Platax pinnatus, also known as the pinnate spadefish, pinnate
batfish, dusky batfish, shaded batfish, or red-faced batfish is a fish
from the western Pacific that occasionally is kept in marine aquariums.
“Where do fairies come from? From the dark. To find the origins of fairies, we must go back to the dark— dark of our own past, dark of the world’s past.”
— — Diane Purkiss, At The Bottom Of The Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things (2000)
More than being forced to be good at fighting, however, the game will never assume that a player character is intelligent, nor that they know what’s going on at any given time. This comes in many forms: the player can never know lore in advance for the benefit of new players, there is never any expectation that the player is actually reading and intaking the narrative (you follow arrows, not directions, which is in part good for accessibility but I don’t believe for a second that it was integrated because of that), they can never have more knowledge than relevant NPCs (your character is not an expert in anything, never consulted, and rarely gets to guide the story), and now we finally get to the point of this extremely long tweet…there’s nothing for your character to be good at besides killing things.
Happy April, here’s a blog about how mainstream gaming is obsessed with death and violence which isn’t inherently bad but it ultimately has nothing interesting to say about death and violence and only trends towards gamer obsession with killing things as a measurable, ranking achievement, which weakens storytelling and ultimately character creation because if you aren’t good at killing things then there is no gameplay.
I do one of these a month, for people who’ve donated on my Ko-fi!
She digs her thumbs in gently, working small, slow circles into the
muscles. Cassian exhales a sudden, shaky breath, but he doesn’t say
anything so Jyn doesn’t stop. Slowly, methodically, she keeps up the
circular pressure, working her way out from his spine towards his sides,
and then back in, letting her fingers skim lightly over his skin but
keeping even pressure with her thumbs. Her own patience surprises her a
little. Jyn is many things, but patient has never really been
one of them. She doesn’t feel even marginally tempted to rush this,
however, noting how he leans forward a little further, granting her a
better angle, more access to his body. The idea that he might actually
be enjoying this, she acknowledges only deep down in the quietest part
of her soul, is a little bit thrilling.
When I was in undergrad, during my methodology class, my professor (and advisor) was asked, “How do you keep your journal articles jargon-free?” and his answer was, “After a certain level, you simply cannot, and to do so would actually make your writing bad historical writing.” He then went on to compare two different articles by the same author written in a journal where undergraduates can submit, and a journal where only phd. can submit.
The difference in language was subtle but noticeable, because there is an implicit understanding that the article is written for someone who has the necessary background on the subject. The writer was able to not have to explain every concept in a journal for phd., since the readers were supposed to bring a baseline of knowledge, or know how and where to go to be educated (or who to ask). This is despite the fact that both were available via jstor.
There will always be people having conversations about things that are beyond your understandig on the topic. I do not instantly understand nuclear physics or computer science or organic chemistry, but I give credentialed people that I know aren’t cranks the benefit of doubt that they know what’s going on. This respect is often not extended to humanities people talking about their work because “blue curtain is just blue” people think the high school education they mostly rejected puts them on the same field of discussion as people educated on the subject. Yet, these are the people who get mad when they find that rudely interjecting into a conversation where everyone else is on the same page and saying understanding the conversation is too hard in an extremely hostile manner gets a answered with hostility.
The bottom line is, you aren’t entitled to understanding everything you come across instantly. If you do not understand the conversation, it is your job to either get educated on the subject if it seems interesting enough, or move on if it seems incomprehensible and is not something you’d care about. If you enter a conversation you are not ready for, that is on you, not people bewildered at your antics.
Specifically, I’m talking about people like this that leave dumb comments on any posts on complex issues that have words with more than 3 syllables.
It is absolutely a form of anti-intellectualism to say that all things should be understood to all people inherently or that conversations should be simplified until this is true. Sometimes, you are the one that needs to read a book until you understand. There is nothing wrong with being uneducated on complex subjects, but to then reject complexity since you did not instantly understand it is dangerous and only help people who seeks to undermine nuances in complex issues.
