Farewell to Harms

A catalogue of things and ideas that I am letting go of.

In a journey, we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as means to an end, but is continued as the ultimate end. Forgetting our purpose is the most frequent form of folly.

— Friedrich Nietzsche in “Human, All Too Human”

Goodbye to XCOM

In 2013 I traded 7 × Mann Co. Supply Crate Keys for a copy of “XCOM: Enemy Unknown”. I know when it was because I was sitting in the audience before a talk at PyCon UK with my friends Daz and Ed. I was being radicalized into the world of XCOM.

I enjoyed this game a lot. I played it on the living room TV at my house in Craddock Road in England. I finished it on Easy and I played a bit on Normal. Ironman mode was not for me. (A variant where you only get one save: no Save Scumming allowed.)

I'd take photos of particularly brutal missions and despite having the option to reload, I always treated my actions as immutable. If someone died, they died.

In XCOM, when a character in your squad dies, they stay dead. You have to balance always sending the best people into a mission against the risk of losing those people.

On a particularly bad mission you could have a whole generation of Majors die and have to face the next mission with a rag-tag crew of left over Rookies and Sergents. Failure (which means losing your best people) can lead to more failure (because now have you have to fight enemies that are just as hard: but with worse people and gear).

I played “XCOM: Enemy Within” when it came out. It was fine.

I played “The Bureau: XCOM Desclassified” — I really enjoyed it, but it's not really an XCOM game. It's not turn based, for one. It was a just an okay third-person shooter that didn't go on too long and when it was over I knew I'd never play it again. There's actually something freeing about a game with basically zero replayability. Too often I never get to feel “done”.

XCOM 2 came out in 2016. I bought it full price. It was glitchy and I didn't enjoy it. I stopped playing. I played it again in 2019. Then in 2021. I've got a play through going right now.

I think that it's time to give up. Not because I'm screwed (although I just got my nose bloodied on my current play-through) but because I'm not having any fun. I want to like playing XCOM 2 because I enjoyed XCOM so much, 12 years ago. But I'm not that person, and this is not that game.

In the mean time, I've played a few “fair play” turn based tactical games. Games like “Tactical Breach Wizards” and “Into the Breach” (no relation). These don't have XCOM's famous chance-to-hit — where a 95% shot can miss (which is fair; this is how percentages work). If you make the right move in TBW or ItB, then you win. Simple as: no luck involved.

I'm glad I played the games that I enjoyed (Enemy Unknown, Bureau, a few hours of Chimera Squad). Thanks, 2K. But I have to face up to the fact that I can't make myself like the new things just because I remember liking the old things so much back in the day.

Goodbye, XCOM.

… and to Ulysses

I had to look up when I started reading James Joyce's “Ulysses”. September 2022. I felt that it was time: it was something I had to do to acknowledge my Irish-ness, even.

I read some Joyce when I was at school — he's basically unavoidable in the Irish school system, as probably the most famous Irish writer (or at least; of the writers that modern Ireland makes a big deal of — Bram Stoker, Oscar Wilde and C. S. Lewis all carrying the stigma of Anglo-Irishness).

I didn't enjoy it.

I had read “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” which I disliked because of its wandering prose and the total milksop of a main character: Stephen Dedalus (a self-insert of Joyce). Mild spoiler for Ulysses: it's also about Stephen Dedalus and he's even more insufferable.

Let me explain why I should like this book; why I attempted to read it even though I had my complaints about Joyce in the past.

• It's set in and around Dublin city, where I grew up.

  Much of Dublin is essentially the same as it was 100 years ago, especially around Dalkey/Sandycove/Dún Laoghaire along the coast and Dublin city (and especially North of the River Liffey).

  I've walked the streets that he's describing; I've experienced the power and status of the Catholic church in Ireland and I even played rugby against Clongowes Wood and Belvedere College.

  When I started this book I hadn't been back in over nine years and I'll admit to feeling some nostalgia.

• The events take place during a part of Irish history that really interests me — pre-revolutionary Ireland.

  The King is on the money, the Anglo-Irish have it, and Stephen (a Catholic) has a chip on his shoulder about his status relative to the Anglicans.

  This is a book where the founding of Saorstát Éireann is about to happen and it's like the radio left on in the background of a TV drama today. The book isn't about that but it's also not entirely not about that.

• It's considered a masterpiece. A classic.

  I didn't want to dismiss it out of hand and even though I knew it would not be an easy read, I thought that it would reward the effort that I put into it.

  I'm more than two decades older than the boy who read Portrait and hated it, and I've since read more widely and deeply.

  Reviews on The Story Graph and Goodreads are 1's and 5's.

  It's divisive, but some of the people who enjoyed it aren't even native English speakers — never mind not knowing Hiberno-Irish and Dublin colloquialisms. I thought that if a non-native speaker could enjoy this book, I could too. (Writing from the future: I doff my hat to you, non-Anglo Ulysses finishers!)

I don't need a list to say why I stopped reading it: it's impenetrable nonsense. I constantly feel like Joyce is fucking with us, to see what he can make us accept as a reader. It must have been hilarious to him to have this book lauded the way that it was.

I'm a native English speaker and fully aware of just about any Dublin reference that comes up. I know all the places that he introduces without explaining anything and the between-line reading about the church and status and relative poverty of Dedalus to his peers.

I'm willing to be wrong: I am the philistine with bad taste who just doesn't get the book, but my full and honest opinion is there isn't that much here to get.

For this book's place as something that changed what a novel could be: thank you. I don't think it would be alone in breaking down barriers and inspiring a generation with what is now possible — while not actually being very good in comparison to what came after.