The Way It's Always Been Done

One of my least favorite fallacies that is used commonly in arguments today is the appeal to tradition. This fallacy revolves around the idea that something has long been valued as true, so there for it must be maintained. This comes up anytime someone says something like "this is the way it's always been done" or in just claiming that something is traditional, and therefore akin to, or even just straight up, sacred.

This is, of course, bullshit.

Traditions exist for many reasons. Going to church is a way of reaffirming your faith. As situations change the need for specific traditions, or rituals associated with these traditions, can also change. If you just go to church because that's what you have always done, going to church loses meaning and, I would argue, value to you as a person. I am not saying that traditions don't have value, I would just like to point out that doing things without thinking  about why you are doing them is harmful to you and the tradition. I would rather see a tradition change then see it stagnate and become meaningless.

Here is a modern example of how sticking to a tradition is damaging to societal growth: Marriage.  Marriage has always been between a man and a woman, so you cannot change it. The thing is, marriage is not just between a man and a woman. In the history of marriage there have been many iterations: one man and multiple women, one women married to multiple males, sets of people intermarried with one another. If this was something that didn't affect other people I would have not problem with it, after all if you want to put limits on yourself, who am I to stop you. But those arguments infringe upon the rights of others because the people making them are too fragile to consider changing their misapprehended term, and that is something that I cannot abide.

Traditions change, and that is the crux of why this fallacy bugs me. We had slaves for a long time, should we have kept that tradition? Women couldn't vote for the bulk of our country's history, should we have kept it that way? Doctors didn't clean themselves before surgery for 90% of human history, should it have stayed that way because it was how it has always been done? The answer to all of these, and any other version is "fuck no, we know more now than we did back then". Context fucking changes constantly (thanks science) and should be taken into account.

The reason this fallacy exists is because people are afraid of change. They are comfortable now, and change might upset their delicate constitutions or whatever. I have stated before, and will probably have to state again, that change is inevitable. Entropy is a thing. You will have to change or you will fall by the wayside, never to be heard from again. Tradition without context is just masturbation. You need to change traditions/rituals to survive with cultural context as time passes and the context inexorably changes, otherwise your traditions become anchors that weigh you down.

Walk into the Club Like What Up I Appreciate Your Needs

Sex is kind of a tricky subject to a lot of people. Some people (wrongly) believe that its an appropriate reward for various behaviors; men who think that not being an asshole entitles them to sex, women who treat sex as a negotiation tactic. Other (wrongly) demonize it or put arbitrary blanket restrictions on its practice. I mean denying consenting adults the right to do as they please with other consenting adults in a private setting, not things like fucking children or those incapable of affirmative consent. Those aren't arbitrary restrictions, those are basic fucking decency and the fact that we need the level of specificity we do says truly fucking disgusting things about a certain percentage of the population. I digress, the point I'm going to assail today is one of slightly less lofty goals. Today I want to talk about how we deal with come-ons.

I don't have any problem with people trying to fuck, provided once again that all parties are of age and can actively consent. It does bother me, however, that more and more, people are trying to restrict where its acceptable to look for a lay. I completely appreciate that people don't like to be accosted by horny passersby on the street; I don't think its appropriate to try and fuck people at your place of work. These restrictions make sense, people ought to be allowed to go about their day without being harassed. The problem I see is that there are certain factions, or possibly just vocal individuals, who apparently want to make all places unacceptable for the casual fuck-seeker.

I've seen complaints about people trying to pick up people at clubs. That is fucking absurd. I will grant that there are groups of people who do not go to clubs to get lucky. I will even grant that these people have every right to be at the club without seeking coitus. It needs to be said, however, that the social context has established that clubs are the best place to go to find someone to have sex with. So being offended by someone asking to fuck you at a club is very much like being offended by someone asking if you'd like some cake at a birthday party. Now yes, some people are entirely too fucking persistent; and yes, some people are fucking assholes in their methodology (I'm looking at you "pick up artists"). But those people are dicks in general, the fact that they are trying to find sex isn't the real issue, the issue is that they're dicks.

The biggest trouble I find with this trend of eliminating opportunities for people to seek casual sex is that it provides no alternative. There will always be people looking for some no-strings loving, and giving them no acceptable place to seek it is pretty fucked up. I, breaking spectacularly from my standard practice, have a suggestion to solve this problem. I propose, breaking even further from the norm, a business opportunity. We need an industry built on sex positive, casual encounters. A place explicitly and in no uncertain terms for finding someone to fuck. A meatspace location, because not everyone digs the various internet opportunities, with age restrictive entrance criteria and a clearly demarcated set of rules to limit assholery. It could even have a bouncer whose only job was to make sure that couples leaving the establishment where both at least mostly sober and consenting. I propose calling it "The Hole S/Hebang"

The Pros and Cons of "Found Footage" Films

I have a strange relationship with found footage style films. Some of the best horror I have seen comes in the form of found footage films, but also some of the worst. For those of you who do not know, a found footage film is a movie that takes place entirely from the perspective of a camera that exists in the environment of the film. These may be handheld cameras wielded by the characters or security cameras as the plot/setting demand. Also, it seems that the only genre that this type of film is acceptable in is horror, though I would love to see someone make an experimental film in another genre as found footage. So I decided to make this post pointing out a couple of the more major pros and cons of making a found footage film as a way of explaining my love/hate relationship with the sub-genre.

Pro: It is tailor made for horror.
As mentioned in my introduction, I don't think i have ever seen a non-horror film done as a found footage film. There are several reasons why this doesn't work for other genres. Found footage, due to the nature of fixed or semi fixed camera angles, feels claustrophobic since you can only look at what the camera person is looking at. This sensation wouldn't do much for a romance or action movie, but for a horror film, it enhances the experience by taking the audience into the scene. The cinematography is tricky in these films because you have to deal with cheap cameras (most of the time anyway), and thus, bad video quality. Pictures will often be blurry or distorted since the camera person is not supposed to be a professional, so framing is done poorly and sometimes a lot of action takes place away from the view of the audience. Once again, this adds to the uncomfortable feeling that can enhance horror by poking people in the "fear of the unknown" part of the psyche.

Con: Cinematography.
I know, I know, I just said that the distorted images and hard to see, claustrophobia inducing, messy shots can enhance the experience; but its insanely difficult to pull-off well. Its a hard balancing act. You have to be able to see enough action to keep the audience interested, but not distort the picture so much as to make the film unwatchable.

Pro: Costs go way down.
There are a lot of ways that shooting a found footage film can lower your necessary budget for a movie. You don't have to buy state of the art cameras, which can cost a small fortune. You don't need to pay for someone to score your movie, as a found footage film with a soundtrack edited in would kill immersion. You can also cut down on special effect costs by not always showing the monster or ghost or whatever.

Con: They have been nightmarishly overdone.
As the costs are lower more and more filmmakers have been making this kind of movie, and as such, the market is saturated with them. Sure, sometimes the moves are great (watch afflicted or V/H/S!) but most of the time you will get imitators (as with any popular style of movie) and people who didn't put any thought into the movie they were making. This means that the overwhelming majority of movies in this vein are fucking terrible.

Pro: Taking advantage of the saturated market.
Using the stereotype generated by dozens of found footage films to mess with the genre and take it to new places is one of the things that makes some of these movies so good. This is something that is hard to do prior to the sub-genre becoming big as there are little or no expectations, but as the number of films of this type grew, clever filmmakers did/are doing more to mess with some heads by doing things in a new and innovative way.

Con: Why is there a camera here in the first place!
This is a major problem for me. When you make a found footage film you have to give the characters a reason to be holding the camera. Sometimes this fits in well with the plot (see Afflicted, Grave Encounters, and Paranormal Activity 2), but most of the time the audience is left wondering "Why the fuck is that person still holding the camera! Why don't they stop filming the monsters and just run the fuck away!" This can kill the immersion that good horror tries to cultivate worse than any bad line of dialog (for me at least).

It is a hard thing to do found footage right. There are many ways found footage movies can fuck up, but if you get the right balance of story, realistic camerawork, and atmosphere down you should be able to make something good. So, go watch some horror movies, after all Halloween is coming up! I would suggest Troll Hunter, V/H/S, Paranormal Activity 1 and 2, Afflicted, and Grave Encounters. They may not be the best movies ever, but they are definitely worth of the watch.

YKWFA 2: Player Characters

Alright, I need to go full on squeeing geek for a minute here. This post has been building for a while and I've had a strong need to write about something that doesn't inspire me to try and hate the world to death, so bear with me. Our topic today is my absolute favorite sort of meta-reference: the PCing of a world. Let me explain.

PCing is a narrative device derived from meta-reference wherein the presence of a player character in the world irrevocably changes the structure of the world, typically by fucking over someone in the game who ought to be important. Sometimes this takes the form of ill explained gaps in a game's mechanics that end up illuminating possibly unintentional subplots. Sometimes its the result of active interplay in the story environment. We'll work through some examples and then discuss the value PCing has as a narrative device. (HUGE SPOILER WARNING OF DEATH)

One of the most explored instances of PCing in a game is the roles of "Ash" and "Gary" in the first generation Pokemon games. By all rights the rival character Gary should be a nearly uncontested champion. He's related to the greatest Pokemon researcher in the world, so he's had, or at least had access to, extensive exposure not only to Pokemon in general but to unique qualitative and quantitative information in the field. He's driven and highly talented. Gary as a character has skill, talent, motivation and resources in spades. In fact he accomplishes nearly everything the player does before the player even has the option. He's also over shadowed in every possible way by the PC.

In the beginning of the game Gary's beloved grandfather Prof. Oak doesn't even remember his name (a good example of a mechanical weakness leading to accidental story depth) and he's largely disregarded in favor of his "childhood friend" that no one seems to know anything about. Over the course of the rest of the game Gary develops an almost compulsive need to beat the PC that results in progressively greater failures at the player's hands despite being relatively successful in all other areas. The PC is even the direct cause of the only possible instances of a Pokemon dieing in a battle (though that is debated weirdly fiercely). When Gary does finally become League Champion the PC comes along, beats his ass yet again, and shames him once again before his grandfather. The PC spends the entire game robbing Gary of his every accomplishment and depriving him of the love of his only relative. My favorite part about this is that its not because the PC is an asshole, its because they can't help it. The presence of a PC in the world ensures that the world bends in their favor. Let's see if I can't clarify with a couple more examples.

Fallout 3 starts out in a Vault, which are constantly demonstrated to be long term social experiments, and follows the development of the player in the Vault environment. Butch is one of the children the player grows up with and his story is what we're interested in for this idea; because Butch is the hero of Vault 101. Or at least he would be if it weren't for the PC.

Your first shown encounter with Butch is at the PC's 9th birthday party, where it quickly becomes clear that Butch is a dickhead. In contrast, everyone else at the party, with the exception of the Overseer, thinks very highly of the player. We learn at this point that Butch's mother is a non-functioning alcoholic, providing one explanation for his aggression. At one point during the player's escape from the Vault one of the Overseer's journal entries becomes available in which he is learned to have been utilizing Butch as a means of social control within the Vault. Given the closed system of the Vault and the low population the Overseer is almost certainly grooming the boy for a position of authority not to mention almost certainly vetting him as the likely husband to his daughter Amata, the only female child in the Vault. So lets build the story, it might be a little weird if you haven't played the game, but I have. Lots. So take my word for it.

Butch, seeking support outside his worthless mother, tries to find solace from the other adults in the Vault, who are all preoccupied with the Outsider child (player). Finding no comfort in any of the adults he develops a hefty resentment for the PC as he projects his inability to earn affection onto the player, he instead establishes a "gang" out of the other male children in the Vault. His gang has trouble understanding his aggression toward the PC, but his clear pain on the subject and threats of violence erode their empathy for the player, after all they must have done something for Butch to hate them so much. Being the clear Alpha male of the Vault's children he reaches out to Amata, once again the only female kid, whose father is the only person to value him over the PC. Amata doesn't share that perspective, making Butch feel even further alienated and cementing his rage.

Now here's the thing. The Vaults are all experiments, and Vault 101's purpose is never actively expressed. We know that the culture of 101 is geared to establish the Overseer as a sort of demigod, carrying on the practices that stave off the certain death of the Wasteland. Its not hard to imagine that Butch was meant to take on a leadership role in the Vault. He's charismatic (though his charisma becomes tainted by his aggression), he's strong, and he is highly capable of establishing and maintaining connections with the Vaultdwellers. The mere presence of the PC denies him even the opportunity to explore anything other than his own resentment.

Perhaps the most prominent example of PCing occurs in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road. In it the player is contacted by a fellow Courier called Ulysses who bears a hell of a grudge. Over the course of the story Ulysses describes both his and the player's actions as Couriers before the events of the game and why Ulysses holds such hate for the player. It turns out that before the events of the game the player essentially tore the country in half. Basically on a whim. Ulysses became obsessed with this act, with what it means to be a Courier. What he finds, what he describes, is a PC. An active, self-actualized being in a world where they are surrounded by people completely at their mercy. The events he describes are the results of PCs in a world without PCs. What Ulysses describes, in both his previous actions and the actions of the player, are what it looks like to the outside world when a PC is active. This is, to me the best description of what a PC is in a game world.

In most games the player is largely lead about by the story, but from a narrative perspective they are all but gods. Their actions fundamentally alter the structure of the world. They are free to act in ways that other actors in the world are not, and the consequences of their actions reverberate through everything. That is why this device is so beautiful to me. By its nature it half-steps the player out of the game and gives context to their actions. It takes relatively simple choices and gives us a chance to consider their consequences, adding depth and engaging us in ways the game otherwise couldn't.

Know When to Fold 'em.

In previous posts I have written a little bit about why I love the crowdfunding of projects. For those of you who don't want to read another blog post; I like that people don't need to go through traditional channels to make a project happen. There is a downside to this though. What if the project gets funded, but then fails. Worse yet, what if the project gets funded then drops of the face of the earth with all that money.

I would like to deal with the scam side of this first as there is already a solution on one side of this as of a couple days ago. Kickstarter has changed its terms of service to make sure that projects have to give updates to explain whats going on, and also state that people who don't finish a project may be legally responsible (if the backers choose to sue) for the loss of backers cash and they will have to return any of the money they have left. I like this in theory, but it also adds more stress to people to succeed, which is a double edged sword. It may make people work harder to make sure they produce what they said they would, but only if they work well with the added pressure. Ultimately I think this will reduce the amount of scammers, which is the biggest problem, so one step at a time I guess.

The other side of this is what happens when a project isn't finished but they have spent the money in development. Unfortunately, I can point to recent events as my inspiration on this topic. Double Fine's game Spacebase DF-9 is getting canceled. This sucks, but for reasons other than just being a game that will never be finished. The game went out on greenlight, a part of Valve's Steam store in which games that are in beta or alpha can sell themselves on the market as "early access" games in order to get more funding. In return the purchaser gets to play the game, give suggestions (which a surprising amount of companies listen to) and have the game already when it is finished. But when a company like Double Fine, which has an impressive pedigree and track record, fails to complete a project, it brings to light the ugly side of game development.

Games sometimes get scrapped. if this was not an early access game, it would have just been announced and then we would never hear about it again. It happens all the time in the gaming industry. Early release just makes the alpha side of projects more visible. Projects fall apart for any number of reasons, anywhere from funding falling through to an excess of ambition. Unfortunately Greenlight doesn't guarantee that you will get a finished project, just an early build, so if the game never gets finished you don't get anything else. Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine Productions, said that they would release the full source code for the game so that people who wanted to continue to add to it could, which is more than most companies would do. But, this doesn't address the issue of what happens to the people who initially back the game. Backing an unfinished project, no matter if it is a video game or a start-up company, is a gamble. You are giving money to someone to show that you believe that what they are doing is something worth supporting. IF you get something out of it that's a bonus.

"I paid for a game, so I want my game" is a popular sentiment on the Steam forums right now, and it is an understandable position, even though I think it's wrong. By investing in a greenlight game or crowdfund project you are taking a risk, as in any investment situation. You are not buying a product. The horrific, systematic failure to understand that has lead to no end of entitled bullshit. You are placing money on a bet that the project will finish, if you are right you get a copy of the game, if you are wrong you get nothing. At least in this case they are still going to be turning the project loose on the fan community,  which honestly is more than we ought to expect.

If you buy a game on early access, or really any project on any crowdfunding site, make sure you are OK with losing the money you put up, or that you are OK with the project as it is presented at the time of supporting, as in the case of greenlight games. Expecting anything more is a misstep on the part of the supporter.

Memento Mori

Death is a strange thing. Most people fear it, many obsess over it, some fight it, a few embrace it, but it comes for everyone. I think at some point everyone considers what they want to do with their life, what, if anything, they want to leave behind. That's interesting to me.

A friend recently expressed concern for my health. Now, I have a preference for a well measured vice and an aversion to unnecessary discomfort, so her concern was understandable. That's not to say that I'm some Baron Harkonnen impersonator; raping slaveboys and wheezing while cultivating my own disgust, I'm just not as fit as I could possibly be. It occurred to me that, other than a pervasive rage and a severe, genetic chemical imbalance, I live pretty damn well; so her concern for my health probably wasn't a quality of life concern. It was a seeming concern that my fat/sassyness would result in an untimely and appropriate end. Which was a sentiment I found to be more than a little presumptuous as she seemed to be placing my potential longevity over my enjoyment of my existence. Its not the first time I've faced down this specific existential quandary, but it never gets any less troublesome.

There are two reasons to favor longevity. The first is a fear of death, which while understandable from a "fear of the unknown" perspective, is ridiculous in pretty much all other areas. The second is a desire to leave your mark on the world, which has always been an issue for me. For one, I'm a cynical, frustrated, rage-aholic, there is no mark I could leave on the world that would be good for anyone, myself included. Second, Ozymandias. Not only are the endeavors of your life transient, even if they do survive time will change them far beyond your intents, usually in ways that would lead you to despair. I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to make the world better, I'm saying that the greater your success the less it will matter in the long run. Not even accounting for the fact that actually setting out to change the world is a motivation of such colossal hubris that I can't believe that the mind behind it would accomplish anything good.

Death is the great equalizer, it comes for us all. I find that beautiful. Before it comes for me I would rather know that I sought joy for myself and the people I care about rather than spend my life seeking Pyrrhic victories and trying to fend off the inevitable. Life is the longest thing that you will ever be involved in, and I don't see the point in wasting it in toil.

Teaching The Controversy

So there is a group of heathens calling themselves "scientists" who claim that the world wasn't created by some all powerful super-being, but was instead the result of matter just forming together in ways that physical laws dictated that they would. These "scientists" also refuse to teach anything other than their ridiculous, closed-minded science. Its just based on generations of "accumulated evidence" and "rationally explains the perceivable universe". What do they know, with their silly, self-consistent, observable phenomena. Even though there are other scientists (probably real ones!) who can show that the world was indeed created as it is now by an intelligent designer. What about teaching intelligent design? Shouldn't you teach the only other side of the argument?

Ugh...OK, that was bad and I am sorry. I feel dirty even saying all of that sarcastically. Incidentally I agree with one point the people who advocate for "teaching the controversy". If you don't want to leave out any "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the world you should teach kids about it. Where I differ though is in my feelings towards this is that I think that if you are going to say "hey, science might be wrong!" then you need to give equal time to EVERY other option out there. Especially when they are more badass than, while also being just as plausible as, yours. Don't agree? Does your god kill shit tons of frost giants in a bloody, multi-dimensional hammer war? No. The Christian creation myth is so boring! Magical Sky Daddy spends a most of a week making toys, then takes a nap. My favorite part was when he took a nap!

And so with that in mind I offer the following:

Teaching The Controversy Part One of Many: The Aztecs!

Most of you readers will know, or think you know, something about the Aztecs. You will probably know that they lived in Mexico prior to the Spanish invasion. You will also probably know them from their enthusiastic appreciation for ritual sacrifice. The origin myth actually explains why this was such a big deal for them. As with most mythology we have many different versions of the myth. Between an almost exclusively oral history, a violent takeover of the continent, and the nasty habit of playing literary analysis with mythology a lot of the information wasn't well kept and what we have today probably differs from the traditional source material. This also means that if I say something that contradicts what you have heard it might be that I read a different version of the myth. I am also just going to be hitting the high points, as I would need to write a book to do these myths justice. So if you want to learn more about the myth/even more about the context behind it, I suggest this.

In the beginning there was nothing except the void. After a while, getting bored of nothingness, a god created itself, Ometecuhtli(male) or Omecihuatl(female). This one being hermaphroditic god-party  represented duality. It was order and chaos, good and evil, light and dark, male and female. This god made sweet love to itself and produced four more gods, each representing a cardinal direction and certain aspects of reality. The god of the West was Tezcatlipoca (sometimes referred to as representing North), who represents judgement, night, deceit, sorcery, and earth. East was Quetzalcoatl(sometimes he is referred to as West instead), who represented light, mercy, and the wind. South was Huitzilpochtli the god who represented war. North was Xipe Toltec (sometimes referred to as representing the East) who ruled over agriculture, vegetation, disease, spring, the making of jewelry, and cutting off people's skin and wearing it about town.

These four began to create a ton more stuff. Water, more gods, and a sea monster named Cipactli. Cipactli was cool because it was a giant (as big as the entire world as it is now) crocodile/fish monster that had mouths at all of its joints and ate everything that went into the water. This behavior introduced a problem to the gods. Everything that they created would fall into the water and be insta-gibbed by the giant sea monster they had created. The solution to this conundrum was simple. Kill Cipactli and turn its corpse into the land. Cipactli's head was turned into the 13 layers of heaven, its body became the earth, and its tail became the 9 layers of hell. During this fight one of the gods, Tezcatlipoca, lost his leg.

So now that the gods could create stuff that would remain uneaten, they went to town. At this point they needed to create a source of energy for the world. This would end up being the sun. Unfortunately an object like the sun was beyond their powers of creation, because, unlike some gods I could mention, the Aztec deities knew when to stop showing off. The unfortunate solution to this was that one of the gods would need to sacrifice themselves to do this. They ended up picking Tezcatlipoca to become the sun, which he did. Unfortunately his sun was only half a sun, either because he had lost his leg, and as such was incomplete, or because he was the god of the night. At this point the first humans were created from ash and were all giants. The gods provided these humans with acorns to eat. Then all hell broke loose when Quetzalcoatl got all jelly that Tezcatlipoca got to be the sun and beat him out of the sky with a club. A now very angry Tazcatlipoca commanded his bad-ass jaguar army to kill all of the humans. Thus ending the first sun.

Quetzalcoatl decided that he would be the second sun and he and the other gods made more humans (this time humans where a more normal size and ate pinon or pine nuts) prior to him becoming the sun. The second generation of humans became lax in their duties and stopped worshiping the gods. In retribution for this slight, Tezcatlipoca (whose domains included sorcery and judgement) turned all of humanity into monkeys. Quetzalcoatl, who was a fan of humans but apparently had an unrelenting monkey-hate, got angry and blew all of the monkeys away with a hurricane after which he stepped down as sun to make more people.

The next god to volunteer as a sun was Tlaloc, the god of the rain and water. While he was being the sun, Tezcatlipoca stole Tlaloc's wife, Xochiquetzal who was the goddess of sex, flowers, and corn. In his grief at this situation Tlaloc refused to send rain to the humans. After a long period of draught, the humans begged and begged for rain. In anger, Tlaloc sent a rain of fire to earth, burning it to ashes. The gods then reconstructed the earth from these ashes. Another version of the third sun has the world burning to ash thanks to a another major fight between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.

Tlaloc's sister (or second wife depending on the version), Chalchiuhtlicue, became the next version of the sun. She was apparently very kind to the people. Once again jealousy caused other gods (you will never guess who) to want her to not be the sun. Sources differ on what happens next, but either Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca beat her out of the sky with clubs, at which point either the sky opens and floods the earth, killing all of humanity; or Tezcatlipoca tells the people that she is only being kind to get their praise, and she was so hurt by this accusation that she wept blood for 52 years, flooding the earth and killing everyone.

Before the next sun could be made, Quetzalcoatl made his way to the underworld to get all of the human bones there in order to remake humanity. Before he went he was warned that Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld. was never to be trusted. So, after Quetzalcoatl got the bones, he ran away with them as fast as possible, as to limit the time he was in the underworld. As he ran he tripped and broke all of the bones (which is why humans today are of varying sizes) but managed to recover all of the, now shattered, bones. Quetzalcoatl and the other gods put the bones in a depression and poured their own blood over them, causing humans to crawl out of the bloody pool 4 days later. at which point the fifth sun, our current sun, had been made.

There are two stories in which the fifth sun came to be. In the first, two gods offer themselves up as the sun. The first, Tecuciztecatl, is a proud and rich god who chickens out at the last minute. Nanahuatzin, who is depicted as frail and sickly, decides that he will do it instead and turns into the sun. Tecuciztecatl, shamed by this also turns into the sun. The earth is to hot with two suns so the other gods take a rabbit and throw it over the face of Tecuciztecatl dimming him and turning him into the moon. Since Nanahuatzin is weak the other gods give their blood to him to keep him in motion and thus ensure that the earth will survive. To make up for this deficit humans need to give blood back. Some gods like full human sacrifice while others, like Quetzalcoatl, prefer bloodletting as it doesn't kill the donor.

The second version of this is that the fifth sun is Huitzilpochtli. Omecihuatl (the dual god/goddess) had more children, who became the stars. These children were jealous of Huitzilpochitli and they wage a constant war with Huitzilpochtli. This constant struggle is the day and night, with daybreak meaning that Huitzilpochtli is winning, and nightfall is when the stars (the Tzizimitl led by the goddess of the moon, Coyolxauhqui) are winning. This war is aided by blood being sacrificed to Huitzilpochtli and the other gods and goddesses (though the reasons for sacrificing for the other gods are varied).

You may have noticed a pretty significant life/death/rebirth pattern in there. That cycle is a huge part of Aztec mythology and played a major role in their culture. It's interesting and awesome, once again you should definitely look up more information.

So there's the long and (not so) short of it; the origin of earth and humanity according to the Aztecs. I hoped you enjoyed this as much as I did. I will continue this in the future since my hands are dead now from all the typing.

Sources: Here, here, and here

Discriminating Tastes

Discrimination ties in to pretty much everything we've been talking about lately, really pretty much every issue society faces on some level or another. Now, we've kinda danced around this as a direct topic for a while, but I'm shit on the dance floor and its time to approach this.

There is a simple exercise anyone can do to determine if they're engaging in this particular variety of asshatery: if you swap the active noun in your argument to the contextually appropriate noun describing you, and the argument then sounds ridiculous, you are being a cunt. A fair example would be, say, refusing to allow heterosexual couples to adopt children. Sound pretty fucking stupid? Yet it somehow slides through when laws are passed denying that right to homosexuals. The only way this makes sense is if you in someway believe that the number of cocks available during child-rearing is a critical factor. For the record if you believe that cocks ought to play any role, other than possibly creation, in a child's life you need to seek some pretty significant help, you fucking pedophile you. The idea of men only making 75 cents to every dollar a woman in the same position makes piss you off? That's because someone's pay being effected by absolutely anything other than performance is fucking discrimination. And no, it doesn't fucking matter that women can get maternity leave, because only allowing women to take time off to be a parent is discrimination. It's also a pretty scathing indictment of the conservative rallying cry for "family values"; but that's a different post entirely.

That rule is essentially a forced empathy hack; actively, if only linguistically, putting you in the position of an opposing party. It requires that for a moment you look beyond the tip of your nose and realize that other people are, indeed, people. Its not terribly difficult and, with even a little reflection, its pretty effective at making valuable points. Unfortunately, a life unexamined is still far easier lived. Discrimination is pervasive because knee-jerk solipsism doesn't require any effort, which is notably less than the any-reflection-at-all required for empathy. Sadly the problem isn't just discrimination, it's the oversensitivity towards discrimination.

A while back there was a bit of a tiff regarding the game Cards Against Humanity, in that a small group of women felt that the game was discriminatory against women due to the creators all being male. They've created an alternate set of cards for the game composed from a feminine perspective, some of which are just as funny as, if not better than, cards in the base game; while others are blithe, smug social commentary on the level of a shitty hashtag. While I will completely admit that CAH can be incredibly offensive (no matter how amusing it may be), it's a game made by a small group of friends who happen to be male. I can't speak to their inclusion policy but I can say that in most friend groups exclusion is less a matter of active internal policy and more a concern of external interest. I don't know them, they could very well be douchebags, hell given the game they made its not even unlikely, but I can say that, without knowing them personally, assuming that they are hostile to women is discrimination. In the same way that assuming a group of women making a game about bras, periods and social justice were hostile to men would be discrimination.

Socially, discrimination is a fraught, nuanced issue affecting everyone in one way or another. Layers upon layers of social programming and ill conceived sub-cultural bullshit force people of varying descriptions into various unpleasant roles, (in the most understated way I can think to say that). But individually all it takes to overcome this disgusting, myopic cockheadedness is just the slightest bit of examination and honesty. We all owe it to ourselves and each other to not be such fucking cunts.

This Is The Song That Never Ends

Eshi and I have been talking recently about something that we have dubbed "the shonen problem". For those of you who do not know, shonen is a brand of manga/anime that focuses on audiences of boys in their early teens and up. Some of the most popular anime falls into this classification: Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and the like. Now, "the shonen problem" doesn't necessarily only happen in shonen, but is something that is very apparent in them. Basically it is a problem that centers on escalation. Basically the story lines always follow this rough pattern with very minimal changes: hero fights bad guy, bad guy beats hero, hero trains to become more powerful, good guy fights the bad guy and wins. This, as a generic story arc, isn't terrible. The problem arises when this pattern is continued ad nauseam.

Every new villain has to be more powerful, every new case has to be more dramatic and convoluted, every new disease has to be more obscure or obfuscated, otherwise the difficulty of  manufacturing a satisfying climax is likely to outstrip the skill of the writers. Its way easier to write the same essential story over and over, changing faces and increasing disparities, than to inject novel character development. This means that the longer a series runs the more outlandish this escalation gets to the point where the audience can't help but become desensitized. Dragon Ball Z was 291 episodes of people getting more and more powerful in a way that shows that all of their previous training wasn't good enough. This is a problem that happens when you try to extend the length of a series artificially. A good story will have a message or point, but this type of "development" removes from that message in favor of perpetuating a brand.

Character death is the most poignant version of this. Character death ought  to be terminal for a storyline, even if it isn't permanent for the character. Death is something that needs to carry a lot of emotional weight, when you take that weight away from a character to justify continuing a story you diminish the character, the story, and what death means. The main character from DBZ, Goku, sacrifices himself on multiple occasions to save the universe and defeat the bad guy, but each and every time is resurrected. This removes the value behind the sacrifice. The impact of a main character who dies is huge, something that people shouldn't see coming, and all of that impact goes away if you bring that hero back. If you know that you will come back to life when you die there is no reason to not sacrifice yourself and the sacrifice is less a price one must pay and more a minor inconvenience.

American comics do this too, there is no end to escalation in story lines for most Marvel and DC comics. Superman is the worst offender in my opinion, and not just because he has been around since the 1930s but because of a trend he started in American comics. Superman getting resurrected was great for the writers in terms of continuing what is essentially a brand name, but it removed the value from his death at the hands of Doomsday. Superman is essentially a deity in the DC universe, and the death of someone who held that much sway would have changed the way comics where written if it wasn't for the cop out, which changed the way comics are written as well, just in a much worse direction. It was both lazy and manipulative and set up a precedent for other writers to follow. Comic writers didn't need to make up a new character to replace the dead hero after their emotionally charged death nor write any story lines which dealt with the long term effect of a dead superhero on their friends, family, or civilians who relied on the protection of the hero.

Really this is a problem that happens with non-episodic series in general. The X Files started strong from a creative standpoint, but the less episodic it became the more it grew to rely on threat escalation and left-field "plot twists".  Movies, TV, comics, and anime are all industries that have multiple goals, one of which seems to be disproportionately prioritized above artistic integrity: profit. I have talked about this in similar terms before, but I just keep seeing how pervasive this problem really is in popular culture and it always depresses me. These things are modern myths, and as Eshi, and countless others, have pointed out, myths are how we establish social values; trading out the core of our cultural values in order to pander to consumerism is pretty fucking disappointing.

Sometimes Its Cruel to be Kind

I watched Snowpiercer recently and it brought to mind kind of a nasty little issue. For those even more behind then myself on contemporary films, the basic premise of the movie is that the world has ended in a catastrophic ice age and the only survivors are passengers on a magical super train going around the world. Most of these survivors are people who payed to be saved and they reside in the relatively luxurious fronty bits of the train. Others fought their way on last minute and mange to eek out a rather miserable existence of hand-me-downs and brutal opportunities in the tail of the train. without getting into too deep into spoiler country, the things that people did both to stow away and to survive in the tail are pretty fucking nasty. Especially before infrastructure was developed to allow for the excess population to even barely survive. The issue that arises for me in this instance is: does it constitute mercy?

The folks in the tail are fed enough to sustain themselves, in the form of "protein blocks". They have bunks to sleep in and copious amounts of free time, as they aren't trusted/don't have the skills to serve the train. They're also kept in filthy conditions, don't receive actual medical care, apparently have their children taken from them on a whim and are subject to daily abuse from an armed and aggressive police force. Sure they're some of the last people alive in the world, but they aren't even slaves, they aren't even cattle, those things are in some way useful, valuable. They apparently only exist to give the people in the rest of the train someone to feel superior to. Now in the movie their survival is framed as a perpetuated mercy, after all the deified antagonist who owns the train did set up infrastructure to allow them their meager existence. But that infrastructure took not insignificant time to establish, time that occurred after they where already on the train. Sealed in the tail. With no resources. Time in which these desperate people where left entirely to their own devices for survival. I don't even really have to go into spoilers here, you can imagine how fucked up people can get during two fucking months without anything.

I would argue that just having people in that position is fucking cruel as shit and completely justifies very nearly anything the people in the tail do to get themselves out of it. Now, yes, this is essentially the basic thrust of the entire film; but it really caught me that everyone not in the tail takes that mercy as gratis. They have decided that the folks at the back should damn well be grateful for even being alive. So if they're abused and degraded, so what if they have no rights. At least they aren't dead. Its a painfully common perspective amongst the oppressive classes, that those who are oppressed should essentially be grateful for the opportunity. To me this is the core of classicism and really the moral of the story. I think what it comes down to for me is you don't get to decide if your own action is merciful. I don't even think you have the ability to decide if your own action  was good. Once other people get involved you aren't just acting, you're acting upon.

I'm not saying that some people aren't ungrateful cunts. What I am saying is that "letting" someone live isn't necessarily merciful, and in fact just the linguistic basis of that statement implies cruelty. That describes a position of near absolute authority over the most basic aspects of someone else's existence that can in no way be positive. The most charitable thing its even remotely possible to say about that mindset is that its condescending. Being merciful shouldn't just not be about you, it can't. Like structurally. Mercy is intrinsically about doing right by other people, we can't forget that, no matter how bad things get.

Ain't No Place For No Hero

I recently re-watched The Wicker Man, and no not the Nick Cage movie; the good one from 1973, and noticed something that I hadn't before: there is no hero in this movie. There is a protagonist, the sergeant, and an antagonist, basically everyone on Summerisle, but no one that I would consider the hero of the story. This is because all of the major players receive at least some characterization, and because they all have flaws as well as a good side. You are forced to empathize with both sides. Heroes are supposed to be paragons that show us the best human qualities, but the problem with heroes is that they kind of cease to be humans after a while and end up being two dimensional.

Sergeant Howie has been tasked with finding a girl that has been kidnapped and his drive to do so is impressive at times; but he is also xenophobic, aggressive, and self righteous. He spends a large chunk of the movie breaking into people's homes and actively violating their privacy, strong-arming the population in the process. Also he spends quite a lot of time lecturing the islanders about how they are "corrupting the youth" by not teaching them about Jesus, and how their pagan beliefs are evil. The islanders motivation is that they just want to make sure that their island prospers again, which they believe will only happen with a sacrifice of sufficient quality. They are also under attack by an outsider, and as such, treat him coldly in a lot of cases, which Howie views as a kind of insubordination and as responds with hostility. Both sides of this conflict have problems as well as virtues.

The beauty of this kind of narrative setup is that it forces you to analyze the situation and realize that the world presented is not black and white (and hopefully viewers can get the fucking message). My favorite kinds of bad guys in movies are ones that you sympathize with. This empathetic response humanizes the villain and makes for a functional counterpoint to the hero, not just a monolithic evil to be overcome. Movies that tend to hit you on multiple emotional levels tend to make you think, and that is a great thing that people like me tend to look for in a story. 

Ozymandias from Watchmen is a great example of this kind of "villain". He is trying to eliminate the problems associated with nationalism by forcing humanity to have to work together against a larger foe. His point of view is understandable, even if you disagree with his methods. Another good version of this type of character is Gerard Butler's character in the movie Law Abiding Citizen. He's a justifiably broken man who's goals reflect his brokenness. All his character is trying to do is show how the justice system doesn't always work, by exploiting its flaws after committing crimes. 

Making the good guy also have flaws that are understandable also makes him easier to empathize with, and as such also make him a more believable character. As I stated above, Heroes are representative of ideals and making them flawed twists their moral certitude in interesting and beautiful ways. This makes it harder to call them real "heroes". Superman is a hero, Batman is not. Supes is supposed to represent hope and justice and everything that is shiny, but he also holds a moral position that is incorruptible. This makes him harder to empathize with, but easier to idolize. Batman on the other hand beats the living hell out of people and uses psychological and physical torture to accomplish his goals. You might not agree with how he does it, but you can understand why. 

Humans are naturally pack animals, and because of this they will react to a deep, human, empathetic character more strongly than with a shallow, one dimensional character. More rounded/empathetic characters make for better, more believable characters and stories, and I wish we would see more of them. 

DISAPPOINTED!

We've been hitting a lot of really depressing topics lately, its exhausting. So I wanted to write about something that I enjoy. The problem is that everything I enjoy is tainted by shit that I hate. So I'm going to talk about that.

Most of my problems with the world at large stem from the fact that so many people are assholes. That is, admittedly, a bit of an over simplification but its true. There is a lack of forethought and basic consideration that boggles my mind and is not so slowly driving me insane. People are selfish, vindictive, lazy, proactively defensive, cowardly and entitled. My hatred here stems from disappointment. Almost every myth and legend in human history (myths being the primary method of imparting social values) denounces these vices and demonstrates alternatives. Almost every major belief system, religious or philosophical, decries these behaviors. Worst, on some level I think we all realize that this shit is shameful; and it doesn't stop it. Instead, people justify their shitty behavior with weak excuses involving other shitty people, either other people were being shitty so its more okay, or there have been shittier people in the world so at least they aren't that bad.

I've no tolerance left for this shit, it consumes me. I've barely left the house in the last four fucking years. I realize that's pretty damn pathetic, I'm not going to try and excuse myself. I don't know, I'm fucking tired.

Sea Life Superpowers

We've been talking a lot about some really depressing and upsetting shit lately and we're tired of it. So for today I will just talk about something that I love: Sea Life. So the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. at 3.6 billion years ago we find evidence of life starting up and we get multi-cellular organisms 1.2 million years ago and 530 million years ago we have found the first footprints of land life (though there may have been some before. I bring up this timeline because I want to point out how much time sea life has had to evolve. We get some amazing adaptations and specializations thanks to this, and that is what I want to talk about today. Basically if you wanted to find real life iterations of pokemon, the ocean would be the place to do it.

I have lots of favorites when it comes to animals that live in the ocean, but I am only going to talk to you about 4 of them because otherwise I would be typing all day. 

Ostracod: This one a simple little family of crustacean and is kind of unremarkable and tiny: around .2 - 30 mm long.

But there are two reasons it is one of my favorite sea creatures. Firstly, they have two Dicks which launch spring-loaded sperm that can be up to 6 times longer than the male ostracod, which is funny to me. I don't care if you think that's immature, dicks are fucking hilarious. The second is a defensive mechanism that it uses. Light from the surface doesn't travel very far underwater. There is no light past 1000 meters in the ocean, and rarely any good amount of light lower than 200 meters. This helps sea life hide from predators, which is where the ostracod comes into its own. 

That is an ostracod using bioluminescence to escape a cardinal fish. If a predator swallows an ostracod it releases two chemicals which create light when mixed. This makes the predator very visible, which attracts larger fish that want to eat the original predator. This is a great example of a biological fuck you to predators: "eat me and you get eaten". 

Electric Eel: A couple of quick facts I need to get out of the way: though called an eel they are actually a breed of knife fish. Also, these don't live in the sea, but rather in South American rivers, but I decided to include it anyway because it's got motherfucking lightning powers.

These creatures generate up to 600 volts of electricity to stun prey or predators, and sometimes even kill them. On its own, this isn't enough to kill an adult human, since it only produces 1 amp of current. That being said, depending on the path the current took and duration of the shock it could potentially stop a heart. Oh, and they can strobe their current for up to an hour. The other cool thing an electric eel can do is electrolocate. This is similar to echolocation in base principal. The eel generates an electric field and is able to sense any disturbances in the field. It can do this to avoid predators or hunt prey.

Mantis Shrimp: The Oatmeal has covered this little beauty before in much better detail and with a passion that I can only hope to come close to, but nevertheless, I present the Mantis Shrimp!

And it is not just a pretty face! It can see thousands more variations in color than a Human being. Every color you have ever seen; every sunset, every work of art, has been seen through the interaction of three cones in the eye, mantis shrimp have fucking sixteen (the Oatmeal covers this in pretty great detail but its amazing enough to bear some poetry). Also, those claw like appendages on the front of the shrimp shoot out as fast as a bullet, boiling the water around them (though not for long enough to cause lasting damage by itself). And if the bullet claw misses the target, the pressure wave that the claw creates dismembers its prey instead. This amazing little creature can punch holes in glass aquariums, and it is only 12 inches long at the most! Mantis shrimp are amazing little engines of power!

Mimic Octopus: I have a fondness for cephalopods in general. This class of animal include squids, cuttlefish, nautiluses, and octopuses, and my favorite one of them (and probably of all animals in general) is the mimic octopus, also known as the Ditto of the sea. Watch This video:

Hell yeah! Mimicry isn't unique to this creature; coral snakes have a very deadly venom and a very distinctive pattern, but the Mexican milk snake, which is not at all venomous, mimics the coral snakes pattern with a minor different color order (To tell the difference remember this: Red on black, you're OK Jack, yellow and red, you'll wind up dead). Mimic octopuses not only use mimicry but raise it to an art form. Animals that mimic tend to pick one thing and focus on it. This octopus flips them all off with all 8 of its tentacles and turns into 15 different/distinct other animals. And that's just what we have observed. After all, we have only known about this animal since the 90s. This camouflage is not just for escaping predators either, it hunts with it too. It has been observed mimicking a crab looking for a potential mate then devouring other crabs when they got close enough. This is a fantastic use of an evolved defensive trait!

So there you have it, Just a few of my favorite sea creatures. I thought of a bunch more while writing this, so I might do another one of these soon. We have only explored a tiny amount of the ocean. Just imagine what other kinds of badass life could be hiding out there!

Please, Please Let it Be Dead

Alright lets kill this lumbering, convoluted beasts. I've written about education, I've written about testing procedure, all under the auspice of discussing the status quo. Now, that's a term that gets bandied about quite a bit in various contexts, but all it really means is the way things are. The problem arises (as it often does) when we try to normalize those things.

We can't help but seek to maintain what we consider to be normal for ourselves, its a basic function of the human mind and it can be quite helpful. For instance, if you can maintain an "abnormal" behavior, like exercise or regular study, it becomes normal and you develop a positive habit, a new status quo. However, there is also a natural inclination to believe that the way things are for you is also the way things ought to be for everyone else. It's a reaffirmative impulse, if other people live the way you live and value the things you value, not only are you apparently more likely to be living "right", but you have an easier and clearer point of connection with other people. Community building is great, empathy and support and whatnot, but we live in a world that is conceptually large enough that our communities require a relatively high degree of diversity to lubricate global relations and counteract exploitation.

Here's the rub though, standardizing education has difficulty when forced to engage social or creative fields, which are key points in diversification. Things like science and mathematics are naturally organized for standardization, but art and social sciences are highly nuanced fields that are both vital to the development of well rounded, well informed people, and almost impossible to effectively prioritize value metrics.

There's also the issue of establishing behavioral recursion, like deference to police authority causing police to expect blind deference to their authority causing people to be expected to defer blindly to police authority. But we've gone on quite a bit about how fucked up cops can be lately and I really don't want to get back into that right now, so if you're curious refer to previous posts.

Reliance on the status quo causes lag in progress, but its lag that is usually mitigated by curiosity and the inevitability of progress in general, so there's nothing wrong with a bit of normalcy. The trouble is that everyone has a different normal, and some people's normal is really disappointing. Since many of those people aren't capable of functioning on the level of some others, we play to the lowest common denominator, we make the weak the standard. People who want to rewrite history, or push poorly veiled fundamentalism as science, or assign political bias to reality (seriously fuck those guys), are seeking to make their normal the Status Quo for everyone. It goes from mitigating an existential fear and building communities to manufacturing consent and silencing opposition. I kinda hate to imply conspiracy, because I don't think its organized enough to qualify, but I do think its a bit too insidious to be allowed, and certainly too damaging to continue. Unfortunately, any solution to this issue starts to look worryingly like "sinking to their level" or worse, treading on any of various misinterpreted freedoms. So fuck it, knowing is half the battle or whatever.

For Great Justice

You know whats cool about being a cop? You can break the law and get away with it because, hey, you are the law! Did I say cool? Sorry, I didn't mean cool, I meant fucking stupid. Seriously, what the hell guys? I feel like I need to say this now: I don't hate cops. I think that they preform a necessary and valuable service for the people. I also know that there have been cases in which cops have broken the law and have gone to jail. But when all is said and done the fact that there has been no punishment for police who have committed crimes in any case at all, is something that I cannot abide.

The story that made me want to write about this is the policeman who killed the former COO of napster because he was texting while driving. The excuse they gave was that he was in the middle of texting a reply to another officer asking a work related question. This is bullshit. Do you know why texting while driving is illegal in the majority of states? Because shit like that happens! People die because someone didn't want to wait/pull over to send a message. The police are supposed to be paragons of justice in our country, hell, in most of the world. These are not supposed to be people in uniforms "just doing their jobs". They are the people we let guard our streets and uphold the rule of law. They are supposed to be the best of us. As Eshi has said, "We outsource our self-defense to these people at the most vital times". They are the ones that we chose to let represent our social Ideals. This means that they must be held to a higher standard of accountability then your normal everyman on the street.

A couple of the news stories I linked to earlier could have been considered accidents and not intentional crimes. That sucks and its super unfortunate for everyone involved, but you still killed a person. I know you don't want to be punished for something you didn't mean to do, but all actions have consequences and you have to live with them, especially if you are the one who is supposed to hold people accountable in the first place.

Really anytime a person has power that can impact people around them, they lose some of their freedom to act in anyway they like. When you have power over people if you fuck up, you hurt all of the people effected by you. You have to bear the responsibility of your actions. I believe that this is especially true if you are an elected official and you break the law. You don't get the minimum sentence or just paying a fine because you are important. No, you get jail time motherfucker. Did you cheat on your significant other, and then proceed to tell people who can and can't get married based on a moral code you possess? Nope, you get publicly fired. You don't get to resign gracefully. We elect people to represent us, and as such they should always act in a way that corresponds to that trust. You don't get to make mistakes. I get that your job is hard and sometimes you make mistakes, but those mistakes cost too much for you to ever get a pass.

Status Quo Part 2: This is Only a Test

Last time, I mentioned having an issue with standardized testing as it pertains to a school environment. I chose to refrain from really exploring testing because while it does tie into my larger point about the status quo it pertains to more than just the education system and is significant enough to warrant it's own post.

Before we go to far down this little rabbit hole, I don't have a problem with making sure people are competent, I don't have an issue with gauging people's knowledge or skill sets, there are just some significant problems with the way we tend to go about that. First, testing in general is somewhat of a troublesome idea in that most tests can only really measure one's ability to take a test if for no better reason than a testing environment is unnaturally stressful. It is essentially impossible to ensure that someone is properly prepared for a test without placing focus, and thus stress, on the test itself. People respond fucking weirdly when under stress, and test stress comes from all angles; parents, teachers, society, self, or authority figures. Anything and everything can stack stress onto a performance situation. Some people respond to stress by exceeding their normal capabilities in regard to the relevant material, thus potentially invalidating the test through abnormal over-performance. Other people panic massively and blank out any skills they do have, invalidating the test through unreasonable incompetence. Tests necessarily diverge from the normal course of affairs, so using tests to determine a person's abilities under normal circumstances is a bit unreasonable; not everything can be a test.

The second major concern I have with standardized tests is essentially the standardization. In an effort towards fairness and consistency we establish baselines and core criteria for success in tested fields. That's great, except for the nature of reality. In any given situation, unforeseen variables will arise that are both more integral to performance and more persistent than were anticipated. Which makes any standardized test necessarily incomplete. Standardized testing is culturally biased, unreliable, and deeply misunderstood. Honestly my biggest problem in this vein isn't even limited to testing, its the persistent idea that a uniform practice cannot be discriminatory despite it's noted illegality.

Standardized testing occurs on more levels of society than many of us are willing to admit, and has more adverse effects than I think most of us know. Fairness and consistency are relatively noble goals, but when they justify the problems that arise from this sort of system it brings to mind tropes about unfortunate roads and the good intentions that pave them.

Achievement (Not) Unlocked

Something that has been a big inclusion in modern gaming is achievements. As with most things this hides some deeper issue with the industry as a whole. Achievements are basically just used for bragging rights and serve no real purpose, unless you really really want that 1-3% rebate from Microsoft's live market. Companies like Microsoft have attached a "gamerscore" to the idea, adding up points received with achievements and rewarding Xbox live gold members with minor prizes worth about $.25, which is kinda shitty considering to get to that point you would need to play and completely beat 20 games minimum. An added requirement for these "rewards" is that you have to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of getting that 1-3% rebate, as only people with Gold Live memberships can get them. By the way a gold membership costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 for a full year, so you would end up needing to buy 10 $60 games in a month (or just 5 if you have the year long subscription) to make up for the loss from the membership cost. Alternatively, if you don't want to buy shit tons of games, you could just not pay and have more money to spend on a steam sale or something. You can also get points to spend on games in the live market, but once again these rewards are kind of negligible considering you need to pay to get them.

So anyway, back on topic: there are people who let the concern with their gamerscore choose what games they play. That article I linked is about a person addicted to getting achievements, and it displays the main problem I have with them rather well. Achievements control how gamers play games and that removes from the overall experience. Achievements feel as though the game company decided that it needed to wave a carrot in front of our faces to guide us along the best way of playing through a game. The best games act as a medium for storytelling, i.e. most RPGs, or as a great distraction for the player, i.e. one of any number of FPSs. Movies have the same basic goals in a lot of ways. Movies try to tell a good story, make a point, or just be a cathartic distraction from reality, but there are no achievements for having seen The Godfather trilogy because that would be stupid. The subjective experience is the important bit. You don't see directors and writers sitting in an audience telling them the way they should watch and interpret a movie. It is their job to nudge you in the direction they want you to go in a non-forceful, engaging way. I would argue that good game design does this as well.

Achievements seem to add extra goals for you to achieve as well as "rewarding" you for completing certain stages of the game. I kinda get the extra goals thing, most games want players to play the game for as long as possible so adding more goals on top of the main game is an easy way to do that, but this was something that happened before achievements were a thing. Did you ever play Super Mario 64? There was a non-essential quest in the game to get all 120 stars hidden in the game. If you did this you got an extra scene at the end of the game, 100 lives, and no fall damage from falling from your triple jump. So by giving the player a goal outside the bounds of the main storyline it accomplished the same goal as an achievement, but differs in a major way because it added to the game. Sure it was kind of a crappy reward considering you had already played the shit out of the game at that point, but it was something. In the Saints Row games (at least from 2 and forward) there was an in-game list of challenges that rewarded you with in game guns, vehicles, and power ups that could only be obtained if you had the genuine skill to complete the challenges. Though these got linked with achievements later, the key aspect of them was still essentially to provide benefit to the player by expanding game play. Achievements don't add shit, they just get tacked on as a way of showing off.

Because of achievements games are becoming more goal oriented and the focus of the gamer shifts from caring about the story, just looking for a distraction, or trying to have fun; to trying to show off how many achievements they can get. I am being hyperbolic here, but only slightly. We live in a world where individuality is incredibly important and largely determined by a person's role in a group. People self identify with a group and then try to show that they are the person most representative of the positive aspects of that group. They scream "Look at my gamerscore! I am the BEST GAMER EVER!". I find this sad for a couple of reasons, the amount of time "wasted" playing games not among them. First of all it denigrates the people working on the game. Why write a good story if gamers are only going to run through it just to get their gamerscore higher? The even sadder part is, by adding the socializing aspect to the game you are exacerbating the perceived need for superiority within the group. This is the way that you show you are a gamer now. It's telling people that if they don't play the game in the way that the people who determine achievements want, then they are not just not a gamer, but that they aren't having fun in the right way. And fuck them for telling me how to escapism.

Status Quo Part One: Book Leanin'

I may be a day late and somewhat deficient of appropriate remuneration, but insomnia is a hell of a thing. If possible, I'll try to make up for doubling up on Brian's day with all the wit and vigor sleep deprivation affords me. Its been suggested that I discuss problems I have with the idea of a status quo. I like that idea, but in order to do it proper justice I need cover a fair bit of additional ground. I've chosen to start this little journey by exploring education.

My first target here is standardization. On paper, setting a standard is great; it seeks to ensure maximum saturation and retention of information while minimizing the percentage of the population abandoned to hopeless ignorance. The problem (as has been discussed ad nauseam by everyone from ivory tower academics to the self-congratulatory "wont someone think of the children" idiots) is that the size and relative complexity of our society demands that focus be placed on that second part. This means that in order to keep that percentage of failure low, the limited resources of our education system tend to be funneled into greater standardization. Some of this is problematic because those standards tend to define success at progressively lower levels of retention, dragging the whole system ever closer to incompetence. We manage this by taking a page from capitalism and rewarding success. We give more subsidies to schools that have a higher pass rate on standardized tests (more on this next time) which allows them to afford better teaches and more classroom resources, it also leaves schools that were already struggling pretty well fucked. As more of these schools start to suffer the habit is then to essential only teach children how to pass the relevant tests, forgoing anything like actual education. More schools "succeed" but the actual value and density of the information students receive has less context and less use outside of passing a given test. But, rather puzzlingly, that isn't the part I find most disturbing. High level standardization of education demands an increasingly rigid structure in the classroom. Which would be great if childhood wasn't a thing.

Think for a moment about all the things that are going on for a child. They are (hopefully) starting to develop the awareness of other people as people, dealing with these newly extant people, learning empathy, constantly expanding a rudimentary understanding of a massive and complex world and themselves, growing and changing at a frankly terrifying rate, and trying to construct a conceptual universe that can justify all of those experiences. That is completely ignoring any schooling and all but denying anything other than an optimal home life. Now imagine how a fucking disgustingly high percentage of these children are dealing with some form of abuse at home. Oh, and all the while they're being told that if they lack focus in class it could ruin their lives. In the midst of this clusterfuck of, what is to them, completely new and complex experience we tell them to sit down, forget all of that and focus on poorly contextualized facts and over-abstracted maths for between four and eight hours a day, depending on age. Now pack thirty or forty of these things into desks together and see how many of them "fail to perform to expectations".

The other major concern I have with the bastion of competing ideology that is education is just that, we can't seem to agree what its supposed to accomplish. Some people argue that schooling is meant to make children into well rounded adults, others argue that it's supposed to prepare children for the "real world" usually meaning the job market. Now, I'll reign in from the bile-spewing polemic about children spending all their time learning how to best sell themselves into slavery and try to only address these issues in themselves. If the idea is to produce well rounded adults then school would be more of a guided discussion with teachers and students interacting with concepts and generally progressing toward relevant details. Alternately, if the goal of education was to prepare children for the "real world", there would be a much greater emphasis on understanding social roles and the mechanics of various industries. The really tricky part is that either interpretation on its own would demand a higher regard for practical application. Unfortunately, the prevailing combination of the two is a gross maladaptation where general concepts and contextualization are largely ignored and the realities of economies and market factors are denied in favor of either hollow optimism or cynical resignation. Practical skills are all but left out entirely.

We place so much weight on the importance of education that these holes in the system don't just fuck with our children, they end up tearing at society as a whole. Because we don't really give children the opportunity to become real people, we end up with a population where many of us never get past stupid high school bullshit. Because we can't agree on what purpose education ought to serve, it largely ends up doing nothing for those twelve mandatory years, and even if you pursue high education you'll still have to fight through the shit to get anything out of it.

I know this might not seem like it leads into a critique of status quo mentality, but give me a couple posts to work through the details and I'll try to lead us into a coherent narrative.