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DF Gameplay Questions / Re: Serrated blade materials
« on: January 07, 2012, 04:31:44 pm »Perhaps I should have been more clear - I know perfectly well that "candy" refers to Adamantine, and I also think it's an idiotic euphemism that does nothing but confuse newbies.Being a newbie, I disagree. I liked the fact that people used euphemisms when they referred to late-game occurances when I first started reading around here. It meant I could (for the most part) read pretty much whatever I wanted without actually becoming any wiser about late-game stuff, since it was all incoherent and random. Thus I could keep my game-knowledge level with how far I had actually gotten while playing.
It's very obvious that stuff like "candy" and "clowns" aren't actually candy and clowns, but rather euphemisms for something else. Thus the only reason to look it up is if you want it to get spoiled. A spoiler is not a spoiler if the person getting it spoiled wants it to be spoiled. People like me, who didn't, benefit from the euphemisms.Confusing newbies is a price worth paying to protect them from the spoilers of DFThe logic, which is actually pretty reasonable, goes that if terms like "candy" are thrown about, newbies are more likely to actually go and look up this mysterious substance on the wiki, which quite naturally leads them directly to spoilers because the substance which it refers to are, surprise surprise, spoilers. As such, the use of the term "candy" leads to more people having surprises spoiled for them, which is exactly what the use of the euphemism is supposed to avoid.
I prefer the term "spoiler metal" for discussions with newbies, though with more experienced players "candy" is a useful shorthand for "adamantine." It's about half as many characters, after all. So, ironically, I sometimes think that the term "candy" should only be used in marked spoilers, and only for the second or later mentions of the substance in a given discussion.
