Episode 0: And I am tired
Piloting Glorious Flesh
Episode 0: And I am tired
Hello. Again.
I am Piloting Glorious Flesh.
I am Cozmo ‘Cozy’ Cozzi.
And I am tired.
It is midnight, New Years Day, 2024. I will be entering my life’s fourth, miserable, decade this year. I finished 6 out of 8 full, agonizing work days in a row, on a holiday weekend.
I am sober.
I am alone.
And I am tired.
Earlier this… last year there was a pretty popular YouTube video. It was about plagiarism on YouTube. You know the one. By some form of cosmic circumstance I happened to watch the video, uninterrupted, minutes after it was published. The contents of the video shook me to my very core, but not for the reasons you might immediately think. Sure the crimes committed were numerous and terrible but I became obsessed with a singular detail. They cheated the EASY PART!
I used to write. I have an old blog I’ll link to at the end. It’s probably not good. I mostly wrote about video games. I thought of myself as a games critic. Eventually at some point I lost faith in my skills as a writer. I felt I was wasting my time. I felt I was worthless. A spider crawled into my ear. She whispers to me. She tells me my writing sucks. She tells me I was wasting my life. She weaved a web in my head and built a home. Every time I feel the need to write again, I let the spider win.
On that day that I watched that… very long YouTube video, I was filled with a white hot rage. The rage burned the spider out of my skull. Sometimes to know you aren’t an imposter, you have to see what a REAL imposter looks like. I was angry that these charlatans would commit absurd, incomprehensible editing war crimes. Seeing the lengths they would go to avoid writing broke me.
Now I do not want to diminish the hard work that goes into any writing project, but I am barely exaggerating when I say I can probably write in my sleep. I swore off writing for a time, but I was ALWAYS writing. I wrote this very essay inside my brain’s word processor while I was in an agonized fugue state at my miserable job. It has come crashing into my attention that not everyone is like this. There are people who have to cheat, cheat, CHEAT to pretend they can write. I won’t even pretend I’m good at writing but I would rather write poorly than commit the bizarre editing nightmares that the serial plagiarists did.
The spider is dead.
And I am tired.
I came to a realization. I will not survive this life. My job will grind me to a nub of a human being. My failure to live life will entomb me in this house. I MUST make a change. In order to make a change I must first pick a direction. I must look within myself and discover what exactly I’d like to be doing for the next 3 decades of my life. I’ve come to a single conclusion. I have one skill that I enjoy doing. I have one skill that people want to steal because there is value. I have one skill that I can do with relative ease that other people clearly cannot.
I have one skill.
And I am tired.
I imagine you are now probably wondering who I am or what this blog is even about. I am Piloting Glorious Flesh. I am a writer. I hate myself. I love video games. I hate myself proportionately to how much I love video games, so I’ll choose to write about video games. I would, ideally, write for a living. I have one skill. For now I simply want to train so I can regain my confidence in writing.
I do want to speak plainly about my goals for this writing blog. In 2024 I plan to start my training arc. I want to try and write one essay a month to try and keep the training consistent. If I am satisfied with my progress I plan to keep going. I plan to possibly accept money from would-be generous patrons or even potentially look for opportunities to work with my writing, but not until after I am satisfied with my training.
I need to quit my day job.
And I am tired.
Lastly… what the hell does “Piloting Glorious Flesh” even mean? It means VIDEO GAMES. I have also developed a taste for evocative, visceral nonsense, or in other words, ITS METAL AS FUCK! Generally I won’t explain any of the nonsense I write purely for my amusement but I figured if you read this far you earned it. Gold star.
When you play a video game, people tend to use actors on a stage as their metaphor of choice. I find this inadequate, what is METAL AS FUCK about acting? (Editor’s Note: acting is actually VERY METAL.) Perhaps it is whatever undiagnosed neurodivergence I have or whatever, but I prefer to think of video game characters as mecha. You see Mario from THE Super Mario Bros. Without you, the pilot, Mario is an empty husk. His meat case would be left rotting in 1-1 if you never pressed any of the buttons. You are a tiny (proportionally) insect of a (presumed) human being. You enter his skull. You press the buttons and pull the levers. Mario moves. You may either send Mario falling to his doom or you might control him with Newtype-esque precision through the most cruel of Mario Maker “kaizo” levels.
If playing a video game is like controlling a mech made out of men, then you may consider me the Char Aznable of piloting glorious flesh. And you, my dear, young, impressionable friend, can be my Amuro Ray. And YES, that was a pick up line!
I am single.
And I am tired.
Next Time on Piloting Glorious Flesh
Episode 1: Death to the Abstraction Machine!
Part 1 of the Abstraction Machine Duology will be a story spoiler-light review of Final Fantasy XVI. Part 2 titled “Long Live the Abstraction Machine!” will cover one, if not both of the recent, mainline entries in the Like a Dragon franchise. (I have to play 8 before I decide if it's worth including in this particular project) A tale of two cities. A tale of two franchises. Ships passing in the night. Trading genres without even knowing.
A wiseman once spoke to me in a language I do not speak, but in words I could understand. They said “Abandoning your uniqueness is equivalent to dying.” They told me this in the form of a blue haired, high school girl in an anime I really, REALLY liked. “So don’t write generic lyrics based on other concerns. Write what YOU want to write.”
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