a new thought on batomon showdown

 it's that game I played and freaked out about.

I'm still playing it but everything is dialed way down now. But it's fun.

One thing that I think playing this game might help with is choosing things quickly. Something I've always hated as a coach and a camp counselor is picking teams or making groups. It's a very fraught endeavor that is, at the same time, often really important to how the experience goes and bound to make some people upset and disappointed. I've seen it done well. I have done it well in the past. But I never like doing it and any time I can pass it off to someone else I will. Especially if it has to be on the spot. 

In my mind there's almost no way to do it without implicitly making a value judgment about someone in front of everyone else. I have a lot of thoughts about it. 

Anyway this game is almost entirely making choices about building a team. It's silly but like one reason I would lose initially is I would get attached to a little batomon that I had chosen from the start but then it's abilities didn't scale as the game progressed and it became a liability. And I didn't want to kick it off the team because it had served me well. Maybe this game is turning me into a sociopath. But I think by nature I'm overly sentimental and could benefit from making more rational in-the-moment choices. 

There is that Maya Angelou quote though, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Well I've got bad news for you Maya Angelou, you're never making it to Diamond Two rank in Batomon Showdown if you're worried about how that level 2 Gildshell feels.

you ask your childhood friend curtis who he would be if he could be anyone

 "Yeah okay so I would be like a monk on top of mountain somewhere, right? Chilling in a temple. I'm sitting up there--having so many thoughts. Pew pew pew it's like lightning in my mind. My consciousness is like a raging swirling cosmos but then you zoom out and I'm like completely zen and still and stuff and you zoom back in and I've compressed the universe mind into a singularity and it's like everything in nothingness. But I'm sitting up there and I just know I'm so smart. I'm so so smart. I'm having all the revelations and epiphanies and I see how everyone is so misguided and astray but I can't help them because they're too far gone and I weep tears of infinite compassion and sorrow and the tears run down the temple steps and onto the snow because the temple is super high up and it creates a little snowball that starts rolling down the mountain and it gets bigger and bigger until it creates this massive snow boulder that causes an avalanche and it destroys a village at the base of the mountain and only a little girl survives. And so she grows up seeking vengeance and she trains her whole life to come up the mountain and assassinate me. Twenty years later I'm sleeping an seemingly unawares and then for no reason I roll off my sleeping pad and a split second later the girl crashes through the ceiling and pierces the floor right where my neck was just a moment ago. I throw a dagger at her but she blocks it with a kick and then we have an extended fight scene for like twenty minutes, destroying the temple and at the end we're both up on the roof breathing heavily and we each have a knife at the other's throat and she realizes that killing me won't bring her village back and that we're the only two who can understand each other but she can't accept that so she disengages and heads back down the mountain, more lost than ever. Just a regular day for a guy like me though."

The Conqueror Worm Stanza Four!

 The action happens!

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes! — it writhes! — with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued!

First phrase we encounter that's kind of strange is mimic rout. Mimic, in this case, refers to the Mimes from the second stanza. And rout, according to a search, can mean several things but in this case most likely refers to a disorderly and chaotic fleeing by a group. So it's just referencing what the mimes were doing in the second stanza. 

I don't have to tell you this but a horrible creature emerges and starts devouring the mimes. 

One phrase that I think is somewhat interesting is "the scenic solitude!"

At the start we are told that the crawling shape intrudes from amid the mimic rout. Which, as we already established, is a chaotic group. But then we're told this blood-red thing writhes from out the scenic solitude. Scenic solitude is, by definition, the opposite of a mimic rout. A peaceful empty place? Is the writhing thing coming out of chaos or coming out of peace? I don't know. I don't know that there's even a point being made by this discrepancy. Or if it's even a discrepancy at all and I'm not applying definitions correctly.

Anyway I like the double 'It writhes!-- it writhes!" 

Kind of a crazy move by Poe, right? Maybe I'm wrong and Crab can correct me but I don't feel like there was anything in the previous stanzas, other than perhaps the title, that would lead us to believe that a horrible monster was going to show up and eat everyone. 

And, perhaps this is another discrepancy to go along with the rout/solitude thing, we're told very clearly in the start of the second stanza that the Mimes are "in the form of God on high" and maybe that's referring to the idea that like Man is made in God's image or something but the Mimes definitely get eaten and 

the angels sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

So are the Mimes human or gods? Also why does the monster come and eat everyone? I still don't get it.

But that's also another reason I love Poe. He will just have a monster come and eat everyone. Is there symbolism to it? Seems like we get some commentary on it in the last stanza but I think part of the reason this section is so abrupt is that we just got done talking about the cycle of humanity just goes round and round and nothing ever changes. UNTIL A BIG WORM COMES AND EATS EVERYONE.

I'm rambling. Stay tuned for the finale where the big twist is revealed! 

felt like I looked good today

 

you know what I Iike

 underrated quality!

UNDERRATED QUALITY!

I like when people speak their words with care. I like when people form their words with care. I like when people hand you their words like they're handing you a delicate flaky airy buttery biscuit over a gravel parking lot on a hot summer day. 

Hand your words to me nicely!

I'd get a T-shirt with that on it. Not really though. Because that would be obnoxious. But if you could somehow get a notification that says "HAND YOUR WORDS TO HIM NICELY", I'd appreciate that.

Heck dang shoot I'll even just take a kind of affectation. Put some spin on em. Put some english on your sentences. You know when people talk and the words come out with a little bit of topspin or they have a little bit of two-seam run? I love that.

Don't. 

Don't you ever. 

Don't ever just hurl your words at me formless and expletive. 

I'm not saying to have proper diction. But I'm saying take some time to consider the manner in which you deliver your words. 

Someone tell me how I deliver words! Am I doing a good job? Am I serving em up nice?

I think it's a nice thing you can do for people and for the people who like it it will be like a pleasant breeze and then ones who can't be bothered are already too far gone.

look at the numbers

Listen!

Lo!

As of my checking, there are 81 days left in the year. 82 if you count today.

I have made 219 posts for the year.

Ergo,

I have to post every day OR average a post a day until the end of the year to get to 300 posts.

Which would mean back to back 300 post years. We've never seen that. 

What was going on in 2021? Only 183 posts. 

Here's a post of note from a somewhat historic time. On the leap year, Feb 29, 2020 I made a post that said I was missing home. Little did I know that a virus was going to shut down the world and I would move back home for about 2 months. Funny.

Conqueror Worm Stanza The Third

 It gets so much crazier

That motley drama — oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased forevermore,

By a crowd that seize it not

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

A lot happening here. The motley drama? Must be all the commotion from the second stanza, right? The invisible wo! 

I had this thought later too, what makes wo invisible? Isn't it always invisible? I guess you could see it in someone's expression. I don't know. Also very eldritch. Like you're just afflicted by pure maddening horror or something.

Anyway, I love how Poe gets really dramatic in these first two lines. He goes into this aside to the reader/audience, "oh, be sure!" And then I italicize all these lines but in the text only the word shall is italicized. So he's really selling it. I'll be honest though I don't really know what he's talking about. What was I going to forget again? The wo? It seems like an inside joke that I don't get.

And then he gets real abstract

With its Phantom chased forevermore,

by a crowd that seize it not

So like, the crowd is chasing the Phantom of this motley drama/wo? I think what he's saying is that mankind is stuck in this loop of like agitation and misery and it's almost like this trauma cycle that keeps repeating but no one really understands what's happening (?) That's how I interpret chasing the Phantom but not seizing it. This unending cycle of conflict and drama that doesn't resolve to anything. It just goes around and around. Which is reflected in the next lines

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

It's rotten to the core, essentially. This cycle doesn't go anywhere or lead to anything but back to itself.  

And much of Madness and more of Sin,

and Horror the soul of the plot.

Again, like before, Poe can't stress enough how this stuff like madness and sin and horror are at the very basic level of existence. I love it. He's just doing so much. Did he really think this? The fun thing about Poe though is that he kind of makes it sexy. He's a showman about it. 

Like he's not saying all this stuff in sort of a gritty realistic way that would actually make you reflect on the capacity for cruelty in the average human heart. Or how society makes us uncaring and blind to actual tragedy and horror. I think that kind of mundane horror and wretchedness underpins this poem but that's not what Poe is talking about here. He's talking about a kind of grand cosmic horror and misery and it's kind of like he's dishing gossip

--oh! be sure-- it SHALL not be forgot.

With the veils drowned in tears. And the bewings and the bedights. I mean tis an absolute gala night!

RIP Edgar Allan Poe. You would've loved My Chemical Romance.

But I really do think Poe is a compelling writer. He's got this haunting relentless energy that's undeniable and the man just knows how to turn a phrase.