My Cousin-in-law's dogs. Cute!

Decentralization

Adminisk8or

11/27/2022

Well, the most interesting thing I think I can talk about this week is the efforts I made to de-Google both my and my Wife's lives. For me, I finally setup my own CarDAV server and even WebCAL. It was actually surprisingly fairly easy- it was just a matter of making sure to back things up before jumping ship, and knowing what I was doing. On my wife's end, she is finally de-Googled from her photo library. It's all backed up now, locally. And she's now starting to use Brave browser in lieu of Chrome. All in all, pretty good progress. It's slow progress, but I will always hold to the claim that the most important changes are the small and subtle ones that take a long time.

Aside from that, I suppose I feel like I should make a quick, fun and interesting rant about a very peculiar game. For most folk who are familiar at all with gaming in the last ten or so years, the title "P.T." is a well known one. It was a hugely celebrated title from 2014- which wasn't actually a title, but rather a "playable trailer" (hence the name P.T.). If you are unfamiliar with what the game was like, the only reason I would recommend seeing a playthrough of it would be to admire the cinematography and visual storytelling... but it comes at a cost.

I acknowledge that what follows is frankly just opinion, but I hope readers will take it with some consideration. Especially in recent years, there has been a rather interesting surge in media, be it games, films, news stories, etc. which promote themselves as being "dark" and "edgy" and not abiding by typical storytelling rules. And here, I want to make it plainly clear, I think a good bit of dark storytelling and shadowy elements are not only important, but vital to any good story. I can't count how many books, movies and games I love that not only have dark and evil elements in them, but sometimes the ending isn't exactly a happy one, either. Heck, my favorite book of all time is "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury.

But there's a continuum, and somewhere on that continuum, there is a grey area where things go from pretty dark to pitch black. I won't say P.T. is pitch black, in that regard, but it definitely swims into waters darker than I think it should. I will repeat, I fully endorse a bit of mystery and opposition to any good story. But I believe I see a trend happening. There are film series, games and movies being produced, which make some of this evil much more real and powerful than I think it deserves. One film in particular I will not utter here, just because of how much it disturbs me to my core. P.T., in my book, is almost fine enough to get past that issue... but just due to the nature of they story told, it falls right into that problem category.

I will repeat, once again, that what I'm going on about is mainly personal opinion, and anyone should feel fine to disagree to any degree with it; but I believe a story should leave us walking away with something- whether it be an uplifting happy ending, an unexplained mystery, questions that make us think about our lives, etc. With games like P.T.? I feel like it just takes. It takes a little portion of the hope and humanity that resides in all of us, and replaces it with darkness and fear. Does it have that exact effect on everyone? I don't think so, but I believe most of us, whether we realize or not, fall into that category.

Now, on the other hand, with the existence of that game, it is with a good round of laughter that I came across another game, ...sort of... inspired by it. "Q.T." Never heard of it? I can't blame you, as it wasn't very popular at its release five years after P.T. I love this game so much, actually, I'm not even going to explain almost a thing about it. Rather, I'll just leave you with a download link, here, to play it yourself. But I will finish my rant, by hailing back to something I think I've almost definitely said in at least one other blog entry. What is the antidote to fear and evil? Laughter. There is nothing more damning to demons than a good, true laugh that emanates straight from your core! I am a witness who will stand by that with my life.

Speaking of "witness", I've been playing "The Witness".... I guess more on what I think of it once I've actually completed it, though. Until next time, see ya!