-completed webcomic Nowhere Girl from around Y2K. (Discussed here and here and here.)While we're at it, Acolytes of the Machine is a song by Mary Crowell and The Reflecting God is the Antichrist Superstar's finest work. I'll let you snipe other albatrosses yourself.

Nay rite in the 'ead

I bought some nerite snails for a small freshwater tank once, not heeding the salesgirl's warning that they can be escape artists. Sure enough, one was happy as a clam (not to insult its heritage) and stayed in the water. Another would occasionally survey the rim of the aquarium a few times making it as far as the aquarium's stand. But the third? Ol' greenie? Oh, things started innocently enough, invading the water filter, which was fine, cleaning the algae off as per its work contract.

And alright, the fish food I spilled on the rim may have provided too tempting a lure.

Soon though, its nightly wanderlust began extending to the aquarium stand and parts beyond, bedding down under some sort of overhang before each morning.

For a couple of months, I would wake up and check outwards from the tank until sussing our intrepid explorer who could be anywhere from obediently munching algae on the gravel inside to within a one-meter radius of carpet beyond. Not always the easiest thing to do, as its tendency to seek cover before daybreak often put it under furniture, upside-down under the stand or under a nearby closet door or, why not, under a suitcase across the room.

Note the battle-scarred shell scuffed during various misadventures. But the real kicker, pun intended, was one morning when it almost got me to wear it as an ornament.

At least it didn't actively chew through the material, which a snail could easily do, being presumably more interested in licking up my salt. You must admit "my snail ate it" would be the weirdest excuse for walking around with a hole in your sock.

 

Of course, eventually the little lunatic managed to hide so well that it dessicated before I could find and toss it back into safe havens, but in honor of its pioneering spirit I've kept its shell as a keepsake.

And I'm never buying nerites again.

What About the Dukes, Counts and Earls?

"yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck(#?)

Fuck me! Fuck me!

Fuck you! Fuck you!

Fuck everyone! Fuck the church! Fuck Jesus! Fuck Mary! Fuck the Jews! Fuck the Buddhists! Fuck the Hindus! Fuck George Bush! Fuck his ugly wife! Fuck Che Guevara! Fuck Everyone! Fuck Gorbachev! Fuck Noriega! Fuck all these assholes! Fuck you! Fuck me! Fuck all of you! A-hah! Stigmata! Stigmata! Stigmata! Stigmata! Stigmata. Stigmata. Stigmaataaaaaaa... They tell me nothing but lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies! Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, lies, LIEEEESSS!"

 

Ministry - the much improved live version of Stigmata

(go ahead and pick whichever George Bush you'd like to fuck depending on your generation)

___________________________________________________

"so inconspicuous an observer, watching Senator Windrip from so humble a Boeotia, could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences.  The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy.  His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.  Seven years before his present credo--derived from Lee Sarason, Hitler, Gottfried Feder, Rocco, and probably the revue Of Thee I Sing--little Buzz, back home, had advocated nothing more revolutionary than better beef stew in the county poor-farms, and plenty of graft for loyal machine politicians, with jobs for their brothers-in-law, nephews, law partners, and creditors."

 

Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here (1935)

___________________________________________________ 

 

"Marius Priscus, formerly Proconsul of Africa, being impeached by that Province, instead of defending the suit, petitioned that his case might be referred to a special commission. Cornelius Tacitus and myself, being assigned by the Senate counsel for that province, thought it our duty to inform the House, that the crimes alleged against Priscus were of too atrocious a nature to fall within the cognizance of a commission ; for he was charged with accepting bribes to condemn, and even to execute, innocent persons."

 

Pliny the Younger, 100 A.D.

___________________________________________________ 

 

 

Well, for today I was planning to follow through on what I told myself to do last time and WRITE down another of my various short story ideas... but I can't resist the opportune <PERFECTLY VALID SOCIAL DUTY> to procrastinate comment on last week's No Kings demonstrations instead. Which were, in contrast to five years ago, exactly not what the Black Lives Matter riots failed not to be, which is to say were not riots, though a fair amount of riotous, cathartic mockery of the criminal establishment was freely shared. Supposedly. According to footage. I did not attend, as I do not attend. Anything. I did expect the different flavor. The demographics are now different, the cause and crimes clear instead of some nebulous "institutionalized" evil, the motivation conscious survival rather than a spastic herd lurch motivated partly by coronavirus-induced cabin fever. And all the reactionary Foxy media sources who had loudly panic-mongered against a communist revolution were hilariously forced to pivot to complaining the protests were just too... boring. Quelle horreur!

 

Now, the senior citizens trotting the samba with frogs and my little ponies, that I did not expect. (Also, you're totally biting Brazil's act!) But even that comes as a welcome relief. Though left-wing obsessions can be moronic, insane, exploitative, dishonest or dangerous, they at least come up with new ones now and again. From the right wing, true to the title of "conservative" you always get the same stupid centennially musty shit. Some jumped-up scheister with a gnat's IQ, a gift for babbling incoherently but loudly and a hefty streak of paranoia gets embraced by the hoi polloi as everything that makes illiterate rabble great again, then proclaims he's been handed a holy quest (likely through holy visitation) to rid the father/mother/cousinland of subversive alien influences (conveniently letting the core constituency blame the fruits of their own stupidity on scapegoats) and promising to indulge all his followers' most murderous impulses must therefore glorify militaristic repression, because he sure as hell has not surrounded himself with any supply of intellect or creativity.

 

But whether in '35 or the new '25 they never have any trouble surrounding themselves with... something. Some kindred breed of mindlessly grasping, superstitious primitive ape. Even if you manage to oust the king, Richelieu and the Sheriff of Nottingham will remain in place. What do you do with the collaborators and the collaborators' collaborators, and the endless hordes of petty bureaucrats which replaced their intellectual betters by merely mouthing an oath of allegiance to the tyrant? They will continue to drag the system ever downwards, every lickspittle Church Lady promoting the dogma that America should be a society by the poor for the rich. The ball that Reagan set rolling half a century ago was merely sped along its path by subsequent administrations, not by any Machiavellian machinations, not by any shady conspiracies, but because the vast majority of the public is quite simply stupid enough to idolize powermongering. Not uninformed. Not uneducated. Intrinsically, genetically, irredeemably stupid.

 

The Roman Senate grudgingly approved, after much deliberation including a four-plus-hour accusatory speech by Pliny, a punishment for the corrupt African governor... of shaking him down for cash and "exiling" him from Italy. Not from the whole of the empire, mind you, just from the heartland. Half of them had wanted to let their buddy Marius remain a senator, and just let him off with a fine. For executing innocents for cash. So, back to our future, even if you manage to dethrone the tyrant, what will you do with all the officials who have colluded in the destruction of public health and safety, of education, of the justice department, colluded also with the military invasion of civilian homes, with dragging American citizens off the street into unjustified detainment? How will you handle the endless ICE hoodlums, judges, and the whole fifty million Red Caps so enthusiastically applauding The Dear Leader's crimes? Taking their lunch money and exiling them from the District of Columbia won't work. Because we know how this went for the Romans. Pliny and his ally Tacitus may have been honest enough to refuse collusion with such corruption, but the majority of senators or indeed of Romans were not. Pardon by pardon, bribe by bribe, power grab by power grab the empire rotted, not because of one Caligula or Nero but because the public and bureaucracy, from slaves to patricians, from Albion to Memphis, cheered one bad emperor after another, endlessly, so long as the bread and circuses and most importantly the kickbacks kept flowing.

 

Until it ended.

 

Because that's what "conservative" means. Always the same old stupid shit.

Ideas swirl and roil sprinkled boil upon calloused gyres loitering between fingers between shoulders between temples rebuilt and coiled inwards inworks in wer inerringly grinning at the great joke played upon him's selfish relish the crash embelish each hellish ending rending sending descend ingrate against your skin of your teeth passably scientifictitious and techno-logical but they only wanted the tech, no logical, a fiction of scientia, no home owes gaia, earth smother beloveds dear learning how to shaft wissens, the better to screw archimedes to the courage place, discourage parlays, a loon in crowds lays golden exacting a pre-session be for every word unuttered for fear forfeit to fanfaron fanfare for wrong errata-tat-tat silver slugs crackle and melt under golden light, umbrage motivational, unreason unseasonal, freeze the layer, get the laid to rest, behest a digest-digest-digest of best practices never mastered, sequestered from the prying eyes by pryin' guys buy pray in guise be pared par pareil pyrrhic meat victorious over the meek me querulous square, oh loosen up you're not dead eaten attend to your appetite for the indigestible and just... fucking WRITE!

u mad sci bro?

Abetting the Setting

"My theories are borrowed from somewhere else
And I've never had too many to talk about
'Cause you were real quick and you were quick to point out, well
That was borrowed too"

 

Ugly Casanova - Diggin' Holes

 

 

From my first swipes at Europa Universalis 4 I wasn't crazy about the far larger density of scripted events compared to #3. Granted this is partly a matter of taste, being a bigger fan of strategy than of historical re-enactment, but such events can quickly overshadow whatever theme you had intended for your campaign. Aragon, for instance, gets several major freebie options for peaceful annexation during its early game (Naples, Navarre, Castile) whose overwhelming benefit dictated my early strategy of maxing diplomacy (national focus, +2 advisor) but going on a charm offensive instead of the naval/trade offensive I had originally envisioned. I will say though, I may wrinkle my nose at the implementation but at least Paradox maintains solid justification throughout, avoiding veering from the game's historical grounding, consistently feeding greater immersion and not tossing random shit at the wall to see if it sticks.

 

Which is not to say sticking to central theme completely avoids weirdness. Take Old World:

It's a Boss Baby prequel, just roll with it.

History, after all, is verifiably weird in many places, child monarchs being the least of it. On the other hand, Old World's enfilade of early monotheisms has repeatedly tempted writers to place more emphasis on the supernatural than feels natural to a naturalistic setting. It's a given that your citizens would believe nonsense, quite another to make it a verifiable in-game force. The blessed/cursed attributes (altering your ruler's random positive/negative event chance) always struck me as out of place, and the newer natural disaster expansion plays around with prophetic dreams and such. Still they cultivate a light touch, thankfully, where more amateurish developers tend to smack you in the face with such digressions.

 

Vagrus is a fantasy RPG set in a Romanesque evil empire with half-elves, half-dragons, half-ants and several other halves, all shooting fireballs and swashing their bronze buckle(r)s. Yet when I traveled to the obligatory Thousand and One Nights expansion, I was greeted with this.

Yes, everyone's fighting over oil wells. As in petroleum. Crude, that is. Black gold. Texas tea. Mullah lubricant. Whatever happened to olives and sesame? Instead of the simplistic and anachronistic Arabs=Oil, why not dip into middle-eastern references more appropriate to the old-timey setting like the spice trade or the silk road, which would've meshed so much better with Vagrus' core caravan-management motif, or hell, why not Arabs' obsession with horses? Or a Persian-themed demon-slaying fire cult aping Zoroastrianism? Or a militarily brilliant lame upstart princeling denied noble title for lack of lineage but expanding a namesake empire off said spice/silk trade. Or dive even deeper to show locals pouring libations to their dead relatives in Ereshkigal's domain? Or if you want to go the Egyptian route, a lizard cult evoking Sobek, since you've already got lizard mounts and nonsensical dinos as random encounters? Why the fuck with the derricks out of nowhere?

 

Sure, Vagrus already featured occasional modern elements like your dwarf companion's pistol, but that at least was presented as a rarity and even then just a primitive flintlock that takes an extra round to reload and is painfully inaccurate, as early firearms were. (At least it doesn't blow up in his face as they were wont to do. Don't ask me where he's getting the powder.) Even if you wanted black viscous petro-oleum in your game, you could've stuck to ancient surface extraction and the odd shallow well; crude, unrefined fuel and tar seeing limited local use, not a full-blown mechanized industry over which wars are fought.

 

It's worth comparing how Tolkien for example got away with his own anachronisms, like the bomb at Helm's Deep and the pterosaur mounts. For one, they're very limited in scope. For another, they're contextualized as departures from the norm showing the unnaturalness of both Saruman's futurism and Sauron's brutish, prehistoric primitivism. Yes, yes, you're allowed to roll your eyes a bit at the Shire's cozy Edwardian provincialism (not to mention the books' larger monarchist/medievalist slant) but that secure grounding allows small departures from such norms to spice without glutting. Coherence matters. (Just please don't look for it on this blog.)

 

You might raise an eyebrow, for instance, at Cyberpunk 2077 throwing Buddhist monks into its dingy futuristic mix... but dinginess makes a fine fit for those sworn to poverty, so there you have the same angle of building on an existing theme. The first quest you encounter concerns two brothers targeted by a street gang for forcible mechanical implantation.

You can later revisit the dilemma: though the artificiality of the modern world is opposed to their sought purity, they don't see it as an absolute impediment, merely a lengthening of the path.

Thus it becomes just another angle on Night City's culture of excess, bringing everything back to the central theme. It contrasts nicely with punk rage as well:

As another series of seemingly chance encounters has a monk feeding you meditations on your elemental constituents... via a neural interface. And that's all. A quest consisting of sitting peacefully in various damp, airy, sunlit meadow cutscenes... and don't spoil the ending for me 'cause I don't think I've finished it yet. But once again, though seemingly random, this element feeds back into the game's central theme of raging against the machine - both in rage and machine. And honestly, you could probably substitute Franciscans for the same effect, were you able to turn to facets you actually need for your narrative and downplay or throw out whatever superficialities or heavy-handed moralizing fundamentalists would want included. It's not as if William Gibson didn't do the same with voodoo themes forty years ago.
 

However, many of the worst cases of such digression are not meant to integrate with the rest of the story at all, but are thrown in to browbeat the audience with a supposedly all-important moral lesson. It's harder to find anything made in the 2010s which doesn't fall in that trap, but as just one example within the medium of games, try Dead State which among other ill-advised soapboxing gave us the NPC companion Karen, who turns out to be in the early stages of pregnancy and demands an abortion. Because it's her body, her choice, full stop, and only an anti-abortionist filthy-male-pig-reactionary-loser-fundamentalist-etc. would deny her this absolute right.

Great?

Now don't ask me what the hell this has to do with blasting zombies' heads off.

 

Of course, there could have been endless ways to work the issue into the plot of your survival shelter, as a pregnancy would raise any number of practical and ethical concerns relevant to the situation.

Do you have adequate medical facilities?

Can your makeshift tribe provide the material resources to ensure an infant's care? Have you looted any baby formula and diapers?

Can you other scavengers afford to support her while she's bloated to uselessness or has a parasite attached to her nipples? And is it fair to ask that of you?

Would someone else be willing to raise the child after birth, lessening her burden?

Are you in a secure location where you can start a long-term community?

For that matter, as you have zero information about the world at large, might you assume humanity has been wiped out and you desperately need every scrap of genetic diversity you can get to rebuild the species? 

Never mind all that because our real priorities are having her take umbrage at the very notion of possibly maybe questioning her choice, browbeating you for not supporting her enough and breaking up with her boyfriend and self-inducing an abortion with a random pill overdose (meant to make her look heroic) because woman right, man wrong, nothing else matters. That they named this bitch "Karen" just a few years before that became a meme is just icing on the cake.

 

Maybe your story can accommodate an inexplicable dinosaur or oil rig or some superstitious blather, maybe it cannot. Cases differ. I suppose the real question to ask yourself is: are you being a Karen about it?

 

 

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P.S.: Don't forget to lube your mullah!

Setting the Netting

"If it happens again I shall worry

That only a strange ship could fly"

 

Sting - The Wild, Wild Sea 

 

 

My recent Europa Universalis 4 campaign surprised me with a bit more novelty than I thought it could muster after half a dozen runs. For one thing, like Scotland and in contrast to the Teutons or Uzbek Khanate, Aragon runs into an old problem of finding a job for Aquaman. Ever since I got into strategy games in the '90s, ever since Civ 2, C&C: Red Alert and Warcraft 2, the idea of having two separate realms of gameplay has run into constant balance issues. A hard distinction between land and sea units leaves ships either utterly useless or utterly crucial. In particular, the need for transports to carry land units raises a whole separate balance issue of vulnerability. Is it fair for an embarked unit with 20 armor to get sunk because its transport only has 2?

 

Though I eschewed the New World colonial race this time around, the Spanish armada nonetheless proved crritical to not only protecting my various island holdings but denying enemies quick deployment. For instance the Ottoman Empire vastly outnumbered me on land, but forcing it to schlep across the North-African coast by foot bought me the time to siege its ally Morocco before reinforcements could reach. It's a bit all-or-nothing. Once I had that naval superiority... I had it. End of story. My fleet only grew with the scores upon scores of vessels I captured, for free, with enemies unable to even deny me safe harbors without conquering me completely, since every coastal province can dock infinity vessels. It's always completely one-sided. One side of every war rules the waves and is the only one who can ship troops. What, no sneaky black sails under cover of darkness? Especially looking at Britain utterly failing to control The Channel across several playthroughs, I kept flashing back to Dunkirk and wondering why I can't commandeer a bunch of merchant vessels for some kind of limited access beyond the old Warcraft spiky turtle dependence.*

 

At least ships providing faster travel for a logistic advantage and not just a numeric one is a solid concept, though it can be taken too far. I don't know what Civilization's doing these days, but its competitor Old World gives every ship a next-turn "anchor" action establishing a traversable radius around it so long as it remains inactive. You can chain these zones to create pontoon bridges over infinite distances.

While my navy was too small for a full-scale invasion, I eked a narrow victory over the Carthaginians there by quickly anchoring my few ships and snagging a couple of low-value city sites in the southeast, impractically far from the mainland and with too little land around them for any other purpose but a couple of extra points. But making the crossing nigh-instantaneous can be stupidly overpowered.

Playing as Greece (bloo) vs. Assyria (yeller) our war quickly degenerated into a perpetual stalemate. The sole overland route connecting west and east consisted of exactly three hexes at the very northern edge of the map (the rest being a mountain range all the way to the sea) making it impossible for either side to mount or reinforce a push. Island-hopping along the center archipelago (two turns to cross half the map) was a nice strategic challenge, and opening up that second front all the way across their empire (as EU4's algorithm tries to do every single war) did indeed lead to eventual victory. Not risking instantaneous unit loss when losing a transport is a nice change (your units either can cross or cannot, and do so in a single turn spending no time at sea) but turning creaky triremes into infinite-range, effortless science fantasy teleporters is a bit much.

 

Age of Wonders does have teleporters, and has done away with naval transports. Much as in Heroes of Might and Magic, units "embark" when you order them into water and fight under some penalties unless they're aquatic/amphibious/flying. For some little while at the start it did feature actual ships as naval units, but eliminated even those as extraneous. Not an ideal situation either, as it removes some player decision-making in deliberately building up sea power.

 

Weird how long the naval transport issue has gone without a clear best option. My own personal favorite would be something like a more purposeful, resource-dependent version of HoMM/AoW "embarking" which stuck in my mind ever since playing Armageddon: allowing the player to buy a motorized transport for each unit as upgrade, of varying quality, activated at will. Of course, "my little pocket ponies" were even mocked in old MMOs, and in some settings like historical grand strategy, seeing your infantry pull a galleon out of its ass may look just a mite queer.

 

Can't wait to see how Bannerlord handles this in its Viking expansion.

 

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* There is a reason for this limited interpretation in mass media dominated for eighty years by Americans' obsession with their moment of glory at D-day, a rare example where the question really was an all-or-nothing, massive disembarkation from purpose-made transports.

 

There's an even simpler marketing-driven explanation for keeping transports as separate units for so long, as every company wanted to drive up its unit count as volume of content.

Are A Gonner Universalis

After my establishment and subsequent loss of Nova Scotia last campaign, preceded by Uzbek and Teuton playthroughs, I wasn't quite sure what to play next. Maybe another European nation before tackling the Indian Ocean, but I'm not too enchanted with the way New World colonies are handled in EU4 (automatically breaking away from your direct control as permanent vassals) so maybe something in the North? Maybe something in the East? Maybe some- wait, it turns out I already chose Aragon some months ago and forgot about it, so I guess we're playing Aragon.

 

Likely true of 15th-century Aragon historically, I appear a naval power. Mallorca, Malta, Sardinia, Sicily, not to mention my most obvious route for early expansion lies along the North-African coast, plus my hardcoded pahtnah Naples is only reachable by love boat.

The biggest problem of course is starting at a disadvantage next to the two worst superpowers, France and Castile, so I decided to pursue an anti-French strategy. Allied Savoy, Burgundy and Castile in addition to my junior partner Naples to start.

- 1447 lose Naples in a scripted event, inherit a personal union with Navarre by royal marriage

- 1456 Castille calls me in against Morocco and Tunis as part of its Granada campaign. Oh no, not the briar patch! And, shockingly, Castille actually awards me three provinces around Kabylia in the peace treaty, giving me a North-African foothold.

- 1460 Iberian Wedding event makes Castille junior partner

- 1467 still putting down revolts, lose my Burgundian alliance for refusing to defend them against France - turns out it would have been a pointless fight anyway, as after the war France immediately takes over all of Burgundy in a dynastic event

- 1473 Ally England as traditional ally against France

- 1488 England calls me in to defend against France. Not much chance of success. Predictably, England sits back and does absolutely nothing while France over-runs the Iberia Peninsula. At least I have Castilla watching my back. Almost bankrupting myself with 25 loans buys me enough mercenaries to eke out a truce.

- 1499 Integrate Navarre. Despite being 22 loans in debt, I declare war on Tunisia again and annex it. Need... tax... infidels...

- 1501 Ally with His Popeness, maybe the threat of excommunication will keep the Gauls off my back.

- 1505-1515 Lose Savoy Alliance to a forced annulment from France. Try to ally Florence as a future vassal, but it's conquered by France first. Try to ally Bologna as a future vassal but it's vassalized by France first. Try to ally Corsica... and I finally get one.

- 1528 France attacks the Papal State and again I'm in no position to help. I finally pay off my loans. Corsica annexed. Now to wait for corruption (from currency debasement) to decrease.

- 1552 France attacks again, before I can catch up in tech. England just wanders along the French shoreline constantly pulling its armies back before taking even a single province. Game over.

--------------------------

Attempt 2

Try allying France and Castile this time around. Refuse Naples' independence dynastic event, and by some amazing stroke of luck no-one supports its independence. Same with Castilla. So the game now shifts to holding out long enough to integrate my vassals.

1461 Invade Tunis, take northern coast.

1464 France invades Provence. This is the first war it's started, in contrast to its immediate expansion last game.

1490 Genoa conquered by Milan leaving Corsica free to be Vassalized by me, even if it puts me at a diplomatic power penalty. Morocco and Tlemcen ally Ottomans, making them untouchable for the time being.

1492 Begin integrating Napoli, with a fortuitous Nobility Diet quest negating the diplomatic penalty for doing so. Ally Saluzzo and Padua with an eye toward vassalization and annexation. My Diplomatic power income becomes 0 for a couple years.

1495 Integrate Navarre. France Invades Burgundy. England's French provinces still untouched.

1501 Vassalize Aquileia. Grant privileges to the Nobility and Clergy to offset my lengthy and costly subject integrations.

1513 Finish integrating Naples, annex Corsica and Padua, Ally Mantua. Begin the painstaking process of integrating Castille

1529 Ally Ragusa when it breaks away from Hungary. Invade Jolof without casus belli just to get a head start on African expansion.

1544 Expanded farther into Africa via Fulo and Kaabu.

1556 Tlemcen lost its Ottoman defense, so invade it and Morocco.

1569 After 56 years(!) Castile is finally integrated. Ragusa and Aquileia annexed. Mantua Vassalized. Trent allied. Spain formed.

1582 Mop up the remnants of Kaabu

1584 Annex Mantua and Trent, vassalize Savoy which has been pared down to a couple of provinces, though like Saluzzo, I can't annex it for lack of adjacency.

1589 Ally His Popeness and lay a claim on Tuscany in preparation for baiting its ally Milan into a war sometime in the future. However, I am three techs behind, so I wait for the moment and build up my economy. My expansion into western Africa has apparently caused a defensive block to form between Songhai, Hausa and Yao, so no advancing in that direction yet. All in all, the map of Western Europe has remained rather static for the first century and a half.

1594

1601 War against Yatenga to bait its guarantor Hausa out of its other alliances.

1616 France loses its great power status.

1625 Invade Tuscany with Fronse and His Popeness. Milan and others defend. Manage to take Genoa's old provinces plus Pisa, but get coalitioned (but not attacked) by Hungary, Austria and a gaggle of German principalities for my trouble. Rush to ally Bavaria, Magdeburg, Strasburg and Three Leagues in defense. If this breaks out into war it'll wreck the Holy Roman Empire. (Thankfully I had invested some "improve relations" diplomat time just in case something like this happens.

Situation... stable.

1632 At long last I have the adjacency to annex Savoy and Saluzzo.

1649 Bohemia declares independence from Hungary (which controls all of Eastern Europe) with France's support. The coalition against me falls apart, leaving me free to... steer clear of Italy for a while, just in case, and push on into Africa's darkest. The remnants of Hausa give me a back-door war declaration against Songhai.

1653 Britain (along with Austria, Morocco and pretty much all of North America) takes advantage of the recent wars to declare war on France. Unable to abandon my most valuable alliance, I reluctantly accept. Cue loans and mercenaries, being at 0 manpower. On Land, Morocco and I focus each other. At sea though, the indomitable Spanish armada make out like... some kind of sea bandits?

- capturing 40+ vessels. Who rules the waves now, putas? After five years of World War -1, in 1658 I get exactly one province out the whole mess.

1662 The PayPal State (no joke, they're loaded) wants to invade Milan... which is Allied with Hungary and Russia. I'm still paying off debts from the last war and haven't rebuilt my military, so, umm, no. I need to spend some quality time with the fam. They force Milan to free another province from old Savoy, Torino... which it so happens I have a claim on. I also happen to have an army right next door. Thanks? You can have this shroud back though, it's dirty.

1675 Bavaria pulls me back into Italian politics faster than I had wanted with an invasion against The Palatinate and its ally Milan. Luckily, since my Aragonese missions auto-core the Mediterranean coast, the computer conquers provinces in my name. Too bad I can only grab a couple or risk another coalition.

1688 Invade Tuscany with all my allies except France, hoping they'll do most of my fighting for me since I'm behind in military tech. It works gloriously. Grab Parma, force them to release Ferrara for my vassalization pleasure. Grab Tuscany's last two provinces. Whaddaya know Jerry, there really a-was-a house in Toscana! Except Three Leagues, my own ally, sacks my capital after liberating it from a siege. I mean, okay, predictable enough behavior for the 1600s, but still, dude, not cool! I'm gonna make the pope proclaim a bull of not cool!

1690s I want to continue my African expansion, but Magdeburg and then Bavaria keep pulling me into Holy Roman Shit. I don't dare give up their alliances though, as France keeps losing ground to Britain. Zilch on territory gains.

1700 Enlightenment appears... in Hanseong, Korea. Okaaayyy... and here I'd been putting up universities in a hurry to rush it for once.

1708 Finally annex Ferrara during a lull in the wars.

1716 France revolts and breaks all its alliances. After all that?!? Swap in Utrecht as my new ally. Buy Enlightenment, tech up to 25 and invade Songhai. Yes, I'm aware of the enlightened irony, but it's now or never. Given I'd forgotten to upgrade my forts (and they hadn't) it turns into a nasty war of attrition lasting until '23.

Mean 250k-strong peasant rebellions after the war too. Yes, multiple ones.

1729 Magdeburg (now Saxony) and Bavaria keep dragging me into wars for their own expansion when what I'd like to do is rebuild my military for a strike on a now weakened France fighting off counter-revolutionary attacks. At least I'm rich enough to keep some mercenaries on my payroll permanently. By the time I finish a time-consuming invasion of Bohemia (ruining my relation with them) just so Saxony can annex one stinkin' province, my window for moving on France has closed. And all because of Freakin' Pomerania once again, I swear, what is your major malfunction, Rostock?

1739 Britain hits France again, creating... maybe... an opportunity? Three Leagues joins the revolution and breaks alliance... but not before pulling me into a war against Switzerland causing Hungary to jump in as well, so once again I can't afford to capitalize on France's troubles.

Grab Utrecht as replacement ally. And then Strasbourg calls me into another war against Baden. Saxony breaks its alliance to also join the Three Leagues war against me. Freakin' Pomerania! Ally Bohemia. Utrecht breaks its alliance as well to join in this piddling little war that has almost cost me the game by this point, because by 1743 anti-war revolts are already starting to break out. I pay 6800+ ducats just to get out of the damn quagmire. Re-ally Utrecht and (against my better judgment) Freakin' Pomerania.

1750 Bohemia breaks its alliance to stick by France, after I'd tried buttering them up to break up the bloc. Fine, be that way. Still giving me no chance to move against France, the Turks invade me. (And I was aready fighting Otto-mans up North!) I let my allies handle the Eastern front (about time they made themselves useful) and focus on knocking Morocco and Hausa out early, before going head-on against a solid million janissaries. Again the Spanish armada triumphs, capturing 57 ships in a single battle. And a big thank you to all the West-Africans rebelling against me only to whittle down Ottoman armies instead. Herzegovina changes hands about six? seven? times over five years (man, they just cannot catch a break over there) and by '55 I settle for grabbing the Barbary Coast from Morocco then just some cash to wrap things up before allies bail and attrition and rebellions lose this for me. Phew. Close one.

1757 Strasbourg gets vassalized by Hungary when I'm not looking. Ally Austria as replacement. Saxony and Bavaria spend the next few years mopping up revolutionary statelets in the HRE. Now if only someone would distract Fronse long enough for me to snag that southern border... in '59 the Brits decide to do just that, let's see how it goes.

1761 Finish Offensive Ideas for that +5 discipline bonus, grab the Horse Artillery policy (+10% artillery power) proclaim my golden age for a morale bonus, take a deep breath and (even though I'm below half my manpower reserves) invade France. Crush the revolution! Scatter the peasant scum! (capture a bit of real estate while we're at it) for our rightful ancestral rightness of rights!

They can't possibly beat all this... can they?

Complicating matters, my ally Utrecht ends up on the other side of the conflict through a different war, and the bellicose gauls tech up to military level 28 two years before I can. Luckily they spend their initial efforts on the Brits as planned and I manage to hold the southern half of their territory, and the Bavarians hold off their Bohemian allies.

Paris falls in March '63, by '64 Bavaria already throws in the towel, so I cut things off at a 48-point peace offer. (Ooopsie, guess I forgot to crush the revolution. That might still kill me if the Brits don't pick up the slack.)

1779 I'd love to keep expanding into Africa, but with its alliance busy against Russia the past couple of years, I doubt I'll get a better chance at France before the game ends. This time I trounce 'em. Aaand it might get me coalitioned, but what the hey, let's capture gay gris Paris. Weirdly, that somehow still does not crush the revolution.

1785 Yet another invasion of the bicentennial Songhai/Morocco/Yao alliance. Gimme. Annex the first, nibble a bit from the others. Most African nations now coalition against me (but don't attack) and y'know, I kinda can't blame 'em. Ten years later, that coalition against me is... still growing? With the Ottomans and France?

1809 Coalition finally disbands.

1811 My golden age expires. For a last hurrah, invade Milan. Hungary and Frronse defend, Bavaria, Austria, Utrecht and His Popeness help me. (The Saxons are conveniently busy fighting the Turks. Freakin' Pomerania. I. Swear!) Knock France out by '15, Hungary by '17, wait until 1820/01/01 to annex Milan due to the inevitable coalition that will this time certainly declare war against me.

Caribbean inherited from Castilla. Not pictured: Greenland.

Conclusions?

1) Unlike my other playthroughs, this campaign had two distinct phases. Until the early-mid 1500s I sank massive amounts of diplomatic power into peaceful annexation, aided by Aragon's quite generous scripted events. With that firm economic base you can move on to forceful expansion afterward.

2) Weirdly, allying France put the brakes on its expansion far more surely than opposing it. It declared war less often, never incorporated its British holdings and fought to a draw with the HRE while rarely calling me in - for fear I'd take half its victims' lunch money or what?

3) Even weirder is how safe Portugal has been in every single playthrough so far. The only one positioned to snatch it up at first is Castile, which has a more immediate problem with Morocco. And that's only if its English alliance gets weakened somehow. After it inevitably balloons into a colonial empire, Portugal's just more trouble than it's worth for its moderate province yield.

4) A Spanish run is Hardcore Catholic. I'd never gotten into it before, but Papal Influence kinda rocks. Sure, the bonuses aren't huge for their lengthy accrual, but they cover areas otherwise hard to address, especially during the early game, like inflation or construction cost. The stability recovery alone saved me well over a thousand administrative power. And the south gives you oh-so-many Muslim provinces to convert for Popery Points.

5) Opposite of Prussia's very high army professionalism, I depended heavily on mercenaries, and thus repeatedly shrugged off initial military losses, winning mostly by attrition. I only noticed when the Economic Hegemon title became available that it includes merc bonuses, so this appears very much by design. Naval power plays into this as well, but I'll address that as an intro to my next post.

6) The Revolution mechanic's weird. I'd assumed capturing the epicenter of the movement (Paris) would allow me to... y'know, DO SOMETHING about it, domestically, but instead it just sits there at 100% completion spawning endless revolts. So the only option to take it down is to declare war with that singular purpose while the center remains foreign. Not the most elegant or nuanced way of handling such a world-changing event. Granted, Revolutionary France really did get dogpiled in real life, but still...

7) Too much of EU4 revolves around gaming the alliance system for ridiculous back-door war declarations denying your enemies their more lucrative allies, especially as your victims' remaining friends rarely take advantage of existing wars, and the coalition system can itself be gamed, if anything, more easily by big empires attacking different geographic regions than by medium-sized nations which must expand in a single region. See my alternating Europe/Africa expansion, and I'm not even good at it. My main gripe remains; the game's designed to favor the big dogs for high score dick-measuring.

8) Computer opponents' insane military strategy prevents Europa Universalis from really standing against other competitors purely as a war game. (Though it more than compensates in other aspects.) Most strikingly, the AI is obsessed with hitting your farthest provinces. It will entirely forego defense for that purpose. While, yes, hitting your soft spot can weaken your economic backing for the war and force you to split your forces, it more often splits the enemy forces even worse, as it usually means longer travel time for them when you can take the shortcut.

Prime example:

Taking the Ragusa and Herzegovina provinces in 1529 made them my best military asset by far, pound for pound, as in every single war the AI prioritized and over-invested in conquering them as a weak spot I'd be unable to protect. Yeah. And also unwilling, uncaring and uninterested to protect. Hungary, the Ottomans, Milan, Bohemia, all of them spent years and armies trudging around the Adriatric while I focused far more important objectives and established a solid, contiguous front line. Moreover, since my allies shared the same obsession, it resulted in a hilarious back-and-forth as the fortress got taken, re-taken, un-taken, tooken, tokened and Tookished half a dozen times during a couple of the lengthier engagements.

But hey, I guess we can call that an apt illustration of the region's history.

I'm sure my hordes of attentive readers are eagerly awaiting a cactus update. It is a tale of stalwart endurance, moral failing and sabotage most devious. Bought back in 2017, it rapidly outgrew its seedling pot, and by 2018 was cozily residing on a windowsill in a palm-sized replacement mixed with aquarium gravel for drainage.

(The seedling pot was present but shall not be visible as an aquarium decoration in an upcoming snail saga.)

By the start of 2021 it was visibly failing to thrive.

Its roots however had developed quite well, so once re-re-potted by its lazy slob of a wolfman caretaker, it started piling upwards and outwards.

2023

Sadly when it came time to re-re-re-pot the silly thing again this year (that lightweight, peat mossy cactus potting mix stuff had settled so badly that the pot's rim was cutting off its light) I allowed myself to be badgered by a self-appointed expert into sticking a fertilizer stick into its soil against my voiced protests, which promptly poisoned it to death.

May 2025. R.I.P.

So, strangely, though I joked about this "life affirming symbol of continuity" possibly dying as an extension of my own suicidal depression seven years ago, its demise instead ultimately demonstrated that my own marginal competence is still better than letting a busybody interfere.

 

You know who you are.