it goes beyond "executive dysfunction" into a general disgust with the very idea of doing things more taxing than napping. even games are proving difficult.
so I'm trying Riven. hopefully that's static enough of a game to permit play
thinking about Gehn's personal cult, and how he adorns himself with religious trappings—it's a common trope in fiction. he's a mage, so he uses his powers to subdue and bamboozle others. is that really all we can expect if humanity manages to reawaken true magic? if that ever happens, are we doomed to be ruled and exploited by confidence tricksters?
~Chara of Pnictogen
these days, my attention is instantly drawn to depictions of magic in fiction; it's my hypothesis that even in a work of fiction written by someone who doesn't write with any definite intention to depict the magical or supernatural, the pen of the honest artist will (so to speak) have an instinct for what might work. that is to say, the artist's desire to depict something magical in terms of forcible and convincing fiction will tend to elicit a hint or spark of true magic, and guide them towards plausible representation of magical rituals, implements, and so forth.
Myst and Riven begin with a marvellously simple magical conceit: a little group of mages has devised a method to gain access to (and some power to modify) alternate universes they call "Ages"—new slots in the Multiverse, you could say—through specially written "linking Books". but this has led to a power struggle among the mages, some of whom regard themselves as creators and gods of the worlds to which they've gained access through their Books. Atrus, the chief mage from the first game, tries to minimize interference with the Ages, but his profligate sons see them as places to rule and plunder; and it seems that Atrus's father Gehn, in the second game, is of similar temperament.
Gehn has another problem, related in this page from his notes: his Book writing skills are subtly inferior. he notes that every conceivable physical quality of the materials from which the Books are created—the inks, the papers, the dimensions, everything—must be got right for the magic to work. we get hints that Gehn has a somewhat crude, blunt-force approach to optimizing his methods, and the result are linking Books that require a massive technological support structure to work, and which cause instability in the Ages thus accessed.
sounds just a little familiar, doesn't it?
~Chara of Pnictogen