Self loathing

Haven't written in awhile, wanted to get back into it, but couldn't figure out what to write about, so I thought I'd try an experiment and see where it'd take me. Turns out it took me somewhere pretty depressing.

This story isn't a cry for help or anything, I just tried to tap into an emotion I have sometimes that's hard to put into words. There was no story here, really, just two disembodied voices talking with each other trying to explore this obscure emotion. By the end, some remnants of the story started to come together in my mind, but I honestly didn't care enough about it to expand on it, so I ended it the only way I knew how: suicide.

I hope to continue writing, hopefully it'll get better from here on out.

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"May I ask you how you're feeling?"

"Sure."

"So..."

"I feel fine."

"Could you perhaps tell me how you're feeling in a little more detail?"

"Yeah... okay. I guess... I feel apathetic. No, well, yeah, but frustrated too."

"Are you sure you feel both? Can you really feel nothing and frustrated at the same time?"

"I didn't say I don't feel anything, I said apathetic. It's emotion control, I can feel all sorts of things; happy, sad, angry... I just numb them, hence, apathetic."

"You numb your own feelings then?"

"Sure. It's not hard, it's not like people can just escape their existence on a whim. We all deal with it, and when I deal with my emotions, I store them in a little box so I don't have to deal with them until later."

"Does that sound healthy to you?"

"I'm not sure why you feel like you're an authority on what's 'healthy', you fucking psycho. But yeah, whatever, I'm actually doing okay, y'know. I'm physically healthy, I manage my emotions okay, they don't affect my professional or social life, I'm fine."

"Was there any part of that last sentence you felt wasn't truthful?"

She saw right through me... did I stutter when I said it? Did I want her to pry?

"Alright, so my social life sucks. Fine."

"Why do you think that is?"

"Are you trying to sound like a psychiatrist?"

"I'm trying to help you."

I laughed. "Right, right..."

Silence.

"Okay well, to put it simply, I don't really have a social life."

"Do you want one?"

"You know, I don't really know. I think that if I really, really wanted one, I'd have one. How many times have I actively avoided socializing with people because I felt it wouldn't be worth my time? Not that you'd know, but the answer is a lot. Most of the time, it's fine, too. If I want to hang out with a friend, they're a phone call away, I don't really have to be lonely, but that's not it... I mean, fuck it, whatever, it's not about friends, it's about... that other thing."

She looked at me sympathetically, still saying nothing.

"Fuck you. I'm lonely. Jesus."

"Does admitting this always make you so angry?"

I tensed up, I truly didn't want to talk about this, I wanted it to go away more than anything, but there was nothing I could do. Maybe I did want to talk about it. How many times have I been in this situation before, though, what good did it do? What good did it ever do me? Do I really want to open up this can of worms, expose myself, to this woman?

"I don't know, it's just uncomfortable. How should I deal with it?"

"With honesty."

Fuck...

"You want honesty? I'm unfit for this life, this social paradigm, this... I don't even know what you call it, this ritual? I don't fit the bill, I don't fit anyone's bill, I'm not about to subject someone to hundreds of hours of my bullshit just to trick myself into believing that I'm normal."

"You don't think you could ever be happy? With someone else?"

I don't know...

"I don't know."

"Do you think it's worth a shot?"

"Christ, what is this, motivational therapy? You know damn well I'm going to give up by tomorrow. I don't have it in me, I'm not like everybody else, and not like in a 'special' kind of way, I'm just some fucking average dude that fucked himself unknowingly and now it's way too late to salvage anything that could ever possibly be conceived as worthwhile. I carry too much of other people's weight on my shoulders, I'm not strong enough to deal with it, and I don't want to subject others to my fucking demons either. It's done, there's no training wheels for this type of thing. I'm finished. I'm fucking finished."

"Do you truly believe that?"

"I don't know for a fact, I don't know anything, it's just a gut feeling, one of those gut feelings that almost always ends up being true."

She looked at me for a long time, probing my sincerity. I wasn't sure how she was gauging my expression, but after awhile, she looked away with a look that I could only describe as satisfaction. With a shrug, she turned around and got off her stool to stand by a table, shifting around various tools.

"Are we done here?"

Without looking back at me, "Not even close..."

It was hard to tell what she was messing around with over there, but after a few moments, she returned to where I was strapped with what looked like a wire-frame orb. It wasn't until she came closer that I recognized it as a scalp massager. She walked behind me and gently applied it to my head. The sensation was nice. I realized how tense I was and slowly but surely allowed myself to relax. Once she noticed this, she began to hum a soothing and unfamiliar tune. I closed my eyes, secretly hoping the moment would never end.

"Do you like being alone?"

"No."

"Then why do you hide?"

"I... I'm afraid?"

"Afraid of what?"

"Dealing with the unknown... other people are like... huge wells of uncertainty. Honestly... I think other people have it worse than I do. I mean, sure, I've given up a long time ago, but it's because I'm okay with it, I'm somehow... I don't know, strong enough to be alone. Other people, I think they seek each other out because they literally can not stand being alone, their fear goes well beyond mine. I simply just... don't want to hurt people."

She continued soothing my scalp. After my little rant, she put the tool down somewhere behind her and then started using her fingers to massage the back of my head, then down to my neck.

"It sounds like you're in a position to help these people. Have you ever thought about being there for these people, to help them?"

What is this... how did this get so turned around? "I guess, but... I don't think you get where I'm coming from, not really. It's not your fault, I'm just really, really bad at explaining myself."

"Go ahead..."

I took a deep sigh, allowing myself to collect my thoughts a bit before continuing. "I am there for others, when they need it, I do it a lot, and it doesn't help. It just exhausts me, I feel used up, and... I hate to say it, I might be awful, but I just don't get anything out of it. Anything I can offer, it's so... temporal. Why spend so much time and effort putting band-aids on other people's emotional scars? What am I doing, really? Delaying the inevitable? Is that all anyone can do? If that's the case, then what the fuck is the point. I might as well suffer alone."

She stopped and sat back down in the chair in front of me, then looked at me intently. "Why are you so afraid?"

Afraid of what? What was she getting at? Am I afraid of something? What did I say earlier, about me being afraid of the unknown... am I backtracking? Why would she ask that?

"Um..."

"Please, tell me, don't hide anymore."

Inexplicably, a tear formed in my eye before I knew what even triggered it... I was hiding again, she was right, but I wasn't sure what I was hiding from. Am I afraid? What am I afraid of?

"I'm afraid of letting people down."

Was that it? Did I say the right thing? Was that the root of my fear?

She never changed expression, motionless, she still retained that hint of concern, sincere concern.

"I'm not good enough. I spent my whole life hiding, I'm not equipped to deal with other people's emotions, their problems. I have never had to deal with any sort of emotional bullshit in my life ever. I've never been in a relationship, I have no idea what makes them work and what doesn't. I'm absolutely clueless. How could I not let someone down? I'm a fucking bomb ready to self-destruct, and anyone else near me is going to get caught in the blast. I don't want that, the only thing I can do, the only empathetic thing to do, is to stay away, keep others away, to die alone, by myself."

She made a movement with her hand, as if she wanted to reach out and hold me, but she knew I couldn't reach back. I was constrained, there was nothing I could do to reciprocate. She receded. Then she faded away. And again I was alone, in a chair, unable to move, nothing to do but wish she was still here, still talking to me, helping me forget about my situation.

I'd go hungry soon. There was nobody else around me. I was going to die here. I got my wish. I got my wish... I got my wish...

I remembered the girl's hum, and began to hum it to myself, trying to recreate that soothing feeling she offered me. I wanted to cry, but I couldn't bring myself to muster up the emotion. I felt so empty... a loneliness beyond loneliness. Despair, they call it, right? Was that the right word?

I would die of thirst before hunger... I wonder which way is worse. I wonder if I could suffocate myself. I tried to reach for the collar of my shirt, but found out I could grab it by the shoulder instead. If I needed to I could chew a big enough piece of it off and swallow it. With any luck it'd get lodged in my throat and I'd die that way. Sounds awful, but it'd be quicker than just waiting it out.

I began to hum louder, but I forgot part of how the tune went. The harder I tried to remember, the more of the tune I forgot. After a few minutes of this, I forgot the tune completely. I didn't want to go out like this... I wanted at least that small comfort, but even that was gone. There was nothing left but death. My heart began to race. Is this what I wanted? Why couldn't I just say no? Fuck... fuck fuck fuck... I can't care anymore.

I breathed in heavily, held it in, and exhaled slowly. I did this again, and again, and again, until eventually no more thoughts came to mind. I began to chew my shirt.

How about one more self-absorbed post?

You know what's weird? No one has ever called me a 'prick'. I've called tons of people pricks. I'm sure I've heard every single one of my friends called a prick at least a few times. It's usually in jest, mind you, but that word is just one of those qualifications that is typically used to address certain characteristic behaviors, which makes me think I've never even once exhibited that quality enough to illicit that label.

Not that I mind, it's just a thought. It's not even the point of this post.

I haven't written in a long time. I mean, every now and then I'll sit down and write a story idea down, or ramble a bit about an interesting thought I had, or perhaps just vent about the recent going-ons of my personal life. None of those I've shared with people; I've never gone back to read them, hell, I never even bothered to press backspace enough to correct an obvious spelling mistake that's more than two words back. No one was meant to read them, even the story ideas weren't meant to ever be re-visited and written. They were just thoughts to write down, because I enjoy the writing process. It helps me articulate my feelings, it feels like I'm turning some ephemeral abstract concept into something real. It makes me feel real.

But as for writing anything with substance... I can't remember the last time I wrote something that had any sort of care put into it. Even this post right now is essentially just me rambling. I suppose there is a point to this post though, but I wasn't quite sure how to say it quite yet, so really, everything you've read up to now was just a warm-up exercise. I bet you feel cheated, don't you? I'd delete this and start over, but we've come too far, even if right now as I write this, you don't exist past being a future prospective reader.

But anyway... I've had www.ailsglyph.com registered for over two and a half years, and its never had anything on it. I had big ideas for it, still do, but I've come to realize that big ideas need to start small if they're ever to gain any kind of momentum. So I decided to re-direct it to my Ailsglyph blog, simply because it already existed, and since it already has so many flaws associated with it, I already don't mind making more mistakes. These blogs exist for a purpose, and my god, I'm gonna get there one way or another, even if I have to drunkenly stumble the whole way!

If you're wondering what Ailsglyph is, well... I'm sure I made a post about it around here somewhere, stop being lazy and go find it. This blog in particular is basically the sister blog for ailsglyph.blogspot.com which is supposedly reserved for the actual fictional universe of Ailsglyph, while this blog is more reserved for my own personal musings that may or may not be related to the various trials and tribulations I had to endure in order to actually write an actual honest-to-goodness real chapter.

One of the strange things about this format is that there's no real guaranteed way to get people to read the chapters in the right order. I mean, for the most part you don't need to read it in the right order anyway since so much about the story is scrambled in the first place. I figured it might be fun for readers to get various clues as to who characters are, what their back-stories are, and what their relationships are to other characters as they read through the chapters, and then they could go back and re-read past entries. 'Fun' being a particularly useless and meaningless subjective adjective in this context.

The other weird thing is that the story of Ailsglyph has actually changed quite a bit since I first started that blog. I mean, there's only a handful of entries anyway so I could just like, edit them and remind people that they're out of date and not considered canon or whatever. But I'm fairly certain that even if I go full throttle with this project, there's going to be a humongous amount of inconsistencies and minor changes that would simply confuse any potential reader that is actually trying pretty hard to keep up and follow the story.

But y'know what, that's also part of the 'fun' I was mentioning earlier. The story's essentially a puzzle anyway, why not throw in a few more pitfalls in there to make it even more difficult to comprehend. I'm just gonna go with the flow on this one. Sorry presumed potential reader. Hopefully you've read this blog entry in particular so you know what's on the up and up.

That said, I do plan on cataloging these entries into a bigger and much more cohesive collection. That's when the actual editing will occur, and then I'll decide on how to release it in a more digestible format.

So what's the point of even having the blog in the first place?

It's entirely selfish, I admit. I write differently when I have a presumed audience. As far as I can tell, nobody's ever even read the majority of the entries I have on this blog, but the fact that they could is what really matters here. I actually kind of care about what I write, I put more thought into it, I correct the obvious grammar/spelling mistakes, I have that extra voice in the back of my head that's telling me to not write down something stupid - even though I tend to ignore it - it's just feels nice knowing it's there.

The other reason is simply because if somebody does attempt to follow the story, they could give me some feedback, which of course I'd appreciate. Couldn't hurt my motivation either. But oh dear me, I'm getting ahead of myself.

I think I've rambled enough for now. I'd expect to see a new entry on the Ailsglyph blog shortly, hopefully by tomorrow. I'll probably post more often on this blog in particular since it requires substantially less thought, as you no doubt have surmised, but I'll do my best to write some new entries with some degree of regularity.

Wish me luck!

Freedom's a Ghost Town

Someone once told me that life's a game. He said that we make our own rules, and we're allowed pursue meaning wherever we care to look. I thought to myself, 'how can something be meaningful if you can find it anywhere'? The question didn't bother me as much as I thought it would, actually, I was a bit intrigued by the prospect.

I was at work at the time, I thought maybe I could find meaning outside, because it didn't seem like it'd be where I was working. I thought about what it would be like to take off my apron and just go outside... but what then? The adventure was staring at me right in the face, all I had to do was walk out that door and yet... I couldn't do it. I knew deep down nothing was waiting for me out there. Nobody would share my dream with me, the streets would be empty. I knew then that freedom, the concept of it... it's a ghost town.

I wish more than I ever wished for anything that I could make my dreams real, so that I could share them with others. I did this all the time as a kid... a playground could be a pirate-ship, it was as easy as blurting it out, others would join in and change the scenery into anything they wanted. A war would break out between the buccaneers, a story would unfold, it was invigorating, there was meaning to be found and explored, it was everywhere.

But then we subscribed to another idea as we got older... an idea that the world's not fair, that you'd have to compete under a very specific set of rules if you wanted to make it ahead in this world. When we subscribed to this idea, we destroyed our sense of wonder, we let go our search for meaning. Truth is... it didn't go anywhere, it's right there, it's been there this whole time, we're free to go back to it whenever we want to.

However, it doesn't seem as appealing by yourself. I wish I had someone to play pirates with... now all I can do is sit on the side and sigh as I'm unable to let go of the harsh realities of the world we live in. How can I sit here and play by myself when so many others are barely managing in this cruel little world we live in? The slow death, they call it... so long as you allow yourself a little bit of time each day to appreciate something, anything, you're considered healthy. Whatever gets you through it... whatever allows you to maximize some company's profits...

I wanted to cry earlier today. Couldn't do it. I was so happy earlier, I had a funny encounter with a pretty girl at the store, we shared a smile, and I carried on with my day... but then I realized how fleeting the experience was, how rare it was, how I couldn't hope to re-create it with any sort of genuineness. I was given my allotted time to appreciate something, and it passed... how can we hope to fill this emptiness with so little time?

Again I had to retreat inside myself. My dreams and hopes and ambitions are all still alive and well inside me... I try to share them when I can, but sometimes I miss my marks, and months pass by where nothing but small-talk is achieved.

Sometimes I wonder if childhood was a dream we woke up from, or if we simply went to sleep since...

Human capacity

If I could define my entire philosophy in a nice and compact sentence, it'd probably be something like "Meaning transcends experience". Which is why I usually don't try to define my entire philosophy in nice little compact sentences.

The idea... as simply as I can put it... is that our worldview, no matter what it is at any given time, is always extremely naive and limited. Not through any fault of our own, it's just that the complexity and diversity of rational thought as far as comprehending the entirety of the universe is just so mind-boggingly impossible that our 'wiggle room' so to speak is unfathomable as well. If there's ever been a consistent experience in my life, it's that as soon as I think I have something figured out, that I found out that there's so much more depth than I was previously aware of.

The phenomenon I speak of when I say something like "meaning transcends experience" though is... say there's a topic you're interested in. It could be anything, but just for the sake of an example, lets say.. .trigonometry. Not a complex subject, really, not everyone's a math whiz, but I assure you for those that aren't familiar with this level of math, that it's truly not that difficult of a concept. The majority of trigonometry is basically the 'art' of determining distances and angles of two or more points. This is actually an insanely innate trait of humanity. We have a pretty damn good understanding of how far away something is because of our depth perception, even if an object is really far away. If you consider the angle between the object and our two eyes, sometimes that angle is less than a single degree, and yet we can portray with a great deal of accuracy how far away that object is.

The complexity of trigonometry, like in most of math, is learning how to abstract the principles and knowing how to manipulate the formulas to figure out more complex and abstract equations. However, the more you play with it, the more intuitive even that becomes, it's like you're extending your base human instinct to essentially transcend the real world into an abstract one. Simply by exploring a system, you become familiar with it, and you start to understand the deeper implications. So while on the surface, trigonometry might seem like a bunch of formulas and equations, there's a deeper connection being subconsciously made that once it 'clicks', so to speak, you have a deeper understanding than just the formulas you learned, you can actually apply your knowledge to things you had no direct instruction on being able to solve, because you now have a 'deeper understanding' of the subject matter.

This is true for everything. Fashion, music, games, movies, you name it. Most things, if not all things, have some sort of level of underlying association with them, so a mastery of, say, architecture, could easily transcend itself and lend itself to your ability to understand music theory. Just recently, learning more about drawing and shading techniques, I've come to have a much greater appreciation for lighting effects in movies, and how they effect the emotional qualities of a given scene. Completely unrelated at first, but there's this underlying abstract architecture that connects everything, some sort of unseen quality of the universe.

The lesson to be learned here is that if something seems meaningless from the start, it probably means you haven't appreciated the deeper underlying picture yet. Simply through the act of exploring something and connecting the dots, the bigger picture becomes that much clearer, and something... meaningful starts to happen.

The logical conclusion to this line of thinking is, well, what exactly is the nature of the universe? Everything else is kind of meaningless in comparison, if you think about how small Earth is compared to the size of the observable Universe, which might be part of multiple Universes and... yeah, we're not even close to comprehending the entirety of it. And yet, no matter what we do, we're experiencing pieces of the Universe in small little bits, unwittingly getting a better idea of the bigger picture as we go along, it's all part of it, we're all part of it, it's essentially the same framework, we, and all the experiences we have, are all essentially part of the same thing. Cool, huh?

This way of thinking has actually lead me to pantheism, which it turns out is a pretty vague worldview, but it's interesting to think about from time to time. It gives everything meaning in a really weird round-about way, and gives me a little bit of perspective, y'know?

Before her majesty

Title is a reference to a Puscifer song: Green Valley.

Had a thought earlier today that I'd like to share. Simple premise really, I was thinking about those little situations you have with people, those tiny circumstances that you forget about literally seconds after, situations like when on a side-walk trying to figure out whether or not to turn left or right, when you're at a restaurant table and trying to figure out how much money to pay for your share of the meal, when trying to determine how many slices of pizza to take that falls within acceptable limits of etiquette.

At the time, these thoughts completely take over your mind, sometimes they're uncomfortable, sometimes they trigger negative emotions that you'd rather not deal with. And yet you have to, otherwise you freeze, you deadlock a situation and the situation goes from something really minor to something much bigger. Most people don't have problems with these types of situations, but most people, I've found, do succumb to various anxieties, fears, and de-inflated feelings of self worth that work to truly color our attitudes about the world and those around us. These almost always feel as if we're working actively to cripple ourselves, and people almost always don't like it, but don't know how to move around it.

I find that 'deadlock' is a good way of explaining these situations. Successful people, and I use that term loosely to define virtually any situation that you walk away from with a feeling of accomplishment, seem to have an innate understanding of how to circumvent these situations, and I've come to theorize that the only way to truly walk away from any situation with any degree of success is be malleable. To be able to go with the punches. To be able to walk around obstacles rather than mull over why they're there in the first place and why that's so unfair.

In short... success is determined by accommodation. Judo, usually associated with the martial arts, actually means "The gentle way", and its core philosophy is to follow the path of least resistance to victory, never to be impeded. Alan Watts actually wrote a very interesting article about this philosophy which you can read over yonder. Also, if you want to have an innate understanding of how to achieve true mastery and victory over obstacles, and especially if you want to know more about the principles of group coherence, go read The Art of War... just do it.

The world's an ever-changing place, it's quickly heading towards a technological event horizon, social networking is finding ever creative ways to increase inter-connectivity and exponentially increasing humanity's collective knowledge and capacity for understanding. The business world is currently fighting an earthquake, where the bigger buildings are throwing as much money as they can at securing their foundation, but in the end, the newer buildings will pave the way to a brighter and ever more lucrative future. I can't imagine a more unstable future if I tried, and I certainly can't imagine a better time to learn the principles of malleability.

Anyway... exciting times, hope we can all make the best of it.

Yar har fiddle dee dee

Poor blog... I kinda want to revive it and devote some writing to it. Maybe I'll do that. Yeah, sounds good.

The thing is, lately I've been using my netbook for all my writing purposes. I got hundreds of documents in there, most of them being inane ramblings and journal postings... some of them are script ideas, or details concerning some stories I'd like to work on eventually. Others still are business proposals, since I had some ideas for start-ups, which are indefinitely on the back burner until I feel the proper motivation for them. Point is... almost none of it serves any purpose, I kind of doubt anyone else will ever read them. I mean, I'm not going to delete them, but, y'know, I wouldn't fret about it if they got destroyed or some such. Most of what I write about that's worthwhile sticks with me anyway, ready to be regurgitated.

This blog however, does serve a purpose... I haven't served that purpose very well, but the purpose remains, still cradled in secrecy, unknown to anyone but myself. I like that the blog is here, it's almost as if it's... calling to me... it wants me to just, y'know, do what I do best.

Whilst in San Francisco, I had an idea for a short story, a story that could only be read a certain way that I'd have to code for to make it work properly. However, in order to do the story justice, it should be thought out and outlined before I put the effort forth, because it's a vision I have. I thought to myself, well, okay, I know what I want, I just have to hammer out the details, make sure it works so I don't come across any problems later, then I just take a day and do what I need to do to make it work.

Then I kind of laughed to myself, because I knew it wasn't going to happen. I didn't have much proper motivation to write a simple short story I had a few days prior, what makes me think I'm going to put forth enough effort to code my own module and write out a pretty sophisticated story? I'm starting to know myself enough to know that if I'm not spending enough time writing regularly, that I'm not gonna just out of the blue finish some big project.

What I really should do is just... write. Every day. About whatever. Ease myself back into the fiction writing scene. More importantly than anything else... just have fun with it. Don't worry too much about it. Don't 'not write' until something amazing or worthwhile comes to mind... I mean, shee-it, I have a few dozen stories on the backburner already that I could give you the plot for right now, probably a few dozen more if I cared enough to search for them. I've been stock-piling these ideas for more than a decade, my 'magnum opus' if you will has been in the making for 14 years, and there's hundreds of smaller stories that it encompasses. Ideas aren't the problem here... motivation on the other hand... heh.

See, that's the thing though, I enjoy writing. People can comprehend what I write fairly easily, without too much struggle I hope, whatever, I'm not too worried about the readers, they're smart people, they'll figure it out. I can be conventional whenever I want, or I can entertain my more eccentric mannerisms at the drop of a hat. Writing is... enjoyable for me. I get some weird kick out of it, and I'm not sure why.

So... is there a reason I'm posting all this on this here blog? Well, yeah, not because anyone will read it, but because it's my little way of officially telling myself that I don't need to adhere to some strict standards of perfect preparation before I begin writing something, especially of something of so little consequence. If someone wants to read through my minor postings and short stories, y'know, that's great, good for them, maybe they'll learn something, but that's not why I do it. I do it because I enjoy it, and I want myself to *know* that I enjoy it, so I don't have to succumb to some irrational social anxiety about it.

Granted this blog is originally intended to be a place I hosted little short stories pertaining to the greater story of Ailsglyph... well, it still is kind of about that, but it's also something more.... something I'll probably get into at a later time.

Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

Mass Effect 3 - Catharsis

I've written about a lot of difficult issues in my time, but this one takes the cake. This article is going to be extremely lengthy, and is essentially a study of thematic elements in fiction and the human condition, while using the Mass Effect universe as the platform to discuss these issues. The inspiration for this article is a directly driven by a search for catharsis to fill the empty void that the Mass Effect series has left me with.

Please note that this article is teeming with spoilers, it couldn't be avoided. Sorry about that. I structured this article in a way that those with no interest in playing through the game can still understand what I'm talking about, though.

This article is not my analysis of the ending of Mass Effect 3, even though my opinion on the matter is very similar to what is being dubbed 'The Indoctrination Theory' which you can find more information about here. Even though the theory has a lot of peculiarities to it that are hard to ignore, I feel that speculation is counter-intuitive in the light that there's a strong possibility that Bioware/EA has yet to release more content that will shed more light on the issue. So until then, we have to work with what we got, and I've decided instead of rejecting the given ending, to analyze what it means in comparison to the themes that have been touched on throughout the series.

The Ghost in the Machine

The war between synthetic and organic life is the basis of the entire series. The ultimate threat that Shepard (the protagonist) is trying to stop is a dormant machine race called the Reapers that wake up every 50,000 years to destroy all advanced civilization. The issue seems very black and white at first, but as the games progress, the theme is expanded on through your interactions with other intelligent machines, namely the Geth: a humanoid race that gained sentience and nearly obliterated its creating race; and EDI, an AI core created as an advanced assistant for Shepard's ship: the Normandy. Notably, neither of these AI creations are inherently evil, and both most definitely have the capacity to empathize and coexist with organic life, as especially made clear by the potential romance option available between EDI and Joker, your ship's pilot.

The Geth are very interesting in their own right. The only reason they turned on their creating race was simply survival instinct since their creators turned on them. This entire period of their history is rife with confusion, as the Geth didn't inherently understand why they were being exterminated, and despite being technologically advanced, were ultimately too underdeveloped to truly understand the consequences of their actions, or to understand the motivations of other types of life around them. However, while the Geth represent an entire species of sentient life, complete with their own culture and ideals, I believe the true theme of AI sentience is expressed through EDI's character arc.

EDI begins the game with advanced characteristics for an AI: she understands humor, and is able to discern the motivations of other life forms. However she is very calculating, and has a very utilitarian mindset centered almost specifically around self-preservation. During the third game, she acquires a cybernetic body that allows her to gain a first person perspective on the universe, and ultimately drives her to ask questions about the nature of her own programming. What's interesting to note here is that the more she understands about humanity, the more human she herself becomes. She is not directly adverse to the human condition, and views the act of achieving humanity as enlightenment.

I believe this suggests that human-level sentience is a natural progression in the evolution of intelligent beings. Even Legion, a Geth commando that operates differently than other AI incarnations in that all 'his' decisions are based off of the consensus of a collective hive-mind, eventually became enamored with the idea of individuality. Without clear explanation, Legion uses some of your armor to augment his own, and one could easily argue that Legion's entire sub-text is that he views Shepard as some sort of god-like figure, looking up to him, perhaps trying to achieve something about Shepard's humanity that his own race could never allow him. This is kind of in the realm of speculation, but I believe this point specifically was being made when Legion used the word 'I' as opposed to 'we' in his final moments, right before he disseminates his own personality for the good of the rest of his race, no less, an important note of foreshadowing, but I'll touch more on that later.

This concept is put into overdrive when you start to receive the Reaper's motivations for destroying civilization. Their argument, in a nutshell, is that an advanced enough machine race will inevitably turn on their organic counterparts and therefore wipe out organic life as we know it. So in order to stop this from happening, an endless cycle was created where only civilizations on the brink of creating this advanced of an AI will be destroyed and harvested, allowing younger species their chance to grow and inevitably do the same thing.

What is odd about this conclusion is that it doesn't quite explore their motivations. Why not allow organic life to become extinct if it is truly obsolete unless there's something truly special inherent about it? If there is something truly special inherent in organic life, why would an extremely sophisticated AI species destroy it? Were the Reapers just naive, or was the cycle necessary for some other reason?

Diversity of Life

Many of the most important decisions you'll make throughout the series is deciding the fate of entire species. Honestly, this game is chock full of these scenarios, I don't even know where to begin. But for the sake of brevity, lets just say that the entire fate of the Quarians, Geth, Krogan, and Rachni are entirely up to you. Each species has its own instincts for self preservation and usually make their ascent to power accordingly, often at the unfortunate conflict with other species. You have the ability to allow humans to bypass the other alien races in political power grabs, and many of the choices you make in general are specifically designed to paint your relationship with other species.

One common recurring theme is whether or not humanity is superior to aliens and deserve their position of power. I believe this is a precursor designed to make Shepard wonder whether he/she is special or not, but either way, the issue is plainly very grey, and the theme usually subverted by the subject of sacrifice, anyway. The whole theme here gets stretched pretty thin as a result, since more often than not, you're making decisions based on what is best for the survival of the galaxy rather than deciding whether or not to maintain genetic diversity or empower your own race.

Regardless of what you end up thinking of the other races, it becomes clear that each race is clearly unique. They evolved differently, have different ideals, different cultures, they all have something unique to offer galactic civilization. The Reapers obviously realize this and make a point to not just destroy races, but to assimilate them into their own machines so that their traits aren't completely forgotten to genocidal annihilation. It is unclear whether or not the Reapers maintain the personalities and cultures of the species they assimilate, but it seems pretty important that our only interactions with these assimilated races is in combat against grotesque and mindless husks, suggesting that the Reapers might only evaluate a race's worth by their genetic properties rather than their societal ideals. But this too, of course, is just speculation.

According to the catalyst's claims, the cycles were created in order to preserve order, lest the universe descend into chaos. Ignoring the question of whether or not chaos is inherently bad, it does give you some insight into their methodology. Each incarnation of the cycle is inherently different for two reasons: the life forms that must ultimately fight the Reapers are essentially products of random mutations and therefore can be virtually anything; and the Reapers themselves change form each iteration due to their varying selection of assimilated species.

One more thing to note about the Reapers is that they leave their mass effect relays behind, their network for extremely fast space travel. Races usually end up coming across this technology, and thus their 'technological arc' is usually centered around this discovery, which could be seen as a tactical advantage for the Reapers, since it makes it much easier to predict the path these races will take and thus how to systematically destroy them.

A correlation can be seen here with the Krogan and Salarians. The Krogan were culturally uplifted by the Salarians, which had dire consequences. Since the Krogan weren't ethically prepared to deal with their new technology, it ended up nearly destroying their species and their home planet to nuclear warfare. The game does a good job of not condemning technology however, but rather puts a great deal of emphasis on doing your best to understand new technology and not to go blindly into the night, as it were.

Free Agency

Reliance on Reaper technology has a similar warning signal, in that Reaper technology has the ability to corrupt people who use it, as seen multiple times in the first game when entire settlements studying this technology are turned into mindless husks. Not to mention indoctrination, a process Reaper ships use on organic life-forms to slowly subvert their free will. Make no mistake about it, the game tackles the issue of free will almost exclusively through the indoctrination process.

The specifics of how it works is largely unknown, as it's kind of a hotly debated philosophical dilemma but while the game is fairly vague on how it works specifically, it does make it clear that it works using the power of suggestion. The question here is whether or not the suggestions are lies or not, since it appears that the indoctrinated are clued in to the Reaper's ultimate goals, though they do show signs that they have trouble articulating those goals, which indicates that either the concepts are too advanced for normal sentient minds to comprehend and is the reason that indoctrination eventually deteriorates the mind... or it works by lying and confusing the subject, which leads to deterioration for similar reasons.

The game makes a considerably stronger argument for the latter, since it's unlikely that Shepard's pretty basic reasoning skills is enough to undermine indoctrination by confusing them enough to question their own enlightened status. Though it is worthy to note that The Illusive Man hints that he understands the bigger picture right before he dies, the entire scene makes it strongly obvious that he is also quite confused and conflicted as well, leading me to conclude that he has probably gone mad by this point in the game. (The game also makes a point to show you that the Illusive Man was oblivious to EDI's capabilities, which would be strange for someone enlightened to the nature of AI to miss) Still, this is just speculation.

Sacrifice and Loss

The bulk of the emotional punch that Mass Effect 3 in particular centers on is the theme of sacrifice. This is hard to deny, pretty much every major decision you make is about choosing who lives and who dies for the sake of the greater good versus your own personal attachment. 'Ruthless calculus' as Garrus so eloquently puts it.

Though you spend most of the game sacrificing others, this feels so much like self-sacrifice, that when it comes time to put your own life on the line, the transition is seamless. The usual dilemma of self-preservation doesn't apply normally in games as it would in real life, though. While you may be invested in your character, I would argue you're more invested in the game experience and its potential offerings. You feel that by sacrificing certain elements, you yourself are sacrificing some of your personal enjoyment by taking those away from yourself. And for what? The outcome of a fictional galaxy? While it's certainly possible to play selfishly, I think most people empathized with the game universe and became immersed to the point where they felt the end mattered more than fulfilling their own selfish desires, and therefore banked everything they could on giving the galaxy the best fighting chance. It became more important to the player that the game's universe had a better outcome rather than maximizing his own enjoyment. This worked beautifully.

And then the player found out that his sacrifice didn't really matter at all.

The Illusion of Choice

The hole in my soul that I was talking about at the head of the article was the direct result of realizing that the ending theme wasn't about sacrifice at all, but rather transitioned very bluntly into the illusion of choice. The reason the entire game mattered to me was because the game led me on the entire time making me believe I had a choice in the matter, that sacrifice meant something, but really, just like the Reaper's plans for the galaxy, it was all pre-decided, I was just playing along, content following the strings of the two-handed puppet master.

While I can sen the artistic merit of this, it brought on a stage of profound denial. It hit close to home. I felt betrayed by no one in particular. I felt angry at myself for falling into this trap, that I never saw it coming, that I didn't prepare for it 'the right way'. I had no catharsis and I generally just felt pretty shitty. I immediately understood the backlash the game received, and was in awe at the same time. It reminded me of Bioshock, and its presentation of the illusion of control. It reminded me of Fable 2, where sacrifice actually punished you. It reminded me of Irreversible, where the idea of inevitability haunted me for days. It reminded me of Half-Life 2, and that feeling of dancing with something unknowable. It was all that yet different... Mass Effect 3 made me feel... shitty... conflicted...

I usually have some sort of philosophy to rely on, some sort of phrase that helps me sleep better at night that I can turn to for comfort. But this game gave me a message I couldn't wrap my mind around, that I couldn't outright deny or disprove. It showed to me clear as day that personal resolve counts for nothing, that believing in some fleeting hope for a better tomorrow can be taken from you at the drop of a hat, and it had a sound logical argument to back it up.

Denial of Fatalism

Going back to the Reaper's motivations, something became a bit clearer. The cycle of destruction has been going on for ages, and we can't take anything the Catalyst says at face value. The cycle was designed to be some sort of test for advanced civilization, as well as prevent an unwanted logical outcome. We're talking about an extremely advanced intelligence here, truly on the cusp of a Technological Singularity... yet it stopped. It decided that it's more important for living beings to dream and hope for a better future, to believe they have a fighting chance of seeing a better tomorrow... all for nothing. Again and again. That's pretty dark.

As a transhumanist myself, I bank a lot of my hopes and dreams on attaining a better future myself. Regardless of whether or not a Singularity is attainable, it does represent a sort of ideal, a vision of something to aspire to. It's a symbol of salvation in a way. I can't bring myself to believe that the future isn't worth fighting for because to me it screams of arrogance on an unprecedented scale, it assumes a hypothetical brick wall, despite evidence to the contrary showing boundaries being surpassed time and time again, almost always for the good of humanity and life in general. Though to have a highly intelligent machine, albeit a fictional one, behave in a way contrary to this is quite unsettling, I have to believe that there's still more to the story than meets the eye.

And yet, this denial is what Shepard represents the entire game. His resolve, an absolute refusal to be beaten, a soldier through and through that simply can not, will not give up. It's the entire emotional investment of the story. It's obviously clear that the writers are attacking the subject of fatalism as honestly as they can. If I took away anything from the game, cliche as it might be, it's that fatalism is destructive, that perseverance means something, that understanding is enlightenment, and understanding is achieved by going out and god damn achieving it.

Conclusion: Trial by Fire

I'm not going to pretend that the makers of Mass Effect 3 are enlightened souls that know something about ultimate destiny of mankind that the rest of us don't. I think they know just as well as we do that if it's out there, it's got to be achieved somehow. I'm pretty sure the Crucible is as honest a metaphor as the writer could come up with at presenting this as an extremely honorable goal. In the game, the Crucible is a huge mysterious device that represents the only real shot civilization has at defeating the Reapers, and everything comes down to completing it and getting it to work. Beat the Crucible, beat the Reapers. Beat the Reapers, bring on the golden age. Eloquent but simple metaphor really.

All that said... the point of this article was to explore the emotions that the ending inspired, but I might as well end this article on my own theory about the ending.

Lets talk about the Crucible for a second. For one, no one knows who first started the Crucible, but I'm betting it was the Reapers. I mean, think about it, no one knows what it does, each successive cycle of races adds more to it and passes it onto the next cycle, and it happens to requires the Citadel, a Reaper capitol ship, and only the Reapers know this. That's a lot of hints right there, but there's more. Even though the Catalyst is presumably unreliable, I do believe that he's being honest that the cycle will truly end if you choose the Synthesis option, and is actually the entire point of the cycle in the first place.

It's debatable whether or not the Reapers were capable of building the Crucible in the first place, but maybe there's a point to waiting for organic life to do it instead. There seems to be something inherently special about mankind's ability to think for itself, to make decisions based on intuition. There's a lot of emphasis on technology being harmful unless you're genuinely ready for it, and ready to take on the consequences. It might have been counter-productive for the Reapers to force this on organic life, as even the most advanced intelligence in the universe knows that evolution can't be forced. The Reapers remained stagnant, collecting races and different societies, cultures, ways of thinking, etc, biding its time until the Crucible would finally be completed, and civilization was ready to face the next step of evolution. The Catalyst actually goes to say that it's the final form of evolution.

Its also interesting to note that the Synthesis ending isn't available unless you get a high enough ready score, an option that doesn't make quite as much sense if it's just as ineffective as the other endings. But I digress.

This doesn't negate the criticisms people have about the ending, though. In particular, that punch from negating your sacrifices is still quite real and hard to get over, but I still think it serves a very intricate purpose. Just like life, you make choices throughout, but by the end of it, you don't get to see the fruits of your labors, all you can hope for is that you left a better world for your loved ones and hope that they can finish what you started.

Hopefully this provided some catharsis for anyone feeling a bit empty after this experience. All I can really say is... don't give up, really.