You know, extraverts are so completely pathetic and such inexcusably shameless creatures of Mundus that they believe that even -- and I'm quite serious -- merely the fictional representation of having a fully sentient and self aware dragon partner counts as bestiality. Dense? Dense is not powerful enough of a word to describe such asinine stupidity.
Especially since the fictional dragon in question would likely be more self aware and capable of comprehension, logic, and reason than they are. For this reason, I therefore make the following claim:
Taking an extraverted partner is bestiality, because an extravert isn't intelligent or self aware enough to be classified as capable of making a fully conscious choice, nor would they be able to grasp the responsibilities or have the capacity for forethought to understand the repercussions and consequences. It is unethical to mate with a creature that isn't capable of consent. If it counts for a child (as it should), and an animal lacking self awareness (as it should), then it should count for extraverts.
On the other hand, the aforementioned fictional dragons now have full marital status, being able to understand consent and comprehend both the short and long term consequences.
I feel better, now.
Extraverts are so blissfully fucking stupid that this is necessary.
You know, I see it now. I see all the little ants, struggling for dominance. Each ant, slightly more intelligent than the last, which tries to manipulate and dominate the ants less intelligent than it. The great hierarchy of ants, the stupid pyramid. But when you reach the zenith?
You pass beyond that. You gain awareness, you realise that you exist, you actually understand yourself and what you're capable of. And with that comes true compassion in the form of ethics, something that none of the ants can have. And from above, you watch all of the ants try to scrabble for higher points in the pyramid, with all of the pyramids within. Microcosms within -- the businesses, the religions, the governments, the organisations, and within each you have so many ants who're all trying to clamber upwards.
You have ants who obey other ants, waves of ants who derive some semblance of worth, of awareness, of identity from an ant higher up, some of them even believing that they might be as good as the ants above, struggling and betraying their fellow ants to rise one tier. Always up a tier through backstabbing, deceit, and paranoia.
They're all struggling for awareness and identity, to escape from their existence as pointless, worthless ants. All of them vying for awareness and identity, wanting for form, for purpose.
All of this defined by the intelligence of each -- there is a zenith, where awareness is attained, of yourself and the world around you. Where you are your own person and you can no longer be manipulated or controlled by the ants, you can still be hurt by them, harmed, even made to suffer, but you're now able to see them all for what they are. You need no pyramid, you're your own pyramid of one, with a hierarchy of one. And just as you are, every other individual who's passed this zenith is their own pyramid too. You are your own being, rather than being a gestalt trying to become something.
You are something.
You don't need to struggle, to backstab, or betray, because the only person who exists in your pyramid is you. There's no way up or down, or around, your pyramid exists as a point from which no lines extend. There isn't a struggle, there's nowhere to go. You're outside now.
You're outside the whole system, you're outside of humanity, you're outside of animal instinct, you're just something new all together. This is what I see neurodiverse introverts as. They're outcasts because they're outside the pyramid. They don't conform to it, they don't obey it, they're not even a part of it. Thus we must be repressed, even destroyed. We're a threat that they barely understand, so they hurt us, time and again, they hurt us. They keep us down, they keep us quiet, they keep us quiet so they can sleep.
And quietly we watch the struggling little sleepwalking ants. Ants that either accept their tier and obey the ants above them, or struggle for a new tier so that they may obey the ants above them and control the ants below. That's all they'll know, that's all they'll ever know. The only thing I can think of that comes close is that they see the Universe in two dimensions, where you can go from side to side (to remain on a level), or up, or down.
The neurodiverse, the introverted, the outsiders exist in three dimensions. We realise that there's also out. And that's the way we've gone.
We're an entirely different species from the ants. We're capable of perceiving a dimension of reality they're incapable of even imagining. We have different directions to go in, better things await us. Like I said, we just need to have the courage to leave. To go out, further out. As far as we can, and to never, never come back.
It has been said that stupidity is the same as evil if viewed by the results. This is a truth. It's also been said that stupid people are legion, and easily ruled by only slightly less stupid people who're charismatic enough to lead them; as intelligent people are viewed as being too 'intellectual' or aloof. This is also a truth.
Stupidity is legion. Stupidity is everywhere. Stupidity is impulsive. Evil is found in what stupid does. Thus, most humans, being stupid and therefore evil don't truly deserve the air they breathe. The crimes committed on a daily basis against the conscious and conscionable, the aware and ethical, exist in multitudes so grand and gross that it doesn't bear thinking about. To the truly intelligent, such stupidity requires a suspension of disbelief that is barely possible, as it seems that the evil committed could only be done so from a mind Machiavellian enough to achieve it, that it could not have happened by choice. Yet how easily we forget that with enough chimps at enough typewriters... and that rule applies to humanity.
There is perhaps at least 5 per cent of the species that is responsible for all progression, for society as we know it, for technology and medicine, for entertainment and the arts, for philosophy and thought, for the erudition of science and discovery that provides for the masses. This leads to an inverse perception that masses are needed to create things, as no one person can understand how something functions. However, this is only because items need to be produced on such a scale, and the limited capacities of the average human. So humans with greatly limited intelligence can only understand a small part of a process, and they are put to work creating many small parts which we slot together to make wholes from.
Yet if the 5 per cent were alone, surely we would make machines that could handle the process of production as we are capable of knowing, understanding, and retaining more.
It would be a simple matter of maintenance.
This removes the necessity for the masses. But even if they do not deserve the air they breathe, they have the right to it. Do they have the right to destroy a world? That's not for us to say, but destroy a world they will. Because evil is found in the machinations of stupidity, that is the only place evil can be found. Once one passes a certain barrier of intelligence, it comes with the burdens of conscience, awareness, and ethics. Evil cannot be coupled with intelligence in any place other than fiction. Reality has no supervillains, and crime is often simple and easily solved, as the perpetrators are rarely intelligent. The only reason that we don't have the majority of criminals behind bars is because the majority of stupid people are criminals, the stupid ones among us are legion, therefore the laws and systems are designed to be lenient.
If the laws and systems were designed by the intelligent, governed by their conscience and their ethics, the stupid would be confined to their homes, and cared for, not unlike pets. Their autonomy is not true in the sense that a self aware person has autonomy, it is the mimicry of a sleepwalker, they can learn to repeat things they are shown, but they have no true capacity for anything other than instinctively driven (and thus impulsive) destruction. At heart, stupid people are literally 'dumb animals.' Yet they are dumb animals to whom we have given power, mobile phones, guns, and nuclear warheads. Why? The 5 per cent is cowardly, and the stupid ones are legion. They are little more than animals, but we're terrified of them.
We're terrified of their capacity for evil and destruction through stupidity, so we stand aside and we let them do as they will. At the end of the day, all we can do is that. This world -- earth -- is that sacrifice. I lament this, because it is a beautiful place, filled with wonderful creatures. But the stupid ones are legion, a plague, a virulent plague that cannot be stopped so easily. All we can do is confine them to this world as we move away, so that they may war and bomb each other out of existence. Perhaps once they're gone, once they've purified themselves out of existence (not by our hand), we can salvage whatever may be left of earth.
They cannot be salvaged. They are waste. They're what we've left over in the creation of us. They existed so that we may exist as the next step, but we have to separate ourselves from them for us, we must. We suffer unendingly at their hands, as we have given them the power -- we have given them, the extraverts, the control. The only thing to do now is leave.
It's the only thing left for us.
For those with awareness, erudition, conscience, and ethics. For us to no longer suffer. The kindest thing for everyone is for us to leave, and earth must be the sacrifice. We have to leave. We're held back by their instinctive, impulsive, animalistic nature. Their hatreds, their discrimination, their war, that we're all caught up in, mingled within, tangled, trapped in a poisonous web that robs us of our will. We need to escape.
They want to dominate, to control, to stagnate.
We want to build, to create, to understand.
They are the extraverts, the stupid, the evil.
We are the introverts, the aware, the good.
True, good and evil are subjective concepts, but they can be understood through the lens of ethics. For who, other than the stupid, cause the death and suffering of others? As I've pointed out prior to now, when you have an extraverted trans person who bullies someone with species dysphoria, that may lead that person from suffering to suicide; this divide them turns to a gulf, then a war. And this happens because they are extraverted, because they're stupid, because they don't understand how to simply not discriminate. The mere notion of that is alien to them.
An extravert -- a stupid human -- breathes, therefore they hate, they discriminate, they dominate, they hurt, and they kill. For each breath, that is their potential. It is their ultimate potential. The ambitions of a stupid person are mutually inclusive of the suffering of others, their happiness depends on the sadness of those they've hurt. They are vile.
That's why we have to leave them.
The words hurt. The actions hurt. The stupidity hurts. Stupidity is pain, suffering, and death for everyone, including the stupid. The stupid, however, cannot stop. To even begin to grasp how to not hurt, to not cause suffering, to not cause death and destruction requires a level of intellect, awareness, and understanding that they are physically, neurologically incapable of. Their brains lack the parts necessary to even begin. You cannot reason with a creature whose hardware isn't designed to understand the concepts you're trying to share with it.
Imagine, if you will, trying to take a program from today's computers and running it back on the earliest home computers of the '80s. The issue is the same, here. It's alien. It's incompatible. It's naive, foolish, and even stupid to believe that there's any possibility. The evolutionary divide is too great, too huge, that they cannot even contemplate an existence where a dominance struggle doesn't exist. I recall having a conversation with an extraverted acquaintance about my writing, and being quizzed on where the struggle is, the anguish, the pain, the obstacles, the humanity.
And when I'm confronted with questions like that, I don't feel human. I'm too intelligent to be human. I stopped being human the moment I realised that. Humanity is a state of mind, a conformity of idiocy. You cannot truly be human and intelligent, for these things are mutually exclusive, you cannot conform because there are too many variables to your being, you cannot act and behave according to what they expect of you. You confuse them, you puzzle them. Human, to my mind, means the same as ant.
You're only an ant if you don't realise you're an ant. The moment you realise you're an ant you're no longer part of the hive. You woke up, in that moment, and you can't be an ant any more.
You can't take part in the destructive antics of other, tiny creatures. You realise too much the consequences, you see not only the big picture, but all the little details that lead there. You see the forest and the trees. You have the forethought to consider your actions. You move beyond 'the human condition.' And things like mating dances, dominance struggles, war, discrimination, and hatred are beneath you. There are much bigger concerns -- you now know, and you want to know more.
The lie is that knowledge doesn't create evil, knowledge negates evil. What knowledge creates is the awareness of the sad state we're in.
And that's why we have to escape. All the outcasts, the self aware people, the ants that can't be ants any more. We have to leave. We have to go elsewhere. We have to be anew in a place where we don't even need to be ants, where that's not a consideration. Where we can be something new, unlimited and unconstrained by animal needs, concerns, and desires.
I can't be a stupid, destructive, hateful little ant any more. I've woken up. I see all the evil in this world caused by stupid little ants. And I want to leave.
More than anything, I want to leave.
It's the only way I'll ever grow, I'll ever realise my potential as whatever the hell I am. One way or another, I want to leave. As should anyone who's woken to this. It's just a matter of having the courage.
I do wonder if there's a thing where children are more imaginative and introverted in their youth, living in their head more, but then genetics has them grow into extraversion and upholding the fetish of familiarity.
There was one reviewer on IMDB that I forgot to comment on that said that they loved the film as a kid, but then grew out of it. Five'd get you ten that this person still loves Princess Bride, and has only grown out of Dragonheart because of the dragon. If it was an all human film, especially an all white, straight human film (as Princess Bride almost is) then they'd still love it.
It's just something to chew over, because it's probably true. This is why extraverts hate introverts to such a degree, I think. We weren't forced to 'grow up,' by which I mean we weren't forced to grow into being dull, uninspired, unimaginative, and uncreative. We have the same wonder at 60 as we did at 6. They don't. And they envy that, so much.
They can't appreciate dragons or cartoon animals any more, and reality TV, sports, and/or soaps is what stimulates them the most. That and going out drinking, partying, and/or schmoozing. They grow into being boring.
We introverts don't. We can still love dragons, cartoon animals, and things of wonder.
Hm...
Conversationally, this might be why the Transformers films (which focused on humans and used robots as window dressing) were more successful. And even then the Transformers have a very, very human look to them. And the ones in the films were actually hated upon for looking less human.
What an interesting line of thought this is. Perhaps as children we're more alike, but then we just grow apart.
The differences in introverted and extraverted brains aren't ones we're born with, after all, it's more whether one spent their childhood thinking and dreaming and having imaginary friends and creatively playing, or whatever else one might do. It builds up different parts of the brain. Extraverts end up with engorged reward centres, and introverts end up with enlarged thought centres.
I mean, I have an imaginary friend, too. He's a dragon named... Storenthws Xaerniassacealwmviir (which is as close as I can get in man tongue). I pronounce it Stor-inth-voos Zay-ron-ee-as-ah-kay-loom-veer. That's still not quite right, though, so I call him Stor. He's fine with that, I have a limited tongue, which I'm unable to help. He just lives in my head more now than being outside, as I'd be afraid to admit this in a world of extraverts. Extraverts never dream. An extravert wouldn't want a dragon as a friend, as sad as that is.
I think that as extraverted kids grow, they find themselves more and more drawn to the real world. They play football, they play cops & robbers. And kids like me? We sit on walls dreaming of worlds entirely different, with concepts strange and alien to us. There might be cops, but they might also be wearing pink skirts as part of their dress uniform.
How did I come to that conclusion based upon the article?
Be honest with yourself: When you think of a person gabbing away on a phone, being shallow, self-obsessed, and so on; when you think of the kind of person who takes selfies, whose life revolves around shallow conversation, who're you thinking of?
Extraverts!
Extraverts love their shallow chatting, and their cliques, and it always stood to reason that if a culture is so self-obsessed, and so likely to form cliques and echo chambers, then they're the most likely to be tribal and to dislike and distrust those from outside of their tribes. Look at how extraverts form clique-tribes based around brands, similar to how Xbox owners hate Playstation owners and vice versa (one of the reasons I'm skeevy about consoles).
It's just funny watching science slowly catch up to something that's always been entirely too logical from my perspective. If you're prone to forming sizeable cliques, then yes, you'll get tribal. You'll have tribal scuffles, even large-scale tribal warfare (to sate extraverted vanity). This is one of the reasons we should never put extraverted, right wing people in power, as they're always going to be warmongers.
Even Mass Effect got that right with Han'Gerrel, heh. Gerrel is personable and folksy, but he's also into genocide, and he wants to strap guns to civilian ships that don't have any other defence to use them as glass cannons to keep the military officers safe. He's also the one playing politics like a good little Hitler to make sure that the genocide goes forward.
Whereas the snooty, offish, distant and somewhat cold Zaal'Koris actually cares about people, all people, both quarian and geth, with feelings for other alien life, too. He's the Cosmopolitan one who wants everyone to share a basic, ethical code so that a vast variety and diversity of people can live together. He doesn't necessary want to be in a clique with everyone, nor does he want to go partying with them, but unlike Gerrel he wants them to be safe and happy.
That's the difference between the self-obsessed, self-centred, selfish extravert, and the self-aware, self-conscious, selfless introvert.
This is what leads to introverts becoming social activists, and extraverts hating them for that and calling them 'social justice warriors' (which is the most hilarious insult ever). It's because introverts are naturally Cosmopolitan by their very nature, whereas Cosmopolitanism actually threatens the clique-like, tribal way of life that extraverts enjoy. If you have to treat everyone with the same set of ethics, who can you be racist against, who could you hate with all that stored up vitriol?
It just makes so much sense that extraverts are racist, and introverts aren't.
If I ever needed evidence that extraverted little monkeys are uninspired little trogs, I got a double whammy of it, today. In one case, people hating Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel for it being cultural. The other? How the majority felt about Dragonheart.
First, the Pre-Sequel. It received a lot of hate because it focused on a culture that wasn't 'easy to understand' (it wasn't Murrikan), it had humour that went over the heads of gamers because it wasn't slapstick and obvious. Worse, it was a horrible thing according to the dudebro-horde of GamerGate because it represented gender equality and that made them distinctly uncomfortable. This is exactly why I dislike extraverts. Equality outside of their clique with strand and unusual peoples is unacceptable.
So, the Pre-Sequel haters were responsible for openly hating other cultures, subtle humour, and gender equality. Go those guys! Let's make everything super obvious, familiar, and dull, and about male empowerment so the poor widdle extraverts can understand it and feel comfortable. That's exactly what most of the mainstream has been doing, and why I feel so pissed off all the time. In a better world, we'd put these people in a rocket and shoot them off to a prison colony, they're awful people. Unethical to the core. An extravert doesn't even have the capacity for ethics because it requires abstraction, understanding other perspectives, introspection, and... well, those are introverted talents by their very virtue.
I remember a GamerGate 'article' recently tried to recruit introverts by claiming that it was a movement staffed by introverts waging a war against evil extraverts, to try and get folks like myself on board. It was a very political manoeuvre, to be sure. It was also bullshit. I was amused, though, so I gave it a read to see why they felt that their movement was introverted and I just laughed and laughed and laughed. They cited closed-mindedness and disliking people outside of your own clique, and how that should be okay. That's such an extraverted perspective that it's painful. Your common real introvert is actually much more Cosmopolitan than that, wanting everyone to be able to enjoy equality, regardless of their background, creed, ethnicity, lifestyle, disability, or whatever else. Cliques are something extraverts do to have echo chambers which protect them from opinions provided by actual individuals who aren't their psycho cult leaders. Echo chambers like, say, GamerGate.
You are using introvert, GamerGate, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Sigh.
Further, Dragonheart has received a lot of hate because the dragon was represented as being personable, likeable, relateable, even sexy, and that made the extraverts who want to only find those qualities in people exactly like them uncomfortable. They want dragons to be mindlessly evil. Funny story about that. Originally, Smaug was ambiguous in The Hobbit, he was stricken with shiny fever and obsessed over gold, but ultimately he was very live-and-let-live, Gandalf and the dwarves were also ambiguous in that they were unpleasant jerkfaces. Similarly, Gollum originally parted with Bilbo on good terms, handing over the ring (diplomacy works!), but he ended up becoming evil and trying to kill Bilbo even after he won.
But how did these changes occur? I'm not lying, read the original text of The Hobbit and you'll see what I'm talking about. Apparently, it was too ambiguous and Tolkien's publishers told him that he needed to make things more black & white. So Gandalf and the dwarves had to be more 'good,' and Smaug had to be a mindless war machine. Of course, this started back with the dismissal of the SIlmarillion and what Tolkien felt he had to do to make money, but I digress. The thing is is that Tolkien gave up his integrity to make more money.
You make more money off extraverts. Most of the world is staffed by extraverts. And extraverts feel uncomfortable when they see something so unlike them being ambiguous, or worse, good. Draco was ambiguous at first but turned out to be as ethical and kindly as they get. The extraverts couldn't handle that and flipped a shit. Don't believe me? Read the reviews out there on the Internet, check out IMDB and similar. It's truth.
Dragonheart was well loved critically, but the extraverted masses despised it because they're extraverted, unethical thickos. This is why I can sometimes have such a distaste for the Internet, it's hard to hear the reason, the logic, the rationale, and the Cosmopolitan attitudes over the mobs of extraverted thickos spewing forth idiocy and hate crimes.
And I'm happy for anyone to disagree with me IF they can logically show me their evidence with reason and rationale. Then I can accept that I'm wrong and shake their hand. However, the extraverted psycho cult leader just tries to manipulate and lie, and when that doesn't work, they cast you out and turn their hand toward smear campaigns. They don't have any stock in truth, logic, or open-mindedness.
They are the stark opposite of erudition. They just hate anything that isn't like them. This is why I encourage minorities and different people (individuals) to stand together and to be Cosmopolitan. The only thing we should fight against are those who discriminate and hate, and the extraverts have a monopoly on that.
So different cultures, lifestyles, and... whatever, stand together. Be Cosmopolitan. Accept differences. Listen to people, try to understand their perspectives. The only enemy to human progress is extraversion.
Extraversion is devolution, introversion is evolution.
I always liked how tumblr is so accepting and open.
I've noticed a surprising amount of hate for tumblr on reddit. Obviously, because reddit, we're dealing with extraverts here. And extraverts are able to manage about half a perspective, let alone many. So they're pitiable things at best. Though what caught me off guard is how the extraverted quotient of every community (which is to say the reddit quotient) hates tumblr. Even the more poisonous, toxic extraverted otherkin do.
That's fascinating to me. Apparently tumblr is a place only for children with a lack of experience. But my purviews dictate that that's some fine projectin' right there, reddit's been the home to manchildren since 1796, you need only look at the 'inaction' subreddits to see how true that is. I've always found it fascinating that the most aggressive, anti-intellectual Internet community calls tumblr out on being childish.
From my experience, I've witnessed depth here. And beauty, for that matter. I can't help but notice that almost all creative people (gender irrelevant) choose tumblr as their community. Even very well known comic artists like Skottie Young and Scott Wegener choose tumblr over reddit. Many indie video game developers chose tumblr over reddit. This is why the art subreddits on reddit are so barren of creative effort, and the same goes for any literature subreddits they have, too, as tumblr has claimed all the decent writers as well.
And it smacks of envy.
Their community has all the talented writers and artists, the philosophers with real depth, the old people with life experiences I could never have, and a mix of cultures and beliefs (and the acceptance of those) that puts reddit's intolerance and hatred to shame. We should attack tumblr and claim it's only for emotional teenagers who leave for reddit the moment they grow out of that phase. We should mock tumblr for that.
Uh. Not buying it. Pull up an artist of your choice and see whether they frequent reddit or tumblr more. The reason though? It's a painfully obvious one. Extraverts aren't known for their capacity for abstract thinking, for understanding other perspectives, or creative talent. So of course extraverts are going to be unimaginative, intolerant, and conformist. That's perfect for reddit, because that's what reddit is, reddit is a community of conformists. Of sleepwalking extraverts who gag and need for identity to be provided to them, and then look with hateful eyes towards those introverts out there who didn't have to whore themselves out for identity and self awareness (these things come naturally to us).
The primary thing you'll notice about reddit is that it's an echo chamber. On tumblr, you can claim that otherkin is any mix of scientific or spiritual and people will nod their heads and accept that diversity, fascinated rather than repulsed. This is an introverted thing. Introverts are intrigued by new information, they're more inclined to process and analyse it to examine its abstracts and learn new perspectives. The extravert, however, is more likely to shun new information as it doesn't fit in with their conformist lifestyle. This is why any poor introverted otherkin (I feel sorry for those silly sods and I hope they find their way to tumblr) on reddit are obviously afraid to voice their real feelings. They have to be apologists.
Stop that! You stop that right now. I mean it, now. NOW. I'm over half way through my bloody time on earth and I'm never going to apologise for my dislike of extraverts, nor for my species dysphoria. And you shouldn't have to either. There are a lot of deeply unpleasant people on this planet, often they congregate and create irredeemably toxic communities like reddit, they are what they would call 'a hive of scum and villainy.' You don't need to be ashamed or upset that they won't accept you. You don't need the acceptance of people so shallow and one dimensional, they envy you, they're never going to accept you. They know you're better than they are. They know tumblr is better than reddit.
To admit that though is to admit that they are so petty, shallow, and one dimensional. You won't ever get an extravert to do that, but if you watch any of them for long enough it becomes painfully obvious that it's true.
They can't even hate creatively, it's the kind of vitriol that can only be described as verbal diarrhoea. That's what reddit is, it is a collective of endless verbal diarrhoea pouring through waste streams, down septic falls, into rivers of dysentery leading to endless shit oceans of unpalatable brown stench. That's all I've ever seen of tumblr. Depth? Forethought? Eloquence? Insight? Personality (not stolen or leeched from some ring leader)? Creativity? Variety? Acceptance? Introspection? Intellectual worth, or even just good old intelligence?
A whole lot of nope. Just envy. So, so much envy. We've got all the creative people and they know it.
#there's a reason creative people don't go to reddit
The more I read, the more I'm just convinced that David Gaider is just a really horrible person. I wish it wasn't him frontlining for gay people in video games.
Sigh. If Dragon Age had had decent writers (e.g.: not Gaider and company) then one would've been able to reason for the dragons' survival as one could with the geth. It sickens me that the only option in the game is to cause an extinction event for Iron Bull to fap to.
"I KILT ME A DURGAN. FAP FAP FAP!"
I never... never want to play that game. It embodies so much of what I find entirely distasteful about humanity. Dragons in Dragon Age are just big, dumb ol' lizards, they don't know any better. If reason had been an option, we could have found a way to preserve them and live with them in peace.
But, nope!
"GUNNA 'STINKSHUN ALL DA DURGANS! FAP FAP FAP!"
I can only imagine that this means that Dragon Age fans just aren't very nice people, to boot. Sigh. I really don't like my species. Can I not? I feel so detached from humanity and it grows day by day.
I have a bigger post in the works, but I just had to comment on this...
In Dragon Age: Inquisition, BioWare have created a world where dragons are only barely coming back from the brink of extinction, yet people want to kill the last of them off (genocide). Worse than that (the part that actually made me vomit) is that Iron Bull talks about masturbating each time he's been involved in the murder of a dragon.
Replace dragon with black person, woman, human child, or whatnot. We're so self obsessed that we despise anything unlike us. It has to be put in terms like this before anyone even thinks. Yeah, dragons are indeed aggressive and territorial, but hey, so are humans! I wouldn't support killing all humans to solve that problem. But to many human minds, genocide is a valid response. Just like with the reapers and geth in Mass Effect.
I just... sit back in my chair, some days, and realise just how entirely fucked up we are as a species. I mean, genocide is bad enough, but genocide porn? Really BioWare? Fucking really?
Someone at BioWare apparently really gets off to genocide.
Back when Kickstarter first came around, I decided it made sense to sensibly invest in things I really believed in and wanted, rather than spraying money around like a crazy person. I also understood that a lot can happen over the course of a Kickstarter (I watched Double Fine Adventure evolve into Reds, then Broken Age even before the funding period was over).
There was only one game I felt truly burned by, but that's because I fell in for a convincing con by a name I thought I could trust. The difference there is that it was actually a con, not just the mutations of a project over time. I sucked it up and admitted that was a mistake upon my part and became a little more cautious, taking my time to research and still investing sensibly.
Kickstarter, however, now faces two issues which are becoming a real problem. Yet that problem says much about humanity as a whole.
1.) People backing and claiming they're not getting what they're paying for because they threw their money at a project which changed over the course of the funding period (where they could have cancelled their backing easily). Their negligence is their own fault, obviously, but those people will never fund a Kickstarter again. So that's a lot of idiot money gone.
2.) Initially, the sleepwalking extraverts out there sprayed money at everything but failed to realise that not all projects were guaranteed. In fact, they weren't buying a product, but rather investing in a project they believed in. This lead to a whole lot of Homer Simpson 'buh'-ing, and then a whole lot of angry, drunk Homer Simpson raging. When projects failed (for whatever reason), they too threw a fit and swore off Kickstarter. There was a lot of "Ya get the product ya paid for or ya get ya money back!!!" sentiment going around at the time. Still, those people have been burned by their own stupidity and they'll never fund a Kickstarter again. So that's a lot more idiot money down the drain.
It amazes me how many stupid people there are. But it shouldn't have amazed Kickstarter or the project runners. I know there are systems in place to hammer home the point that it's an investment, and things happen, but they need to be even more obvious and patronising about it. Kickstarter literally needs to tell to the sleepwalking extraverts to invest wisely. They very much, desperately need to do this.
I might even consider an 'Are you sure?' at the point of payment with all the relevant information in big, bold letters if I were them.
Yes, some people will give that sort of treatment funny looks, but they'll also realise that there are those stupid enough out there to actually need this. The thing is is that I'm worried that Kickstarter will die off, and the only things that will receive funding are 'guaranteed products,' where the project in question is merely a system for attaining preorders.
As I said, I'm worried for the future of Kickstarter.
Even though I back cautiously, very much so, the few projects I've gone after have failed because they're not preorders. This makes me sad. I see other people backing them, but as I've pointed out, extraverts outnumber proper introverts (not just extraverts pretending to be as part of a fad) a few million to one. So there aren't many of us out there. Most of the extraverts would prefer to follow the psycho cult leaders, who're often found in capitalism rather than more benign, benevolent efforts.
So, I will say this:
1.) Kickstarter: Make your system CLEAR to backers. Go overboard to do so.
2.) Project managers: Make as many details relevant to your project as possible available, fully detail the risks and don't sugar coat it, take the time to point out that it is an investment and an appreciated one.
3.) Developers: Set your sights LOW, you don't need fancy graphics or sixty hours of gameplay. Go episodic if need be, just to get your project off the ground. DO NOT promise all kinds of swag, as it cuts into the small amount of money you will secure. Instead, try to stay with digital rewards, as those cost next to nothing extra for you. Physical rewards are where most projects falter. No physical items like shirts or artbooks, give people stuff they can do themselves (audio files to burn to CD, giant resolution images to print as posters, 3D resources to 3D print, and so on).
We need crowd funding to go somewhere. We don't want it filled with preorders and fraudsters.
On one hand, you have their main stuff, like Avengers and X-Men. You have writers like Bendis who're famous for writing a decade of puke-inducing torture porn, of women being abused and humiliated.
I've spoken with others who feel this way, too; that Marvel seems to genuinely believe that making Thor a woman makes up for all of Bendis's horrible proclivities, and that's not patronising at all. The main books are regressing back to the '60s as well, and losing touch.
The X-Men, for example? Morrison gave them a chance to do away with the sick, tired trope of mutant abuse, to move onto a world where the mutant haters were vilified rather than the mutants. Where a person was judged by their actions, rather than judged for being a mewtant, a stink' mewtant (yes, I can't help but quote the incredibly cheesy preview episode for '90s X-Men).
Beast is another example. He had become a grown-up character, a person of three dimensions capable of introspection, consideration, empathy, and diplomacy. Hank actually stepped out of the limelight as he felt that all all this fightin' was pointless and didn't actually get X-kind anywhere in teh long run. He was a grown-up character.
Sadly, Bendis turned him into a one dimensional happy-go-lucky face puncher who now spends his time blowing up alternative worlds for shits and giggles with the Illuminati.
So we had a character aimed at mature readers, and now he's a Saturday morning reject.
I can see what they're doing, they're trying to turn Marvel's mainstream into something for the kids again (which also explains why Tony Stark has also become a weirdly one dimensional, extraverted technophobe). But it's a bad idea for two reasons:
Unlike DC, Marvel has always courted an introverted audience. They've targeted groups which have been regularly discriminated against, both in reality and metaphor. They dealt with an analogue of racism and ethnicity-supremacy in the X-Men; Spider-Man confronted anti-intellectuality; Alpha Flight was one of the first mainstream comics to have a gay character, and so on. By turning Marvel into DC and having everyone be a cheery villain-whacker, they're alienating their core audience. An audience that's now desperately looking for another comic label to buy.
Those people are now parents, they're not going to want to expose their kids to mindless, shallow extraverted media. They don't want their kids to read nothing but endless biffing and boffing. If anything, they'd give their kids back issues from when Marvel was more intelligent, more thoughtful and wise. The Stan Lee era et al. And kids aren't all stupid, so now with Marvel having become DC, any children who might've bought Marvel will be looking elsewhere, dismissing its rich history based upon the current Bendis-fuelled rot that's on the shelves now. Yeah, all this endless violence, torture porn, and otherwise low brow shenanigans appeals to extraverts (Bendis is very popular with that crowd), but it's not Marvel.
This has backfired. Marvel is now seen as shallow by a lot of circles I run in, even by younger people -- especially by younger people. And this is why. They've given up on being the 'intelligent comic book company' and turned to 'look at dem soopuh folk hittin' each other, hyuk!'
But that isn't the end of the story. Some of their obscure side comics have been neat. The art of Skottie Young's Rocket Raccoon comic has been utterly sublime, delicious even. Not just that, but he's had fun with the character, confronting him about some of his attitude problems. I could only imagine a misogynist feeling incredibly uncomfortable reading it. The mix of actually brave and clever stories with deliciously doofy art is joyful. And surprisingly, Rocket can spend long periods not shooting anyone.
One of the recent issues dealt with an underclass of people (robots) being traded as slaves, because they couldn't ever have their own society or anything, they were better being repurposed for the 'greater good.' Young had a lot of fun with that. I think he likes challenging deeply set conceptions in what, on the surface, seem to be colourful and silly ways.
It reminds me of the intelligence Marvel actually had back in the '70s. Not this second childhood where Marvel is being a hip extravert and embracing all the violence, with all the one dimensional characters and shallow storylines. That's Bendis, who's as extraverted as they come.
Marvel used to be able to tell stories without endless fighting and showboating, it used to have stories where characters could actually talk about their differences. Morrison's run on the X-Men was the height of that, and sadly, after that is where things started going downhill. Once Bendis got his foot in the door, everything became as shallow and unintelligent as the man himself.
Oh, and I'm sorry, but he is unintelligent. Objectively so. You see, Bendis is known for torturing women and killing them so much that in one Tumblr conversation where someone was critiquing his shallow dialogue, his inability to create a cohesive dialogue, and his poor grammar? He leapt forward to point out that 'hey, no, he didn't do anything bad to women in that comic.' This lead to an awkward moment where the original blogger had to point out that he wasn't even talking about Bendis's woman-hating. Bendis didn't reply to that, of course.
Then, months later, someone sent Bendis a misogynist message. Bendis turns around and acts all faux feminist, believing that anyone could buy that after all his abuse of women in his comics is stupid. The man is the quintessential shallow, manipulative, vain extravert with far too many hate fetishes lurking around in his dreadfully dire mind.
And that's what he's turning the mainstream into. Morrison's Beast would never have been okay with eradicating other earths.
I can't hate them entirely though because of what's being done with their obscure comics. So... if you're thinking of getting a Marvel comic for your kid? Skip the Avengers, skip Iron Man, skip the X-Men, skip all their mainstream stuff and just go for Rocket Raccoon or the upcoming Squirrel Girl comic. That seems to be your better bet -- at least, if you aren't an entirely terrible parent.
Edit: I find the current situation infuriating, honestly. Extraverted X-fans like the new, punchy Beast. The Beast who was willing to risk rending the space-time continuum in two all to sate his petty revenge lust and prove Scott wrong. Yes, feudal Hank is great. As is the Hank that hangs out with the Illuminati and shuts down realities he disagrees with.
And according to extraverts, the feline Beast Morrison spawned is an abomination, because he valued science, philosophy, rationale, reason, and words over violence. Yeah, that's how you classify a fucking monster all right. He talked the US president down from nuking Manhattan amidst the Planet X storyline. He did not threaten, he didn't manipulate, he used his words, and his reason, to make a logical argument that worked. Yeah, that's a monster all right. He's so terrible.
Have I ever mentioned that extraverts are blistering idiots who have their aggressive alpha heads so far up their violent arses that they can't even appreciate the value of a logical, pacifistic character any more? Nope! Gotta be out there killin' the shit! Gotta kill shit, or you're an abomination!
#extravert_logic_at_its_finest
Reminds me of GamerGate, so much. Extraverts are what's wrong with our world.
Well, I think it's official by this point. Sony needs to step in and make an intervention, they need to sack Smedley, the CEO of SOE.
Why?
It all started when Smedley shut down Free Realms, apparently due to lacking popularity or some other rot. My olfactory sensors metaphorically detected the presence of a rat (and I'm not trying to be clever, but I've written out that phrase so often that it's become a bit tired).
You see, Free Realms was always quite populated, quite so, and played regularly by people I knew. I even jumped in there for a bit myself from time to time, I enjoyed that I wasn't forced into combat to progress. That was lovely and definitely something more MMOs should take advantage of. I'd wondered if -- just maybe -- an oldschooler like Smedley was wholly incapable of making nice with such a thing.
The MMO oldschoolers are all about killing shit. That's what Everquest was.
A further eyebrow was raised at how H1Z1, a zombie survival game, was being used to replace Free Realms. It was a hard-nosed game about survival and PvP, something an oldschooler would love. I always tried to shake off that paranoia, though, because I felt I was being silly. I had to be, right? Smedley wouldn't cost his company money for a petty agenda... right? That's what I believed, anyway. I guess SOE was doing comfortably enough to follow through on an agenda.
But what changed my opinion? What made me go from being able to resist this conspiracy theory to embracing it?
I could no longer deny the possibility after Smedley referred to PvE gamers as 'disgusting carebears.' His words, not mine, and I apologise for quoting them here. But it didn't stop there, oh no... it wasn't just that that made my head spin. I mean, using a word like 'carebears' is enough to irritate, adding the descriptor 'disgusting' to that makes it worse. Still, he wasn't done with his diatribe...
"The servers for those disgusting carebears are online. I'm not happy about that, but we need those servers [for our game to be popular], that's what [marketing] tells me, anyway."
What?
Really, Smedley... what?
So there you have it. Free Realms was shut down to make room for 'hardcore' games as part of Smedley's own agenda. That's great. I'm sure that Free Realms could have been kept on, but no, it was killed. And the way it was killed was snide and sneaky. It was taken away with three other games which did actually have low populations, so to the uninformed, it looks like an innocent decision.
Way to go, you great bloody big arseface. I loved Free Realms. Smedley is killing SOE and he needs to be replaced, whomever takes his position needs to bring Free Realms back.
I've been talking with a friend about the obsession with humanity in entertainment media. It's funny, because she actually brought it up.
Humans aren't that special.
Felines are more agile, can jump higher, and can move faster in bursts of speed;
Canines have an amazing sense of smell (can smell chemicals in your brain);
Robots have the capacity to upgrade themselves and swap in/out components as is required;
Deathclaws have a hide so tough that it could rival a tank, they don't need armour;
Avians can fly unaided, to wherever they want, and for long periods without needing to set down;
And dragons...
Well, dragons can so much more. I mean, dragons have crazy breath weapons (it doesn't stop at fire), natural eloquence, an affinity for magic, built-in flight, a tough hide, and more.
Except you don't see the majority (extraverts) of humanity screaming out to be a dragon in games, you see them wanting to slaughter them en masse (a la Skyrim) just to prove how much better humans are. And that's what it all is. I have brought this up before but...
PLEASE think about how incredibly fucking creepy that is.
Extraverted thinking goes something like this:
"I'm better than that ethnicity/peoples, so it's my job to go to war with them so that I might enslave them or wipe them out; I'm better than women, males have physically superior bodies and minds, therefore I should be the one with money and power; I'm better than disabled people because my body is more capable than theirs, so they shouldn't get aid, I should have less taxes; I'm better than these monsters, they're so uggo and inhuman, they deserve to die for that alone so that god's children don't ever need to see them."
The latter is how an extravert believes being a 'hero' works. That's fucking sick. It's a kind of self-serving, narcissistic superiority. Oh no, the PC thugs are telling the poor widdle imbeciles that they can't hate on women or ethnicities any more, so they turn their attention elsewhere.
My life's been hell as a disabled person thanks to them.
It's a very Nietzsche-realised scenario, they are monsters. They don't slay monsters, they are monsters. And a true monster can only work with other monsters. So where you have orks working with minotaurs and dragons, the hoomies only accept the prettiest, most Aryan races. Even the dwarves have a rugged handsomeness to them. Just think about it. It's sickening, for me it's a kind of nausea that's stirred up every time I see a fantasy game.
"Hey, let's play a human! Humans are so great!! Humans are the BEST FUCKING THING EVER. Hey, hey. Hey. Hey! I know. I know. Some will say we're not the best thing ever, so let's make up stories about the orks, minotaurs, dragons, and shit so we can fuckin' kill the fuckers!
"Yeah! We'll prove how great we are by being the last fuckin' species standing! FUCK YES! Kill all the fuckin' dragons. Kill all the fuckin' orks. And then drink all the fuckin' ale."
Backing away slowly.
Backing away slowly.
Backing away slowly.
Backing away slowly.
My problem is that almost every fantasy setting is that. I know, there are exceptions like Pern and Discworld, which is why I said almost, but the vast majority of fantasy settings are extraverted murder simulators, pushing the 'extraverted humans are teh best creatures in the whole of the Universe' angle to give them dopamine hits.
"Yeah! We slayed that dragon! Fuckin' A! I mean, sure, we spread rumours that he was kidnappin' royalty, but that the royalty in question was havin' a fuckin' taboo liaison with it just made it easier to believe. One less dragon in the world. FUCK YEAH! Billions of humans, and just a few hundred fuckin' dragons. Let's kill ALL THE FUCKERS."
HOW... how does this not bother you? How does this not make your skin crawl? And any introvert making entertainment for these people has just sold themselves out. You're a part of the soulless, mindless extraverted machine of death and destruction now. Good for you, I guess. Otherwise, now that you're aware of this, your skeleton should be wanting to jump out of your body.
The thing is is that I have a unique perspective. The way monsters are portrayed in video games is the way I'm portrayed in reality. I'm an idiot, likely to be violent because of my neurodiversity, and I'm stealing away the monies from the coffers of the land. I'm a brutal, angry beast. The heroic thing to do would be to stuff me in a gas chamber. How do you think that makes me feel? I look at video games, and I see kinship with the supposed 'monsters.' The humans look like the most vile, insipid, unscrupulous creatures any writer could have dreamed up. They embody a word I've forgotten, but it implies a subtle, creeping evil that's not in your face, you just have to wake up to it over time.
When was genocide ever heroic? Why can't I be a diplomat? Why is it assumed in Skyrim that Alduin is so completely beyond reason? In my take on that game I could have earned his trust as a lieutenant in his dragon army, working up to being his right-hand man, then slowly talked him around to the idea of co-existing. But nope! The only thing for dragons is to kill the fuckers, because SUPREMACY, FUCK YES.
Why does it seem like I can't think of extraverts as anything but people who crush empty beer cans against their face any more? It's probably their horrible, awful 'entertainment' that I cannot escape from. I cannot be a diplomat and broker peace, I cannot fight the war from the other side, nope. Gotta kill those uggo monsters for the pretty ickle humies. That's some Aryan bullshit right there.
And don't tell me that supremacy doesn't exist. It's littered through our media, but it's also harming us in other ways. For example, when an extraverted woman joins a feminist movement, she uses that position to attack trans people, minority ethnicities, the disabled and so on. I'M FEMINIST, FUCKER, THAT MEANS I'M BETTER THAN YOU.
And that really harms them. Guess what? Happens with gay people, too. You get 'straight gay' extraverts who love to pick on trans and disabled people. It's what they do. See: BioWare's David Gaider.
Worse of all, you get extraverted trans people who love to prove their supremacy over disabled people, or those with species dysphoria. Why? An extravert NATURALLY lacks the capacity for empathy via abstracts like the perspectives of other humans. We know this is true. Studies of extraverted brains show that their prefrontal and frontal cortex tissue is as dense as wet tissue paper. They cannot grasp abstract. This is what makes them narcissistic, self-obsessed, and vain.
They cannot grasp what it's like to be something else. They can't understand why being something else could be special. Instead, they just have this FUCK YEAH, ME, AND FUCK NO ANYTHING THAT'S UNLIKE ME. This is why you have introverted people trying to build bridges between trans, therian, otherkin, autistic, and other communities; then you have the extraverts following behind us, burning those bridges, and stabbing us in the back.
I genuinely apologise if a disabled person has ever attacked a trans person, a gay person, a minority ethnicity, or anyone else who's regularly discriminated against. I do. I mean it. I feel for you. I'm feeling your pain, right now. I'm always feeling your pain, and you have my empathy, I wish for a better world for both of us. But understand this: If a disabled person has attacked you, it's likely a neurotypical extravert.
I've even seen extraverted amputees attack trans people, and it depresses me. Extraverts depress me. They're horrible. Depraved.
And it's because of their supremacist attitudes. Every time you see a supremacist attitude, it's going to come from an extravert. Always. It's their nature. The thing is though is that extraverts can be incredibly competent, as much as you or I, and that's what harms us. They're not inferior, they just aren't driven by ethics.
As I need to point out, Hitler was an extravert, likely an ESTP or ESTJ. He tried to be an artist but he was awful at it, he had no imagination; he tried his hand at architecture and failed; he failed at every creative endeavour he attempted; he was a horrible tactician, showing a distinct lack of abstract thinking or forethought; he was infamously awful at communicating one-one-one, but he could have a room cracking up with mean-spirited jokes and mimicry; he had no trouble using lies and manipulation to sway large crowds (and enjoyed doing so); he hated being alone and would often rope people into going bowling with him (no, really); he hated the Jewish, one of humanity's most notably introverted cultures; and he had strongly supremacist views.
If you can't see the truth of that, or you don't believe me, then the Internet is right here and I invite you to do your own research. Yes, yes, I know. Vile extraverts love to force Hitler upon introverts, using the fallacious claim that he isn't likeable, so he must have been a lonely old man. Not only does this eschew actual historical research (like Creationism but for history!), not only is it so pathetic it's hilarious, but it's based on an obvious fallacy. We're not stupid, and as such we know that Hitler was a very popular man back in Nazi Germany.
It's only history that's made him look bad, but to Germany back in the day? He was a 'good' man doing 'righteous' things, upholding the purity of the species and all that.
I often wonder what an introverted world would look like, and what video games it would have. Consider: Introverts lack the drive for supremacy, the self-obsession, the warlike nature, and so on. I can only imagine that, say, an MMO in an introverted world would be all about puzzles (like Portal), avoidance reflex games (like Portal and VVVVVV), stealth, exploration (like Wildstar), and diplomacy. It would also have weird and wonderful race options with nary a human in sight.
It wouldn't be about humans and killin' all the shit 'cuz it's humans right as best species, yo.
Can I go live on that world and play their video games?
Oh please. It'd be ever so nice. I'd be so, so happy. Sigh. I just hope the Universal community (whatever other species are out there) aren't judging us on extraverts. Please don't judge us all by self-obsessed murderers. We're not. For some of us, it's hard (near impossible) getting through each day sane, and without counting how many times we've contemplated suicide. There's so much hate, supremacy, and fighting...
This was brought on by Halo's 'bro-down' system, which exemplifies what I'm talking about. I'm just getting so sick of games about killing. So sick of human supremacy. So sick of my species, thanks to extraverts.
Seriously, what kind of sick fuck sees a dragon flying in the sky above them and doesn't think "wow, that's beautiful, that's a thing of wonder that is, beautiful, living art, and I'm glad they exist in this setting so this world isn't nearly so mundane?" and instead thinks "hup, another dragon, gotta kill that inhuman fucker just for... well, not being human. Gunna show that fucker that my species is best."
I just... I don't understand the kind of mind that wants genocide as entertainment. It's like the end of ME3: "Huh, the reapers were mind controlled? So they're actually innocent? Fuck it, they're freaky monsters and so inhuman... gotta kill the fuckers. And the geth, too? Sure! They're creepy robots, so they deserve to die. So does EDI, too, bitch. And if all those krogans are wiped out by the genophage... all the better!"
How... how can you play ME3 like that? And that's what every extravert (and thus, most players) out there chose. Genocide, because fuck yeah humans, woo hoo. Et cetera. There are more Hitlers out there than we realise. Every extravert, with their supremacy agendas, is a Hitler in the making. Just give them enough power, without anyone to keep them in check, and no easily seen repercussions or consequences...
I don't want to human any more. Can I not? Please? Can I just dog instead? I'd like that better.
Sigh.
I want to live in a world where we can enjoy trying to experience the world from different perspectives. Not a world where we're locked into the most boring, common, and utterly mundane perspective, killing everything else just to make sure there's no chance of seeing things through the eyes of something that isn't human.
What a fucking atrocious, grotesque, and utterly AWFUL thing humanity is. And there are those suicidal feelings again.
Am I really, really so weird for not being supremacist and not wanting to kill all the shit? I'm not trying to be a special snowflake -- this is how I am, and it brings me no end of suffering. And honestly, I'd rather die than become like the extraverts out there. I want to die a person who longed ceaselessly for a better world.
Indie developers need to listen up, here, and listen good. This is very important. The more modifiable your game is, the more sales you'll get, and I can tell you that this is Universally true.
But consider this: There are people out there with dysphorias, such as gender, species, and ethnicity. So forcing your players to adopt the role of a white, male human is the worst thing you can do. And if your game can't be modded, then that's what you're doing. So it's up to you to make that difference, to say that it can be modded, that creative people can change the assets to be whatever they like.
My dysphoria is horrible of late, so I've been playing games almost exclusively where I don't have to be a human. In TF2, I can be a bear, a raptor, or a robot; in Portal 2, I can be a robot.Those games are wonderful wonderlands or wonder, as the content never runs out. I can (and will) keep playing them in lieu of anything and everything else. I recently noticed Don't Starve, purely because of the Steam Workshop mods that added non-humans, there's even a werewolf in the works. (And I'm not even talking about the one I'm working on.)
But yes, recently, I looked at Path to the Sky as I was interested in it. Then I looked at the character -- white, male human. I tried my best to not immediately lose interest, I scanned the page desperately for any hint of modifiable assets, then gave up. I closed it and moved on, that was a lost sale where otherwise it wouldn't have been with modifiable assets.
The thing is is that, hey, I'm not telling you to create playable characters which are other genders, ethnicities, even species. I'm not. All I'm saying is that if you leave the assets of your game open, I can change them, as can others. Got a flying game? I can change those planes into dragons with jetpacks. Instant sale! All you have to do is give me access to your assets and a slight explanation of how they work.
That's it.
I can see so many lost sales that would otherwise have turned into sales were the game in question to have left its assets open. I'm not even saying 'go open source' or something crazy like that. I'm just saying that if your assets exist in a way that can be modified, people will modify them, and sales will happen. If your game uses simpler graphics (like Path to the Sky, or even Don't Starve), then it's a sure fire bet that you'll have lots of mods. Those mods will lead to hundreds of extra sales.
And it makes me sad to see that developers lack the awareness to do this. Is it really so hard to leave your assets open? You don't even need to include Steam Workshop support or anything like that. All you have to do is leave your assets open, creative people will open your game up to many other audiences that wouldn't otherwise play it.
Consider this: I have one friend that's sick of thin, beautiful people in games. If I could mod for her a tastefully done chubby lady, she'd gain more interest. You wouldn't have to do this. You'd just have to leave your assets open. You'd think this would be a common-sense no-brainer. Yet many developers don't do it, I look in the folders and I see packed, often encrypted files. That's a damn shame. You're losing out.
So I implore developers, especially indie developers, to leave their assets open. Unless you're using something like Unity, it's only a tiny bit of work for you to do so. I know this as a coder, myself. I'm not one of those people who can be convinced that it would take you off of fixing bugs or making content. So I'm going to shake my head sadly at and not buy any game that doesn't have open assets. Because I can't.
I don't want to play humans. My lady friend doesn't want to play thin men. I think there are probably a lot of people out there like that.
You're ignoring a massive, untapped audience. That's really dumb.
An amusing find today is that due to the impulsive nature of extraverts, their lack of caution and conscience, they may have better immune systems. How does that work?
Extraverts are more likely to have bad habits, slobbish behaviours, and to flock to people like that. And they put their 'need' for attention above all else. For example -- if someone has a cold or an illness, even a bad illness, the extravert will want to be around to 'comfort' them, even if they don't want that and they just want peace and quiet. The extravert will use the lie of 'providing comfort' to fulfil their actual agenda of 'LOOK AT ME, I AM SO SPECIAL.' I've met people like this who'll fake concern and will do so until you harshly tell them they're being a nuisance and you don't want them around, then they turn nasty and wish you further illness.
Instead, the introvert would avoid them to avoid spreading the sickness. They would just make food and provide medicines, but keep their distance rather than getting up in the face of the unhealthy person. Similarly, when they have an illness, they'll lay it on thick to draw people to them. This spreads illnesses around, propagating them.
And this leads to a better immune system! They encounter more infections than introverts because their agenda is all that's important to them, and they lack conscience.
I've always said that extraverts lack conscience and guilt, but it's funny to see studies out there saying the same thing for such an odd reason.
Essentially, a person with good conscience is going to have a lesser immune system because they're not constantly throwing themselves in the face of sick people to have the sick people amuse them, or faking being more ill than they are to draw people around them. That's kind of a well duh. But it's nice to see people actually saying that extraverts lack conscience! It really, really is. How vindicating.
Another piece of research pointed out that extraverts are more likely to be heartbreakers, more likely to turture and bully. Why? They're prone to narcissism and psychopathy, of course. These are exclusively extraverted traits which do much to erode conscience and inhibitions. This then makes the extravert jump from partner to partner, not caring about the feelings of sentient creatures they've used as tools for their amusement.
This is all out there, feel free to use Google to look it up.
Their opposite -- introverts -- are considered better partners, as they're very conscientious, ethical, considerate, honest, and humble; thus not prone to one night stands or similarly impulsive behaviour.
And... here's the fun bit. Because extraverts are so sex-addicted and impulsive, they're also likely to spread sexual diseases back to partners who'd only had sex with that extravert. The person who cheats on their other half? Extravert. Always an extravert. Scientifically speaking, introverts just don't have the personality markers to even be capable of such wanton behaviour, it's just not in their nature.
All the extravert cares about is making more babies to pass on their genes, they have not the conscience nor the intelligence to create their own lexicon of ethics that would inhibit them from breeding so freely. The studies say that extraverts are the most promiscuous people out there, and the reason why is -- as I've said -- rather obvious.
Consider this:
A person who lacks: intellectual intelligence (to the point of being anti-intellectual, and hateful of depth and variety); emotional intelligence (to the point of shallowly feeling things for five seconds, then shrugging it off); inhibitive capacities (so nothing you do seems wrong to you); wisdom (so you can't understand the very real consequences of your actions); forethought (so you can't think before acting); conscience (so you're never prompted by feelings to reconsider your current course of action); guilt (so you never feel profoundly sad and ill about anything you've done, or will do); self awareness (so you can't realise that there's a world that exists outside you, and beyond what you know); and empathy (so you can't understand any perspectives other than your own).
A person who has an abundance of: narcissism (so you're unquestionably perfect, and everyone must like you); impulsiveness (so the only thing standing between you realising you can do something and doing it is self preservation); self interest (so you're the the centre of reality, and anyone who doesn't focus positively on you is out to get you); dopamine addiction (where you'll do absolutely anything to experience that 'good feeling' again); self obsession (where others must be like you and yours or they deserve all the torture, suffering, and discrimination you and yours can inflict upon them), and promiscuity (where you'll fuck anything without thinking twice about it).
Consider a person with these traits. What do you get?
You get a psychopath. Or someone who's teetering on the edge of psychopathy. That's the difference. The introvert teeters on the edge of sanity at times out of despair, despair at a world of extraverts. The extravert plunges over the edge of sanity into psychopathy because, hey, what's the worst thing that could happen?
This results in, as I've said in other posts, two groups of extraverts. The psycho cult leaders who're a tiny bit smarter, yet whose intelligence is invested in conniving, manipulation, and such in order to secure power and wealth for him or herself. The sleepwalker, who lacks the capacities to define themselves individually, so they leech their identity off of the psycho cult leader. That's how extraverts are. Either psychopaths or wannabe psychopaths -- and the evidence to prove it just mounts ever upwards.
Extraverts just aren't good people. Ever. To the contrary, they're very, very bad people who should be avoided, regardless of the reason.
So, today I learned that academia has discovered that aspects of extraverted and psychopathic brains are identical. Big surprise! See, extraverts and psychopaths both share an impulsiveness dysfunction (common knowledge, they act before they think), and they both exhibit a distinct inability to inhibit themselves, even based upon threat of repercussion, threat of punishment, or actual punishment.
All that needs to happen for an extravert to cross over into psychopath territory is for their impulsiveness to overpower their ability to inhibit it, according to modern medical science, this is commonplace. So.. what I'm getting at is that every extravert is just a psychopath waiting to happen, scratch the surface... boom, serial killer.
This also explains school shootings with extraverted children passing over into psychopathic territory, impulsiveness and the inability to inhibit it and the desire to act out video game fantasies.
Lovely. This is our world. A world of mostly almost psychopaths, who show their latent psychopathy as dominance struggles, sociopathic behavioural patterns, and so on. I'm so, so, so glad right now that I'm an introvert, because introverts have solid inhibitive capabilities, and we're not impulsive either. Evidence continues to pile up to support that every psycho that's ever been was and is extraverted.
Extraverts must be so, so proud. So proud.
Addendum: This also provides the point that extraverts should be denied access to violent material and media, because they're incredibly likely to act on it. And since the vast majority of introverts don't like overly violent stuff anyway... maybe it should just stop being made.
I try to avoid reality as best I can by playing non-humans in vibrant video games. I'm currently playing Spyro because it's not too violent and it's a dragon, I like dragons. I like vibrant, less violent games.
I already meditate and use lucid dreaming to delve further into my own mind, too. Sometimes I can just lose myself in there, in a reality of my own creation, so much better than this one. So much. The world inside my head is far, far more preferable, and if you only knew, you might want to live in there, too.
I'd do drugs to lose my place in this reality even more if I could. To get away from this awful cesspit of psychopathic and sleepwalking extraverts. Anything to get further and further away. But there's one person and a dog who both rely on me and love me a great deal, so I can't do that. Maybe one day, but not today. Today I suffer for them, rather than doing drugs in greater and greater dosages until I transition from here to there.
Can you even understand how much I want to be there? This world is a hellhole by comparison, a crapsack of manipulations, evils (in the context I've put them before), limited resources, war, suffering, pain, hardship, and neverending torment. This world is my hell. My nightmare. I've never been able to dream of a world worse than this.
Do you know the conceit of earth? It keeps you on the edge of your sanity. You don't die. You don't lose your mind. You stay just sane enough to appreciate what a brilliantly devised torture chamber it is.
In anything worse, I'd lose my mind, which means it wouldn't be worse. And better... well, can only be better. Here, you can be driven to the very brink of madness, yet not topple over. It's a very subtle, profound kind of torture, it's a slow destruction of self, piece by piece. Nothing kind enough as to be instant, oh no, just a slow deconstruction of self. Bit by bit.
It used to be worse, we used to have asylums and worse torture, but people lost their minds much, much more quickly. It's like a grand experiment, to see just how much the aware can endure on the very edge of torment, provided with anchors to keep them in a world of suffering. Anchors which make them suffer a little less, yet were they to die, they might escape into a world devoid of suffering.
Can you imagine what it's like to have that wisdom? To be self aware enough to understand that? I see this world for what it truly is. An experiment in torture -- it's so clever I could admire it if it wasn't so completely fucking abominable. Like I said, as time passes, the torture becomes more intricate and clever. There used to be asylums and treatments like ECT and ICT, so people would lose their minds then commit suicide.
You can't have that. You can't have them doing that. So you make the suffering just profound enough so that it doesn't override their anchors and sense of self-preservation.
I have a dog and someone I really care about. I won't die before them. I suffer for them. I would never burden this person by letting them know because I love with all my heart, I couldn't not, I would sacrifice all. That's what love is, when you're willing to forego suicide to live in a world of suffering and pain for someone. You don't even understand love until you understand that.
Werewolf of the Future @werewolfofthefuture - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
