Enter the World of Ettare
Adam’s Notes for October 12, 2023
Hello and welcome to Adam’s Notes. This week we’re taking a break from the usual format for an interview with Cockydoody, creator of the upcoming videogame Ettare.
Adam: So I guess to start, can you explain your patreon and the video game project you're working on?
Cockydoody: Okay. So the patreon is basically a way to help fund the video game. I'm not as active using it as I should be but I post things I'm working on daily on twitter. The video game, Ettare, is a first person fantasy RPG along the lines of the Elder Scrolls series (especially Morrowind). It's being made by myself and ABMarnie, with a lot of help from watermuseum_.
Adam: From the photos you're posting, there's a sort of crude look to it, but that's intentional, right? It always reminds me of that old Mysteries of the Sith game whenever I see you posting pictures.
Cockydoody: Yeah, it's partially intentional and partially a side effect of the fact I'm still learning as I go along. I never touched any sort of 3d modeling software until late 2021, when I decided I'd try and make a game after the success of my friend's game, Cruelty Squad. I needed something to fill my time after dropping out of school and losing my job/digging my way out of some awful Lockdown-era depression.
I'm happy that the look of my work is starting to reach the level of games like Morrorwind and Kenshi, whose own crudeness is hugely appealing to me visually. It's a charm that for me is less to do with nostalgia and more to do with that special quality that's imparted by passionate amateurs. There's a quote from Bruce Sterling on science fiction that's something like, "I like weird ideas and I don't mind if they're communicated crudely." I feel that my project and some other games are that. Crudely communicated in terms of visuals, but there's something there.
Adam: Right, I was going to mention Cruelty Squad too. From what I've seen of that (I haven't played any videogames in at least ten years), it feels like it uses that aesthetic crudeness to make players ask basic questions about what's going on, questions they wouldn't ask if they were playing the latest shooter. It also reminds me of that dictum you hear from historians, about how the term 'Dark Ages' used to be a judgement on an epoch, but now the term is used to refer to how little we know about the time and place. It feels like you can use that kind of crudity to give us a dark age that blockbuster movies just can't render visually, but that Bresson gets at with his paired down props/sets and amateur actors.
Cockydoody: That's definitely a way these sort of graphics can be interpreted. They're less definitive than they are evocative (to paraphrase a line from Moorcock, I think, when referring to Elric's anti-worldbuilding). I get a lot of comments that the faces of some characters I've made look like masks. There's been some really wonderful art inspired by Ettare that was made recently where a mask was interpreted as the wearer's face. I like that there's always something "off", borderline uncanny, about the models I've been making.
Adam: Can we talk about your inspirations?
Cockydoody: I have a huge affection for old Robert E. Howard stories and the random bits of sword and sorcery stuff I've read over the years. Dying Earth, Zelazny's Lord of Light and Jack of Shadows, as well as Wolfe (both Book of the New Sun and his Latro books) loom large as influences. The snotty french decadent medievalism in books like "La Bas" is big for me too. No idea if any of this will come through, but it feels important regardless.
I hope that helps situate where Ettare fits as far as genre goes.
Adam: I think it works. 'Snotty' especially is very evocative.
Cockydoody: Snottiness is important, lol. The pompousness and easily ruffled dignity. I remember the War Nerd interview about his version of the Iliad where he mentions the phrase "he is Gentle and quick to anger."
Adam: You seem to be drawing a lot from medieval Arab/Turk cultures, some Pre-Columbian stuff. I tracked down that book of pre-Islamic Arab war poems you once recommended, but haven't got around to reading it yet.
Cockydoody: Yeah, absolutely. I've been reading a lot about the Medieval Islamic world, which I really know nothing about. It's completely fascinating to me. One of the first books I read that started to inform Ettare's look and feel was called "Violent Order" (can't remember the title right now) and was about the chivalric organizations originating from Islamic Persia. The stories of fanatics, clashes between gnostic knights pursuing "opulence of mind" and fighting duels to the death over whether "fire preceded earth" or not.
There are things I see reading history that feel like pre-made fantasy. Weird juxtapositions of aesthetics and ideas that were probably normal but due to my ignorance are surprising and strange. I love Fellini's bit about his Satyricon adaptation being a "science fiction of the past." Both that film and the text are massive inspirations to me as far as fantasy goes. Pasolini's "Porcile" is a big influence as well, with its cannibal wanderers in pseudo-Italian/spanish helmets and rifles.
Adam: I just read a history of Carolingian diplomacy with the Abbasids and Umayyads, and also their inability to do diplomacy with groups in North Africa. It's a really fascinating time period that I'm drawing on for my own fiction projects, but I stumble with Arab/Islamic history, so kudos for finding a way to incorporate it. I think I saw you had some background guys based on the Franks?
Cockydoody: I've been loving those excerpts you've been posting on that stuff. That kind of clash of cultures and weird interactions is so exciting to me. That's part of what I mean by strange juxtapositions. Imagining the armor and weapons of those peoples, the clothes, all of it together.
I'm slowly getting fascinated by the Franks, the more I learn about them. A part of Ettare is that I'm trying to avoid the usual fantasy setting that's focused on a pseudo-medieval England, France, etc. so in my research I was avoiding them.
I've been thinking of making up a pseudo-Frankish culture based on the stranger aspects of their culture, as well as broad statements made by an Arab observer in the book "An Arab-Syrian Gentleman in the Time of the Crusades" (which is one of the most wonderful books I've ever read)
Where he makes broad statements like the Franks lack all sexual jealousy or a proper nudity taboo, their extreme violence, their obstinate refusal to pray properly, etc.
Adam: I haven't read that, but I loved a book called Saracens and Franks in 12th - 15th Century European and Near Eastern Literature: Perceptions of Self and the Other by Aman Nadhiri which touches on all the stereotypes Franks and Arabs had about each other. I get a little worried sometimes though because in my fiction projects I’m drawing a lot from the French chansons de geste and I dislike their frequent xenophobic/Islamophobic sentiments, but still there's something fascinating about how they'll have the Other as like tusked mutants and stuff. It's clearly the start of the tradition that goes on to include Hieronymus Bosch and the Star Wars cantina aliens.
Cockydoody: Oh, absolutely. The more I read about the Crusades the more I see where a lot of anglo/american authors take things. It's like how so much of classic SF was rehashes of Rome narratives. I'll have to check out that book you mentioned.
The Arab-Syrian gentleman book is interesting in that it's a memoir with a lot of really lovely, sketched out vignettes. Little scenes to illustrate some moral point. The author was a knight when he was younger who fought the Franks under Saladdin, to whom he was an advisor. He was also a religious judge and so he will have pages talking about how the Franks are unclean, cruel, born liars, etc, but then he'll list their virtues.
It makes him a likable writer for a modern person in that way. Or a chapter that's just about how women also have a "love of adventure" and praises women he's known who killed Franks, both in combat and through schemes where they'd lure them to secluded places and kill them.
In making Ettare I've been conscious of that kind of xenophobia/orientalism too. I love orientalist paintings. I love that whole aesthetic of "the east." reading about the Crusades I can see some of the origin of this stuff: the descriptions of the armies of Fatamid egypt which were incredibly diverse culturally and racially (and religiously as well, considering they had Armenian Christians, gnostics, and Muslims fighting for them as well as Christian Nubians), but it also reminds me of 300. This ultra-diverse other, swarming, vs. the few, noble, white Franks/Spartans/Nazis vs. the Soviets as seen through so many repulsive youtube "historian" commentaries. But that's a whole other thing.
Ettare is set in an area of its world called Burku that I'm basing off of the medieval Balkans and Caucuses. A hilly, mountainous frontier with a clash of cultures and religions, and a heavy Byzantine influence. I want to take some inspiration from those sort of writings you mentioned. The prejudices and superstitions that give that writing some of its non-modern flavor.
Adam: Can you talk about the twerking homunculus crossbow?
Cockydoody: I love the homunculus crossbow. The extremely talented watermuseum_ is animating the crossbow and has posted a few videos of it jiggling around. Ettare has homunculi, which are living things brewed up by alchemists out of blood, "generative liquors", and so on. The crossbow homunculus is going to be an enemy in the upcoming combat demo. It's going to be the toy of one of the aristocratic raider-pilgrims. An expensive weapon and servant commissioned as a status symbol.
Adam: God, that rules. What’s up with manticore?
Cockydoody: Oh, yeah. The manticore and its rider are going to be NPCs. A cataphract and its irredeemably malicious, sentient mount. I made a model (which I'll probably redo and spruce up in the future) and sharp_sticks drew an incredible version. Then a few others did as well.
Adam: Is there a timeline for when people can expect this demo?
Cockydoody: We were planning to have it out around the end of September but now we're porting over to Godot, like a lot of game devs. We were using Unity, but their recent bullshit with licensing fees and Musk-style retractions made us wary. Everything has to be ported over and it's taking a little time, so I'm not sure.
I'm very proud of what's been going into the demo. watermuseum_ has animated the crossbow homunculus, a sea scorpion, and a beautiful repeating crossbow that the player will be using.
Adam: Thanks for doing this interview!
Cockydoody: Thanks for interviewing me! It felt nice articulating this stuff a little bit. Hopefully I'll come off not-annoying lol.
Adam: I think it'll be good. We should do a follow up sometime on orientalism, because it's a fascinating topic and I can never quite fully articulate myself about it.
Cockydoody: I'd love to. Talking about orientalism, history, and genre overlapping is fascinating. Like I can't claim to have even a tiny grasp on any of those things in a scholarly way, but they are things I think about a lot.
Adam: I hope Ettare really takes off when it comes out. Feels like such a welcome and weird departure from so much fantasy-style stuff.
Cockydoody: Thank you! I hope so too. I'm optimistic about how it'll turn out. I've been shocked by the flurry of beautiful interpretations from artists on twitter and how many people actually seem curious about the "lore".
You can follow Cockydoody and Ettare collaborators ABMarnie and Water Museum on twitter. Also check out the Ettare Patreon.
Pepys Show
October 1660 was a pleasant month for Pepys. He’s settled into his new job and using his new wealth to decorate his new house. The theatres are reopening and the churches are emptying, leading Pepys to conclude that religion, “is but a humour, and so the esteem of it passeth as other things do.”
Pepys is also really starting to delight in gossip. His patron, Lord Sandwich, tells him that the Duke of York has knocked up the Lord Chancellor’s daughter and he’s refusing to marry her even though King Charles insists. Lord Sandwich’s comment: “he that do get a wench with child and marry her afterwards is as if a man should shit in his hat and then clap it on his head.”
Lord Sandwich has also been offered the opportunity to invest in the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, which won’t actually be incorporated until December. At first, its primary objective will be to search for gold, but by 1663 it will be England’s first large scale venture into the slave trade. For now, Lord Sandwich demurs, but I believe he will eventually be involved in its affairs.
On October 11, Pepys sees the inventor Greatorex’s engine for drawing up water and afterwards goes to a performance of Othello at the Cockpitt Theatre, noting that a very pretty lady “sat by me (and) called out, to see Desdemona smothered..”
On October 13, Pepys heads to Charring Cross to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered for his part in the execution of King Charles I. Pepys comments that Harrison looked “as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.” On October 15, another regicide, Mr Carew, is executed, “but his quarters, by a great favour, are not to be hanged up.“ By October 20, Pepys writes that “I saw the limbs of some of our new traitors set upon Aldersgate, which was a sad sight to see; and a bloody week this and the last have been, there being ten hanged, drawn, and quartered,” yet overall he seems more concerned that his neighbour’s bathroom is flooding into his cellar, which caused him to step into a great heap of turds. Still these hangings are the end of an era in Pepys’ life: as a child Pepys felt strongly republican and skipped school to see the execution of King Charles I.
Links
I don’t really feel I have anything interesting to say about the Hamas attack and the ongoing genocide in Palestine, so I’m just going to list a few sources that I’ve found valuable:
Chapo Trap House’s latest episode offered a sober look at the attack and Israel’s unhinged response.
Radio War Nerd has put out a couple of episodes on the attack and is sure to have more great coverage in the days to come.
Isaac Chotiner’s New Yorker interview with Tareq Baconi, the president of the board of the think tank Al-Shabaka: the Palestinian Policy Network, is worth reading. “I think the rhetoric that has emerged since this attack has partly been a continuation of the fundamental misreading of what causes violence. The important thing is to end the war and to end civilian death. Unless the political drivers of Palestinians are really contended with, this isn’t going to go away. If Hamas is decimated, the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle will continue in another guise and with another ideology. What I find frightening is that the Western powers and the Americans who are so bent on supporting Israel despite its apartheid somehow think that they can maintain this project cost-free.”
Tareq Baconi also has a good article in the New York Review of Books offering context.
Derek Davidson’s Foreign Exchanges is always good for current events and their historical context.
Sandy and Nora have a good podcast on the domestic fallout.
#Heistwatch: Lawsuit gives new details of Swiss gold and cash heist from Toronto airport. Glen McGregor reports that Brinks is suing Air Canada over the recent gold heist from Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, alleging the airline negligently handled cargo and accepted a fraudulent waybill from a thief.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, especially if you’ve made it this far. This has been Adam’s Notes for October 12, 2023. My name is Adam McPhee, and you can find me on Twitter, Bluesky, and Goodreads.