It’s a snow day and my eyes are stinging for some reason, so work is taking a back seat. So, I wanted to write this…
As you may or may not be aware, I’m writing the next Elementary book. Calista has been busy winding herself up over certain people conducting bad science. In this case, it’s the classic kind: I know what my conclusion is, let me find evidence to prove it. It’s amusing in fiction and, of course, those who do it will get their just desserts because it’s fiction. But I’ve also spent the day seeing it happening in real life.
The totally harmless version of this is from Genshin Impact lore. I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin Impact for the past year and, me being me, I’m interested in the lore of the game which is, quite frankly, huge and complex. Seriously, they dragged in elements from just about every major philosophy, mythology, and religion to create the background for a gacha video game! Awesome. You can find lore videos all over YouTube. I recommend Ashikai’s channel, if you feel the need to see what I’m talking about, because she seems to do her research, admits when a theory is probably just guesswork, and has a really soothing voice.
Many theories revolve around Paimon. For those unaware, Paimon is both our in-game companion and mouthpiece, and the ‘face’ of the user interface. One can click a button and enter the Paimon menu which gives access to various user interface features such as the shop, the wishing mechanism, the exit button, and more or less everything else. (This bit’s important) When you enter this menu, your character freezes and Paimon pops out to fly around in front of you. (And, on a PS5, if you blow on the microphone in your controller, it blows Paimon about, which is just the stupidest cool thing ever.) Various people have used this freezing to ‘prove’ that Paimon is a degraded version of the Goddess of Time. There’s other evidence, but here it is: when Paimon appears on-screen in the menu, time stops. Paimon has control over time. Ergo, Paimon is the Goddess of Time.
Except… Now, pointed out in many of these videos is the fact that the wind still blows. You can see it moving grass and leaves, etc. So, Paimon doesn’t stop the wind. Ah, but you see, the wind is associated with Time for various reasons I won’t explain (but they make a little sense), so she wouldn’t stop the wind. And water keeps flowing. But she wouldn’t stop the water for, um, reasons. And butterflies still fly… When I noticed the butterflies, I went looking. Turns out, there’s no discernible pattern to what stops and what remains animated. Named NPCs freeze. Unnamed NPCs remain animated. Cats (probably dogs, maybe other animals) freeze. The robot police officers in the new area (Fontaine) freeze. It’s not consistent. One thing is for certain, it’s nothing to do with Paimon’s true nature. It’s probably some feature of the game engine.
Someone had a theory about something. They went looking for evidence to prove it. They did not do the research, stopping when they found evidence to back their claim and not checking to see whether it really did. Bad science. But it’s hardly going to break the world.
In other news, Trump won Iowa. Early this morning, I watched something about this saying, ‘Look, barely 50% of Republicans actually voted for him. How terrible.’ At lunchtime, I watched another video which pointed out that no one has ever got 50% of the vote in Iowa. Trump won by 10% more than anyone has ever managed before. Bad science. Someone has been huffing so much copium that they didn’t bother looking at the actual statistics (probably at all; it’s propaganda; both sides can put out propaganda, and do). This could break the world, and it made me kind of nauseous.
It feels like this kind of thing is getting worse. When it comes to the lore of a video game, who cares? When it’s becoming the most common mode of operation regarding politics and even science, we have a real problem.
Sorry for the rant. Had to get it off my chest. And my eyes are feeling a little better now, so maybe I’ll get some work done. Big heroic seen coming up for an unexpected character. And now you’ll have to wait until April to find out who! Bwahaha!
Witches and Ray-Guns 
I think a lot of people are beginning to come to that same conclusion, and that gives me hope.
Hope is always nice. 🙂
With video games, the designers are always torn between lore, realism and what they can push the hardware to do. Money is the big modifier. Will the studio pay for it? Will the players put up with it?
A simple example in World of Warcraft is your mount. The original designers debated how you would store your mount and then deploy them. In the game your mount appears and disappears in a puff of smoke. Nobody like the idea of having to either stable your mount in town or tie them to the nearest tree. Realistic, but not fun. It doesn’t mean you shrink them and stuff them in your pack. The process on the screen is a shorthand for what a real person would go through with a horse. Too much realism and immersion is boring.
Some people might like the idea of seeing their character go to the bathroom(looking at you sims) but is that what you want to spend your gaming time on.
Real life is another kettle of fish. Bad science then usually comes down to money and time.
I gave up on the US in 2016 and I LIVE here. When you have a choice between a REALLY bad liar (Hilary) and a DAMN GOOD liar (Trump), does it really matter who gets it? You are going to be lied to.
At least, I thought that before January 6. Now? No one cares that we are in a trainwreck. All they care about is their personal power. Nothing new about that, but the WAY they go about it…
All these people touting Trump as a ‘great leader’ have no IDEA what leadership actually is. They see a big strong bully with no inhibitions and think he is a good leader. He is not. If you look at his actual track record in office as opposed to the propaganda, the most important things he did were 1) Packing the supreme court so he can get away with crimes and 2) Betraying every single one of the oaths he swore.
Good leaders care about the people they lead. They USE those people to achieve their goals, but do not throw them away for no gain. FDR and Winston Churchill were good leaders if very controversial men. Every time anyone compares Trump to those two I laugh, because there IS no comparison. FDR and Churchhill sacrificed a lot to lead their nations in time of war. Trump is making everyone ELSE sacrifice so he can have his war.
Oh, and um, all of those who compare Trump to Adolph? Again, no comparison. Adolph and his followers had standards that had to be met and loyalty was a major one of those standards. Trump is loyal to himself and no one else.
Good thing I probably won’t live to see him burn the US down. Win or lose the election, that is what he will do. After all, that is what his hero Vladimir and his buddies in the Taliban want. Why should he care about the US?
But you’re not bitter…
Sorry to make a joke when this is clearly a serious situation you care about, but, yeah, if you can’t laugh what can you do?
TBH, when I was a lot younger, I was worried about nuclear war, and that went away. Nukes were not really a problem. No one’s going to use them, and if they try they probably won’t work. And now I’m back to worrying about WW3. And that’s assuming the scenario in my Tatsu books doesn’t come true and the robots get us.
If you listen closely, you can probably hear me laughing. It may sound a little hysterical.
Yeah, when I was a kid, nuclear war was the boogeyman around the corner and under the bed. Civil defense drills still happened in my area until 1989. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and I had hope, but that hope faded over the years.
Now? We have people leading countries whose SOLE exposure to war is TV, movies and video games. Why wouldn’t they go nuclear if they think it will win? It is not insanity if THEY do it after all, naming no names.
I am bitter. I am sad. I am dying and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Maybe another year, but probably not. I am selfish enough to hope that I go before the nukes start flying, because they will.
My grandfather put it quite well- ‘WMDs are no joke. Anyone who says they are is insane.’
And 1 guess what good ol’ Donald regularly jokes about with his best buddies… He is one of the few on this planet who I believe WOULD fire them off with no regrets at all. Probably at Americans.
Yeah. Laughing.
Nuclear War isn’t what scares me the worst. It is one of those big rocks zipping through the Earth’s orbit. We have as little defense as a guy in the bottom of a well getting bowling balls dropped on his head.
Trump is one of a long line of leaders in the U.S. who were incompetent at best and evil and vindictive at worst. Most of our history as a country has consisted of bouncing from one crisis to another. Up till WW1 we were always trying to pick fights with England. If it weren’t the Empires problems in Europe we would have got our clock cleaned.
It would be very hard to make man extinct. We survived some pretty drastic changes to the earth. What could do it is not AI but race of supermen who decide to pull the plug on humanity 1.0.