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Day 102: shower thoughts
Thursday, 2 July 2020 08:51 amGawsh, that was an unconscionably large posting gap. In the featureless slide of lockdown days it's fatal to get out of the habit of posting, weeks have drifted past before you know it. Something about the comparative blandness of days at home makes time go weirdly fast, even with the enormous and horrible events happening out there - they are still strangely distant.
I cannot tell a lie, however, my absence from Teh Intarwebs for the last couple of weeks has more than a little to do with the fact that I finished playing Witcher 3 and went straight back to replay 1 and 2 in quick succession, more or less in a spirit of enquiry. Did I hate 2 as much as I did first time round? oh hell yes, the Roche path is even worse than the Iorveth one. But I enjoyed 1 again, as much for its nostalgia value as anything else. While replaying I was struck by how similar in feel it is to DA Origins, just in level of graphics and underlying assumptions about gameplay, my guess would be that they came out in approximately the same year. (A quick google reveals I am almost correct: 2007 and 2009, respectively). Am now embarked happily on 3 again, which was the whole point of the replay (I will be completist or nothing, dammit). I am revelling in its beautiful design.
South Africa has yet, I think, to hit its true COVID peak, I suspect our worst times are ahead of us, so I am in no way complacent about this, but I am still reeling at how badly the whole thing is being handled in the UK and, particularly, the US. There is no excuse, absolutely none, for a major global power and highly developed nation to screw up disaster management this badly. I keep reading reports of Trump or Johnson doing their typical destructive flailing, and thinking, gods, they are actually trying to kill people, this is Scrooge's “they had better [die], and decrease the surplus population".
But a slightly different Shower Thought struck me the other night. If America were a fantasy novel, this whole thing would be a giant cautionary tale about the hideous energies unleashed when a Manifest Destiny goes wrong. Can you imagine how much, even with the cumbersome corruptions of the American political system to circumvent, Hillary would be kicking butt responding to this whole crisis? There would be none of this nonsense about science denialism, or not wearing masks, or opening businesses again. Her particular brand of energetic, hard-headed efficiency was clearly designed by merciful Cosmic Wossnames to lead the US out of this horrible thing with minimal loss. Trump stealing that election drove destiny off course, causing backlashes of cosmic energy which ensured that (a) he was the exact inverse of the Destined One, absolutely the worst possible person to respond to this particular challenge, and (b) everything would go spectacularly to hell in the most extreme way possible. Thus plagues and rains of fire and riots and murder hornets. Barring a plucky band of chosen heroes to overthrow the Big Bad, we're doomed.
I cannot tell a lie, however, my absence from Teh Intarwebs for the last couple of weeks has more than a little to do with the fact that I finished playing Witcher 3 and went straight back to replay 1 and 2 in quick succession, more or less in a spirit of enquiry. Did I hate 2 as much as I did first time round? oh hell yes, the Roche path is even worse than the Iorveth one. But I enjoyed 1 again, as much for its nostalgia value as anything else. While replaying I was struck by how similar in feel it is to DA Origins, just in level of graphics and underlying assumptions about gameplay, my guess would be that they came out in approximately the same year. (A quick google reveals I am almost correct: 2007 and 2009, respectively). Am now embarked happily on 3 again, which was the whole point of the replay (I will be completist or nothing, dammit). I am revelling in its beautiful design.
South Africa has yet, I think, to hit its true COVID peak, I suspect our worst times are ahead of us, so I am in no way complacent about this, but I am still reeling at how badly the whole thing is being handled in the UK and, particularly, the US. There is no excuse, absolutely none, for a major global power and highly developed nation to screw up disaster management this badly. I keep reading reports of Trump or Johnson doing their typical destructive flailing, and thinking, gods, they are actually trying to kill people, this is Scrooge's “they had better [die], and decrease the surplus population".
But a slightly different Shower Thought struck me the other night. If America were a fantasy novel, this whole thing would be a giant cautionary tale about the hideous energies unleashed when a Manifest Destiny goes wrong. Can you imagine how much, even with the cumbersome corruptions of the American political system to circumvent, Hillary would be kicking butt responding to this whole crisis? There would be none of this nonsense about science denialism, or not wearing masks, or opening businesses again. Her particular brand of energetic, hard-headed efficiency was clearly designed by merciful Cosmic Wossnames to lead the US out of this horrible thing with minimal loss. Trump stealing that election drove destiny off course, causing backlashes of cosmic energy which ensured that (a) he was the exact inverse of the Destined One, absolutely the worst possible person to respond to this particular challenge, and (b) everything would go spectacularly to hell in the most extreme way possible. Thus plagues and rains of fire and riots and murder hornets. Barring a plucky band of chosen heroes to overthrow the Big Bad, we're doomed.
