Rank is a Word for Stinks

Often, to force us to rate things in terms of their highest value, we're offered a supposition that really doesn't make sense: "If you were stranded on a desert island, what book would you take with you." That's framed to force you to commit to "a" book, say the Odyssey or the Brothers Karamazov, or anything known for its depth and complexity, suggesting that we won't get bored re-reading it.

Obviously, the better book would be some kind of survival guide, preferably one tailor-made for the island you're getting stranded on. I'll choose the one written by the author who spent 10 years on this self-same island, giving an account very useful to my situation. But foregoing that...

An education, a grasp of "depth and complexity," is not managed through one book, in any case. If the reader on the island does not have a long and lengthy understanding of literature, or history for that matter, or any knowledge of the 19th century, then the Brothers Karamazov is going to be uselessly inscruitable for them. And if the individual IS educated enough to understand Dostoevski, then they should already have enough books in their head to manage just fine without any such books — since one such book really isn't going to be of much value after the first read anyhow. What are we to do in the weeks and months before we're ready to read the same book again for the ninth time?

The "best" of anything is a representation of shortcut thinking. It presumes that one's favourite food somehow precludes the need to actually have a diet of hundreds of foods, or that the best vacation spot means that no other vacation spot anywhere on earth is necessary, or that so long as I see the best movie, I'm done with movies now, I've seen them all. Saying something is the "best" is really shorthand for, "I have no comprehension of nuance, so I prefer to speak with my gut." It's tiresome, it's bland, it doesn't say anything real about the thing described and... it's an inescapable form of list-making content on the internet. The pervasiveness of it really is remarkable. It allows so many people to say so little about so little, while still sounding clever.

List-making is structural rewarded online; rankings are faction-driven, they are easy to argue about and infinitely repeatable. This does not conflict that they are the lowest form of discourse, one in which individuals really do not need to explain themselves, or their choices, especially when those choices are framed as visceral, personal or in some way political. It takes no study to name the best of something, since anything not seen or experienced can be discounted with no fault upon the writer or speaker. If someone claims that the "best sports team" is one of the twenty-four in a given league, there's a very good chance that 1 in 24 people who care at all about sports will agree with them. Everyone else is, obviously, "biased," being unable to see the truth about the best sports team as I personally care to name it.

Moreso, people don't hold one another accountable for these opinions. It's really just a game, just a way to pass the time, just a choice some people want to hold dear because they must hold something dear... and so, randomly or merely because of the way their minds are framed, they've chosen their hill to die on, however ludicrous that hill is. The best way to have an "identity" nowadays is to pick something so unpopular that no one really knows it, then claim it's the "best" of its category, proving somehow that the speaker is that much more educated and knowledgeable, because they alone understand the best to be something that vast majority does not know.

As a result, ranking becomes a stand-in for thinking. After so many years of it, I'm quite done with it. I do not care what the best version of D&D is. Or what wins Best Picture this year, or what should have won it. Or anything to do with ranking one thing over another. I am perfectly capable of liking a thing, supporting it, voting for it, wanting it to become standard and giving my time and energy to that thing, without having to compare it to some other thing. This last, which is so de rigeuer in this culture, holds zero interest for me.

This allows me to enjoy many things at the same time in a culture that craves comparison. I do not live, for example, in the "best country" in the world; I do not live in the best city of that country; I do not think anything like this actually exists. I happen to live in Canada; there are things I like about the country and things I don't. On the whole, I think I'm happy with it as a country. I would not like to see it change for the worse. But it is not a better country because it happens to sit alongside a country I would rather not live in. The one has very little to do with the other, except that they are different and that I like how they are different. Ranking one over the other tells me nothing about either. Stating those specific things I like, on the other hand, makes a point, just like discussing those things I don't like. None of this has anything do to with liking this thing more than that, or less than that, or anything to do with comparisons. It is simply that I have this, I like this, I'd like to go on having this... and I'd rather not have that. The person who lives in the address across the street may feel differently. That is just fine. They may think what they wish. I am fine with them going their own way, so long as it does not interfere with me going mine.

As such, I have spent much time on this blog disparaging 5e or the White Box or attitudes about D&D in general. I do not commonly (I cannot think of an example, but I may have spoken loosely at some point) rate things. I based my game setting and rules system on AD&D because that was the only system available at the time when I started making changes. I made changes to those things about AD&D that I didn't like. I still don't like those things. I do not think AD&D is a good system. But it is irrelevant to say that AD&D is a "better" system than what follows. It may be, but it is irrelevant to say so. It is better to describe, in detail, taking one's time, what things are and how they function, and what they attempt to resolve, then discuss how others options attempt to resolve those same problems, discussing and pointing out why this fails or that succeeds. It is not valuable to make blanket statements. Nor it is valuable to give blanket statements any credence, just because we think we should "tolerate" other people's preferences. 

"Preference" is a form of prejudice. It is not an opinion, it is a preconceived opinion that sets out to change other people's minds upon the basis of favoritism or partisanship. It is not intelligent, it is visceral and worse, it is performative. We must stop, as a culture, assigning "preference" a value it does not possess. It is not worthy of tolerance, because it refuses to give itself value through thought or investigation.

Some might hear "preference" as when we say, "I prefer tea to coffee." This is not the sort of preference that is stated, however. What is said, however, is that "tea is better than coffee," as though we should obviously drink one and forego the other.

That coercion, the one that says, "Star Wars" is the best picture ever made, and anyone who doesn't think so is... blah blah blah," underlies every statement of this kind. We are not being asked to just rank things. We are being asked to revere those things that are ranked, because some organisation, or even some solitary person, has taken the time to rank things, as though the ranking itself is an achievement. It is not.

Obviously, for whatever reason, we're not going to stop ranking things. Most likely, the habit reaches into a distant past, perhaps a million years ago, before consciousness, when human-like beings comprehended that "this plateau" was better than "that one," because on the whole there tended to be more food there. Since, we've allowed our minds to be guided by a similar principle, the idea that "best" is equivalent to "most resource-giving"... only it's become conflated with a sort of masturbatory impulse to conflate everything. I don't expect it to stop.

But for some individuals, I ask, please... hear it when it happens. Hear it and understand what you're hearing. The groundlings are always going to indulge. That does not mean we all must.

Art Ruins Everything

Most drifters around the internet are familiar in some degree with "aphantasia" (greek, lit. "not imaginative"; pronounced after the manner of "atypical"). This relates to one's ability to visualise an object in our minds having been asked to do so, most commonly an apple. An individual's ability to do this varies from perfectly realistic (three dimensional), through realistic and reasonably vivid, moderately realistic, dim and vague and not at all. Those falling into the last category account for about 1-4% of a case study.

This, however, is an extreme simplification of the condition, and usually the only one that can be found easily when searching. In fact, although you or I might be able to see the apple in our mind's eye just as if in real life, there are further delineations to our phantasia ability beyond this. For example, if the reader will kindly imagine said apple, can you change the colour of the apple from red to golden to green?  Can you change the colour to one that is not normally to be found in apples, such as making the apple white, or polka-dotted?  Can you visualise the apple being bisected without flattening the appearance of the apple? Can you imagine the individual parts, once separated from each other, falling inconsistently with each other? That is, both in the same direction, or one at a time while the other defies gravity?  There are a host of other questions related to this.

If I were to have people in an audience able to see the vivid apple stand up (mostly likely between 30-40% of those present) and asked them to sit down each time they answered a follow-up question "no," about half of those standing would sit down. At the end, I'd end up with about 1-4% of the audience still on their feet. These people experience what's called "hyperphantasia."

The implications this has for D&D are instantly comprehensible. If I describe a dungeon room for a party of ten, it's almost certain that two players won't be able to actually visualise the room at all, not as a flat picture or in any way except a dim, fuzzy concept. There's about a 1 in 4 chance that one of those ten people won't be able to see even that... which is interesting where a tournament is concerned. Large cons may have 500 participants. This would mean, if we assume an ordinary cross-section of the population, that some 5-20 participants have aphantasia, with an imagination bereft of any pictures at all in their minds. They simply can't have one present.

Begging the question, do people with aphantasia play D&D?  Seems there ought to be a study.

It stands to reason that players who can't visualise a fireball, for example, or a number of other conditions that arise from play, particularly if no actual physical example of the game's phenomenon exists to give aid to their imagination... potentially about a third of all participants... then that would make sense that a considerable number of players would want to push the game away from reliance on such imagery compensate by relying upon personal memories, language and abstract reasoning.  These, in D&D terms, can be boiled down to backstories, characterisation role-playing and "rule-of-cool" propositions.

In effect, 1 in 3 of your players, most likely, wants to role play and not make it a game. It's congruent with how their minds naturally handle information. They live through language, interaction and conceptual scaffolding rather than internal pictures, so in a game like D&D the roleplaying side feels like the most natural channel. It's less about rejecting the “game” part and more about finding immersion where their brains already excel — conversation, backstory, rules that can be reasoned through, and the social theater of the table.

In which case, it's a waste of time arguing with them or promoting a specific kind of game philosophy. You might as well be holding up an apple and telling them it's a toad.

Not saying this is true. Without funding, I can't pursue it in any meaningful way. But I have a suspicion that a certain "brain-type" moved towards the game earlier in its iteration... those who, used to certain kinds of games, could visualise D&D at once because they were built that way. I can remember a time when very few people had ever heard of it, and where trying to explain it to a, well, less-evolved fellow student would be a good way to get pantsed or a wedgie. To really grasp this, one has to remember there was a time when no visual representations of any of the monsters existed, not even the monster manual, nor any representations of most parts of D&D... and even at that, a time when there were just one or two representations of any one thing. The only movie that really demonstrated what a halfling looked like out of a book was Bakshi's Lord of the Rings. That radicalises the kind of people who could play, because they didn't have pictures of most everything.

It makes sense that the aphantasia-adjacent players began to join the club well after a vast proliferation of images became available.

See? Art ruins everything.

For the record, I am unquestionably hyperphantasic. Not only because I can morph apples into figures having sex with each other in 3D, but more annoyingly because I've long possessed the ability to see every potential horrific accident that might occur, right down to what objects in a car will sever off which body parts and in which order all in living colour detail, if I'm sitting next to a bad driver. I'm afraid of heights not because I'm going to fall, but because I want to jump — usually a moment coupled with cinematic visualisation of the ground coming up towards me in slow-motion, uncomfortably in a way that looks so cool I want to try it. I have PTSD from places where I've gotten too close to an edge; if I let myself remember those moments, I can shudder right here in my safe computer chair.

This kind of vivid imagination can serve a film maker very well. It's also awfully beneficial to a writer, who has to describe scenes without visuals well enough that total strangers can see the same thing. And obviously, it's of enormous benefit to a DM.

And having said this much, dear reader, I'm going to step off into the void now. You're welcome to come, you're welcome to stop here. What follows isn't going to be about D&D, and it's not going to discuss things that might usually be associated with this blog. Therefore, if you're the sort who likes it only when I talk about D&D, despite my being a whole person with other interests, then now would be a good time to click your browser window closed and count yourself having learned something interesting about what's been ruining the game you love all these years.

I came out of high school with a level of self-awareness not much different that what I have now. I wasn't as educated, I wasn't as experienced, there were a great many skills I had yet to learn... but the thought process of deconstruction and reconstruction has remained about the same. Think of it as my younger self having this many lego bricks — quite a few, but a finite number — and the present me having a LOT more. But they click together in the same way.

My more negative qualities... the pre-desposition, the pitbullishness, the resentment about things... those parts were pretty much dialed up to Spinal Tap 11. It's taken me some time to roll those down. Some readers here might have noticed they're still pretty high.

I became fairly conscious early on, the sort of coercion and emotional blackmail I watched my friend's parents perpetrate on my friends, pushing them into things that brought a lot of unpleasantness and emotional pain, and ultimately a lot of regret, which tended to infuriate me — mostly because I was a kid and, ergo, helpless. Friends got pushed into full immersion French-language schools for their "future success" (alcoholism, drug abuse, listlessness). Friends got pushed into International Baccalaureate, again for success (implosion in university, suicide). Friends were rigorously denied any contact of any kind with the opposite sex, to make them good parents (prostitution, spousal abuse). It was a long list. Mostly, it was children my age telling me, "What can I do, they're my parents" and "When I try to stand up to my father he scares the shit out of me." Basically, pretty early on, I had my doubts about the veracity of what most people said about parenting and what they did. I began to resolve, before puberty, that when I was a parent, I would NOT do what I saw parents do. I didn't. I have a spectacular relationships with a well-ordered, capable, emotionally healthy and happily married daughter. None of the characteristics I've just included.

This coercion and emotional blackmail emerged quite prevalently throughout my teachers in and around the time I started grade 7, when suddenly it wasn't enough for us to know stuff they were teaching, we all had to "ready ourselves" for the world in some fucked up manner that really, as I remembered it around the time I was finishing grade school, amounted to pretty much not preparing us for much. Given the general self-destruction that coordinated itself upon my graduating class, I couldn't say I was the only one.

My father was an engineer, as I've said on this blog. I thus spent my years in an upper middle class suburban neighbourhood, virtually all white, virtually all what I'd call "traditional Christian," which is to say that Christianity applied between two random hours on a Sunday, depending on the household. Trimmed lawns and trees, last year's car, everyone with insurance, everyone with all the household and outdoor gadgets, most families with two cars, children getting cars as a high school present, that kind of landscape. I bring this up lest anyone think that suicides, drug use, self-imposed homelessness and teenage prostitution doesn't happen among the children in that kind of neighbourhood. I was pretty good friends with Simone Baer, who used to sit next to me in grade 8 science class. Anytime I wanted, I could go down to hooker stroll and find her, if she wasn't with a client. That same day, mind you. Simone was 14. Christ only knows what happened to her. She didn't attend grade 9.

I'll beg the reader's patience a moment and make a point here; that was 1978; the brutal truth of it wasn't that I was the only one who knew, though I was probably one of the very few 14 y.o. boys not afraid of hooker stroll. The brutal truth was that there was no one to tell. I did not know Simone's parents and counted myself lucky that I didn't.  I could hardly talk to the school guidance counselor, he was suffering from the delusion at that moment that my outbursts of anger might mean I needed some kind of attention. There was no one to tell who would believe it. And I wasn't getting Simone, my friend, arrested. I say all this not to stress the injustice of it, nor the absurdity, nor the time frame or the culture or any such part of it, but rather, to stress the point of this second half of this post: the infuriating, utter, miserable fecklessness of knowing nothing one could do could help in any meaningful way. That is the hell of being a self-aware child and the hell of being a self-aware adult. It is the eternal push-pull I have with virtually anyone who couches moments of social horror, like a mass shooting, into language that says less than nothing, regardless of which "side" is saying it.

Then, I ignorantly perceived teachers as persons bestowed with a responsibility to look after and educated younger persons who plainly had less power than they did. I could look at the structure of the school and made sense of it; it was rational that the teacher needed order to be heard, it was natural that some level of discipline was necessary to compel children to sit in orderly rows and be silent, given the drudgery of the information being told and its apparent irrelevance not only to our lives, but to anything we might have seen or heard on the news, or in a movie or television show, or in terms of our home life, or indeed any other part of our lives. Children are required to take it on faith that knowing natives used to make pemmican out of berries and dried buffalo is important information that deserves the retelling of this information for ten minute periods at a time over multiple grade years of education, and other thousand like facts, because nothing, absolutely nothing, makes this self-evident at the time. So yes, discipline makes sense.

What I did not understand at the time — and to be fair, no child should, it would be ridiculous to suppose it — was that teachers were just people working for a living, who did not in large part especially enjoy their jobs, who got into those roles because it seemed right when they entered university, only to find themselves afterwards with a degree and a debt and a need to make a living at something. At that point, once you've already paid the fee, your best option is to do this thing now, regardless of whether or not, after being educated, or after five, ten or twenty years of doing the job, if you like it. True enough, there were "good" teachers, and I can easily name mine off. And there were "bad" teachers, too. But at the time we did not rate them on whether or not they liked their jobs, but on whether or not they were "decent" or "assholes."  It was an entirely emotional, obscurely uneducated point of view, because no teacher begins the school year with, "Okay, all, I'm not really happy about having to do this job another year, especially now that I'm divorced, I've had to move to a shit-hole apartment and my father's gotten sick and is living with me now." This sort of thing probably influenced a number of the "assholes" to be "asshole-like"... but obviously, we would have been clueless about that at the time.

As such, I was ignorant about teachers at the time. I tended to view them as exactly what they said they were, or as the principle of the school said they were, or as television and politicians and everyone else said they were... Guardians of Knowledge and Order, in logical capital letters. And when they didn't behave like that, when they got the names of capital cities wrong or said that a book I loved was about something it wasn't about, I tended to call them out on it, much the same way that I piss people off right now, here on this blog... only you have to imagine it's coming from a kid whose gangly, pimply, self-righteous and sitting about eight feet from you, who just won't shut up even after you send him to the office or give him detention. Whatever I felt about asshole teachers, I promise the dear reader here and now, there were definitely a few who described me exactly that way to their wives and husbands. I have two stories I could tell about that, but I'll stay on point.

All this goes back to the point I made earlier about coercion. After more life experience, playing various sports, football, hockey, baseball, soccer, next to kids who were coerced by their parents to play, coerced by their coaches to play harder, coerced by coaches who were also teachers in high school, essentially bullied into believing that sports mattered more than everything, by 15 I was accumulating a steady pile of adult groups I couldn't trust because they seemed a lot more aware of their agenda than the damage they were ready to do. I still bristle at stories, both in the media and personal anecdotes, that talk about "sports" as a totally positive experience, when I know both from being on losing teams and winning teams that they never, ever, are. Sports is about conformity, and excellence in achieving comformity, which is accomplished through guilt, expectation, coercion and emotional blackmail. My adult experience has been to realise the coaches don't even know they're doing it. The "sport" is already upon a pedestal so high, arguing that a person should put aside every other part of themselves, regardless of the sacrifice, becomes an unquestioned virtue. And I notice, those people who right now are first at the front of the line to explain moments of horror with simple, aspirational rhetoric are those who hug the pillar.

And still, what could I do about it?  If Jim played football because his dad wanted it and he was decent at it, and the coach needed him, what matter was it if Jim fucking hated football, or if Jim spent every minute when we were away from adults bitching about how he fucking hated football? You couldn't say to Jim, "Well quit." Jim couldn't. He was 15, he was under his dad's thumb, he didn't dare fuck up on the field, he had enough physical strength or ability to play every game... he was stuck. And anyone on the team who felt for him, who understood him, who appreciated the trap he was in, whether or not we wanted to play, couldn't go to anyone and say so, because even if they helped Jim get off the team, he was still going to find himself in front of his dad. So fuck, so it was with all of us, in some sense, in some way, all through fucking childhood.  Which is why, in 1980, I sat with headphones in front of our turntable and played Hell is For Children from Benatar's Crimes of Passion over and over and over and over.

I can still feel the anger I felt when I heard it then.

Because, I think, I was hyperphantasic, and because, like everyone else, I wouldn't put it out of my mind. I wouldn't tell myself little lies, I wouldn't pretend it was better, I wouldn't just shrug, I wouldn't push it down and suppress it. I was mad as hell... and I hadn't even seen that movie, and wouldn't until after I was out of high school.

Which I am, still, now. Because to live in this culture, to watch this culture's media, and this culture's creative product, and this culture's evaluation of it's product, is to be without any power at all. It is to watch the news knowing that knowing it will give precisely no benefit, that it will empower in precisely no way at all.  It will only anger and enervate and reduce one's sense that anything has any value of any kind whatsoever.

Last night, I watched Jimmy Kimmel's return after being pushed off the air in what must unquestionably be called the silliest reason for a censorship.  And his response to all that was to essentially express his gratitude that people liked him. Somewhere in the middle of it he mentioned George Carlin and after that I could not get it out of my mind how Carlin would have responded if he had been where Kimmel was.  

I thought it was the worst speech I've ever heard, from someone who the gods had given the leverage to say anything he wanted, with no chance of his being removed from the air. I can hear in my head all the things that Kimmel could have said, that he should have said, that he had the power to say, that he didn't. All that granted to someone who, in the end, was just chickenshit. Pat Benetar would have done better.

An ode to impotence. I wish I hadn't watched it. It made me feel like a child.

The Language of Meme

I have seen several efforts like this video of late, which strive to highlight a particular rising trend that began far, far earlier than the creator of this video suspects.  True enough, the obsession with ironic, self-aware storytelling has become increasingly widespread in mainstream film in the last decade, but it is hardly restricted to Hollywood and it certainly came into vogue with varying television shows dating back to the origin of Saturday Night Live.  Self-awareness is a natural outgrowth of satire, that uses humour, irony and exaggeration to expose and criticise just about every sort of foolishness of which humans are capable.

But this isn't a long deconstruction of the rise of satire, or the evils of self-awareness, because to really investigate these ideals, we'd have to start with Aristophanes in the late 5th to early 4th century BCE.  In The Frogs, during an imaginary contest administered by Dionysius, between Aeschylus and Euripedes, the former is mocking the latter for composing verse in a specific iambic that allow for the insertion of "a little bottle of oil." Aeschylus then invites Euripedes to spew out a few verses, and we get this interaction:

Euripides: "Aegyptus, so the widespread rumour runs,
   With fifty children in a long-oared boat, 
   Landing near Argos—"

Aeschylus: ... lost his little bottle of oil.

Dionysus: What was this little bottle? You'll be sorry.
    Recite for him another prologue, so I can see once more.

Euripides: "Dionysius, who with thyrsus wands and fawnskins,
    bedecked amidst the pines on Mt. Parnassus
    bounds dancing—"

Aeschylus: ... lost his little bottle of oil.

Dionysus: Alas, again we have been stricken by that flask.

Euripides: It won't be a problem. For to this
    prologue he won't be able to attach that flask.

    "No man exists, who's altogether blest,

    Either nobly sired he has no livelihood

    Or else base-born he—"

Aeschylus: ... lost his little bottle of oil.

Dionysus: Alas, again we have been stricken by that flask.

And so it goes on, and on, proving that we all have our little flaws, the greatest poets as well as anyone else.  The Euripides in the play works because he just won't accept it.  Aeschylus makes his point a half dozen times, neatly infecting all of Euripides work with the little bottle, in precisely the same way that he "flaw" of every classic film has been excoriated by the Simpsons and a dozen other popular sources in the last 30 years.

Some of us know about the age of this infection because we played D&D in the 80s, and "self-awareness" is without a doubt the greatest anathema to a game that relies upon engagement through pure imagination and nothing else.  The endless referencing of Monty Python alone had polluted D&D campaigns to the point of immobility.  How many times have I overseen a session where the players became so involved in the self-reflection of how "unrealistic" things could get due to the precepts of the game and sheer happenstance, to the point where people rolled on the floor and couldn't breathe on account of the laughing?

Many times.

Gets to the point where rules have to be made against any anachronistic reference that a player makes, no matter how abstract... because if I get it, and another player gets it, then it's not the D&D game that we're thinking about, but some movie or television show, which doesn't belong within the discourse of a engaged, immersive experience.  I have shouted at players to shut the fuck up, I have threatened to remove levels of experience or to permanently ban such people from the game, because they could not stop themselves from repeatedly singing the song to "Sir Robin" or speaking the words, "It's just a flesh wound."  It's a disease.  The jokes are tired, they're not funny any more, yet for some, it's still a kind of wit to connect something some character said in some bit of media to something happening right now in the game.

There is a word for this sort of comment, made without thinking first of what the repercussions might be upon it being expressed.  I'm certain that Somerset Maugham made reference to the word, but alas, I cannot find the quote.  The word is "snark," which we may identify as a form of hostility against anything that's serious, or might conceivably matter.  Snark is reactive.  It attempts to impose a worldview that replaces thoughts with memes, which is to say, to quote a Canadian, the media is the meme, expressed when it isn't relevant.

The superficiality of snark, with it's capacity to replace thought and discourse with the meme, runs rife through every element of our culture, so it's no great insight to find it infecting the actual dialogue spoken by characters in film.  Like I say, these memes have been a part of tabletop gaming since the 1970s; they have infiltrated into video games, they have become the repeatable soundbite that forms the underlying substance of reality television, they possess the very fabric of political thought, they're all anyone encounters when entering a chat room or a real life coffee shop.  The vast hordes of people do not speak language, they speak "meme," with which they've been supplied in abundance through the internet.  Communication is transactional and shallow, and there is little chance that we're going to see a significant reversal in our lifetime.

Which doesn't matter.  As I have said before, "What do the simple folk do?" is not a substantial, worthy question for anyone who desires mastery of the world.  Creating a video that says, "look at what's happened to movies" is a sort of in-bred joke, like standing in shit up to our hips while pointing and laughing at other people up to their hips in shit.

If we want to do something that rises above these shallow observations and the exchanges they spawn, we must put the conversation behind us and apply to the problem itself.  The world does not produce enough serious movies?

Then go make one.

Conformity

I don't like to read the IMDb trivia for a film.  While interesting details are learned, often I also learn something about the film's making or its design that I can't unsee once I know it.  This has occasionally ruined individual shots in films for me, and once or twice a whole movie.

I'm sure this is a common experience.

Knowledge has this side effect regarding a great many things.  Outside of art, I prefer the effect.  For example, I'd rather know that Alexius Comnenus of the Byzantine Empire wasn't expecting thousands of nutjob crusaders when he asked Pope Urban for help in 1095.  I was told otherwise by my high school teachers.  I also prefer knowing that the American and French revolutions were not grassroots popular uprisings, but propaganda campaigns by rich assholes who wanted to retain their properties while getting rid of their overlords.  Again, not the story I was told.  Likewise, many of us have learned much of what we were told about Christopher Columbus was horseshit, and likewise with regards to considerable host of other "heroes" and historical figures.  I recognize that people don't like having these icons shattered, but I'm different in that regard.

Moreover, once I learn something along these lines, I can't "unsee" it.  For example, recently I convinced my partner to watch Fury Road; this was the end of a long campaign.  She didn't like it; not because of the violence or the story, but because of the intensity of male toxicity that impregnates the story ... even though the toxicity is clearly messaged as bad, with that toxicity coming up the loser in the end.  Which is, of course, a reason why the film didn't do well with the white boys of the alt-right.

Our discussion turned to the appearance of the villain males throughout ... not just Immortal Joe, but all of them.  The desired effect of make-up, pins, nails and other freaky appurtanances is to evoke fear in the observer.  The same principle underlies the various face-painting that's been incorporated in hundreds of cultures when preparing for war, and the subject could be left there.  However, I feel compelled to point out that one's outward appearance is not of direct benefit to the wearer.  I can wear the paint; but when I'm out there, I can't see the paint.  No matter what others see, I'm still me.

Let's take that a step farther.  In a primitive culture without mirrors, relying wholly upon the occasional askew reflection to be found in water, only occasionally, our looking frightful as primitives is a truth we accept from others.  More to the point, I rely upon you to make my face, while you rely on me.  When I make your face, I'm not able to make a face that you may necessarily find frightening; I must make a face that I find frightening.  In effect, I create your outward "personality" and you create mine.  This is a personality made prior to a battle, without my input.  Yet, to maintain the respect of my clan, I must live up to the face I'm given — a face I'll never see.

This provides context for the tribalism that is fundamentally a part of our cultural structure.  It's not the paint that makes us think this way, but the co-operation that allows individuals to forsake that individuality for the benefit of the greater whole.  This practice has been co-opted for millennia, despite advancements in technology, because it's what makes humans ... human.

The practice of deciding how everyone is going to look, past the clothes and the helmets to precise ways of holding the weapon and the body erect; the manner in which everyone's facial hair will be maintained, the expression on everyone's faces, the tone of voice and ritual of speech ... once regimented in a specific, ritualised manner, the practice builds endurance, the willingness to stand fast in a fight, the willingness to die in place rather than forsake one inch, welds a group of individuals into a unit as unyielding as geology.  One man will not break and run, because there is nowhere to run to.  From birth, every man is indoctrinated to understand that cowardice is a permanent, irreconcilable social disgrace ... not only in that I will be disgraced if I'm a coward, but that I will perpetrate disgrace upon every coward I encounter, ruthlessly and contemptuously.  Every man knows this.  Better that I stand here and face impossible odds, knowing that I'm going to die, another faceless drone among an empire of faceless drones, than that I present the least sense of being an individual.

This is not a post about Fury Road ... but it is a post about the yearning of males, particularly white males, for individuals of the culture to conform with what they perceive is sacrosanct of that culture.  The 80s films, the ones where all the women were victims, were "great fun" and "innocent" ... but this new Mad Max is nonsense, nihilistic, sterile and empty of meaning (because the originals were Shakespeare).  What's changed?  Certainly not the filmmaker, as he's famously still George Miller.  Nope.  It's that women are depicted in the film as able, capable and ultimately triumphant over the white, white, white, white males.   So white, we have to paint them white, just to make the point clear.

Women are not "scary" ... painting them just makes them sexy.  They haven't got facial hair; they can't put the same expression on their faces; their tone of voice doesn't conform, the ritual of speech doesn't ring true ... and most of all, if one of them backed out of a fight, there is absolutely no way that society is going to indoctrinate women to stand fast and be murdered, or indoctrinate men to ruthlessly express contempt for a woman who protects herself.  Functionally, as humans, we just don't work that way.

Which can only exacerbate the fundamental, biological comprehension that males are disposable in war and battle, but women are not.  Understanding that this is a "comprehension" from the male's point of view and NOT THE WOMAN'S.  Still, males have been doing things in a particular way for a very long time, and they don't like that this way is turning out to be ... well ... limited.

Still, we are seeing an intensive cultural rise in white males abandon their individuality for the comforting conformity of a singular, co-operative, aggressive, discriminative outward-assigned communal value system.  Why comforting?  Because individuality is confusing and unsettling.  It is full of questions.  What do I believe?  Am I a good person?  Did I behave wrongly five minutes ago?  What should I have done?  Questions like these can dominate anyone's consciousness if they haven't something to ground themselves — like what my family told me to believe ... which is, in fact, just another outward-assigning group of people.  Thinking for oneself — being an individual — just feels wrong for virtually everyone in the population.  This is what's meant when sociologists or anthropologists talk about us having a "need" for belonging.  What they don't say, of course, because it doesn't play well in the media, is that "belonging" means being told what to think, how to think, when to think and why not to think for yourself.

As enlightened people of the 21st century, we pretend this isn't true.  We rush to spew out content like the comment above as though it's on point, imaginative and unique ... when it's exactly what I expected to find when I went to the comments section of IMDb's Fury Road page.  It was the fifth comment down on the 1-star ratings.  The other comments talked mostly about how the violence was "silly."  Because violent films don't sell millions of film copies, at all.

We pretend that everyone is special and that our tastes are so unique, but everyone's list of top ten anything always includes the same tired list of the same approximately 100 shared items.  We know inherently that if we include something obscure and commonly frowned upon in our list when sharing it publicly, we'll have to explain ourselves ... and that just brings up that list of self-abusing questions that make us run for the communal experience in the first place.  Everyone recognizes that if we post a list of, say, "top 10 films," what others see will cause them to judge us.  It is easier to pick "safe" options than to risk being judged.  As a result, we're taken at our word ... and most of us have found ourselves in some situation where we've agreed that Return of the Jedi is one of our "favourite" movies, only to have to sit miserably through it when family members set up a surprise birthday party where we're expected to be pleased as punch to sit through this awful, terrible film.  Again.  Rather than admit we never liked the thing.

Our clothes don't reflect our inviduality so much as the "individuality" we think others will accept quietly.  And those who don't behave this way, who dare to be actually individual, get to endure this constant, abusive, unrelenting joke-making, under the rubric of, "I don't mean to be disrespectful."  Because this is how things are.

This blog is hostile, but not towards those who fail to conform, but towards those who do.  This gives me the semblance of "affecting greater importance" than other people, because I have zero interest in identifying with other people.  The very fact that I don't care to identify suggests it's because I feel "superior" ... when, in fact, as a single, isolated, totally vulnerable outcast without a tribe, I'm vastly inferior to the forces arraigned against me.  A single individual makes a terrible army.

I speak disloyally of the D&D pantheon of holy inventors because I didn't sanctify them and I don't recognize the faith granting that sanctification.  I don't believe in any faith.  "Faith" is what we have when we let someone else paint our face for the greater good that I won't choose.  Fuck faith, and the seeds it gestates.

Finally, I scorn the words of bloggers who love editions, modules, artworks and other elements of traditional D&D because I can see plainly that these are not the blogger's words.  They are repeated words, unexamined words, ritually repeated and never truly defended, because they are indefensible.  This blog is a campaign that repeatedly examines the words, exactly the thing that individuals do, but which belongers are terrified of doing.  Over and over I post the words, ask questions, demonstrate the failings, demand explanations for why such as such is so popular, or what makes it good, when it is so obviously, flagrantly shit, especially compared with words originating from sources other than D&D.  Traditional D&D is bad game design, bad writing, bad interactive advice, badly organized publishing, mawkishly disastrous business envisioning and, on the whole, irascibly resistant towards educating non-players HOW TO PLAY.  This last, obviously, should be the first thing addressed, but it's the last thing every admitted.

The crime that other people see is "not conforming."  I know that.  But the crime I prefer to address is "the game is shit as written."

The British Army was once an irresistible military force; I don't question that.  But it was a force that defended racism, brutality, theft, systematic murder of both cultures and people and ultimately the perpetuation of human misery.

Letting someone else paint your face may be all well and good for you, but I'm not a native.  I don't live in a tribal group because tribes are selfish, territorial, coercive, ultimately enslaving entities, whose practice in dealing with any desire for freedom is to shame, hate and ultimately to ostracise, which once upon a time meant dying in the wilderness alone.

Civilisation has taken the teeth out of ostracisation.  I, for one, am happy in the wilderness.

Diversify

If you run a world that suffers from uniformity, where all the countries seem the same, and where one town the party finds is a cookie-cutter semblance of the town before, and the town before that ... then you must invent diversity.  For your first go-round, I urge you to go slow.  Think of the marks you make on your world being like the symbols a tattoo artist adds to skin.  Whatever you do, you want it to be permanent.  You want not to regret it later.

What is diversity?  It is the pattern a society develops because of its land, resources, climate, historical happenstance and moments of genius that have popped up year-by-year.  A region becomes militaristic, idealistic or factionalized because of its relationships to other regions, the certainty of peace and its relevant wealth.  Some countries are destined to be slaves; others, to be masters.  Without Earth's history to sort this out for you, you will have to look at your world map and settle this yourself.  Don't fall into the mistake of thinking every region wants the same things; or values one universal treasure above all things.  Not every country loves money like Americans do; or religion like the Italians do; or solitude like Russians do.  Find a distinguishing, unique personality for every region ~ but like I say, do not rush into it.  Give yourself a great deal of time and thought before making a decision.

There is an old trope called "planet of hats": a condition where all the inhabitants share a single defining characteristic.  I don't encourage this as a solution, but I do urge the reader to use it as a jumping off point.  As TV Tropes explains,

"To some degree, this is unavoidable; you have only so much screen time or page space to develop and explore a culture."

As a DM, you have scores of cultures to create, so to some degree you're in this same boat.  But if you give the matter thought, you can see how the trope can be a short term solution, leading to greater and greater specifics ... in the way that the Klingon culture evolved over different series, as more and more thought was added.

Initially, you can designate a generalized wardrobe for five or six different cultures; perhaps, in some cases, for specific character races.  This wardrobe can be defined by the types of clothing worn, but also by its color.  Perhaps in the country of note, a particular seashell enables the cheap creation of a violet-bluish dye.  Or perhaps orange, or brown, or white.  Coupled with a clothing style, a player character moving down the street can tell the locals from the foreigners ... and we may suppose the foreigners are proud to wear the colors and clothes of their home country.  Just as they've all been trained to use a select kind of weapon, or carry specific charms or types of carry-all.  Perhaps they wear a kind of shoe, or like a particular beverage or food, one that reminds them of home.  Then, if the player stumbles across a bar deliberately made for members of another region, every one is suddenly wearing violet robes with headbands, and speaking in deep accents or another language.  If the players are looking for information about that region before going there, they should look for this kind of establishment.

Don't rush into making a bunch of details for every place in your world.  Make a few; and then as you run these groups in a campaign, let your imagination expand on what's already there.  Within a few dozen runnings, you should have three or four somewhat fleshed-out cultures ... and your players will begin to recognize them, and perhaps ask specific questions about what those people do, or like, or believe.

Thereafter, it can become much easier.

Who's Doing the Appropriating Here?

Gawdammit.  I can't sleep.  Two days into a hiatus and now I have to break it to get this nonsense out of my head.

JB wrote a post about Appropriation on the 3rd; and Ozymandias wrote another yesterday ... and in his he quoted this benchmark on the subject by Lindsay Ellis.  Whereas I can't sleep because people are wrong on the internet.

Look, I get it.  Cultural appropriation is a relatively new bugaboo and people are scrambling around trying to define it according to what the appropriator of some other culture is doing ~ and this is particularly fed by anger surrounding sport teams like the Indians and the Redskins.  But ... this is a complete misreading of the social phenomenon, sorry.

Let me redefine the term for you, as a departure from definitions you're likely to hear.  Cultural appropriation happens when the people of that culture appropriate their OWN culture, draw a line around it, then argue politically that because its OURS, no one else is entitled to any part of it, nyeh!

For example, when white people decide that only white people are entitled to protection from the law, or the right to vote, or the freedom to live in what neighborhood they wish, or the right to bear arms, or any other right that white people casually decide that African, Oriental, Muslim, Hispanic or whatever people you choose to name are not entitled to that specific benefit.  Like when a Norwegian can arrive in America and expect to stay with their family in a hotel, while a Mexican is separated from their children and all other privileges of being treated as a human.

It is the white people appropriating whiteness, and calling that right of appropriation a matter of "cultural integrity" or "purity" or whatever other bullshit we care to name, as a justification for selfish, brutal, racist or otherwise crap behaviour.

And this is no different when a Native Canadian tells me I can't write a fiction novel with a Native Canadian in it, because I'm not Native Canadian, or when I'm told I can't possibly understand what it means to be a mother because I'm not a woman, or when a transsexual tells me I can't understand what it mean to be non-binary because I am, in fact, binary.  The appropriation is by the culture weaponizing that culture as a means to silence free speech and free access to the total human experience.

Every other argument is an extension of that weaponization, that pretends to decide that there is a "line" between neutral something and offensive something.  The line is obvious: you step over it when it's my motivation to control you ... and if no motivation to control you exists, then you're free to do as you like.

At least, until someone figures out a way to weaponize something you've been doing for decades, but is now suddenly offensive and unacceptable.

I am the first to argue, do no harm.  Blackface is mockery, pure and simple, and anything that is mockery or much like it is harm, and I'm opposed to that.  My writing a positive non-white character, or a woman for that matter, into a story as a protagonist is not mockery and I won't be held accountable for it.

And I am the first to argue that another person's notion of behaviour is deserving of respect, as long as it does no harm.  I won't defend the ritual mutilation of children supported by religion nor the abuse of animals ~ I don't give a shit how old the religion is or how deep the bias is.

Above all, I will not be silenced or coerced into silence by the guilt of someone weaponizing their culture as a means to stop me from enjoying the benefits of their culture.

That's a line I won't accept.

P.S.,

Sorry for this.  The post was writing itself again and again in my head, not letting me sleep, when I should at least have been trying to figure out the expositional patterns of chapter 26.  Hopefully, I can reobtain my focus on things that actually matter.

The Invention of Culture

All right.  I'm going to tread lightly on this one.  Earlier today, on my post about racial characteristics in humans, I had the words, "cultural sensitivity" thrown in my face by Jojiro who ~ I think ~ actually shares the same belief structure as me.  However, he has an axe to grind with me about Chinese place names and mangonels, so I think making peace here is bound to be a rough go.  I'm not making that better by writing this post, but ... well, I'll have to be respectful.

The present state of personal politics that we have observed take hold and evolve since the late 1980s would have us believe that "race" and "culture" are the same thing.  This involves arguments where significantly positioned persons in social groups state matter-of-factly that because they were born into a specific culture, they deserve every bit as much respect for their choice in maintaining that culture as they expect to receive being of their given race.

Being in Western Canada, the most evident example of this would be the presence of Native communities who have been granted special status on account not only of the race, but also their culture.  There are numerous, complex reasons for this, which I don't wish to simplify.  One of the special reasons for the maintenance of the Native culture in Canadian law was that not very long ago many very deluded Europeans systematically tried to eradicate that culture in a very reprehensible manner.  If you're not familiar with the tale, I suggest the reader get educated on the matter.

Let me state clearly that I am opposed to forcibly obliterating anyone's culture.

However.

I consider this a voluntary option.  It is a good idea,
but it should in no way regulate human choice or behaviour.
We have other laws for that.

Culture, unlike race, is an invention.

It is a belief system; and as such, like any belief, regarding anything, including Jojiro's opinion about me and my opinion about Jojiro, it can be voluntarily changed.

I was raised a Lutheran.  I was taken to a church every Sunday from before my memory began, and beginning at the age of six I was given instruction in Sunday School.  At the age of 13, I began three years of intensive studies for two hours every Wednesday night for three years, until I had memorized my catechism and a great deal else besides, so that I could be confirmed as a Lutheran at the age of 14.  I spent hundreds of hours in church, hundreds of hours in reading the Bible, hundreds of hours in taking part in youth events, including church plays and Christmas carolling, until I reached about the age of 17.  I can point to this period and plainly say without fear of being contradicted, this was my culture.

I was glad to ditch it at the first opportunity.  For a time I bought into it, said my prayers, believed in god, embraced the faith, considered myself "born again" ... and then a series of events having to do with my puberty began to assert themselves after 15 and I had some, *ahem,* problems with the expectations of organized religion.  I continued to pray, however, until I reached the age of 30.  Whereupon I ceased to do that, also, for other reasons.

One's culture can also be taken away.  And not only in the sense of the cultural genocide attempted by Europeans in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Beginning at 15, my other culture consisted of two very intense and much beloved environments.  One of these consisted of dark, smoky coffeehouses that served tea, coffee, felafel and lox, where poets read sharp, activist poetry between sets of Dylanesque musicians with guitars and harmonicas, which remained open until 2 a.m.  These places were fundamentally nothing like Starbucks.  They were deeply cerebral, radically political, fueled by anarchy, communism and social justice, and solidly underscored with fist-on-table-beating a priori position-taking.  Non-book readers need not apply.  Long before there was an internet, I fought flame wars in my teens with university professors, and afterwards to enjoy having them pay for my cheque.

My other culture was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gc4yrcdAok&t=574s.  Except less shitty t-shirts and more men in leather and metal, with women in spandex and rubber.  Pretty much the same music.  I was a very, very, very angry young man.

Those cultures are gone.  Obliterated.  Not by Europeans, but by changing tastes, corporatism, chance, technology and a lot of forces I can't even guess at.  Cultures are an invention.  There is nothing about an invention that belies the possibility that someone will create a better invention and obliterate the culture that was.

Those who argue for "cultural sensitivity" choose to ignore this.  They want to believe that, like skin color, one's culture is a right.

The Canadian Charter of Rights states that everyone has freedom of conscience and religion, along with freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression (and other things that aren't expressly relevant to this point.)

There is nothing in the Charter of Rights that states I am entitled to have my culture sustained if other persons in that culture decide to go do something else.  I can't force people back into smoky coffee houses and compel them to listen to Bob Dylan.

Would be cool, though.

If people can change their minds about culture, and If culture can evaporate because people change their minds, it therefore follows that I am ~ so long as I do not use force ~ allowed to attempt to change the minds of other persons about their culture.  I can't deny you the right to believe what you believe.  But I am empowered to change your mind about what you believe.

Therefore, what you believe is not sacrosanct.  What you believe does not prevent me from disregarding, advocating against or otherwise verbally challenging that belief.

I am under obligation to keep my hands off you, and in this country, to not disparage your culture with hate speech or to rally other persons to harrass you regarding your culture.  But I'm allowed to produce arguments.

I'm allowed to change your mind.

If your belief system is so weak that it can only be sustained by insisting that other persons never challenge it, then it is not much of a belief system.

In fact, it is a belief system that ought to fall.

Are we good?  I didn't swear at all.

Hope

Here is how this post is going to be.  I'm going to write about me for a little while, talking about my personal trials and tribulations of late, since breaking my finger.  Then I'm going to talk about recent killings in Oregon, Colorado and San Bernardino, yesterday.  Then I'm going to talk about the 2nd amendment and the Constitution of the United States.  Then I'm going to draw that conversation back to my tech tables and how that relates to D&D.  This all has one theme.  It is going to take awhile.  Some of you may want to skip ahead.

Of late, for lack of anything else, I've been working as a line cook to make money.  23 days ago, on the 6th of November, I broke my finger at work, while directly observed by both my kitchen manager and the front house manager.  I was walking through the kitchen, misjudged the slipperiness of the floor I was walking on and did a full dive, straight forward, as both feet went out from underneath me.  Automatically I drew up both hands to my chest and landed on the fatty parts of my forearms, protecting my face and jaw from making contact with the floor.  I managed to fall on a thin rubber mat - but unfortunately, the pinky finger on the left hand, the one closest to the floor when I hit, broke in the middle.

It began to swell.  While being questioned on how I was doing, I demonstrated that although the finger was hurt, it clearly wasn't broken as I was able flex it repeatedly without feeling any pain.  I must have flexed it thirty or forty times before the swelling in my finger, wrapped in an icebag, made that impractical.  I apologized to my bosses that I didn't feel up to working and was relieved so I could go home.

The next day, expecting to fill out a form for Worker's Compensation (I live in Alberta, Canada, something to keep in mind when we get to the American part of this post), since I injured myself at work and felt I might be out a day or two of wages otherwise, I took myself to the hospital.  No one was surprised more than me to discover that I had broken the finger.  I had to see the x-ray to truly believe it.  It was a complete break, but as the movement of the bone was about a fifth of a millimeter, the doctor had high expectations.  I was put in a cast and given an appointment a week later.

I went directly from the hospital to my workplace to give them the paperwork I'd just gotten.  The two are, coincidentally, five blocks apart.  I had a meeting with the owner, an extremely unpleasant, business-oriented woman who narrowed her eyes at me before looking at the doctor's evaluation.  She showed no empathy whatsoever and with the practiced eye of someone who has dealt with injured employees before, she went right to the part where the doctor expressed whether or not I would be able to do what's called 'modified duties.'  The box was checked yes - and she told me with all sincerity and the flat resonance of truth spoken by one who knows that this box being checked just so would mean that I could NOT receive worker's compensation.  She then took my paperwork and assured me that a report would be filled out by the restaurant.

Her statement about worker's comp was a fucking lie.  I didn't know it at the time and I was quite upset - I haven't collected any worker's comp since I was 19 and it was very different then.  However, I did my due diligence and called the Worker's Compensation Board (WCB) upon coming home.  Upon doing so, having filled the form out once for work, I decided to go online and fill the form out again, directly to the government, in case the restaurant failed to comply within the 72 hour window they're allowed.  Good thing, too - because the restaurant still hasn't sent in that paperwork.

WCB is quite unhappy about that.  Apparently, there's a $25,000 fine.  Meanwhile, I was approved for compensation almost immediately, because apparently the doctor's note demonstrated absolutely that I was completely deserving.  My opinion is that the restaurant tried to boondoggle me into not expecting them to live up to their obligations.  I can't possibly guess why.

I said in the post I wrote on the 7th that I had a week off from work.  That turned out to not be true.  WCB began harrassing my workplace to give me the modified duties the doctor's report called for and the restaurant had to agree.  No, I should amend that.  WCB couldn't raise the owners of the restaurant, they could only find my kitchen manager - and they cowed her into agreeing.

These duties proved to be somewhat problematic.  Basically, in a kitchen, I couldn't use my left hand, I couldn't work with food (because the cast could not be kept clean), and I couldn't lift anything above 22 lbs. with my good hand.  Any decent, self-respecting restaurant would have put me in a chair in the office and taught me to do orders.

Instead, I was put in a chair, in the kitchen, in front of the other cooks who were working, and told to relax while the kitchen manager assured the WCB that the restaurant was living up to its responsibility.

Obviously, this was the beginning of bad blood between the cooks and me . . . and an absent management that simply failed to understand how this could be a problem.  Cooks are not geniuses.  They are not forgiving, they are not empathic and they resent anyone sitting in a kitchen.

I complained to WCB.  WCB told the restaurant to give me real work.  The kitchen manager tried to do this and totally failed to come up with anything that would require four hours a day.  Result?  Now I was moving about the kitchen as slowly as possible in order to make the work 'last.'

On the 14th I had my doctor's appointment and was told the finger would have to remain in a brace for two more weeks (at least) and that the modified duties would have to continue.

More shifts and more resentment.  Followed by a management that began to bark at the cooks rather than solve the problem.  In the meantime, I'm bored, frustrated, ashamed for not working and generally dispirited from having to go into a job and do no meaningful work day after day.

Come yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment to confirm that the finger was healed.  The kitchen manager, who considers me one of the best cooks in the place (when I'm healthy) was overjoyed at the prospect of me being healthy and gave me as many hours this week as she could - full shifts, back to back, until close at 2 a.m.

Guess what?  Saw the doctor, who showed me that the break actually runs through the middle of the bone, lengthwise, not across the bone as I thought.  Diagnosis: two more weeks in the brace, removing it now and then to flex my now incredibly stiff finger.  Typing with it was okay, so long as I took breaks if I felt any pain.  And more modified duties at work.

I'd already had several arguments with the other cooks.  Last night, when I went in to give the bad news, there were no managers to tell.  Result - another long, drawn out series of reproaches from the other cooks, none of whom are my boss but all of whom now feel a sense of superiority and resentment.  Meanwhile, I feel a sense of fuck them, fuck the restaurant, fuck working, fuck this fucking job.

Tonight, I went into work.  I started about three hours ago.  I talked to WCB today about quitting, I talked to a lawyer about quitting, I covered all my bases and then I went in.  And after about an hour of grinding my teeth in a silent atmosphere of shame and intolerance, I was told this by one of my coworkers: "Well, if it were me, I wouldn't care what the doctor said. It wouldn't stop me from cooking."

I exploded for about four sentences, cleaned up my station and then quit.

And here I am, writing about it.

Why have I quit?  Because I have run out of hope.  I don't worry that I won't be able to do my job once my finger is healed.  Yet I don't feel any hope that I can respect the management again for having fucked this up so badly, making me feel dirty for being injured.  I don't feel any hope that I'll be respected if I injure myself again.  I don't feel there's any hope of rebuilding the bridges between me and my co-workers.  I don't want to heal and try again with this place and these people.  I want a clean slate.

Hope is everything.  Hope is what makes it possible for us to go work a hard job and feel good at the end of the day, expecting that what we've done will show merit and obtain respect.  Even in something repetitive and unchanging, we are still people and we hope that others will value us and be there for us in tough times.  If we're not getting that, then we're on the wrong road.  We're wasting our resources on the wrong places and the wrong people.  The only solution for that is to stop wasting and seek out the right road, the right places and the right people.

I've been fighting the inevitable these last weeks because I've been trying to convince myself that this was the wrong road.  That isn't easy.  Even when something hasn't lasted very long, we tend to cling to it in the same old way just because it IS the same old way . . . and we forget that we only got into in the first place because we needed money - or a better situation than the one we'd had.

We make mistakes.  We take the wrong road.  We dig in because we think it is a good idea and then the evidence piles up and we understand that no, no, this is actually a lot of shit.  We realize that we should have quit when they lied to us.  We realize we should have quit when they treated our situation like an inconvenience or a joke.  We realize we should have quit when the managers failed to do their jobs.

On October 1, a man at the Umpqua Community College in Roseburg killed 8, wounding 7 to 9.  On November 27, a man walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs and killed 3, wounding 9.  Yesterday, a man and a woman entered a center for persons with developmental disabilities in San Bernardino and killed 14, wounding 17.  I heard about this last just minutes before going into work, where I was thinking about stupidity and waste and time put towards things that could not and would not bring me any hope.

Most would say that this shooting business would put their miserable broken finger into perspective and make them glad just to be alive or at least sorry for more than just themselves.  I don't question that the incident gives me perspective.  It's only that the perspective it brings it that, while alive, we should do what we can to make the world a better place, not a worse one.

No rational person has any hope left that these shootings will not continue.  By now we've surrendered any expectation that they're rare or that they're not the sign of a greater problem.  I find myself thinking about some fellow in the world who is having the sort of month (and year, I have to add, since I've been on the skids since being let go of my cushy $65K a year job back in January) that I'm having.  A fellow who is seeing this killing on TV and thinking, "Yeah.  Yeah you know, fuck it."  And then he sees another and another and he thinks, "Well, I've got the guns already."  And then the Colorado Springs shooting happens and he goes and puts the gun in the car.  "Not really going to do anything," he thinks.  "But . . . well, why not."

And then he starts thinking and planning, just keeping himself busy, just tired of the shit at work and the attitude of others and the whole rotten show - and San Bernardino happens and this guy drives out at night, in Tallahassee or Souix Falls or Yakima, scouting out places.  Getting a little more comfortable with the idea.  Just a little more comfortable.  Maybe if one more shooting happens, somewhere, it will be his turn.

Relax.  We're not talking about me.  There are tens of thousands, however, having a year just like my year.  Waiting for their turn.

There's no hope left that, left alone, every one of them will change their minds.  Some are going to go through with it.  We know that.

The fellows who came up with the Second Amendment of the Constitution had Hope.  They knew full well what they had done about a bad government in control of the United States and they felt justifiably good about the employment of weapons for the betterment of their homes and families.  They were humble, remarkable men, who did not believe themselves able to guarantee that a government based on the rules they had written couldn't become corrupt.  They had every expectation that corruption was inevitable - they were well read, they knew their philosophy and their history, they had been steeped in the principles of how governments through the ages ALL became corrupt.  They hoped to do something about it.  They put the 2nd amendment in place to say, "We had to do it; one day, others will have to do it again."  Then they shook hands and felt that they'd done a good job.

There were many things they hadn't foreseen.  They hadn't foreseen the proliferation of what they would think of vice or the technological changes that would wrought the country they knew into something unrecognizable.  They did not guess at guns that would belch out power and death in the hands of people who were not remarkable or humble like themselves - who would be so deranged that the idea of listening to a remarkable or humble voice of reason would be anathema.

But these men made plans to ensure that any part of their Constitution could be made to adapt.  If something had been forgotten, it could be added later.  If something proved a very bad idea, it could be removed.  Even in the face of the worst calamities, there would always be hope.

It was presumed that when Americans recognized that a situation was hopeless, they would change it.

The situation is hopeless.  Nevertheless, like the miasma of useless wasting of time surrounding the situation of my finger, the time between recognizing the situation's hopelessness and doing something about it will stretch out and out, until the only rational thing to do will seem presumptive and unwise.

Exhausted, brutalized, as the number of victims and near-victims who have personally experienced this nightmare rises above the number of people who think they know what's best, it will become evident that the solution is the elimination of the second amendment and the removal of all guns from the general public.  It won't matter if that's right or fair or appropriate; the only thing that will matter is the hysteria that will begin to claim, "If you have a gun, you're already guilty."

That tipping point will take some time.  Just now, the gathering victims left behind, scarred, surrounded by their families who shudder in horror from the deaths and the hospitalized are scattered throughout the country.  That will change.  These people will begin to gather and they will begin to be bold - and they will not be civil or reasonable in their expectations for what needs to be done.  They will speak from the heart and their hearts will say no more.  No more guns, no more games, no more hunting, no more posturing, no more depictions, no more movies, no more stores, no more associations, no more bribed politicians, no more, no more, no more.

They will not care whose rights they trample.  Because these people will have hope.  They will hope for a day when this will stop happening.  This hope will sustain them against everyone who tries to stand on their rights. . . . for the rights will be buried with the dead.

The hope that there could be a world that treated people decently, that could create a worker's compensation board for someone luckless enough to fall down at work accidentally, was created in spite of all the rights of people who felt they deserved not to have their paycheques or their profit-lines trimmed.  The hopes of millions make it possible to stamp out the 'rights' of the people who were more concerned with their privilege to be strong, selfish and dangerous.  As it happens, more people worry about falling down and being injured for life while working a dangerous job than all the business-owners who would prefer not to care.

It will surprise people - and cause many to scream vocally about the trampling of their rights - to learn that there are more people afraid of being shot than there are shooters and people anxious to sell guns to shooters.  But it will take time to get these people together.

We started getting people together somewhere in the 17th century, about the time my game world takes place.  Long before the American Constitution was written, many compacts and contracts between the government and the people were tried.  There was a growing sense that all the people who made things, spent money, attended events and safely went about their business every day without willfully fucking over others mattered.  And because they mattered, they felt that perhaps they should take steps to ensure that unpleasant folk were, shall we say, contained.

I see a small part of my adventure-rich world made up of people who have the capacity to be concerned with more than just their own people and more than just their own immediate gratification.  These people, I think, would be seeking to create islands of freedom, bliss, faith, charity and hope . . . but while I Corinthians argued that the greatest of these was charity, I disagree.  I don't believe there's any motivation to give charity - to change the hopes of others - until we feel hope in ourselves.

I don't believe that in finding myself without work that my situation is hopeless.  I'm still me - and when my finger fully heals, I'll find myself installed in another kitchen, where my skills will again be appreciated.

I don't believe that we should lose hope in the face of these mass killings.  We can see the solution - we just need time for enough people to believe in the solution to truly cut into the problem, even if that means going door to door for the guns, even if that means killing those who won't give them up.

I don't believe that every part of my world has to be a killing ground, just because the players have weapons.  I think the players, as well as anyone, can appreciate there being a few places in my world where misery, discontent, distrust and brutality have no sway.  In fact, I feel the players might think of retiring there.  They might be intelligent enough to retire there.

Me, I look forward to the day when I won't have to sell my time to people who will lie and mistreat me in order to earn my livelihood.

Cultures in Paraguay

Making a map isn't enough.  Presuming the party will someday be wandering about the area, it's necessary to create some sort of culture that will infringe upon their actions while promoting new ideas and adventure possibilities.  Supernatural mojo and monsters in the Chaco, lost temples and whatnot stashed in the jungles of Brazil won't do it (sorry JB).

Let's look again at the map I posted yesterday, with a few added labels:

Helsith, in the upper right, corresponds roughly to Mato Grosso and Mato Grosso do Sul.  Supay, to the department of Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia.  If the reader will look closely, there are four small enclaves that can be found in the vicinity where indicated as 'Spanish Missions.'  These represent the few localities that I could find as founded before 1650.  Spanish occupied Paraguay (in 1650) consists of this:

That is, the small area surrounding Asuncion (upper left) and the Misiones district (right).  This consists of nine centers, most of which were small missions, Jesuit and otherwise.

The remaining localities shown on the map are all 'native' cultures.  Of course, none of these are human cultures.  I had no interest in filling the new world with human populations, which would be quite boring - and for the most part I'm not that interested in Amerindian culture, except where that culture became relatively advanced, as with the Aztecs, Olmecs and Incas.  I realize this creates a strongly anti-politically correct stance: I'm simply taking most of all that and throwing it in the trash.  I imagine there would be some who would find that remarkably insulting.

Nevertheless, I believe my world is better for it.  If I'm going to place cultures that the Spanish must face in my world, I would much rather those cultures be as unusual as possible - and somewhat removed from traditional D&D races, as well.  The rest of this post will be about those cultures: the Helsith, the Supay, the Bokkeer and the Guarani-Neembucu.  I feel I must point out that all of these, and what is below, were conceived entirely in the last three weeks, somewhat forced upon me by realizing I would need to fill up the map with non-Spanish creatures.

The Helsith

Here I do borrow from the Monster Manual, but with a twist.  The Helsith are lizard humanoids, somewhat like 'lizard men' from the book.  The development of humanoid lizards for the Amazon & Parana jungles is logical . . . but of course there are several lizard species, so we can easily imagine several manifestations of humanoid lizard cultures.

'Helsith' describes both the creature and a large kingdom, but for the purpose of this post I will refer to the creatures as 'Sith' to keep it simple.  Helsith represents a very old culture, dating back 6000 years, with its source in the upper Guapure river in modern day Rondonia.  It has a high population with many large cities above 15,000 creatures, so it is a considerable political force in the continent.  Note that the Spanish settlements are nowhere near Helsith.

The Sith are differently behaved depending upon their age.  The young are far less threatening, being about 5-6 feet in height, having typically around 7-14 hit points, attacking with bite and claws, being fast moving and full of energy.  As the Sith age, they grow considerably in size, until being around 9 feet tall - but as they age, they become wiser, less interested in raiding and conquest, much more ponderous in nature and slower-moving.  However, their hit points increase into the 60-80 range and they attack only once with a devastating biting attack or with weapon.

This tendency towards patience as they age makes the elder Sith more approachable and appreciative of the necessities of politics and negotiation.  It means that parties are far more likely to encounter the hot-blooded younger form, as they raid surrounding areas without much concern for things like treaties or good relations.  At the same time, it also means these younger raiding parties tend to lack strong, intelligent leaders - for as the Sith shed their skins, they simultaneously grow wiser and cooler-tempered.

The Supay

These are a passive, highly social group of humanoids developed from the Capybara, far more intelligent and organized than typically conceived rodent humanoids.  In shape they are somewhat like dwarves, with barrel-shaped bodies and large trunk like legs.  They have a strong, flexible neck and they attack with both weapon and bite in combat.

On the whole, they don't seek wars with their neighbors.  They occupy the area around the Spaniard missions and are friendly with the Spaniards because that is the Supay nature.  If pressed, they prefer to retreat into the Chaco swamp rather than fight; this works well for them, since they live much of the season in temporary bivouaks in the wild, often abandoning their established stone villages for months at a time.

They will also act as intermediaries between different cultures in times of war, as they are highly trusted and known for their fair dealings and honesty.

The Bokkeer

This represents a master-slave culture among cats, where they masters are highly intelligent humanoid jaguars.  As humanoid cultures go, the master Bokkeer are far more jaguar than humanoid, commonly moving onto all fours in attack rather than using weapons.  They are far more intelligent than most of their neighbours and highly reclusive, there being only nine highly isolated settlements where a large number of them dwell.  Even at that, only 10% of the population will be masters.  The remainder, the demi-Bokkeer, are displacer beasts (which are semi-intelligent).

Each master Bokkeer will share a telepathic connection with up to 20 demi-Bokkeer, which will attack at the Bokkeer's instigation if so directed.  Masters do not share demi-Bokkeer and cannot control those of other masters, so the culture tends to be based upon the intellectual power of a master to control so many underlings.  Even the weakest masters will control at least four demis, making the least of them considerably dangerous.

Thankfully (for the Spanish) the Bokkeer are not especially territorial and are somewhat tolerant of other creatures.  So long as they are not personally threatened, they are willing to correspond, trade or even aid travellers - but they are excessively distrustful of large numbers or any show of weapons or personal protection.  Any number of interlopers above ten, especially if armed, are sure to get attention . . . this will usually mean a watchful eye from creatures designed to move silently and quietly through the natural vegetation of their lands.

The Neembucu & Guarani

A note before I start; the name 'guarani' is stolen from the actual human native that dwelt in Paraguay before the Spanish.  I'm not above using a good name.  No other association should be assumed in its use here.

These two cultures surround the north and south sides of the Spanish incursions in Paraguay.  Both are not humanoid in any way, but are rather Entish in design.  However, unlike the great and powerful ents from Lord of the Rings or European conception, these creatures are much smaller, much more bush-like in form and far more communal.  (My players, once told about them, immediately tagged them 'Bushents.'  Snigger).

Guarani and Neembucu differ in vegetative form.  The Guarani are spreading, full shrubs atop low trunks, with large leaves.  They prefer high country and deep valleys.  The Neembucu are more akin to bottle trees, with fat trunks topped with a small collection of branches.  They like innundated glades.  Both forms are less than 10 feet tall (3 meters) and typically possess 6 hit dice.  

I don't see these creatures as 'protective of trees,' since I view ordinary trees as unintelligent and therefore competition for good water and comfortable glades, where the Guarani and Neembucu would prefer to dwell.  Thus, ordinary trees tend to be displaced in favour of settlement.  These settlements tend to look like well tended copses of trees, filled with carefully designed canals or levees, rice-paddy like shelves in hillsides or low stone dams to create a shallowly flooded plain.

Like most other races in the region, these tree-cultures are passive and respectful of others - but they vastly outnumber the Spanish, who must be very careful not to cause an uprising by the Guarani.  There simply aren't enough Europeans in the region to 'conquer' much of anything.

A Few Additional Thoughts

So how is the Spanish survive?  Remember, this is D&D, so I allow no firearms or muskets for the Spanish to possess, while these races are clearly advanced in engineering, social design and military power.  They are also considerably greater in number than the real world native population (Santa Cruz and Mato Grosso were hardly occupied at all, which helped the Spanish and Portuguese to choose those areas for settlement).

Well, the answer to that question will come with the next post . . . and it begins with Zoroastrianism.