Written by esotericdev

Sex: Sex, Culture and Fiction

Ok, let’s talk about some sex; we’ve not talked about sex that much lately. What I’d like to touch upon today, are specifically the various roles sex plays in human interactions and, by extension, the different narrative contexts that can come up for it when writing some good old fiction. This will start with what I observe to be some of the less healthy approaches commonly seen in both reality and fiction (by extension), and from there, I’ll spin it out into some other cases, not all of them exactly positive.

Written by esotericdev

Lore: Valerian; All Of Me

Mages are, in the end, human. The story of a mage is the story of a person, only superficially distinct from the story of any other human. In this text, we see excerpts from the life of a mage, retold in an autobiography spanning nearly 150 years. Memories of childhood, personal accomplishments and tragedies.

Written by esotericdev

Voices – Part II – Voices With Dialect

Voices! Let’s talk about voices and the rather unique position the English language has when it comes to them. It’s, after all, the lingua franca of the modern world… or is it? There are different English dialects, after all, and there is a question of how they mix together within the bounds of a single work. An issue that’s a bit of a personal problem for me in my endeavours.

Written by esotericdev

Lore: Hyperreal

There is a tendency humans have, to treat the quality of humanity as something more than it is. This often translates to treating humans as an absolute. The word humane, for example, which we hold to have moral meaning etymologically merely refers to us and, with the language used, carries unfortunate connotations towards the… inhumane and the inhuman as being lesser. This excerpt tackles the issue of a rather simple notion – humans are real, right?

Written by esotericdev

Lore: Maladaptive Oneiromancy

In the real world, we often encounter people espousing various pseudo-scientific and pseudo-intellectual ideas about lucid dreaming. But in this world, there is much more to dreams and the process of dreaming. For mages, it is normal to dream lucidly, and their ability to manipulate the fabric of the dreamlands is much greater than for an average person. As such, maladaptive ways of dreaming arise. Taps the mind sets for itself on the other side of the Gate.

Written by esotericdev

Voices – Part I – Finding The Right Voice

The voice of a written piece usually refers to the idiolect used by the narrator. That doesn’t always happen, of course, as there are, for example, written works without a narrator at all. But here, I want to speak of pretty much the exact opposite – works that use multiple voices and how working on my game exposed me to some issues I’ve uniquely experienced through it.

Written by esotericdev

Lore: Unsolved Cases, Vol 13

How readily recognisable is the difference between madness and the deeper truths of reality? That is also part of the nature of reality, that deep knowledge of its underpinnings appears indistinguishable from insanity. In this fragment a group of mages struggle to comprehend a difficult issue, but one excerpt among many who stumped the wizened.

Written by esotericdev

Game Developers Lie To You

Listen, this is probably not going to be pleasant to read and possibly a bit of a mess, but I want to address something about game design. Many game developers outright lie about game development and, specifically, its difficulty. This most often happens with overhyped and underdelivering mainstream games, but it doesn’t mean that all or only AAA games fall into this pattern of behaviour. It’s a much more nuanced issue regarding where and why the blame falls.

Written by esotericdev

Lore: Scars Upon The Soul

Inhabitants of this setting live as a duality of what is called the soul and the body. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the soul can bleed and hurt. Here we see excerpts of musings about the subject coming from a few sources. The thought come from personal introspection or observation, but the conclusions are similar.