Essay

Let me tell you something about having social trauma.

It does cruel things to you. The constant bullying teaches you that you are doing something wrong, while tricking you into thinking that if you behaved “correctly” you’d be accepted, make friends, and not be tormented on a daily basis. It makes you crave validation — or even just confirmation — that you’re doing “human” correctly. (This is also likely exacerbated by autism, if you happen to have it.) Even friendly jokes can be salt in an oft-opened wound.

At the exact same time, it teaches you that social interactions are dangerous. If you make a mistake, you will be hurt, physically or emotionally. You pull away from attention and mistrust your self-confidence. You lean against the wall and wait for others to approach, because even introducing yourself is risky. You get a reputation for being standoffish, elitist, or smug.

I have a lot of Solo RPGs. A lot of them were free, and others I purchased in RPG bundles. Some of them are funny or silly, while others are dark and foreboding. Some ask the player to introspect, others are casual coffee-break games. I’ve played and written about only a small sampling of my collection; it’s extensive.

All the same, I’ve started to notice a pattern, one in which I think there is value in exploring. Both with RPGs in general and as a writer, I would like to talk about planning versus pantsing.

Pantsing is not pulling down someone’s trousers. In writing circles, it is the alternative to the method of writing that involves plot skeletons, character backstories, prepared themes, and charted plot-points, even before the first chapter is written. It’s “by the seat of the pants” writing, where you just write, and leave all that plot nonsense for later.

What does Deserve mean?

Yes, this is going to be another longwinded diatribe about the specific connotations of a word that everyone already understands, so don’t worry if you’re not interested; just move on to another website, and I’ll see you next time.

After all, I don’t deserve your attention, do I?

Already there are some interesting connotations. That simple phrase, “I don’t deserve this,” holds derogatory weight. Regardless of my intent, I come away looking humble, yes, but also self-depreciating. “I don’t deserve your attention” is another way of saying “I’m not good enough to entice you.” “I’m a bad artist, look away, go find something of greater worth to spend your time on.”

I won’t lie, that’s certainly a connotation I would have used in the past, well after my ’teen emo’ phase.

Did you know that there are rock-paper-scissors tournaments?

I’m not joking. Yes, it sounds like a joke, but the WRPSA is a real institution, with games taken as seriously by its players as any other sport. There are championships, books on strategy, trainers…

Now, the easy(and likely immediate…) reaction is to laugh. It really sounds like a lost Monty Python sketch, doesn’t it? You could see it on The Simpsons; hushed reporters discussing with retired masters the strategies this particular player is using…Oh, Paper; that’s the same opening he used against Keriovick in Moscow last year. A risky gambit; will it pay off, John? And the camera pans to the retired seven-time world champion, who’s maybe 14 years old.

It’s easy to laugh, because RPS means something to most of us; it’s a “game” only in the loosest of terms. There is no strategy, no skill, it’s entirely random, right? It’s what you do when you need to roll-off or cut-high but don’t have any dice or cards handy.

But it’s not entirely random, because you choose. You decide whether you throw Scissors or Paper or Rock, and surely there is some strategy in the choice, right?

H.P. Lovecraft, the racist little muppet, has a famous saying that gets trotted out like a prancing pony every time Horror as a genre gets mentioned.

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Most people, I think, get too wrapped up in this idea, and think that he was explaining his overall thesis statement: but consider, how much of Lovecraft’s horror is about the unknown? Most of his horror, I think, comes from the idea that exploring and discovery is dangerous. It’s an anti-intellectual sentiment, that the more you learn about the world, the more horrifying it becomes. A more accurate thesis statement might be “Ignorance is bliss.”

Now, do I have a long-winded yet articulate dissertation on Hit Points Lovecraft in the hopper for you? No. This is a half-baked idea at best, but it’s a fitting prostige(A portmanteu of prologue and prestige, used to define the practice of telling a seemingly unrelated story as an opener to a thesis; made famous by Rachel Maddow and lefty-Youtube video essays.) to what I want to talk about: Looking Behind the Scenes.

Look at the published stats for any “moral choice” game, and you’ll see that most everyone picks the “good-guy” path, rather than villain. We don’t want to be cruel and evil people, we don’t want to cause pain or suffering, we want to be the hero.

So here’s my question: why would anyone want to be the bad-guy?

Because people do want to be the bad-guy. Look at all the people who play Warhammer 40k as chaos-marines, tyranids, orks, necrons, and dark eldar. Count all the people who love playing Evil RPG campaigns, or relish in being the anti-hero. Consider how many people reach for red lightsabers and stormtrooper outfits, or vampire capes, or purport to identify with the Joker.

I say purport, because no one really identifies with the Joker. I mean, if anyone was really given the opportunity to join an oppressive dictatorial regime predicated on the suppression of the poor and downtrodden, no one would actually join up, right?

Some would. Some already have.

I’m Gender-Neutral.

Or perhaps I’m Genderfluid. Agender fits too, and ultimately every time I try to nail down my gender identity to one of the currently accepted terms, I come away thinking “I mean…maybe? I guess?”

I’m autistic, and for me, gender is just confusing. There is a lot that goes into it, a lot that comes out of it, and I just don’t flippin’ know anymore. I don’t care anymore. I don’t have the time or energy to devote to this when I could be planning my next RPG session or struggling to finish this dang-blasted chapter!

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts. If you need evidence of that, look at my post on gender-neutral nobility. Give me enough time, and I’ll fix all the problems with the English language!

Eh, maybe not, but I certainly will share my opinions! Thank you for asking! So glad you’re curious! No, no, the doors are locked, don’t bother trying to flee, you’re mine now! For the next few minutes, anyway.

Titles are an interested etymological study.

Consider that we use the word “human” to describe our species as a whole, “woman” to describe the female of the species, and “man” to describe the male. Wouldn’t it make more sense to say “man” is our whole species, while “woman” is female and “human” is male?

That was how it was done in Old English: “man” was separated into the words “wereman” and “wifman.” (Note that I’m being general, here. This is not a detailed explanation, nor is it meant to be precise. If you want a longer and more detailed/accurate explanation of old english words, please go to a primary source, or a work dedicated to the subject.) to designate male and female. Wifman became the word “wife,” and wereman became…well, at some point we dropped the idea that males needed to be defined seperately from the species. “Man” became both non-gendered and gendered, depending on context.

Think about what this does. It implies that “male” is the default, that “man-kind” is the baseline expectation, and that being a “wo-man” is to be different from a “normal-man,” or a man. This encourages viewing females as an “other,” a being that requires special treatment of some kind, leading the way to thinking women shouldn’t read or study, be given the right to vote for how the world is run, or be allowed to speak their mind with benefit of the doubt.

I’ve had an…interesting relationship with fan-fiction over the years.

I will admit, I was quite dismissive of the genre at first. Not the effort or the results, but the desire to tell a story in another person’s playground. Every fan-fiction story out there could be re-written with minimal changes in a new universe; why copy someone else’s? It was a kind of plagiarism in my eyes; a kind of laziness.

A lot of this, I think, came from my social issues. The idea of inserting yourself was — well, still is — frightening. You aren’t the original “official” writer of Star Trek; if you wrote a story about the crew of the Enterprise, you might get it wrong.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s a silly mindset when you think about how many times the official IP has “gotten it wrong,” and that’s even before you question the whole idea of a story “being wrong” in the first place. I was young and stupid.

Please read my last post before reading this one, I’m kinda jumping in the middle of a train of thought.

A train of thought that began: in Grimdark Future, you can make the argument that anyone can be a “good guy,” depending on your perspective. Good’Nuff Gaming mentions this as a pretty key point for grimdark, as you aren’t supposed to have good guys in grimdark.

Now, in Warhammer 40k you could make the argument that the Space Marines are the “good guys,” or are at least not nearly as “bad guys” as everyone else. Sure, they’ll burn heretics, but the Tyranids, Necrons, and Orks want to genocide humanity. The Chaos Gods have plans that are even worse than genocide, so being alive in an Imperial dystopia is better than death and/or eternal torment, right?

In a pure Grimdark setting, that would be an open question. The peace of the grave might be preferable to the unending machine of the Imperium, and the torment of the Chaos Gods little different than the dead Emperor’s oppressive fist. Either way, the universe will look pretty much the same no matter who “wins.” In a weird way, the ideal in the universe of Warhammer is this constant war; the instant someone wins the dystopian universe will get even worse.