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[wierd]

Weasleys being poor:

This is basically because the wizarding world snarks at the muggle world. The muggles figured out how to turn certain isotopes of mercury into gold, but this is very energy inefficient.

If the wizarding world would stop looking down its bearded, spectacled noses at what the muggle world has accomplished, and solve the energy problem with magic, they could have all the gold they wanted.  But NO. (Simple charms appear to be able to manipulate all the necessary particle types, so the dangers of the radiation involved will be mitigated by proper application of said charms)

Really, The wizarding world is all confused about electical mains outlets, because of this systemic ignorance. You would think that of all people to have the inclination, it would be old man weasley, what with his love of muggles and muggle artifacts and all.

[birdy51]

I suppose there must be a reason that they have Muggle Studies. Those who grow up with magic tend to just keep using magic even for the most mundane things like turning on the oven.

[mastahcheese]

A thread about inane rants and senselessness?

Why am I only now finding this.

[Neonivek]

So I was reading an article on whether or not dogs would be better domesticated or wild (Mostly to see how they fare in the wild... I know they typically don't)

and an article seems to suggest that wild dogs have a great deal of freedom. Sure it says that wild dogs have to hunt and survive all day and thus have it limited.

Yet it seems to not remember just how much "survival" limit things significantly. A lot of the "no" behavior for a pet dog... is a even stronger "no" for a wild dog... The difference is a pet dog will get reprimanded and then cleaned/treated... and a wild dog will die.

Secondly the article is rather... from the human perspective... when it comes to dog. It forgets that the rules, commands, and work that dogs do, DO make them happier. They are not human beings where the idea of continuous servitude is bad. Dogs thrive in the comfort of knowing the rules and limitations... Dogs... are not humans.

I know that science fiction and fantasy just makes every race human beings just slightly rearranged... yet that isn't how the world works.

Not that ill-treatment and poor breeding practices should be admonished mind you. We still have a responsibility towards the animal.

---

Actually it is kind of weird to think of things from that perspective. Since people tend to take two extremes.
1) Purely from a human-centric POV: Animals are people
2) Purely from a human-centric POV: Animals are objects

[Neonivek]

Ok there is this old game (not that old I guess) where you play a prisoner in a prison that is basically going through some silent hill-esk situation where people's fears and inner selves become living creatures.

Anyhow what is kind of interesting about the game is that depending on how you play it affects the ending... But not because it actually changes anything about the ending directly but because it changes the backstory.

Yet unlike most of the time when games do this (where it is a cop out... or badly handled... like one specific Silent Hill game) in many ways this kind of makes sense from a sort of meta sense. In that if you play the game as a truly good person, there is kind of no way you really could have done it (Oddly enough the neutral path is an interesting middle road) because you are kind of not a murderer.

Yet at the same time they don't make you so squeaky clean, even on the good ending, that you couldn't have bad assed your way through the game. They do describe how you have bouts of irrational or near psychotic anger. This is the other pitfall games of this type fall in, where they make a character so innocent that they really shouldn't even be in the game.

[Helgoland]

Ah, I wish that approach was more common in general: The book/movie/game/whatever seeing itself as an artifact, a story being told, a mythos, and not as a chronicle that records objective truth. Hell, just think of the possibilities for pen and paper RPGs! Suddenly GM interference is nothing more than an application of the anthropic principle.

[Reelya]

That backwards justification can explain other things in fiction as well.

If you view a story from start-to-finish, then it seems unlikely that any particular character would e.g. win a gold medal, so the outcome seems unlikely. But that's viewing fiction as if it was a simulation starting with a character, chosen entirely at random, then following their life. All the cool stuff that happens to that character seems vanishly unlikely.

But then you can view it from the perspective of finish-to-start. We're following this particular character's story because of the unlikely and cool things that happened to them, and it's why they are the protagonist and not the next guy. Unlikely things happen to some people, and it's what makes their story worth following. Showing other people who failed along the way makes it more believable too.

It can also be a problem with games more than non-interactive stories however, as games are all about you the person, doing these cool things. Then you have to explain how the player inevitably has these unlikely and cool things happen to them, which could be stretching plausibility more than other media.

[Helgoland]

Maybe we need more games where you keep dying all the time. We could start off with an insurgency simulator - a fictionalized version of the Irish struggle for independence, maybe, to get around the 'white folks killing brown folks' problem. Just have the player character die, either from flying bullets, or random artillery shells, or IEDs... And no respawns. You get a new guy every single time.

[Neonivek]

Maybe we need more games where you keep dying all the time

People always harp on Sierra for you dying all the time... but if anything I think that is one of their strengths. Their weakness is that they were often obtuse, unwinnable, and unfair.

Though... I'd rather have nothing but Sierra point and clicks to play with than ever touch another Telltale point and click (not to be confused with their interactive fiction). Mostly because I don't play point and clicks for a calm relaxing autoplay. I really should do my Letsplay again when I am feeling well... It was supposed to be a partial tutorial/class on how to play point and clicks, because people always find them extremely obtuse but that is usually because they don't speak those game's language and don't understand the concepts behind it (often game's try to indoctrinate you to the game's logic)... The key to playing them is usually to actively avoid the "Click on everything, use everything on everything" scenario.

Also screw that Seanbaby article! SERIOUSLY! Seanbaby you made a humorous article that was funny, ESPECIALLY to me who knows point and clicks inside and out... I know you weren't being serious and it isn't your fault... but WOW do people take that article as categorical truth of all point and clicks.

It would be like if I made a funny article on what a ditch horror movies are currently in and made it funny... and then 10 years later everyone keeps quoting my article to explain why horror movies are bad period.

Then again part of it, the reason why people can just categorically apply Seanbaby's article, is that not many modern gamers can even play point and clicks without immediately resorting to FAQs or brute forcing solutions. They find bilateral thinking to be extremely difficult and counter-intuitive. Hence why I've gotten comments like "All point and clicks use moon logic".

----

Sorry uhh... I do think a sort of death filled environment does a lot for a game's atmosphere.

WW1 (or was it 2?) medic somehow upgrades its status from arcade game... to almost an art game just because of how easy it is to die and how most of the time you will die from being shot in the back by your own team mates.

[mastahcheese]

I've tnought about that before. If you played a World War game where, instead of respawn, the camera swings over to the view of another unnamed soldier.
It would definitely give a different feel to it, like you were as much fodder as the bad guys are.

[wierd]

Sierra point and clicks were soo.... saccharine... though.  Forced morality is gross.

Much preferred the Lucas Film Games ones, myself.

[Neonivek]

Maybe I am missing something but the way romantic relationships are depicted in the media makes them seem... extremely unattractive.

I watched a talkshow who brought in a dating expert who spoke about how to text to your SO... and let me just sum up their and pretty much all dating advice.

LIE!!! LIE TO THEM!!! DON'T TELL THE TRUTH!!! LIE TO DEATH!!! THEY MUST NOT SEE YOUR TRUE FACE YOU UGLY MONSTER!!!

Mind you this is because it was me who was mildly flirtatious when I was younger and learned how hollow and meaningless it kind of is as well. Not only are you lying, but your being very transparent and meaningless. "Ohh just thinking about you made my day better" LIES! Get out of here!

And then there are just the sheer amount of relationships that are entirely one sided. There is a reason why I loathe the "Unpleasable girlfriend" trope. Sure, there is nothing wrong with a character who is like that, one of my favorite social links in Persona 4 was exactly that... yet it evolved and was never "acceptable". Television and anime treat it as desirable.

I feel compelled towards the gay relationships because at least they seem to be on equal terms and aren't relationships based entirely on one person bending over backwards to please another.

Then again, this might be because that IS the classical relationship isn't it?

The Man asks the woman on a date, the man selects all the venues, the man pays for all of it, the man is responsible for everything that happens, and if a woman makes a request it is up to the man to fulfill it... Yet this relationship isn't biased against the man, that isn't what I am getting at (notice how the woman has no real agency in this or sense of responsibility?). Rather that the whole "Unpleasable Girlfriend" and "One sided relationship" is directly a result of this.

Heck I remember watching things on foreign women who got local husbands and ignoring the sort of... unfortunate undercurrent of ethnocentrism and other unfortunate implications (Goodness one of the women looked unhappy... Dear goodness man just let her buy that ugly couch! It is YOUR home, not your home)... They were surprised and felt slightly offput that the men were actively helping with the baby and children.

[Neonivek]

Ok writers get your rears in gear because here is another rant!

There is a certain phrase that I see used sometimes something along the lines of "He is really a good person when you get to know him" or "He is really kind once you get to know him"

Now... Here is the challenge writers. If you want to use this line you have to give it a reason to exist AND for all their previous actions to also make sense in context. You cannot have someone act like a murderous psychopath and have them be actually "really kind and gentle" because they stopped yelling.

What is odd... the BEST example of this being used correctly is in a Disney made for TV movie about Corey, from Corey in the house, getting a dog.

He does act like a jerk through most of it but we see him eques to his feelings slowly over time. Ending with the female lead to ask Corey's best friend why he even likes this guy.

He then tells a story about how he was sick and Corey spent every moment for the next week or two keeping him company. Yet at the same time he also says that sometimes this goodness is buried deep in Corey, sometimes so far it is tough for even him to see.

---

Now I know what you are possibly saying... "But Neonivek, he does end up kind. So doesn't that mean those words were true?" Think about why you are telling your audience this and the effect you are having.

Most of the time it is being used as a sort of way to wave away the previous unpleasantness a sort of "Ohh, just ignore the previous scene". It isn't to build intrigue with how they could be nice, hint at a dissonance in their personality, OR a dissonance between how someone sees them and how they actually act.

[wierd]

Some people develop harsh exteriors as a protection mechanism against a cruel and uncaring world, but are otherwise really nice people.  They have to get to know you, before they will let you past that harsh exterior.

another possibility is somebody with aspergers, who is unwittingly an asshat, but really does not mean to be.

Somebody that is just an asshat, and is really JUST an asshat, the phrase has no value being applied to, except maybe if you are lamplighting a family member who is delusional about the person. (eg, when discussing serial killer, and mass murderer son stereotype, mom insists her little boy would never do something like that, when he most certainly does.-- "Sure, he's murdered dozens of people, but he's a really nice guy once you get to know him!")

[Neonivek]

Well I haven't had a lot of good sleep lately (my feet problem is weird right now... though a TON better... but it seems like whatever caused it in the first place still applies as I get HUGE hives across my feet... but it is manageable now)

But I noticed that my lack of sleep and my current activities (that I won't get into) have caused me to become extremely tired (I am close to becoming sick from exhaustion again) and now my mind is frayed and I can barely think at the moment.

Yet... How do our minds become tired?

Apparently you become physically tired when you are also mentally tired, but that makes sense... Your mind wants you to relax and take a load off.

Emotionally tired makes sense to me, and probably not others, because their is a physicality to emotions. Strong emotions tax your body and throws your body chemistry out of alignment, which needs to be fixed and often resting helps... Not to mention some emotions just naturally cause exhaustion.

Yet what does our mind do that makes it throw its arms up and go "I can't take it anymore!"?