GCU "Having a quiet time here"

Also, the COSMIC IRONY of leftish crowd quoting cryptofascist [see Moorcook's Epic Pooh on it, though even if cleaned of bait-ish parts, toryism of Tolkien is relatively open] to combat technofascistic tendencies is not lost on me too.

The layers of irony that are uncovered at the very moment we consider that "Last Ringbearer", Tolkin-based fic with "good techies of Mordor" by Russian author played it's role in Thiel's Reign Of Darkness called Palantir, are even worse.

(Do I have stance on AI? Yeah, basically "Pope is right that unchecked AI is dangerous, but AI can be immensely useful, and yeah, I doubt the take on AI having no moral agency - for all it's worth, we may be overselling the amount of such agency in humans, like it was with vitalism in biology long time ago")

Colour me intrigued, I'll risk pre-ordering the game.

On a beloved topic of the Tumblr: humans as space orks. Extinct space orks this time; and you're playing the alien xenologist, researching ruins on their planet (common designation Sol-3, self-referenced by locals as either "Dirt" or "Mud", depending on which reconstruction tradition you rely). Underpaid, overworked, biased xenologist with extremely limited resources for this specific dig.

Basically, bureaucratic comedy / anthropological commentary, dedicated to sci-fi writers.

Special thanks: Ivga, my beloved, for UI/UX improvements in Ukrainian version of the game, and Lanaya, my good friend, for art for UA version cover.

In English

In Ukrainian

Finished 7.3 last week (shout out to my beloved who helped me to gear out my main class). Few notes:

- Significant improvement on cutscene direction at 7.2 onwards. Really a quality jump, cutscenes making sense, "show more than you tell" and even "we will transport your character in another location at the end, if it's logical thing to do". Like... having high hopes towards 8.0 after that. Story is rather simplistic, but execution growth...

- Okay, direction moment of "we are the Big Damn Heroes, our WoL shields *spoiler* from *spoiler* attack in post-trial cutscene" is literally "ending of 7.0 directed RIGHT".

- Okay, okay, IDK if it is me, or it is real, and if it is, then why - YoshiP, or they had pulled Ishikawa-sama back, or is it KojiFox, but they are beating the WE WILL RATIONALLY SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS AND ACHIEVE TRANSHUMANISTIC VICTORY OVER DEATH for TWO. FULL. EXPANSIONS. Yeah, people, I've got ya, you hate the idea.

- But. What is worthy to note. Spoilers ahead.

Calyx is literally an enemy with modus operandi of Elidibus, to a point: "I will show you the visions of real people you are killing" (remember 5.1-5.3, yeah?), and even "I will throw at you the Primal made of my deepest feeling". But at the same time, and I believe it is intentional, it is underscored: he is ACTING like Elidibus, but not of love - of hatred. It's like again DRK are privileged class for this story: "remember moogles teaching you about love? Dark Knigth with love becomes Hades or Elidibus; Dark Knight without love becomes Calyx". Brilliant bastard. My WoL wants to repurpose compute powers hosting this sad dead boy to run the stupidest and most irrational moogle calculations, just to humiliate Calyx... and - it's a nice feeling.

- But Calyx is THINKING in a way that would make Elidibus shudder. He is genuinely abominable by old guard standards (still hadn't seen 7.4!!!), with his "let us use star's aether to fuel our deathless future".

I mean; one moment you go through your feed in Tumblr, and it's usual mix of informational/funny/just shitposting stuff.

And then suddenly something clicks, and you look at the most unhinged, meganiche ultravague shitpost.

And Literal Mind goes "okay. Person who wrote it, meant literally whatever is there. In a cold blood. Absolutely seriously. No irony. No hidden senses. We need to understand the world model in which such position makes sense, because literally nobody would write in internet anything they don't mean and noone means any non-logical stuff; every post written has all consequences measured and agreed with".

And you sit there and in the very best case you manage to catch yourself by the tail and prevent the increasingly embarrassing act of ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN SHITPOSTING.

Few points worth of note, all relevant at 7.0 (maybe some of it is processed better later), except for the last one, which is about side content, though:

- Brilliant ideas, lousy execution. I don't mean "Wuk Lamat is stupid" - nope, she is actually pretty cool... as soon as you get the idea behind her. No. I mean, "lots of stuff is told rather than shown", "writers sometimes forget the specifics of their character cast", "we had too little time to bond with Alexandria for it to hit us proper" and other hiccups of execution phase. Won't elaborate, I know a person who is determined to write about it in details, so I don't want to steal her thunder.

- Living Memory specifically has much more emotional weight for some classes than others. You are DRK main? Welcome to the trip down the Memory Lane, "I wanted to do exactly this kind of shit when I was in a dark place of my mind during Stromblood". You are BLM main? Liberally quoting my good friend, "it's a mausoleum full of hungry undead, and it's my job to put them to rest". Is it so personal for DRG? For RDM? Not sure.

- Living Memory is not Amaurot, and I wish to stress that. Amaurot was extremely personal Hades' imprint of memories - to remind something to himself or to show us why he is doing all of it. Living Memory is Sphene's programming quirk, "I must do it because I must". Sphene in 7.0 is not Hades. It's Elidibus. Poor construct losing it's mind over contradictory instructions.

- Oh yes. It's hilarious: we have second (maybe third, though debatable about Elidibus) case of "what caused this hell? - poorly constrained AI, whose creators failed to solve alignment properly". Though, Meteion as Von Neumann probe was a metaphor better hidden (nothing of trappings surrounding her was of sci-fi origin; but concept as-is was the most hard sci-fi thing in FF14 I ever saw) than Sphene with her direct "all of Alexandria is made of pure computronium", it's funny that deranged AIs almost ended this star twice in a row. Especially funny for me due to unrelated reasons.

It's (at least, in-setting) a clearly visible order of steps: first, Emet-Selch devices Calamity of Lighting in Alexandria's world (high-tech imperial conflict - we all know who stands behind such stuff, laughing from the shadows, right? Also, "we had recreated Lifestream process, but artificially" - Twelve bear witness, this stinks of Hades)

And then he sees Living Memory, the theme park full of ghosts of the dead.

...and then he builds Amaurot on First, his very own living memory of days past.

Because, it turns out, I have a very good example of one. Quite obvious and scary as hell, I suppose.

Being bad at writing horror, so I'll just describe: as far as pure Slaughter domains are the endless bloodied trenches, Vast/Slaughter domain will be tad cleaner. No less horrible, though.

A sea during unrestricted submarine warfare.

Miles and miles of the sea (Vast), both over and under the surface (Vast), where each ship besides one you are on is perceived as an enemy (Slaughter). Seems simple? But this is not the full scale of it. Because... submarines.

So, you are experiencing this hell of a naval warfare while being in a small metal shell. Where any sound could unmask you for Enemy's acoustic detection. And if the sub breaks, well... it's a bad death, anyway. And you are under the pressing mass of water, hunter and prey at the same time.

And it goes this way: either you are on the surface, and death comes suddenly, any moment, but if you hear the movement, you can deliver it to Enemy. Or you are underwater, with the same rules. Slaughter of the war. And Vast of an open sea.

Now I can't shake off the vision of Estinien "Wyrmblood" Varlineau scaring the living shit out of the ex-Stazi agent in a cafe in Berlin.