Life as a Bloodborne Cooperator: Part 1

Hello there, my name is Skuttle and I am a cooperator. Today is my first day on the job, and I'm praying all goes well. My aim is to impress so I'm wearing my best attire and ringing my charming little bell, lying in wait. I'm going to help people. That's what I'm here for, it's what I was made to do. Running into the heat of battle in a world infested with blood-drunk monsters doesn't scare me, if anything it has the opposite affect. I feel invigorated, powerful and most of all, unbeatable. Nothing will best me, I won't let it. No beast, ghoul or hunter will prevail, no matter how equally matched they are, or even how outmatched I am. I will find a way.
  Oh, here we go! I've been discovered! My little bell resonates with a beckoner in need of assistance and it is finally time to show my worth! I see the green glow before me and-
  ... Wonderful. I appear to have fallen off the bridge I was summoned upon and I'm returning to my own world. Perfect start to my first shift.
I remain,
Skuttle.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
30/01/2018

Logan Paul: Saving Face

  D... did you hear that? It was a gunshot. Where did it- oh! Of course, that was the sound of me shooting myself in the head because Barbie Girl has been floating around in there for the past hour. Send help ASAP.

  Happy Friday everyone! First day back at work for me today, and it was nice to know I was missed. Even though all I ended up doing was carrying sofas for seven hours. My back and legs are totally not aching at all. Nope. Though in all seriousness my walking stance could be somewhat likened to a fawn on their two goat legs as I hobble around attempting to keep my weight from the heels of my feet. God, I'm old.

  I was thinking of writing a third, (and bloody last), dedicated post on Logan Paul's most recent fuck up, but honestly I'm completely bored of hearing his name, and I'm certainly sick of typing it. So instead, the tiny update on the older Paul will be in this post. Apologies in advance.

  Suicide: Be Here Tomorrow was dropped by Logan a few days ago. I believe it is his third and final apology. A seven minute video dedicated to supposedly opening his eyes to how serious suicide really is. Y'know, as if he was oblivious this whole time. Suicide has been prevalent forever and Logan playing dumb for the sake of his image is truly pathetic.

  The whole video reeks of PR, and I'm taking a guess that his team were the ones that put it together to try and save what face Logan has left. Begrudgingly, I have to commend the donation of one million dollars to various suicide prevention causes, but the sum is irrelevant to me. The money is damage control, that's it.

  But that's just my opinion. I'm genuinely interested to see what everyone's thoughts are so feel free to leave them below. This is the last time that man-child's name will be written on this blog. The end of the conversation has come.

  Thanks for reading as always, and I'll see you lot on Tuesday.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
26/01/2018

Constricted Vibes

  I opened my text document for my novel today and worked on about two lines before I closed it down again. I'm in the rut of, "it's gone somewhere I didn't expect when I started and now I'm stuck," so I'm not motivated enough to pick it up again. I still write short stories and I still have my blog to work on, which I've been proud of recently, but I think it's healthy to acknowledge that I'm definitely still struggling creatively. What's the point in lying about it? I don't like to project too falsely even though you'd probably be happier reading about how great everything is going. Look at me, noble for not lying to my audience.

  Speaking of lying to an audience, DJ Killer Gnomestar blocked me on Twitter so I guess it's cool to be a part of that crowd.

  If there's anyone out there that appreciates song/artist recommendations, I suggest checking out Take Me Dancing by Will Joseph Cook. I've been vibing to it these past couple days and it's helped with a few things.

  Now, you may have noticed the new banner... I have been re-branded! Kit has once again worked her ass off for me with concept designs and ideas, and come up with a swanky new design that I adore. So special thanks to her for the effort she constantly puts into her work, and for me especially.

  I saw Insidious 4: The Last Key at the cinema with Brian and thought it was a fantastic ending to the franchise. If anybody wants my thoughts on it in a blog post, let me know and I'll work on it.

  Have a great night, everybody.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
23/01/2018

...

You knew my boundaries and you broke them repeatedly, you found a way past every wall I ever built and demolished them, you made me love you and then you took everything away from me. Please stop trying to contact me, and don’t ask my friends how I’m doing because you don’t care. Not really. If you did, none of this would be happening. Goodbye.

Bloodborne: Git Gud or Die Trying

  Bloodborne - yet another title in the Soulsborne franchise that had gamers shaking with anger and fear. Another brand new world, the streets of which tiled with the bloodstains of frustrated players. But why? Let's explore that shall we?

  The Soulsborne games are known for being difficult, infamous for it even, yet with each new installment there's always a certain slew of people that complain about everything being too hard and how the developers have cheated them out of a pleasant and fun experience. Git gud or give up as it goes, but the more prejudices you go into one of these games with, the more irate you'll become when you inevitably die repeatedly for those first few hours.

  Bloodborne isn't hard. The Dark Souls series isn't hard. Demon Souls isn't... well, actually...

  I jest, of course. The reason so many people believe the opposite is because they listen to what they're told. Personally I've never been one for listening, so I went into Bloodborne with a completely clear head. I woke up in that clinic, and I strolled into Yharnam with the mind frame of, "I know I'm going to die, but each death will be my fault, so don't be a little bitch about it and don't get mad." This genuinely worked, and boy did I die, and died and died and died.

  It took me about two and a half to three hours to pass through Central Yharnam with that fresh, obnoxious, burning pyre alight in the courtyard, and I died a LOT. But I didn't get mad, I just wanted to get even. I used each death as a driving force. What could I do better? Where was I going wrong? I feel that attitude is very important when entering a Soulsborne world for the first time.

  The only part so far, (touch wood), that made me rage quit and turn off the PlayStation was Father Gascoigne, and that was only to switch it back on five minutes later and do some grinding. My anger in that situation wasn't directed at the game, I was frustrated with myself. It wasn't Bloodborne's fault that I kept dying, it meant that I wasn't playing efficiently enough. That's what gives this game so much charm, it's an unapologetic beast that refuses to hold your hand. You can be good at this game if you play it correctly.

  After farming for a while, I came back to the game the day after and beat Gascoigne on my first try. I directly addressed the issue and fixed it. I'm so glad that I did that. The only thing I'm sad about is that ol' Gascy wasn't developed further. I really liked him...

  I was going to write a little more on the mechanics of the game, but I remembered that I'd already written Play Style: Git Gud, so I didn't want to go into the controls and the graphics when you could just read that entry. This was written at about 4am last night because I couldn't drop off, so I hope after writing it up properly and editing it that it's coherent enough.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
16/01/2018

Mountain

  "The time I spend with Mountain feels slightly more real to me than anything else inside my computer."
- Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra

  "Mountain breaks the mold of video games."
-Ian Bogost, The Atlantic

  "Welcome to an existential nightmare."
- Patrick Klepek, Giant Bomb

  Mountain is a game that opens up to you with the phrase, "welcome to Mountain, you are mountain, you are god," and immediately drops you into your personal, ambient little zen garden. Created by David O'Reilly, Mountain is a simulation 'role playing' video game released on July 1st, 2014.

  I originally downloaded the game on Steam after seeing NerdCubed upload a video on it, and I was immediately enamoured. There were many videos attempting to talk about whether Mountain is in fact a game at all, which then leads into asking what a video game even is, or is supposed to be. It all comes back to subjectivity in art as a whole, and we all know by now that I have a special place in my heart for that conversation.

  But anyway, back to the task at hand. Your mountain will slowly rotate, face the seasons, collect pieces of furniture and other every day items, and occasionally offer it's thoughts every now and then as time progresses. When you pull up the controls in the options menu, it lists as 'nothing'. The only controls are that you can zoom in and out, and rearrange your collection by holding down on the items.

  There are many... displeased... written reviews on the IOS app store complaining that Mountain is a complete waste of money, but David describes his creation simply as a mountain simulator, a 'relax 'em up', of sorts. I've never heard that terminology before but boy do I love it. The key to Mountain is patience. It's a simple concept. You leave it on in the background while you do other things, and slowly become obsessed with checking in on it. It's not complex, it's just... pretty.

  Playing games like The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide and Getting Over it, (the latter I've only seen footage of because there's no way in hell I'm putting myself through the frustration of that game... damn you Bennett Foddy), remind me of this game. They all have something similar in common and it's that they give you the glaring desire to ask, is there something these games are trying to say? Are the artists trying to communicate a specific point? With Mountain, I'm not so sure of that. I think it's just a very charming little game that can aid you on a particularly stressful or lonely night.

  That's about all I have to say on Mountain. I'll leave Nerd's video down here so that you can go watch it if you fancy, but the game is only 99p so... why not go give it a try yourself?

EDIT: It's the 14th of January now, a day after this post went public, and I just wanted to say that yesterday I was trying to think of the game EVERYTHING on PS4 to add to the above list of games that Mountain reminds me of. The reason it's in an edit is because I couldn't fucking remember what it was called and I had to google dumb shit to find it.

Nerd³ Plays... Mountain

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
13/01/2018

Washed Out

  On the come down of all the YouTube drama, and the seemingly motivation-staunching new year, I'm not certain of what to write about today. After channeling all my effort into my last two posts, I'm wondering how many people actually want to read my normal posts, or if the posts about drama are what people really want. It's understandable. Drama is tantalising and it offers the same feeling as watching a schoolyard fight from the sidelines.

  Despite being compared to Pyrocynical and iDubbbz, (thanks Mark), this is far from a commentary blog. Or... does this count? I'm offering my own messy, inner monologue on a lot of different topics that I suppose does qualify as personal commentary - though I'm not about to take up that mantle, so don't panic. Focusing this whole thing on drama all of a sudden would be extremely disingenuous, and I'm not going to tarnish my space for the sole purpose of grabbing views.

  The reality is that I just enjoy writing, and that's all this is. The Logan Paul drama posts kind of brought something I thought I'd buried to the surface, so maybe I'll work on that sometime. But! In the meantime, I might post character breakdowns on here every now and then. I'm not sure yet. My original characters are very much a part of who I am, but maybe I'll share that with you at some point.

  As you can tell, things are a little uncertain right now, but I guess we'll just have to see what the future holds. I'll see you guys on Friday.

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
09/01/2018

Warning: Restricted Content Ahead

  How far is YouTube willing to go in terms of censoring its creators? If the recent controversy with Logan Paul is anything to go by, then I think we still have a long way until creator freedoms are restored. (Spoiler alert! probs never lol).

  I mean, as if it wasn't bad enough that YouTube manually reviewed Logan's video on the suicide forest and decided to leave it up, they appear to be actively seeking and taking down videos that are directly responding to the issue. Both Pyrocynical and Elvis the Alien had their response videos removed due to, "misleading content or insufficient metadata," within two hours of being uploaded. After numerous re-uploads by the creators, their videos have been age-restricted.
 

Now, with that in mind, let's quickly recap; the original video in which Logan Paul, a vlogger with fifteen million subscribers under his belt, uploads a video with a dead man in his thumbnail and shows vulgar footage of the man's corpse while cracking jokes and acting seemingly unaffected is MANUALLY REVIEWED by YouTube themselves and left up on the site until Logan removes it. No age-gate, no take down, and six million views later. Then on the flip side, you have respected creators responding and speaking relative about the situation, showing no offensive or inappropriate content, and for some reason... those just happen to be removed and then age-restricted.

  By the way, Logan's video was re-uploaded by other users on the site and there was no age restriction whatsoever. In fact, it ended up #2 on trending after the original had taken the top spot.

  Are you noticing a theme here? Are you catching the line I'm throwing you? Videos criticising Logan and pointing out what a shitty person he is because of his abysmal behavior are being obliterated from the website at a very efficient fucking rate. I think it's extremely far-fetched and naive to think that YouTube isn't protecting Logan, just like they did with Jake Paul when he threw out false abuse allegations. Logan has only gained from the situation; his channel has grown due to the publicity, and you can bet your fucking ass YouTube is raking in that dollar.

  Something is broken, or deeply, deeply disturbed in the minds of the people running YouTube as a company and a website, and if there isn't? Well that's probably more fucked up than the alternative I've posed to you. The algorithm only favours those with the ability to pump out meaningless content every single day. The reason? It racks up the views and therefore the traffic onto the website. Creators that actually make good, worth-watching content can fuck off as far as YouTube is concerned. They will protect and coddle the ones that make them the most income, and bury the little guys in so much shit that their hard work is never found.

  It's sad. That's the only way to describe it. The lengths YouTube is now willing to go and how far the website has fallen. People used to be able to make a career out of doing something they loved, so what the hell happened to that? Logan Paul happened, Jake Paul happened, people like Danielle Bregoli and Tana Mongeau happened. Relatable garbage is all over the internet now and it fucking plagues YouTube to the point where young and heavily impressionable kids eat that shit up. It's just... it's fucking sad.

  This affects so many creators to the point that they're struggling to get by with the wave of age-restrictions and cases of unnecessary demonetisation. Videos that would be impossible to consider offensive are still having their ads pulled, and YouTube clearly has no issues with their own blatant favouritism. That fact alone means I can't see them altering anything any time soon.

  I decided to fish around for some opinions other than my own, and the responses I received just make me believe even more concretely that something needs to change.

  @_tidalpanic_: "Regarding the Logan Paul situation, I feel he needs his channel removed. PewDiePie said he doesn't believe that should happen to people, but being able to make a career from YouTube is a privilege not a right. After something as grotesque as this, apologies are not enough. If there are no REAL consequences, Logan and people like him will see that the only downside to breaking the rules is public backlash, which fades with time. YouTube needs to make an example of him, they need to remove his channel and remove his YouTube Red movies to prove to other YouTubers that they aren't safe and they can't get away with their distasteful, algorithm-pleasing practices. But of course they won't because he, [Logan], makes them too much money."

  @_amyth0mps0n_: "Honestly, YouTube has gone to shit. Logan Paul is the new 'hit' so they let him do whatever he wants. He's their little golden boy. Apparently YouTube gets triggered when PewDiePie makes a joke that could be considered offensive, but oh no, Logan Paul can do no wrong! Let him post a dead body for all his fans, mostly children, to see! They won't get traumatised or upset! What pisses me off the most is that his fans stick up for him. 'OMG we all make mistakes!' How is it a mistake to post a video about a dead guy hanging from a tree with hardly any censoring? It makes me fucking sick!"

  @jacobdew9059: "With the Logan Paul thing, it highlights that YouTube favours only the rich. This is a no-brainer. However, this is a lot deeper in terms of how many more videos seem to breach the rules. I'm only touching on it, but from what I've heard from Andy Warski, every video uploaded is given an algorithmic code that categorizes the videos into different parts. This also affects monetisation and age-restriction. What Andy found out is that these codes can be altered so that you can remove certain parts and retrieve monetisation. But the main problem with this is that parts of the code have been made so nobody can alter them - therefore YouTube has full control of every video. It might be to crack down on rule breakers, but this impacts every video made including those from innocent creators. This is not confirmed, please don't take this as gospel."

  I apologise for the length of this post, I didn't expect to have this much to say, but the inclusion of the above statements proves that it isn't just me that believes something here is fragmented and needs to be fixed, or at the very least, to be addressed. Whether anything will change in the future is yet to be seen, but I can only hope for the best. YouTube offered so many people another option and it's a shame to see that disrupted. If I find out any more information, I'll drop it in a follow up post sometime.

  Thanks for being here, guys.

Signed
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
05/01/2018

2018: DOA

  I didn't think it needed to be said outright that filming a suicide victim's lifeless body and uploading the footage to YouTube is a disgusting, depraved, insensitive and utterly mindless thing to do but... well, here we are.

  Logan Paul, the former slightly less cunty one of the Paul brothers took the trophy from his younger sibling on New Years Eve when he uploaded 'We found a dead body in the Japanese suicide forest...' to the website. The forest being referred to is of course Aokigahara, national forest of Fujiawaguchiko, where more than a hundred people a year go to check out.

  Within the first day, the video garnered six million views and 460,000 likes before it was removed by Logan himself. It's safe to say the footage should've never existed in the first place, let alone been uploaded to a channel with a subscriber base of fifteen million - the majority of which is made up of kids between the ages of roughly nine and sixteen. In the video, the victim's face is blurred, but it can clearly be seen that he is hanging from a tree and his hands are purple. Logan and his gang of unsympathetic mutants can be seen joking and making offhand comments throughout.

  Apparently Logan's objective when visiting the forest was to make a video about suicide awareness, and if that's true, he got more than he bargained for and is currently dealing with the deserved repercussions. Unfortunately, the family duo are known for their lies and system cheats to rake in the views, thus increasing the ad revenue received. Going by the facts we know already, who knows if this reasoning is even the truth.

  Logan uploaded an apology, (I say that lightly), to his Twitter last night in which he basically apologised for all the aspects that affect him and him alone. He isn't sorry for what he did, he's sorry that what he did has had such an adverse affect on him. He doesn't mention the family, the victim, suicide prevention, or show any signs of remorse at all for what he's done.

  This situation further highlights the fact that YouTube's system is currently broken. Content creators are still being demonetised for something as menial as swearing when there was literally footage of somebody's corpse that managed to slip through the cracks. It doesn't surprise me as much as it concerns me considering the Paul brothers are basically YouTube's new poster boys, (PewDiePie who?) but fuck me, you'd think there'd be some type of cap on that kind of content.

  I daresay that this event will be swept under the rug after a week or so, once everybody gets bored, then the rest of 2018 can follow this particular car-crash accordingly. Could we really have expected a start less problematic than this? It's nice to dream about, I suppose.

  The video of course has since been re-uploaded so there's no forgetting what Logan did, but I'm not going to link it for obvious reasons.

  Instead I will be linking Logan's original apology, (literally just those screenshots), and a suicide prevention hotline. Not all of us take suicide and depression as lightly as Logan Paul, and I can assure you there is help out there. Having the correct sources is half the battle.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Logan Paul's Twitter Apology

Samaritans Suicide Prevention Helpline

Signed,
Elijah.
Meta Sentience.
02/01/2018