via Literature Devil channel on YouTube
I stumbled upon this video at 4am in the morning. It’s 30 minutes long, but offers one of the most succinct explanations as to why wokeness in modern-day western fiction is doomed to fail from the start.
Diversity by itself, is not a bad thing. But diversity should come from your storytelling, not from forcing LGBTQ or racial ideals randomly on characters.
Also Aloysius, if you’re reading this, please pay attention to this quote from 16:30 in the video:
In this week’s fortnightly Dungeons & Dragons 3.5E session (something that I look forward to as the highlight of every fortnightly Sunday), one of the players in our party, who plays a ranger, asked:
“Is Ingrid [my character] lawful good?”
My heart completely sank, and my brain almost melted. My PC’s actions thus far in the campaign, have been as typically lawful good as I could have played her. She obeys the law and respects authority and customs. She aspires to be a knight, and was recently knighted a couple of sessions ago (in front of the entire party). She even went out of her way to rescue that particular ranger from execution — the ranger was mistaken for an enemy by a border patrol.
Am I lawful good?
????
I enjoy the “roleplay” aspect of roleplaying games the most. Because if you don’t roleplay, but treat DnD as just another dungeon crawler to earn loot, then what’s the point? You might as well play a videogame instead.
Let me be clear on my definition of “roleplay”. I don’t expect all of the players at my table to do voices like Matt Mercer — we are not professional voice actors like Critical Role. I don’t expect my party members to have long, personally-written backstories — not every one is a writer or a literature student. Roleplaying is simply putting yourselves in the shoes of another person, and making decisions based on what you think that character would do.
But if your roleplaying efforts are overlooked and forgotten, to the point where a ranger has to ask, “Am I lawful good?”, then I seriously question what is the point of it all.
What is the point of trying to RP, of trying to write a script for my character’s knighthood, when another player doesn’t pay any attention to your effort?
Sometimes I wonder why I play games so seriously.
My grandfather passed away yesterday at 98-years-old. He survived and recovered from a stroke, only to succumb to pneumonia complications caused by Covid-19.
Me and my father both thought that he was 96. This means that ah gong outlived Jack Lalanne. Unfortunately, he also succumbed to the same ailment that took Lalanne’s life: pneumonia.
As someone who has actually suffered from pneumonia, and who spent the majority of his childhood and young adult life overcoming asthma, I can tell you that lung diseases are no joke. Please go see a doctor if you have any sort of lung problem, especially if it’s an infection caused by flu. Also please get vaccinated/boosted if you haven’t already.
via Macabre Storytelling on YouTube
I got into a lighthearted argument with a friend on WhatsApp where he boldly made a factually incorrect statement: “Storytelling drives the story. Characters are secondary.”
As a former literature student, and as someone who has actually written and edited stories in the past, I was quite horrified by what he said. Because it goes against the fundamental principles of writing a good story — you need to have interesting characters for the audience to care about. A story is engaging because you emphatise with the main characters, you want to see them succeed in their struggles.
But at the same time, those characters must have motivations and decision-making moments that make sense. They must have consistency.
I stumbled upon this three-hour video essay on YouTube and sat through the whole thing. It explains why The Last of Us Part II’s story was an incoherent mess — the characters’ actions made little sense, and some of them don’t even serve any purpose other than to function as a plot device.
At the end of the video, the author left this quote which drives the point home (timestamped in the embed above):
One of the biggest cheat codes you can utilise is to create truly incredible characters. They don’t have to be perfect, they don’t have to be flawless or invulnerable. They just need to be given the respect they deserve as individuals. You do that, you create fully realised characters — and I promise you, they will practically write your story for you.
You won’t have to think up things to throw at your character to make them struggle, because you already know what exactly makes them tick. You don’t have to think about what the characters might do in a certain situation, because if you have realised them enough, it will be obvious.
– Angelia, Girls’ Frontline
– Persicaria, Girls’ Frontline
Her full quote:
Emotions can compel you to do something illogical. It can also give you incredible strength to do something that you can’t otherwise do.
Love is the true source of strength.
Emotions have made you weak and feeble, but they have also made you invincible.
– Sir Ian Livingstone
His full quote, taken from this GamesIndustry.Biz article:
“Games are perfectly natural, it’s the people who don’t play games who might be the strange ones.
“I’m never going to retire, I don’t see the point. There’s an awful lot still to do. Life is a game for me. And games are my life.”
Original article: Judge my unpopular opinion: Board game nights are the absolute worst – ABC Everyday
I read the opinion piece above with absolute horror. Since then, I’ve discovered that this article has already gained a lot of notoriety among some of my peers.
As someone who has spent their entire life playing games (eg. videogames, board games, and now tabletop games), I found the author’s tone to be borderline insulting.
She even considers board games a waste of time and money:
They’re hurting your bank account and they’re hurting your non-board-game-playing friends.
It’s totally cool if you don’t like playing games. My dad doesn’t play games because he considers himself way past the age to enjoy them. I understand that.
But you know what my dad likes to play? Table tennis. Before pandemic restrictions kicked in he used to have weekly sessions with his table tennis friends. He has even taken part in table tennis tournaments at our local community centre and won first place.
So let me ask you, Madam Yasmin: how is playing table tennis different from playing board games? There are arbitrary rules to be followed, and every player must memorise and adhere to them during matches. Table tennis players must move a small object (the ping pong ball) around a “glorified” piece of table with a net attached.
I dare you now, to say to my father with a straight face, that he is wasting his money on a table tennis paddle. Or that he should invite his table tennis friends to “hang out” instead of playing ping pong.
My dungeon master for my DnD 3.5E campaign is quite passionate about kendo — the Japanese art of swordfighting. Like many sports and games, kendo has rules, and you need to invest in equipment for it. An entire full-body set of protective kendo armour, can cost upwards of US$1,500.
I dare you, Madam Yasmin, to tell my DM that he is wasting money on kendo. That he should ask his kendo teacher and classmates to “hang out” instead.
Games have existed the beginning of civilisation. The current version of international chess that we play today, has survived and evolved for thousands of years. To call games a waste of time is equivalent to saying that our entire human race is a waste of time.
I showed this article to my friend Richard, who owns a gaming club stacked to the brim with shelves of board games — he is the number one authority on board games that I know. This was his response:
“I think she’s a bimbo. This woman is Aussie, so Aussies generally are more a party type of people. If you diss on them drinking and partying the weekend away, I think they’ll have some choice words for you too.
“Her credibility is out the window when she mentions Monopoly. Board games nowadays are so advanced!”
I slightly disagree with Richard. I don’t consider Monopoly a “simple” board game at all. And there lies the logical fallacy in Madam Yasmin’s argument.
She says that Monopoly is one of the few board games that she enjoys… but doesn’t Monopoly also have rules? Every time you pass the Go square, you need to collect $200. Sometimes you get sent to jail because of bad luck, and you need to come up with a quick plan to get yourself out of jail. If you’re playing to win, you need to know when to use the right strategy and tactics with your property — should I sell my houses to raise some quick capital? Should I mortgage some property cards and auction them to another player to forge a temporary alliance?
I haven’t played Monopoly in over two decades, and even I can remember most of the rules. Game rules are not there to impede you — they give structure, depth, and purpose to the board game. Using your brain to understand the rules, and creating a basic plan to help you win, or to help you overcome the challenges presented to you, is what makes games fun.
Does Madam Yasmin not like to use her brain? Or does she have some sort of aversion towards basic human intelligence?
If you don’t like board games with tight rules, then I suggest giving tabletop roleplaying games a try. Not Dungeons & Dragons, because I consider DnD’s rules to be quite moderate in terms of difficulty (yes, even for DnD 5E). But perhaps something more rules-light, such as the Powered by the Apocalypse system or Advanced Fighting Fantasy. You might be pleasantly surprised at such games that reward and encourage players to explore their creativity.
I love gaming because it has given me tens of thousands of hours of entertainment, camaraderie, and storytelling that I won’t experience anywhere else. Leave us alone to waste our money on our hobbies. It’s your loss.
This author doesn’t have a favourite board game, but is currently into Mansions of Madness, Gloomhaven, and Resident Evil 2: The Board Game.
I was reading this Eurogamer article about Resident Evil Village and was quite disappointed at the first few paragraphs.
The hype and thirst for Lady Dimitrescu following her reveal was so strong that art director Tomonori Takano publicly stated her official height – 9’6″ to be exact – sending the internet into even more of a spin. It only continued once the game was finally released on 1st May.
One of the reasons why I greatly enjoyed Resident Evil 7, the predecessor to Village, was because I went into the game with zero knowledge. I didn’t watch any previews or video trailers. I only knew that the game takes place in a mansion, and that it is played entirely in first-person — which is a first for the series (if you don’t count the rail shooter games on Wii). In the end I was rewarded with one of the most memorable videogame experiences that I had played in years, but only because of my lack of knowledge.
It was impossible for me to avoid all of the previews for Village because the marketing hype was so ubiquitous in the weeks leading up to its release. I had already seen screenshots of Lady Dimitrescu and that was enough to drive me borderline upset. Fortunately, I managed to avoid the preview bits about her daughters. Playing through the first arc of the game, and slowly learning that I had to fight through the Lady’s family gauntlet of crazy vampire women was a pretty entertaining experience.
Is this deja vu? It seems like I’ve written a similar blog post like this before, so I’ll stop here. It’s 11pm and I want to sleep. I feel like I’m a one-of-a-kind, dying breed of media consumer — someone who absolutely refuses to be spoiled by previews.
This post contains some very light spoilers for Matrix: Resurrections.
On Tuesday night I had a very pleasant dream: I dreamt that the polytechnic classmate I always liked went out on a date with me. The next day (in the real world), on Wednesday, I went to watch The Matrix: Resurrections. There was an interesting scene in the film, where one of the characters was explaining how the Matrix works: how human emotions, when experienced at the extremes — i.e. extreme adversity, extreme bliss, extreme nightmares — can generate far more energy for the machines than a normal captive at ease.
On Wednesday night I had a really unpleasant nightmare: I went to Japan on holiday, and saw a bus running over a pedestrian. His brains and body were split open. Very promptly, I woke up in the real world. It was 7am and I felt refreshed after feeling quite fatigued for the past few days.
If this is my body’s way of recharging itself, by generating energy from my brain’s pleasure and misery, then I’m worried for Thursday night (tonight). Sigmund Freud once hypothesised that dreams are a manifestation of your subconscious thoughts — they might convey your deepest, most closely guarded secrets; your innermost desires and wishes; or hidden hints and dangers that your mind is worried about.
Or maybe my brain is just a nonsense blender that comes up with whatever random concoctions that it can produce. The human mind works in mysterious ways sometimes.
Playing videogames and reading about videogames consumes most of my free time. I try to play everything except for rhythm games. Also enjoys sports, animation, comics, Japanese language studies, and the occasional American TV drama. Learning violin.
Cruel Ultimatum 