EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
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User ID: 78
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
1d ago
I replayed Doom 1 with the Unseen Evil mod, which makes it look like Doom 64. It added an impressive psychological depth to the techbase levels of E1, but I felt that the slow descent into Hell in the other episodes was marred by the subdued colours. You can't really tell that the pool of blood is a pool of blood, nor can you tell the flesh textures apart from rock. It did give E2 a somewhat interesting gothic feel, but you never felt the slowly increasing spiritual fear that it invoked in me the first time I beat it. For E3, only Mt. Erebus was creepy.
In the original, the high point (or the low, depending on how you look at it) was House of Pain, with the tortured humans which may have been a Mussolini reference- effective, because up till that point the tortured sprites made one fear that it would be your fate too, but now one sees it from the outside, as witnessing someone who might have deserved his fate. In the mod, it was quite dull.
They also altered the end text, which meant that the theme of apparently eternal suffering was lost. Though I consider the end of Doom 1 to be in a strange way a good ending; once you reach Earth, it poses a question: has your soul been tormented enough that you give up just when the proof that you're not dead (ie. your continued existence on Earth, rather than the afterlife) is right in front of to you? The entire game was about wondering what you did to deserve this. If you're alive, you still have a chance to turn back...
Great mod nevertheless. It might make Doom 2 interesting, if I ever get through it.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
6d ago
So, what are you reading?
I've finished Churchill's Savrola. The latter half is a long revolution, with a focus on the fighting. Now that it's over, I can't say that it has been particularly memorable, but maybe I'll come back to it in the future. I found its specific interests of personality and capability, and its realistic, detailed style to be interesting. Not a bad read. I'll definitely be reading other writings of Churchill, though it seems like this was his only novel.
When all deductions had been made on the scores of ambition, duty, excitement, or fame, there remained an unabsorbed residuum of pure emptiness. What was the good of it all? He thought of the silent silent streets; in a few hours they would echo with the crackle of musketry. Poor broken creatures would be carried bleeding to the houses, whose doors terrified women would close in the uncharitable haste of fear. Others, flicked out of human ken from solid concrete earth to unknown, unformulated abstractions, would lie limp and reproachful on the paving-stones. And for what? He could not find an answer to the question. The apology for his own actions was merged in the much greater apology nature would have to make for the existence of the human species. Well, he might be killed himself; and as the thought occurred to him he looked forward with a strange curiosity to that sudden change, with perhaps its great revelation. The reflection made him less dissatisfied with the shallow ends of human ambition. When the notes of life ring false, men should correct them by referring to the tuning-fork of death. It is when that clear menacing tone is heard that the love of life grows keenest in the human heart.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
13d ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm about halfway through Churchill's Savrola. It's basically a political conflict between authoritarian President Molara and democratic agitator Savrola, with a woman in the middle. It's actually engaging, though the dialogue can be quite stilted. The focus is on the game of ambition and the necessary qualities to win in it, and the characters seem divided on either side between the people who matter and the people who need a firm hand. Probably it is more fascinating than it otherwise would be because of who wrote it, but I think I would like it anyways.
Was it worth it? The struggle, the labour, the constant rush of affairs, the sacrifice of so many things that make life easy, or pleasant—for what? A people’s good! That, he could not disguise from himself, was rather the direction than the cause of his efforts. Ambition was the motive force, and he was powerless to resist it. He could appreciate the delights of an artist, a life devoted to the search for beauty, or of sport, the keenest pleasure that leaves no sting behind. To live in dreamy quiet and philosophic calm in some beautiful garden, far from the noise of men and with every diversion that art and intellect could suggest, was, he felt, a more agreeable picture. And yet he knew that he could not endure it. "Vehement, high, and daring" was his cast of mind. The life he lived was the only one he could ever live; he must go on to the end. The end comes often early to such men, whose spirits are so wrought that they know rest only in action, contentment in danger, and in confusion find their only peace.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
20d ago
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most engaging parts of Said's The Question of Palestine were when he did literary analysis of novels and colonial writings. A lot of interesting facts or claims or documents about Israeli oppression and violence appeared, which will keep me busy for some time in reading up.
The prose is characteristically smooth, and ultimately his appeal for common sense, dedication and looking beyond the initial appearance of the Other had an impact, albeit mainly in abstract. This was likely because of my own lack of historical knowledge, which made it difficult to come up with an opinion on the topic at hand.
But also, Said's case sometimes seems to rest on the ability to ignore what people say and observe instead the context underlying their actions and words. I'm a firm believer in putting less faith in what people say, but one wonders if in this case it doesn't amount to casually dismissing the Israeli position while pig-headedly proclaiming that the cause of Palestinian liberation is really about democracy.
I can't easily call to mind any specific instance of this from this book, but in the third book in this trilogy, Covering Islam (which I'm still reading), Said takes issue with the framing of Hezbollah as a "terrorist, militant Shi'a group backed by Iran," and says that they are better understood as guerrillas whose purpose was to resist the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Failing to call them guerrillas means that "resistance is both dehumanized and rendered illegitimate." Granted that the context matters, isn't it natural that the religious element, the anti-Zionism and the ties to Iran matter to Israel and its allies from a security perspective?
It doesn't help that many things which have lost some trust with me are cited: Chomsky, United Nations, Amnesty International, etc. I suppose it goes both ways, as Said makes me wonder if perhaps I have been too hard on Chomsky after reading about the Khmer Rouge stuff.
I've come to believe that Said's books are genuinely important, but mainly because figuring out what he got right and got wrong may point a way forward to understanding. On their own, I have decidedly mixed feelings.
In broader strokes, many parts serve as a plea for things of merit. Ultimately Said wants a solution which allows both Israelites and Palestinians to see each other as the human beings that they are. A quote from Covering Islam, because I didn't highlight the interesting ones in Palestine, and because the same theme runs throughout it:
But what I really believe in is the existence of a critical sense and of citizens able and willing to use it to get beyond the special interests of experts and their idées recues. By using the skills of a good critical reader to disentangle sense from nonsense, by asking the right questions and expecting pertinent answers, anyone can learn...At that point, humanistic knowledge begins and communal responsibility for that knowledge begins to be shouldered.
I really like this side of Said, whatever else I may think. Unquestionably, these books have encouraged me to keep listening and thinking, and to seek a more involved understanding than I have thus far.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
20d ago
So, what are you reading?
I've finished Said's The Question of Palestine, Thoughts below. Not much progress on Savrola. Giving McLuhan's The Classical Trivium another try; the third or so that I've read has stayed with me.
EdenicFaithful
Dark Wizard of Ravenclaw
27d ago
So, what are you reading?
I'm finished with Sayers' Whose Body. Lord Whimsey was great, and it had enough intensity at times to grab my interest. I feel like the confrontation was a missed opportunity, given the convergence of themes which was implicit in the scene. A good read nevertheless.
Picking up Churchill's Savrola, because it has occurred to me that I've read more Hitler and Stalin than Churchill.
I'm not into Doom enough to play mods or player-made levels in general, but Doom has definitely followed me around. Unseen Evil was a lucky find, because Doom 64 certainly has an interesting style.
As for the pitch, I think that in the old days people made a lot out of a little. Doom's aesthetic is exquisitely made once you look past the fast paced, gung-ho exterior, and ponder the mysteries of the UAC and the terror they discovered. Even the simple title screen music, paired with the cover art, has always brought to mind a feeling of moral horror.
But you have to be in the mood to look for things to appreciate. The first time that I really started paying attention was in E2. In the Deimos Lab, near the end after you step on a teleporter, you're confronted with a moving wall which shows faces of the damned. A little further, you see a pool of blood flowing from a gothic face in the wall. The implication, or so it seemed to me, was that Hell was as a place which converts souls into mere blood.
There's an underlying intensity that gets obscured by the now household nature of the name Doom, and probably the old moral panic that surrounded it has made people less attuned to the genuinely strange and frightening themes which saturate it. The Doom experience, at least of the original 3 episodes, is a slowly unfolding, prismatic vision of what Hell really means. Add to this the generally high quality of all its aspects (though the level design never gets as good as E1 again, and the last level was aptly named Dis[appointment]) and you have a game that matters.
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