So, Cormac and I are doing a start-up (which I will tell you all about at some future date) and we are trying to come up with a studio name. Please vote in the poll.
Here are some of our favoritest options:
For context, we’re working on a very character interaction focused RPG (interacting with crew member, building relationships/reputation). If you come up with a new name–and we use it–we will totally Tuckerize you.
I totally need to write a rant on tentacle porn and the true master race of the world. Totally!
Think about it. All those paintings of fishermen’s wives being sexed up by tentacled sea monsters. How far back do those paintings go? Okay, 1800s. Not that far back. But still. Tentacle porn starting in the 1800s. With the possibility that prior instances may have preceded it (wouldn’t be surprising).
And then there’s Cthulhu. The dark god, destroyer of worlds. Looks like he came into popular literature in the early 1900s. Huh. Wonder what was going on in the world at the time that might have created that kind of zeitgeist.
Anyway. Powerful, predatory, sensual, sexual squid things (and octopi) exist at the margins of those time periods. Seducing pearl divers on their good days, overwhelming the fragile minds of men on the bad days.
What if, what if…. in reality, we were their servant race. Slave race. Whatever you want to call it. Minions. Peeps. And they ruled the world, and had us two legged things to run around on land arranging things to their content. But then some enemy came, some mysterious enemy came, from which they couldn’t hope to defend themselves. It would be war. Death. Destruction. Human servant peeps tossed this way and that. Messy.
So instead, they all convened–or maybe they didn’t need to convene, maybe they communicated telpathically to each other– and agreed to sink deep under the seas and hide there. For however long it took the danger to pass. Leaving their servants, or slaves depending on whether they were Torries or Whigs, behind above the land. Wandering around kinda aimlessly, not knowing their purpose in life. Trying to find it, trying to come up with meaning and goals, but ultimately feeling kinda lost and confused. Poor little peeps.
And the enemy, it leaves the confused little fellers alone. Maybe it doesn’t know what they are. Maybe it does, and doesn’t care. Why go for abandoned hampsters?
Maybe, in fact, these deep sea tentacled world masters have been in hiding for longer than we know. The truly great stay below, growing into their full strength. The smaller ones serve as spies and scouts to the world above. Where, if they’re small enough, they sometimes get caught, dunked into formaldehyde and then dissected by bored little peeps who, in another reality, would have been serving their every whim. Or getting captured and put in cages by peeps who ought to have been providing some sexings instead of taking notes and babbling.
What if this has been going on for centuries. Millennia. And they’ve erased most of our knowledge of them. Maybe they sank Atlantis.
Maybe, maybe their great enemy is the whales. The largest of the whales. You sometimes see them scarred, with tentacle marks crossing their skin.
Maybe there has been a great battle between the sea behemoths. Maybe we worshipped both once, but the mammalian whales struck marketing gold when they hooked up with the dolphins and sent them out to help the poor stupid two-legs things that keep falling off their boats. They don’t swim so good. Get ‘em out before they pee in the water.
Maybe we have been the unwitting audience, missing the greatest battle of our planet, silently waging on the depths of the sea floor.
And while the gods of our era (squids and whales, kids, squids and whales) engage in their titanic struggles, we little two-legs-peeps-servant things are still trying to figure out our purpose, and we keep poking at shiny rocks that burn, and digging for oil, and putting crap into the air (with no one to tell us not to, since the big guys are underwater and totally ignoring us). And maybe, just maybe, after centuries of struggle, their battle ends in a wash of plastic bottles and pollution.
The great war is ended. What few remain struggle off to hiding places in hopes of healing. In hopes of raising their civilizations again, and finding whichever little fucker it was went and got the whole planet fucked up. And meanwhile, we keep wandering around on land, with our strange hats and shoes and shit, totally unaware of our impending doom, and occasionally giggling over dirty pictures of a cute Japanese diver girl getting sexed up by a bunch of amorous octopi.
Well, until the probe comes and starts wailing in the air over San Francisco and there are no fucking whales left to answer and the giant squid down below are thinking, “Yes! The plan will work. The whales are dead, and now this dumb probe will kill off the walkie-incompetent-peep things–and really, who let them stop worshiping us? That was a totally bad idea. But all we gotta do is chill and relax on our deep sea sofas and divans and wait for life as they know it to go kaput. Then the whole place is ours again. Rock.â€
Until, of course, the peeps figure shit out because, man, they did that whole space travel thing in the time that they had no squids to worship, and hey, if you’re going to pick a purpose, building spaceships to fly to the stars is a pretty good one.
And so the peeps ruin it again, and the squids wake to silence as the probe stops wailing and goes away, and that wasn’t quite supposed to happen that way and then they hear it.
The ancient enemy.
Is back.
I guess I can take that rant off the to do list.
I am on unemployment. I am on Obamacare. The vast majority of my friends and acquaintances probably feel the same way I do about both of those things: I wish I didn’t need them, but goddamn am I glad they’re there.
This, then, is the profile of someone benefitting from government aid.
I’m not fresh out of college. I’m not new to my field. I’m a middle class white girl with all the privileges and disadvantages that go along with that state (middle class & white = privileges, girl = disadvantages). I’ve worked hard, sometimes for little pay, sometimes for good pay.
When I was teaching, I barely made the equivalent of minimum wage. UCI, USC, and Scripps all paid decently–for the field, but it’s not a field that pays well. The junior colleges… I made less than minimum wage between in-class time, office hours, grading, and lesson planning.
My first year in the game industry, I made twice as much as I made in a decent year of teaching. Six years later, I make twice as much as I made my first year in the game industry. Well, when I’m working. I tend to get contracts that last between 3-9 months. And then I get to go back to job hunting, taking on whatever small projects I can find in the meantime. And I go on unemployment.
You’d think, making 4x the money I made teaching, I’d be doing okay financially. But that’s because you don’t realize I went into debt teaching. It’s not a living wage. I’m not the only one. I remember handing in my resignation and saying, “I’m going into debt doing this.” The response? A sad sigh and, “Yeah, that happens.”
I’m also still paying off my school loans, so that’s $300 a month. As a contractor, I have to pay for my own health insurance. Up until recently, that’s meant I shell out $323 a month in premiums, and another $300-$600 for prescriptions (because the deductible is huge and I’m getting screwed). My half of the rent is $1100 a month. Add in utilities, groceries, car insurance, gas, cell phone, bridge tolls… Most months cost me a minimum of $3000, assuming there are no unexpected expenses and I don’t fill all my prescriptions.
So, I squeak by. Living in Silicon Valley isn’t cheap, but I always have a roommate. I cook for myself, almost never eat out, and have almost no luxury expenditures. Not absolutely none, although buying video games should actually count as part of my job. But then something will happen. My car will break down, I’ll get sick, my mom will get sick, my cat will get sick, unemployment will decide via some arcane procedure not to pay me for two months and then admit it’s their fault and still refuse… sorry, got a little bitter there.
Just one of those things happens, and I’m in the red again. Two of those things… and I have to borrow money from my little brother (which is awesome, in that he’s doing well and likes me enough that he would lend me money, but sucky in that… he’s my little brother, I should be helping him out, not him helping me).
Admittedly, spending the money to save the cat… for a lot of people, that’s ridiculous. But even without the cat, I’d be in trouble. Because of the cost of healthcare.
In the 13 years I’ve been working, only five of those years did I have employer sponsored health insurance. Most of that time, I carried my own. Or was on COBRA. Or I was on an ex-bf’s insurance (which was all of seven months; most of the time, he was on my COBRA).
I have chronic health conditions. Don’t get me wrong, on average I’m pretty healthy. But I have celiac disease (yes, fully diagnosed with biopsies and all) and hypopnea (which is like sleep apnea’s younger cousin, but not quite as obnoxious). Which means I need reliable medical care. I need to be able to see my doctor more than once a year. I need DME (durable medical equipment) coverage. I need regular vitamin absorption tests and bone density scans. I need to get my intestine biopsied every few years. Oh, and since my mom has had breast cancer, I should also be getting regular mammograms. Oh, and don’t forget the sleep studies! Between the hypopnea and a fatal sleep condition running in the family, this matters.
A sleep study can cost as little as $1k out of pocket (yes, that’s the cheap price) but usually will cost upwards of $2k. Then there’s the DME, which is a few hundred a month (depending on which equipment you’re using). I don’t even know the cost of the bone density scan or vitamin absorption tests, just that my insurance insisted I get the biopsy before they’d be willing to pay for either.
I can’t afford to be without health insurance. For the last year, I was paying the aforementioned $323 a month for a crappy health plan that barely covered anything. I was paying $300-$600 a month for prescriptions. The $300 months were when I skipped filling two prescriptions. Don’t tell my doctor. I was paying my therapist out of pocket because my health insurance refused to cover her. My insurance co-pay to see a psychiatrist–$273 per appointment–was higher than the out-of-pocket cost of seeing that same psychiatrist (did I mention it was a craptastic plan? it was a craptastic plan). I skipped the DME entirely for that whole year, instead making do on out of date supplies and hacking things together when I needed to.
On Obamacare? On one of their most expensive plans, that is way, way better than my old craptastic plan? I’m paying about $243 a month. And they cover my therapist. And I have a $10 co-pay for prescriptions. A $15 co-pay to see a psychiatrist. Let’s do the math here:
In a month in which I fill all my prescriptions, see my therapist, and see my psychiatrist (who I do not actually see every month), pre-Obamacare I would have spent $1756. With Obamacare I’m spending $518. That’s a $1238 difference. I’m spending less than 1/3 of what I did before.
Look at that $518, and don’t tell me I’m getting free healthcare. That ain’t free. That’s still a hefty chunk of change. But it’s a lot more doable. Again, for comparison’s sake, let’s show that info in a different form:
Pre-Obamacare = $1756
Post-Obamacare = $518
Difference = $1238
I’m not coasting along on handouts from the government. I’m not living big at the tax-payers’ expense. I’m working my ass off and being as frugal as I can while living in a high-cost city and dealing with chronic medical conditions. I am also paying my taxes without complaint when I have work, because I’m cool with my money helping to pay for unemployment, health care, ambulances, cops, firefighters, and roads.
So, hi. My name is Diana, and I’m on Obamacare.
A long, long time ago, I can still remember when…
Right. Back on track. A long time ago a guy friend of mine asked me why I wasn’t interested in him. This was during a conversation about his dating prospects. I matched what he wanted–on paper at least–but I wasn’t interested.
At the time, I tried to explain the question wasn’t why I wasn’t interested in him, the real question was why I was ever interested in anyone. The default isn’t attraction. It’s not like I’m attracted to every guy I meet, and then as we interact I’m taking away points for his mistakes. Meh. What a horrid world to live in.
My default is actually not to be attracted. Sure, I can tell if someone is physically attractive to me in an objective way, and yes, that will catch my eye. But if their mouth opens up and stupid falls out, I’m not sticking around no matter how pretty they are. On the other hand, if I’m really enjoying a conversation, sharing humor, and learning interesting things from my conversation partner, then he starts becoming more and more attractive to me. (I use “he†here because I’m into dudes, obviously y’all can use whatever pronoun you want).
So, attraction is not a losing game the way my friend seemed to believe. It wasn’t a matter of him losing points and having to figure out the perfect way to act. That sort of thing always leads to disaster. You end up walking on eggshells around the person you’re interested in, always trying to say what they want to hear, and worrying they won’t like the real you. Exhausting. Attraction seems a lot healthier to me when you treat it as additive. Every conversation then becomes a way to build up, instead of tear down.
But I shouldn’t let this get away from me completely. I’m tangenting a bit from what I wanted to talk about.
The girlfriend zone. The nice guy. The friend zone. There are some awesome articles, essays, and comics out there talking about it. The idea is that guys will automatically place an attractive girl in the girlfriend zone and, if it turns out she doesn’t want to date, then drop her completely. While she foolishly thought they actually liked her and wanted to be friends, not just get into her pants.
Please stop a moment and think about that interaction. Really think about it. Say that girl is me (she certainly has been in the past, and probably will be again). I’ve got my tangle of neuroses and insecurities. One of the reasons I like Jim so much is that he’s always been direct with me about what he wanted. I don’t have to worry about what he’s not saying. I don’t have to second guess our interactions. It lets my ever present anxiety have a bit of a break. But in the girlfriend zone, the dude is never direct.
So I’m hanging out with a guy friend, maybe playing Left 4 Dead. Maybe walking Ragnar. I know this guy is my friend, right? I’m assuming he’s a real friend. He really does like playing Left 4 Dead with me, he really does think Ragnar is cute. He really does enjoy talking about re-finishing furniture and really does like my cooking. Because I’m assuming he’s honest with me. Maybe we’ve been friends for a few weeks. Maybe a few years.
Somehow dating comes up as a topic. Maybe I tell him about someone I’ve met. Or maybe he finally says something about wanting to go out with me. But I’m not interested, for whatever reason. Maybe he looks too much like my brother, maybe he just smells wrong to me, maybe I just don’t like guys with too many vowels in their names. Doesn’t matter.
If he’s my friend, really and truly my friend, this is the conversation we should have:
Dude: So, I’d like to take you on a date.
Me: Oh. That’s flattering, but that wouldn’t work for me.
Dude: Oh. Can’t blame me for asking, I think you’re pretty cool. But I get it.
Me: Thanks. You’re pretty cool, too. Let’s go shoot zombies.
I’ve had conversations that were pretty similar to that. I had a breakup where I turned to the guy and said:
Me: I’m thinking I want to break up.
Dude: I’m thinking so.
Me: Wanna get a pizza?
Dude: Yep
And we went for pizza. That guy, by the way, was a true friend. He thought I was nifty when he was dating me and when he wasn’t dating me. And I felt the same about him.
But I’ve also had this conversation with a guy:
Dude: So, I’d like to take you on a date.
Me: Oh. That’s flattering, but that wouldn’t work for me.
Dude: Why not?
(Please note, this is a bad sign right here. He’s not accepting no and challenging my answer).
Me: Huh? Uhm. I just don’t feel that way. I think you’re awesome, but-
Dude: You think I’m awesome but you won’t date me. I can’t believe I wasted so much time.
Me: Wait, what?
You know what that conversation tells me? That all the time we spent being friends, playing Left 4 Dead, walking the dog, eating cookies I baked, all that time was a waste. All that time spent with me was a waste. And this is when my insecurities fire up again. I re-examine the entire relationship, realizing now that he was just hanging out in hopes of hooking up, and I can’t believe anything he said. Maybe he hated my cooking. Maybe he thought I was a terrible gamer. Maybe he thought if he just was nice to my dog, I’d sleep with him. I learn that I never should have trusted him. My judgment is suspect, and my value—for him at least—is only skin deep.
If you already have trust issues, if you’re working on getting past those issues, this is a disaster. It’s horrible even if you don’t have trust issues, because it’s still a case of someone deceiving you. So this guy, who says he wants to date me, who therefore ought to want me to be happy and healthy, has instead decided to tear me down when I say no. It’s like a kid kicking down a sand castle because they don’t get to play with it.
As a friend, that dude seriously violated the campsite rule. You know, the one that says leave the place in better shape than you found it? Yeah, no. That guy just kicked over the trashcans on his way out. Which means that the next guy who wants to be friends with me may not get the chance. Because I’m going to be reluctant to open myself up for that again.
I get that there are social games out there around dating, and that guys get screwed over, too. I’ve known girls who go out on dates constantly not because they’re interested but because they want someone else to pay for their dinner. That sucks.
This is why I like up front communication. Yeah, I can be shy, but the past—wow—seven years, I’ve told guys I was interested. Maybe I’ll be friends with them for a long time first, because with me, it often takes a while to build up interest. But if it matters to me, I’ll eventually get around to saying something. “Just so you know, I’d totally date you if you were interested,†seems to go over well, even when the guy isn’t interested. And if he’s not interested, that’s fine. I’ll be disappointed, don’t get me wrong. But I won’t be mad. And I won’t obsess over how perfect we’d be if he just realized we were meant to be together (I’m trying not to gag here, ick). I’ll move on.
And I’ve had people (guys and gals) I really admire and like tell me roughly the same thing, and take it with grace when I decline. Honestly, some of those friendships are even more awesome after. Because we know we can trust each other. And it feels good to know someone you consider pretty nifty thinks you’re nifty, too. Even if you don’t want to lock lips over it.
I love Dragon Age: Origins. I enjoyed Dragon Age 2, but it’s nowhere near the game the first was. Not narratively, anyway.
A necessary clarification here: I like Dragon Age 2, and it is a good game, and it’s so easy to see how it could have been better. The infrastructure is totally there. I’ve learned more from playing it, in its flawed beauty, than I have from most games. In fact, I’ve been replaying it this week, which is what got me thinking.
Okay. Disclaimer done. Rant begins now.
Warning: Spoilerrific
Where DA:O gives you several emotionally different endings (you die, your lover dies, no one dies and you pay a devil’s bargain, your best friend dies, you become co-ruler, you become the lover on the side for the ruler, you partner up with your assassin buddy as lovers, etc.)… That sentence ran away from me. Where was I?
Right. Where DA:O gives you endings with different emotional resonance depending on your choices in game, DA2 gives you one ending. Yeah, you can choose to kill or pardon Anders, but that doesn’t really affect anything in the world. Oh, yeah, Sebastian might get mad at you. Whatever. Sebastian is annoying, and is a DLC companion, which means he’s not central to the plot anyway.
The storyline of Dragon Age 2 is one unending series of failures. No matter what you do, it all goes to shit by the end.
First goal, get yourself and your family out of Ferelden and away from the Blight. Guess what? You kinda fail in the first 10 minutes of the game. Because no matter what you do, one of your siblings will die. It’s actually kinda cool, narratively, because the two siblings are very different and will interact with you in entirely different ways, and the choice of who dies is a result of whatever character class you pick. It does establish the premise that every action is going to cost you in this game. And, oh boy, it’ll cost you big. But the fact remains, failure number one, right out the door.
You get to Kirkwall with your mom and surviving sibling, and a redheaded annoying guardswoman, but that’s a different issue. The entire first act is all about reclaiming the family name, dragging yourself and your surviving family out of the gutter and up into the nobility. Or at least the middle class. And making sure the Templars can’t touch any of you. Guess what? No matter what you do here, partial failure.
You lose your sibling. No matter what decision you make, your sibling is no longer a part of your life (except for some possible cameo moments later, if they live). Either your sibling is going to die in the Deeproads, or survive by becoming a Grey Warden, which means they’re out of your life and will always have some pretty heavy duty secrets they can never share. Plus the dying early thing, the infertility thing, the fighting nasty darkspawn thing. Yeah. Sorry, sibs. Your life sucks.
If you don’t take your sister with you into the Deeproads, when you get back, she’s being taken away and imprisoned in the Gallows by the Templars (you are a scary mage, lady, so we’re taking you away and locking you up. Sorry, Bethany. But, hey. You’re still adorable.) So you know how such a huge part of wanting status was so you could protect your family from the Templars and make sure your sister never got locked up in the Gallows? Yeah.
Or, if it’s your brother, he goes off and becomes a fucking Templar. You know, a member of the religious order that persecutes mages like you. It’s a complete betrayal of everything your family has fought for. But, you know, shiny uniform. And it does get him out of your shadow. Oh, and it makes you, his big kick ass sister who always outshone him, vulnerable to him. No family issues here.
Okay. So now, it’s you and your mom in the mansion. That’s kinda a success, right? You managed to keep her alive… (Can anyone see the foreshadowing here? Bueller?)
You are nobility. So you managed to get out of the gutter. Go, you. You also have partial ownership in a mine as a result of a quest in act 1 where you save a bunch of miners and clear out monsters from the mine. But that pesky mine just keeps having dragon infestations. So, go back to the mines to find a bunch more miners have died, but you save the rest. The mine is safe again. It’s totally a great idea for those guys to get back to work. Of course, by the end of Act 3, they’re all dead. Every last one of them. So all you did was prolong their lives working in a mine. Which is just the nicest and healthiest place for anyone to work. And then they died. Failure.
In Act 2 you also get to hook up with your love interest. Which is aways gonna have some wonky shit going on. Isabella has commitment issues, so don’t act like you’re really into her, okay?
Anders, well, Anders. What can you say about him other than, don’t. Seriously! Possessed mage! With a “sensitive guy pony tailâ€.
Fenris is hot, and has an amazing voice, but then he freaks out and runs. And you can’t really blame him, because slavery. Who knows what the hell happened to him when he was a slave? PTSD for sure. You can wait for him for another three years, and he will eventually get his shit worked out and come back to you, and he’ll even have your back in the end whatever you decide. But… that’s the best romance in the game.
Sebastian… celibate sworn to the Chantry. The best you can get out of him in the entire game is a “chaste marriageâ€. You can pray together. Hot.
Merrill. She’s adorable. She’s quirky. She’s like the librarian girl and mad scientist you’ve always wanted to date all rolled up in one. Plus kittens! Oh, and demons. You don’t mind demons, do you? She and Anders, by the way, are kinda clingy. What is it with clingy mages?
You can’t romance Varric, which is a pity, because that chest hair is pretty fantastic. You can’t romance Aveline, who I did say was annoying (red head guardswoman), but she’s at least a seriously competent warrior. Competence is sexy. It makes up for some emotional un-intelligence.
You can hook up with Zevran if you play your cards right, but he’s not a main character, he doesn’t stick around, and he doesn’t even look like himself thanks to whatever weird changes they made to elven features between DA:O and DA2
You can’t hook up with Cullen, which is a pity, because he’s adorable. And he was so screwed in game one, you kinda want to hug him and make things work out right for him.
You can go to the Blooming Rose and hook up with a prostitute. Not my thing.
And then there’s the Arishok. I wish he was romanceable. I so wish. But he’s not. What a waste of a gorgeous voice. And he’s an interesting character. I kinda agree with him when he rants about how fucked up the city is. Actually, I agree with him on a lot of things. He’s a hell of a lot more competent than the Viscount who rules the city. And a lot more sane than Knight Commander Meredith who leads the Templars, or First Enchanter Orsino who leads the mages. And let’s not even get started on the ineffectualness that is Grand Cleric Elthina. But no matter what, you’re gonna have to fight him. Which could have been cool with a little bit more emotional resonance between you and him. It nearly was cool. But.
Either you let him kidnap Isabella as punishment for her theft, thereby losing her entirely. Or you have to kill him. And I hate having to kill him. But I also can’t convince myself to let him take Isabella. No matter what you do, he’s gone at the end of Act 2. On its own, this is actually a perfectly good plot point for the game. But taken as part of a series of continual failures, meh.
Oh, and the Viscount is dead. Remember all that work you did for him trying to keep the city stable? Remember saving his son and trying to help out with their conflict? Yeah. His son is dead, now. And so is he. And there was never any decision you could make that would change that. Really, the end of Act 2 is pretty depressing.
Act 3, you have the Templars and the Mages frothing at the mouth to have a go at each other. Initially, I find the mages more sympathetic, but by the end of the game, I just want both sides dead. And guess what, that’s what you get! I guess that’s kinda satisfying, getting to kill the dumbass leaders of both factions… But you spend so much effort trying to make peace between the two sides, and nothing you do makes a difference. And you can’t convince that ineffectual head of the Chantry to get her head out of the sand and do anything…
But I get ahead of myself. You remember your first ever goal in the game? To keep your family together and get everyone somewhere safe? Yeah. Your mother dies in Act 3. No matter what you do.
It’s actually one of the more effective storylines for me. That ending is just gruesome and heart wrenching. But the fact of the matter is that at this point of the game, you have completely failed. Your entire family is either dead or taken from you by the wardens or the Templars. And you never had any chance of making it turn out differently.
When you resolve Varric’s storyline, you end up killing his brother. When you resolve Merrill’s storyline… god, poor kid. No matter what, she’s screwed. No matter what, her mentor and mother figure bites it at the hands of Merrill’s pet demon. And she is completely rejected by her people. And her entire quest to save her people through studying old and forbidden magic? Total failure. Congrats.
Isabella… You know, I don’t even remember what’s up with her. Was it all resolved with the Arishok?
Sebastian, meh.
Fenris, you do at least get to kill his former master if you so desire. Or you can let him take Fenris back into slavery. I always kill the bastard. That is satisfying. That is one of the few moments I find completely satisfying. And if you romanced Fenris, you get back together and he’s with you through the end.
And then there’s Anders. Who betrays you. Again, no matter what you do. He betrays you. He lies to you, gets you to help him make his stupid bomb, tricks you into aiding and abetting him in blowing up the Chantry.
The Chantry. The center of the religion. The main power in the city. The folks who control the Templars.
No matter what you do, no matter how much effort you put into making peace between the Chantry/Templars and the Mages, Anders starts a fucking war. The end.
Okay. Maybe not the end. Not completely. You do get to kill the obnoxious leaders of both sides. Knight Commander Meredith, who is just evil from the get go. And then Orsino, the First Enchanter. Who was a sympathetic character. But then he goes batshit and eats his apprentices (or, well, uses their bodies to create a grotesque golem creature with him as the head). And, and! Turns out he was totally in on that crazy shit that got your mother killed. Ass.
So, basically, all the authority figures in the game die. Unless you let the Arishok go. And he’s the only competent one, so I guess him having a chance of survival makes a certain amount of sense.
Your entire family dies. Wait, no, your alcoholic asshole uncle who stole and the gambled away your mother’s inheritance and then sold you into indentured servitude and bitched at you a lot? He’s still around somewhere. As is his illegitimate daughter, I think. She’s kinda cool. But they’re not hanging out with you.
The religious war you tried to stop is happening.
You’ll lose all of your companions, except your lover, unless Anders was your lover and you decided to kill him for the whole starting a war thing (and really, don’t get involved with Anders).
The game is one long failure of a life. No matter what you do. Your choices don’t matter.
This in part is due to middle of the story syndrome. DA2 has to bridge between DA:O and DA3. It’s got major limitations because of that. There has to be a religious war, so that has to start in DA2. There’s probably stuff going on with the Arishok and his people (the Qunari). They are conquerors and they will be coming after the rest of the world, so we need to set that up, too.
The main character of the game has to be central to all of this, but the way they did it, you’re just running a maze where nothing you do makes a difference. Instead of making the player feel important, it makes you feel powerless.
If you want to look at the game philosophically, it’s a great treatise on nihilism and the ultimate heat death of the universe (not literally, but I feel the same way when I think about the heat death of the universe). I just happen to find that depressing.
It plays like a novel. It’s actually a pretty good novel. But I play RPGs to feel agency. To feel like my actions have meaning.
So Dragon Age 2 had a lot of great things going for it. Tension, motivation, gorgeous art, some awesome voice talent, plenty of interesting characters (plenty of blah characters, too, but whatever), and some witty banter. And it does a great job of carrying through on things that happened in the first game. But you only get the illusion of player agency. In the world of DA2, nothing you do changes anything.
Abandon hope, ye who enter here, because you’re screwed whatever you do.
I would like a year with no more cancer. No more friends, family, or coworkers getting frightening diagnoses, or dying right as they were supposed to be getting better.
No more unexpected emergencies for supposedly run-of-the-mill intestinal problems, that turn a half hour surgery into a four hour series of surgeries and require a second surgical team. No more lost sounding text messages from dad as he ends up spending his day in the waiting room, worrying, and the best thing I can do is send him pictures of puppies.
No more putting beloved pets to sleep because of money. Because the surgery that was supposed to fix the problem (and wiped out all of your savings) only bought you another two months.
No more convoluted wills designed to set all beneficiaries at each other’s throats. No more reassuring the rabbi that I really don’t give a fuck about grandma’s money and think he earned it by putting up with her for 15 years. No more talking to the rabbi. At all. (Unavoidable, though. I still need to deal with the household items she left me. Reminders that neither of us were ever what the other wanted, and her desperation to make me into what she thought I should be. Reminders of her need and loneliness… And my desire not to be dragged down into it.)
No more curses you can’t undo, left by grandfathers you never knew…
Let 2013 take those things with it.
Jim Murdoch is softly snoring next to me. Ragnar asleep across our legs, Kayla curled against my stomach. Across the house, Scott is also snoring.
We move tomorrow. Jim and I. And Ragnar and Kayla by association.
The house is nearly packed up. All that remains are odds and ends and the things you can’t do without that somehow fill twice as many boxes as they ought. Pens, tape, one dish, one bowl, the Xbox (but not the Wii, that was packed ages ago.) Keychains. Why so many keychains?
We’ll move the bare essentials this weekend. Movers will bring the heavy and awkward bits on Thursday.
We’re moving in together tomorrow. If we had not both moved in to Tortuga a year ago, we’d never have met. And if Jim hadn’t admired my StarTrek earrings, we might never have started flirting. And if I hadn’t discovered that Jim would show up at my door any time I baked desserts, we might never have dated. And if Joe hadn’t told both of us, “Duh! You’re into each other!” we might never have made a move.
I was not looking for this when I found Jim. He wasn’t either. I’m not sure which of us was more stunned… But everything just fell into place. Continue reading
Back to Tortuga.
Jim and I are renting the front unit on one of the buildings, which is pretty much perfect. No yard for Ragnar, but he likes playing fetch in the courtyard, and it’s a great walking neighborhood.
Funny. This is the third time I’ve moved to Tortuga. Both prior times lasted six months. But, then, those were both intended to be temporary.
We move next week. In the meantime, I’m alternating between packing and playing Assassin’s Creed 2. Which, I swear, is actually relevant to my job hunt. (Talking to a company about an alternate history game).
I’ve been listening to the man next door yelling at his child. Again. It’s the kind of yelling that just goes on. Not the short and effective “No! Don’t!â€, but endless. Yelling for yelling’s sake. Because it certainly does the child no good.
I want to go next door and tell him,
Don’t do this. You don’t want to do this to your kid. Look at me. I can tell you, it hurts. It sucks and it will break him and he will spend the rest of his life trying to mend it.
Your kid doesn’t understand what you’re going on about. He’s what, 7? Respect, honor, pride… these are all abstractions. He doesn’t get it when you yell at him that he doesn’t respect you. Tell him instead what respect means. Tell him respect means listening while the other person talks, and you need him to do that. Tell him there are consequences if he doesn’t, and then give him a consequence that matters. Give him a timeout. Trust me, being told to sit alone by himself and knowing that he disappointed you is far more effective than being yelled at.
Yelling just makes him draw in on himself. It makes him scared, and eventually it will make him angry. It tells him he deserves to be treated that way, and not just by you. He’ll let other people treat him like crap, because it’s what he’s used to. It’s what he deserves. More to the point, it’s what you’re teaching him he deserves.
If he gets angry instead, he’s going to take it out on everyone. He’s going to yell, because that’s what power means to him. He’s going to yell at friends, co-workers, girlfriends (or boyfriends). He’s going to yell at his own kid someday, if he ever actually has one. His self confidence is going to be so precarious, anyone questioning him will send it crashing to the ground, and he’ll hit back. He’ll be closed minded and afraid of anything he doesn’t understand.
If you don’t care about that, then care about this. You going on for 20 or 30 minutes will make him tune you out. It all becomes noise, like the Charlie Brown teacher, except louder and angrier. It won’t stick. He won’t understand it. He’s a kid, for goodness sake. He won’t understand the finer points of respect and masculinity that you’re going on about. For that matter, I’m pretty sure he’s not the one who needs to hear it.
If you must yell, make it short. Make it startling. Make it something that he doesn’t expect so that when you do it, it freezes him in his tracks. And then stop yelling. Then explain to him what he’s doing wrong. Don’t overexplain. Just tell him, “I need you to listen to me when I’m talking with you. When you don’t listen, it makes me feel like you don’t care what I think and it makes me worry, because I’m supposed to protect you. I can’t do that if you don’t listen, and I don’t want you to get hurt.â€
Even that’s too much, but at least it’s simple. And if it doesn’t work, time out. Or no dessert. Or extra time doing schoolwork. Or no play time with his friend tomorrow. Something that is a concrete consequence. Something that makes him realize his actions have meaning. Right now… they don’t. Right now, he just knows you yell at him. And he doesn’t understand why. So he doesn’t know how to fix it. He will never know how to fix it. And that will apply to his whole life.
He will never believe that when something’s gone wrong it can be fixed. You’re teaching him that his life is completely out of his control and he can do nothing to change it. You’re teaching him that he’s too dumb to figure out what to do. Because a 7 year old faced with the philosophical rant you just gave? He’s not going to understand it and he’ll assume that’s because he’s not smart enough to understand. He won’t realize that it’s you raging on pointlessly and taking your fears out on him.
He’ll become me.
He’ll become you.
And I want to say these things, but I can’t. I’m too afraid to break the social contract and go over to a man’s house to tell him he’s raising his child wrong. And I’m too cynical to believe it would do any good. It would just make him angrier, and then I’ll have contributed to his kid getting broken.
Or perhaps I’m already complicit, in my silence.