When you can’t beat em: help them beat other people.

An insane world demands crazy standards

With void week nearly over, and the spacetime continuum jolting back into its proper volumized moment of “nowish” in question, the frozen absurdity of humanities follies regain virality unabated, and with it, totality of disappointment made manifest afresh once more…which is just a dramatically fun, albiet pedantically exhausting way of saying mistakes will have relevancy again, as when one is surrounded by complete and utter abject nihilism, with nothing in question mattering what so ever, even if one could get something wrong, the failing value judgement in question would become an innate irrelevancy upon itself, as if the proverbial tree falling in the soundless forest draped in midnight is beside its own reality.

My time with Mario Kart World (MKW) is not necessarily “coming to an end”, as it were, as like any MK game, it no doubt represents a staple of sorts that with any realistic standard, will likely remain relevant, in a not too ridiculous assumption, for the rest of the Switch 2’s life cycle, so the better part of the next decade, at the very least. Considering the ever increasing irrelevancy of the distinction of console generational shifts, in the realm of each one seeming more vague than the last, especially with both multiple tiers/pro offerings bridging gaps between “new but sameish” iterations of said tech hubs, MKW might be swirling up dust for sometime yet in our shared futures, for better or worse.

I suppose I’m feeling a bit bodacious with my verbiage this day (spoilers), as I am certainly “chewing up the scenery” something fierce with such profoundly long-winded ways of address this night, perhaps I’m feeling a sense of propriety after a long day of aura farming upon the maniacal machinations of MKW’s multifarious mileu, I begin to lose some steam in wrapping up qualitative conceptual critique in having concisely coveted the bulwark of the metagame’s proclivities. Which, fine enough, such an endeavor was to come to an end eventually, and briefly looking upon the weeks worth of commentary of what I’ve cultivated in reference to MKW‘s offerings in a competitive sense is quite dazzling, if I may be so emboldened by my own self-audited, egofairing notions, though not unfairly so, as I am a firm advocate of not only giving fair credit where credit is due, but taking pride in one’s work, as to strive for anything lesser within one’s own realm is nothing less than a metaphysical self-sabotage of needlessly caustic psychic proportions.

Ah, yes, I knew if I bided my time long enough cavorting in my mayweather fields of mischievous fancy, I’d eventually stumble upon one of the final truths I will touch upon before displacing my own horizon of interest in the name of disentangling my vane merits from MKW’s “greener grasses”, and that is the proposed value proposition of how to deal with what I’ve outlined in the past several days as a destabilized metagame of choatically amorphous proportions.

The proposition in question is not necessarily an entirely new innovation within the realm of navigatory standard, though an often overlooked obsequiousness offering where queer quantum qualification is concerned: and that is, to put it in layman’s terms; strategic sandbagging…aka, “controlled losing“, as the sterling silver standard of “those who come after”, and their most expeditious of wayfaring weariness, will end up being granted the position that the rapidly minded will mistakenly be robbed of.

To wit; it’s been a known known in any competitive circle worth its salt in the realm of Mario Kart savviness, that one can “game the meta” of lucky providence, by using the shuffling slippery standard of yielded precision in hanging back in the pack, and willfully sacrificing placement for advantage, as the further back one gets, the less of a target one becomes, aside from the wealth of quality offensive items that goes along with the leveraged sense of lagging leeway. A lot of the more pedestrian Mario Karters will have likely never even considered this notion, being so far removed from the comforts of being able to hold and maintain position on a whim, willingly “giving the lead away” would likely be an unfathomable affair to them, but the greasy truth will set their precious hearts free.

While strategic sandbagging has firm routes within the foundational methodologies of Mario Karts history, it is certainly one of those strategies that supercedes the confined boundaries of the series own sense of self, and has much wider applications, even outside the virtual realm, in having relevancy of competitive conquest. The examples would be of course too varied and numerous in their applications, so it remains one of those improvisational tools of abstractual worth to keep on the conceptual toolbelt for when one is beset by the intensity of ridiculous demand where cruelty, chance, or lucky randomness is concerned. In this way, it hearkens back to my shared approaches in “mastering the metaphysical mayhem” of Silksong’s wilds, in that I was attempting to show one how to ready themselves psychologically for the idea of the virtual battlefield itself, rather than just give them a schematic of a single arena with which they may encounter. I’ve espoused this level of framework thinking before, in being able to refine and hone one’s tendencies to universalized approach, in borrowing from one’s own experience to compliment further existential treacheries that seek to quell the seething spirits of a warriors pride, in however farcicle a scenario this may take the form of; blue shells and banana peels not withstanding.

Ergo; if first place becomes a minefield of ill intent, tread not upon the sullied grounds of havoc laid bare with explosive folly, and ebb and flow with the outlying stream of perspective to make fluid ones own sense of willful victory.

I don’t know if that does it, in concluding my crystallized thoughts upon the wondrous meta of Mario Kart World, though it kind of brings forth the vibe of finality before my discourse on the matter perhaps starts becoming a bit long in the tooth of where explicit standard is concerned. Thinking back to last April, when I staked a claim in what I thought was new and impressive ground of linguistic articulation within the confines of Mario Kart’s address, in all of its perceived greasiness, I thought proud of myself for the new found efforts of word smithing that followed in Mario Kart’s wake, and dreamt not a more vivid standard materializing, upon which new imaginations may take root in any immediate furtive harvest.

This day I reap gratification from which my whimsies sprout.

-Pashford