I have several questions.

"I hate how American media will just make up a European nation rather than do any research, so I'm going to get back at them by writing a story set in a fake American state" like, do you have the slightest idea how much American media is set in a geographically impossible fictional small town located in no particular state and characterised entirely by some guy from Los Angeles' collection of half-remembered stereotypes about the American Midwest? They've already got the "lazily inventing fictional parts of America" bit locked down.

No, if you want to play the Uno reverse card on American media, what you need to do isn't to make up a fake state: you specifically need to wilfully misrepresent southern California.

About that.

— Chariots of Steel v1.0 by @open-sketchbook, p. 72

This is very possibly the best explanation for lack of realism in a tabletop RPG I've ever read.

The fun thing about Tumblr is that I can explicitly tell people, with my words, that I am consciously engaging in misguided pedantry in an effort to be annoying on purpose, and a certain subset will still act betrayed when I decline to address their objections in good faith.

@beokirby replied:

Toki Tori 2 is commonly called a metroidvania but it only has knowledge gates with no actual ability progression

Knowledge gating – i.e., the player being given certain capabilities, but not being given enough information to realise that they have these capabilities until some time after they're initially acquired – is a different axis of progression from the one I'm talking about.

Super Metroid is a great case of making use of knowledge gating in a precision platforming context, for example: stuff like wall-jumping, shinesparking, and the bomb elevator are all explicitly developer-intended movement tech, but they're either tutorialised long after the ability to perform them is acquired, or not tutorialised at all.

Whether a game which relies purely on knowledge gating and has no formal ability progression at all can properly be called a metroidvania is definitely a fun opportunity for pedantry, but it's an orthogonal strand of pedantry; you can construct a sliding scale of knowledge gating versus formal ability progression in both precision platforming and environmental puzzle-solving contexts.

I think a big part of the reason that efforts to redefine a "metroidvania" as any exploration driven semi-open-world game with ability-gated progression tend to implode is that they're not acknowledging the precision platforming side of the equation. A world navigated via precision platforming creates a very specific set of opportunities and constraints regarding the kinds of ability-gating a game can implement, and those opportunities and constraints are where a lot of the metroidvania "feel" comes from.

Like, there's a reason that "are the 3D Legend of Zelda games metroidvanias?" is treated as a controversial question, and then Psuedoregalia comes along and practically nobody questions its status as a metroidvania in spite of the fact that its actual gameplay resembles Super Mario 64 more than anything: Pseudoreglia is a precision platformer, and thus has the kind of ability-gating that metroidvanias – as conventionally described – have.

I suspect it's possible to construct a continuum of ability-gating paradigms in semi-open-world games with a pure focus on precision platforming on one end, and a pure focus on environmental puzzle-solving via the interactions of novel "gadgets" on the other end, but I'm not sure what you'd actually call those extremes; certainly, most conventional metroidvanias sit more toward the former end, and most "Zelda-likes" sit more toward the latter end, but pure examples of either pole are thin on the ground.

There's an amusing historical anecdote about the first British edition of Moby-Dick accidentally omitting the final chapter (i.e., the one detailing Ishmael's miraculous rescue from the wreckage of the Pequod) due to a printer's error, and subsequently being criticised by the British literary press not because of the unsatisfyingly abrupt conclusion, but because the resulting narrative was unrealistic: how could Ishmael have narrated events in which he appears to have died?

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

(In the interest of full disclosure, the reason I'm going down this particular taxonomic rabbit hole is less out of unalloyed pedantry and more because the fact that you can frame a legitimate argument that Super Mario 64 is closer to being a metroidvania than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is is both a. very funny, and b. likely to annoy the hell out of certain people.)

I think a big part of the reason that efforts to redefine a "metroidvania" as any exploration driven semi-open-world game with ability-gated progression tend to implode is that they're not acknowledging the precision platforming side of the equation. A world navigated via precision platforming creates a very specific set of opportunities and constraints regarding the kinds of ability-gating a game can implement, and those opportunities and constraints are where a lot of the metroidvania "feel" comes from.

Like, there's a reason that "are the 3D Legend of Zelda games metroidvanias?" is treated as a controversial question, and then Psuedoregalia comes along and practically nobody questions its status as a metroidvania in spite of the fact that its actual gameplay resembles Super Mario 64 more than anything: Pseudoreglia is a precision platformer, and thus has the kind of ability-gating that metroidvanias – as conventionally described – have.

I suspect it's possible to construct a continuum of ability-gating paradigms in semi-open-world games with a pure focus on precision platforming on one end, and a pure focus on environmental puzzle-solving via the interactions of novel "gadgets" on the other end, but I'm not sure what you'd actually call those extremes; certainly, most conventional metroidvanias sit more toward the former end, and most "Zelda-likes" sit more toward the latter end, but pure examples of either pole are thin on the ground.

I think a big part of the reason that efforts to redefine a "metroidvania" as any exploration driven semi-open-world game with ability-gated progression tend to implode is that they're not acknowledging the precision platforming side of the equation. A world navigated via precision platforming creates a very specific set of opportunities and constraints regarding the kinds of ability-gating a game can implement, and those opportunities and constraints are where a lot of the metroidvania "feel" comes from.

Like, there's a reason that "are the 3D Legend of Zelda games metroidvanias?" is treated as a controversial question, and then Psuedoregalia comes along and practically nobody questions its status as a metroidvania in spite of the fact that its actual gameplay resembles Super Mario 64 more than anything: Pseudoreglia is a precision platformer, and thus has the kind of ability-gating that metroidvanias – as conventionally described – have.

I suspect it's possible to construct a continuum of ability-gating paradigms in semi-open-world games with a pure focus on precision platforming on one end, and a pure focus on environmental puzzle-solving via the interactions of novel "gadgets" on the other end, but I'm not sure what you'd actually call those extremes; certainly, most conventional metroidvanias sit more toward the former end, and most "Zelda-likes" sit more toward the latter end, but pure examples of either pole are thin on the ground.

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

#early results indicate that the kickstarters should be shipped with a cheese sandwich (via @tenivan)

Unfortunately, most of any crowdfunding campaign's backers are likely to reside outside Canada, and shipping cheese internationally involves a lot more paperwork than you'd expect.

Informal survey: if you were to back a crowdfunding campaign for a proper printed edition of Space Gerbils, would you be more interested in cheap cardstock versions of the existing papercraft minifigs as an add-on, or in fancy acrylic standee versions?

#what would the contemporary opinion be on The Thing wrong with him? #I wana retroactively armchair diagnose Lord Byron #he sounds bipolar #dude was so manic it got him killed (via @anamcaramia)

Bipolar disorder is actually a fairly popular modern armchair diagnosis of what Lord Byron's deal was. If nothing else, the strong hereditary component of bipolar disorder might explain how Ada Lovelace managed to inherit her father's "poetical temperament" in spite of the fact that he had essentially no involvement in her upbringing.

I read your post that contained the sentence "Fundamentally, the thing that was wrong with Lord Byron is that he was a poet" and I feel like I had an existential crisis as my mind tried to grapple with "the thing", singular, that was wrong with Lord Byron.

(With reference to this post here.)

It helps to understand is that the idea of the "artistic temperament" – i.e., the notion that Artists are a specific, biologically distinct Type of Guy – was very much in vogue during the Regency. This is the era that spawned phrenology in its modern form, after all; such notions were going around! The idea that all of the various things that were wrong with Lord Byron were ultimately attributable to the singular cause of "being a poet" would have been viewed, at least by some, as perfectly plausible, at the time.

That's a related device, yes; it's basically splitting the difference by retaining the conceit of the omniscient narrator, but reassuring the critics that there's no need to get their underpants in a twist because there's actually a very good explanation (which will now be set forth in excruciating detail) for how the narrator came to know all this stuff.

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

Informal survey: if you were to back a crowdfunding campaign for a proper printed edition of Space Gerbils, would you be more interested in cheap cardstock versions of the existing papercraft minifigs as an add-on, or in fancy acrylic standee versions?

Mm. While I agree with your conclusions in main, I don't share your optimism that it's merely a product of folks not thinking things through. I've met enough folks who have thought it through and landed on the conclusion that disabled people as a class are inherently bourgeois – albeit not always in those exact words! – to suspect that the real problem is lurking in our premises, not our reasoning.

Early cyberpunk has this tension between framing a well-argued skepticism of body modification rooted in concerns about bodily autonomy and corporate ownership of human bodies, and being really shitty about actual disabled people because it was predominantly written by able-bodied folks who knew fuck-all about disability advocacy and treated all that bodily autonomy stuff as a metaphor for the artist's loss of intellectual freedom under the corporate state.

I look at folks on this site pulling the whole "well ACTUALLY having cool robot arms would suck because they'd be based on proprietary technology which would be used to exploit you, and then the owners would stop supporting it and you'd be left to slowly die" routine while clearly intending it purely as an ideological gotcha against cartoons they don't like and neither understanding nor caring that they're literally just describing the daily life of anyone whose chronic medical condition is managed by patented drugs, and I'm thinking "wow, forty years and we haven't learned a damn thing".