Subterranean weekly notes August 3, 2026: rants, forgotten art, forgotten magic, and metal farts

I’m going to tell you several things that have crossed my mind this week. Some are rants, others admiration. And a few jokes in between.

THE STUPID DEBATE ABOUT UNITY OR GODOT

Since I write here for my players and my readers, here it goes without filters: Unity is the best system for games. Period.

More documentation, more examples, fewer bugs, more solid… And they only ask you for… nothing. You can even remove the “made with Unity” label. I don’t do it, because I’m grateful.

And I think it’s silly that everyone gets angry because they ask for a tiny percentage if you get rich with your game (which I don’t think will happen for most of us). I would gladly pay it, and more, if that happened, because without Unity I could never have made my game.

This is what Tamzyn represents in my game, what make her a real "knightress" (even in the joke of the Purple King):

"Peaceful mind, brave heart, grateful soul"

The whole debate that appears from time to time is artificial. And I think it’s a very dirty game to feed it.

Godot can be great for some projects. If you use it, great. But keep your dirty tongue off Unity, please. Period.

A photoreal depiction of Tamzyn, just because.

AND C# IS BETTER THAN PYTHON

C# is easy. Of course you need to know how to program. And it resembles C++ a bit.

But someone can perfectly learn to program directly in C#. And there are millions of tutorial resources and all editors support it.

Python, on the other hand… is useful, especially for things like text handling. What drives me crazy is that forgetting a tab or a space breaks the code. And they’re invisible characters!

C# is structured, specific, with braces and parentheses like the magic circle of a spell. Python, instead, is fighting silly errors thrown just because you forgot a space or a tab!

And all this is my opinion. Those who want to use Godot and Python, keep doing it.

What I reject is fanaticism and attempts to create an opinion or rejection of other ways of working.

SOLAS COMPOSER'S NEW PIECE

Solas Composer continues creating sublime music. I love this new piece of his. I truly think he is the best fantasy composer.

WE NO LONGER REMEMBER MAGIC

The other day I saw a video where they talked about magic in fantasy books and games. As always, they talked about Sanderson.

One phrase the author of the video said was that magic had to have “rules like science.”

Let me crack my knuckles and hold this mug of mead…

What did you just say!? Magic is magic. It’s not science. It follows sympathy and contact. It connects with the imaginal and with symbols. No, no, no and no. It’s not your damn science and it doesn’t have to happen because you eat metals.

Besides, normally if you ate metals you would die. That’s not scientific or empirical.

And here’s another problem: magic is not about empirical reality. It’s about imaginal, liminal reality, and its action on the rest of experience. Don't damn try to fit it into something empirical. You are doing something absurd anyway!

People have forgotten what magic and fantasy are. One of the challenges of my story is to recover it.

WE DON’T UNDERSTAND ART

We don’t understand art. And this happens because we no longer understand magic.

Creating an image can be a craft. It can follow rules and have monetary value. The one who makes it is an artist.

Or it can be an invocation. It follows the rules of the symbol. Then, the one who makes it is a shaman.

And sometimes these two facets overlap. For example, in master Waterhouse.

He has this work called “The Magic Circle.” In a YouTube video they commented that the circle was a barrier against bad things. Everything good inside and everything bad and dangerous outside.

Oh, I need to vent!... Well, I’m sorry, but a circle does not mean that in magic. A circle is a boundary!

The mage handles raw power. It doesn’t belong to him/her. It can belong, for example, to the Great Mother.

Words, gestures, the circle… all are boundaries. All of them limit and define the amorphous and undefined. The circle keeps the imaginal world within that area. That way it doesn’t unleash itself beyond.

It’s sad that all this has been forgotten. However, it’s still there. Fantasy is the way we live it again.

But for that, stop eating metals like Sanderson. It’s not healthy. Then it upsets your stomach and you go flying off propelled by a magical intestinal gas.