The three comprehensive virtues of the soul are prayer, silence, and fasting. Thus you should refresh yourself with the contemplation of of created realities when you relax from prayer; with conversation about the life of virtue when you relax from silence; and with such food as is permitted when you relax from fasting.
- St. Ilias the Presbyter, Gnomic Anthology III
I still want to scream that Dave is just as right as he is wrong. There’s always a healthy sub-culture of crafting and art in every geek and nerd community that I’m a part of. Hell, the TTRPG community has always embraced a relatively high level of DIY. I mean, I was doing homebrew almost out the gate, in high school! Technically I’m doing it now. It wasn’t very good in high school. One might argue I’m not very good at it now. But I’m doing it. But Dave isn't talking about the minority, he's talking about the general trends. See, the problem is that, four years after this series came out, not a lot has changed in the fandoms I follow. Star Wars is still as toxic as hell, in no small part because of the eradication of the EU and Disney making a "new" canon (EU was never canon folks, sorry).
But see, there’s a healthy way to approach all of this. We cannot stop contemplating the good, true, and beautiful. I didn’t say we shouldn’t, I said couldn’t; humans are built to constantly meditate upon what they think is good. We do that or rot. But our brains wear out after prolonged exposure to direct thought. They get tired and need to relax.
And this is where the quote at the top comes in. “Created realities” is what’s said. For some that may mean a life of hiking or gardening. For others martial arts or philosophy. But some of us? We wanna get into something abstract, a sub-creation of the mind. We like having something made up to think on. That’s relaxing.
The object of St. Ilias’s statement isn’t to make a straitjacket, but to simply say: “Goodness is the point, however you get there.”
If you can relax while playing a game with your friends, and thus build relationship and affection? Great! Mission accomplished! Is watching a TV show filling you with hope? The hope’s real, who cares how you get it? If playing an obsessive amount of RPGs helps you understand and forgive the real world, then fantastic!
It’s drifting away into nonsense and ennui that’s evil. Whatever helps you stay here, with the ones you love, that’s what’s good to contemplate. And, when people do this together, it’s naturally communal. They build silly little things. The fact that they are silly is the point. The fact that they aren’t real is irrelevant. As people build and debate they build a culture, something informal and invincible, so long as their higher goals align. Things like The Brothers Grimm, LOTR, fan fiction, it’s all folk culture.
Or it can be.
The thing is that geek/nerd culture is a bastardized form of folk culture: the difference between someone who paints his own minis and those who carve their own chess pieces is academic. But now we can rely upon these huge centers of production and we have gotten lazy, and even the bits we do do we scoff at, because they're not shiny enough like the mass-produced bullshit.
Yes, I'm aware most fanfic is awful.
But that's not the point.
The point is that nerd/geek culture is the monetized form of folk culture... which then chokes out folk culture. Because the love of money does that. We've gotten to the point to where we just take in this stuff passively, as opposed to making it ourselves and giving our own little tweaks to it.
Corporations making up crap for us consumers is not culture. Culture comes from the bottom up, in response to top-down influences. Instead of guiding us along in contemplating the good when we’re tired most of these corporations merely want to make a buck.
And I think the drive that Dave woke up in me, years ago, was to not be a part of that bastardized imitation of culture. I didn’t know it then, but the drive to make games that pointed out something good while you were tired began here.
Because yes, this is ultimately why I design now. I want things that help guide me to goodness when I’m too worn out to do it myself. I want to be able to relax and not lose a second to evil, because evil rides in with tides of disintegration and time. Evil doesn’t need to try, not here in this world. Good does.
None of us deserve that. We should be able to relax and still keep our focus on goodness. We need to trust that we will be carried, just a bit, while we rest from the exhaustion that living can inflict.
No, I don’t think Dave quite has the picture, even now. His truly black pessimism allows him to see the rot, but like many of the neo-reactionary YouTubers he has trouble realizing what the point of having a point of view different from the rotten mainstream is for. But without his promptings I wouldn’t have gotten here.
I think this the weakest of Dave's videos in the series. He goes into Conquest's Laws, and while I don't think that's wrong I think it shortsighted for the constructive point Dave was trying very earnestly to make, but more on that for the amazing epilogue. Dave's point, ultimately, is that the corporate buyouts of IPs will inevitably lead to the bastardization and commercialization of the things that us nerds and geeks love so much. And, regardless of how negative Dave gets, he views that as a tragedy. He mourns. There is something to nerddom and geekdom that goes beyond the materialism that it so often gets bogged down in. It's hard for me to sum up, though. I sit in my room surrounded by RPG books and comics, so I definitely count as a geek. So I'll give you my story with my favorite superhero: Spider-Man.
I first saw a picture of Spider-Man when I was four years old. It's one of the few genuinely positive memories I have from my childhood: the red and blue suit just jumped out at me, and I found that I wanted to know why someone would wear something that.... colorful.
And then I found this piece of beauty:
I watched it out of order from the ages of seven to.... oh jeez I'm still watching it today. I had to piece the timeline together, episode by episode. And I managed it, actually. The overall arc of the show was seeing Peter Parker grow up from an isolated loner to a leader, the Uncle Ben of superheroes. I've written a bit on the show, so I won't go into it more, although you can go here to read it. The point is, the ideas of accepting responsibility and the world as it was, not as I wanted it to be, were shown by the show. They dressed up these themes in a bright and somewhat silly package and when I grabbed for the bright and sillly package I got the themes.
Once I realized there were comics I got them... and found Ben Reilly. Mary Jane and Peter were married, and he wasn't Spider-Man, and the clone was Spidey now? Something about it didn't feel right, but I found Ben to be an interesting take on the problem of Spider-Man, and so that was... good enough.
And then he vanished? I wasn't a regular buyer at the time, so I had no idea what happened. And, at the age of ten, I couldn't just get on the internet and find out. I looked for a few months to try and get some sort of an answer, but couldn't find anything in any source. Where the hell had Ben gone?
So I 411'd Marvel Comics, and called the editor, Ralph Macchio.
Yes, I did this, at ten.
Ralph was quite surprised to have a child on the phone. I got to the point, and finally found out that Ben was dead. Dead! And I was told that he had died to save Peter from a situation that he very clearly did not need to be saved from. Peter's spider-sense very much so would have been able to save him from the situation that Ben died to protect him from. And I said so. Loudly. At ten. To Ralph Macchio, the man who was "responsible" for the change. Mr. Macchio showed incredible restraint with me, trying to tell me he disagreed with my assessment... but it's hard to argue with a ten year old who had seen Spidey jump through tires while mouthing off. Something in Mr. Macchio's voice, however, caused me to relent.
You see, he hesitated. And sounded a bit embarrassed.
At ten? I'd never heard this tone of voice before. I knew I was missing something. So I relented. I wasn't happy, but I could tell that I was missing pieces of the picture and needed to think on it. So, like I usually do, I sat and thought on it, for years and years. At thirty four I know exactly what that tone of voice was. Mr. Macchio was trying to be a company man at that moment. He had his marching orders and needed to hold the line. That's not a judgment on his character. He had a job and he needed to get it done.
I continued to call Mr. Macchio for years afterwards, up until I was seventeen or so, when he retired. This was during the legendary Ultimate Spider-man run, where Bendis and Macchio more or less had free reign. Mr. Macchio sent me a copy of Bendis's script for Ultimate Spider-Man #11. Which I drew my own version for. And then sent back to Ralph Macchio at Marvel comics. He and I talked over the phone about it, and he gave me critiques that abide with me to this day. As I got older he and I had deeper conversations, where I learned a bit about how the comic business actually worked. If you could get a good story out that was fantastic, but the editorial and corporate mandates came first, at all times. Mr. Macchio did not break this news to me directly, but gently, over the months and years of our conversations. Looking back I am in awe of just have gentle Mr. Macchio was with me, and how callous I was, by sheer accident of being young. He put up with a lot, and I benefited from his patience and gentleness.
And then came Spider-Man: Reign. I don't know how controversial this is, but this is my favorite Spider-Man story. Period. There were things on going in my life, at that point, that I badly needed from this story. And thank God I got it, because I don't know where I'd be today if not for the tale of Peter Parker falling apart because he'd killed his wife... and then being able to move past it. My parents were on the verge of divorce, Lyme's disease had practically wiped out my ability to tell reality from hallucination, and I had either been blacklisted by my friends or lost them due to the stresses of their own lives. And this story, as controversial as it may be, reminded me that even though I was down I was never truly out.
It is the only comic I have held onto from that time, coming up on twenty years later.
At the other end of stories of that time was Civil War. By now I had gotten a good whiff of what corporate interference smelled liked from Mr. Macchio, and so I approached this story very differently than I had before. This was obviously corporately mandated. Corporate had written the story and Mark Millar had been tasked to make it not awful. And he kinda succeeded? Unlike most of the fans I knew at the time, I liked that Spidey had unmasked. JMS had taken his company mandate and worked it into a legit story, showing Peter's growing reliance upon Stark and the system Stark represented. It was pretty clear this wasn't what JMS had necessarily wanted to do, but he wrote the hell out of it.
And that definitely applies Back in Black. Was it corporately mandated? Probably. JMS was not one to just make up events and throw huge waves at the rest of the Marvel line, The Other event being the notable exception to what was actually a pretty quiet and introspective run. But JMS took the idea of Peter having nothing to lose anymore and pushed it as far as a good writer could ever be expected to push it. I freaking loved it.
And then I had an idea. I called Mr. Macchio and pitched it to him. What if Peter was reunited with his daughter May? What if Osborn had her, this whole time, only for Stark to seize all his assets... and thus May? I outlined a three issue arc, where Peter went after the Thunderbolts (who Osborn was in charge of at the time), shooting flaming webbing in Venom's face to knock him out of commission... and then being captured by Stark. And shown the truth. And May, Peter's own daughter, rejected him. She didn't know her dad! And Mr. Stark was a hell of a lot nicer than Osborn! So Peter kidnapped his own daughter away from Stark and brought her back to the New Avengers, distraught over being rejected. The three parter ended with Luke Cage helping Peter to grieve the events, and Peter decided he was going to stick it out with May until she was old enough to understand what had happened. I pitched this story to Mr. Macchio, over the phone. And he told me in that same company-line voice that they had figured out another direction to take Spidey. I told him I couldn't wait to see what it was.
And then Marvel had Spider-Man sell his marriage to the devil. So he could save Aunt May.
See, most folks? They saw this as the corporate interference it was. I did too, but I had made a pitch at Marvel, no matter how silly that may sound. And I know that my pitch was probably going to be rejected, even if it was good enough. I was a seventeen year old nobody talking to an editor who had very generously lent his time to me. But this? This horseshit?
I could feel JMS's heartbreak. He had spent the whole run rebuilding Spider-Man into a mature man. He was becoming the Uncle Ben of Marvel. And it was beautiful. To have Quesada come in and trample all that JMS had done, and to force JMS to write it...
At that point I realized it wasn't a fluke. Ben Reilly had been born and killed out of the same corporate urge. It wasn't a flaw in the system, it was the system. Marvel was trying to sell a product, not a story. They wanted content, not character, and definitely not art! Up until this point I had wanted to become a comic book artist and writer. It had been a dream of mine since seven. I had worked as hard as I could. I wasn't very good and I don't think I would have made it, now that I look back at it. But did I know that at the time? No, but it was my dream. I wanted to write and draw Spider-Man, and had wanted that so badly I could barely see straight.
And that dream died with One More Day. Because Marvel owned Spider-Man. And I knew I couldn't work with Marvel.
Mr. Macchio left around this time. To this day I wonder if One More Day hadn't broken him too.
The cold hard truth was this: to Marvel Spider-Man wasn't a character. He didn’t have a history. He didn’t have a personality. He hadn’t grown or changed, because that’s what characters do, and Marvel doesn’t want that, even now. Marvel regards Spider-Man as a property. And Marvel can dictate what could happen with that property. If someone was willing to work with them to manage Spider-Man as Marvel would like all well and good, but if Marvel didn't want to sell the artist’s vision it was done. It didn't matter how good the story might be. How true. How good. Those things don’t matter to Marvel. Not above making money by selling their product. The relationship between corporations and the geek/nerd is not a symbiotic one, but parasitic.
Corporations do not care about meaning, they care about money, and if you make them big enough they will farm you for that money, however they can do it. Your own meaning can be torched for all they care, the money must keep flowing.
I was not really a part of Gamer Gate, in any capacity. I remain not a part of Gamer Gate, in any capacity. So this entire video was instructive to me. Dave's usually pretty good at factual objectivity, so if he's wrong let me know. I include it because I do have my own thoughts, inspired by the video.
When I was in highschool I learned something very important: how to watch movies and consume other art in a Christian manner. I was taught all art is morality, aesthetics/enjoyment were the highest expression of said world view, and that it was possible to view the world through the Christian myth. I was taught to apply the faith, as expressed in the Scriptures, the Fathers, and our Eastern Christian liturgical texts.
No, not your remembrances of said sources!
Actual critical reception of said sources!
The themes of resurrection, a broken humanity, and the common yearning for renewal were given pride of place. And then our priest proceeded to have monthly movie nights, where we were shown movies like Gattaca, SpiderMan 2, Spanglish, and many more, and asked "How does this square with how you view Christianity?" There were no wrong answers, and our priest always gave what he saw at the end, which he allowed us to disagree with. We were given a toolbox and shown how to use it a bit.
I've never not seen the world this way since. And to be blunt, it's helped keep me sane. It's helped me see the common humanity of people via art, to empathize and see that, in reality, nobody is really against me and mine. We all hurt. We all need forgiveness. We all need renewal. And we need it so badly that even if the event isn't real we make it real in ourselves. We are one. And, no matter how bad a piece of art is, if it has these elements, addresses these yearnings, there's still a spark of goodness within it, no matter the subject matter.
Yes, even this bloody and obscenely beautiful thing.
Using this approach has let me view a wide variety of media with little to no issue, in a way that constantly intrigues (and frustrates) many of my friends, who want something of a simple answer from me... and almost never get it. Because I assume Christianity, inherently. So if I make anything creative, it's always with humanity's need for resurrection, forgiveness, and the frank acceptance of darkness in mind. Always. Because we need these things so badly we're willing to check out of the literal world to get them.
But that also means that bad works of art do not follow these principles. Works that deny the ability to be forgiven and change, that do not allow for the transcendent, are hurtful to people. There's enough nonsense darkness in the world, there's no need to deny people what they need but cannot get in "real" life; actual, real, life happens between your ears. And those things I don't just feel as gross, I feel them to be repulsive? The new Green Knight movie? That's a bad movie to me. It takes the themes of the poem and not only denies them but despairs they can happen at all. I feel bad for the director and his bleak vision, but ultimately I won't be seeing it again. I don't find it edifying at all.
So, at least to me, the situation with SJWs screaming foul about everything is darkly hilarious. There is no neutral humanity, it doesn't exist, and therefore everything is ideological. I agree with them on that! I always have! But, as I've covered in the previous post, wokeness and the SJW movement's use of Marxism means all they will ever be are suckers for the elites in their petty little conflicts. Wokeness does not address the need for forgiveness, resurrection, and acceptance, it only makes one into a rage drone.
Oh, right, we need to get into why the messaging matters. Why this isn't neutral. Why there is no such thing as something neutral and simply enjoyable.
Let's talk The Rape of the Mind, by Joost Merloo. I've talked about it before, but Mr. Merlo studied brainwashing in detail and wrote what could be considered one of the huge pieces on the subject. Merloo's findings include a crucial fact: if you keep yelling something at someone they will eventually come to believe it. Our brains get tired. They want a break. Or, as a friend of mine once said: "I have to stop thinking sometime!" You can only keep your guard up for so long. So all it takes is to just brute force a population with propaganda, because eventually people will just accept the propaganda, because eventually people get tired.
So, for all those who are professing "belief" in anything SJW/Woke: there's a very, very, very high likelihood that you don't, at least on purpose. Because brute forcing a population is real thing. It's very well documented. And if you think you're not affected you're not just wrong, but you're exactly where people pushing their agenda want you.
Don't believe me? Think I'm a conspiracy theorist? Here's the first chapter of the book. It's right there.
Go ahead.
It’s not hard to find the rest on YouTube. I happen to own the book.
And no, you can’t “reset”, because humans are social beings and will never be neutral. You can either do it to yourself (“education” and “habits”), have someone help you (“teaching”) or let society force it upon you because people need something in common (“culture” if it creates positive unity or “mass brainwashing” if it’s a negative unity).
What you enjoy is what you believe. Whether you like it or not, acknowledge it or not, aesthetics are the window into your soul.
And just in case you think I’m sitting from on high, judging you, in no particular order:
Clannad/Clannad Afterstory transcends all media for me
Movies
The Last Jedi
Brick
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Chronicle
Logan
It’s a Wonderful Life
Pacific Rim
The Big Short
Serenity
Schindler’s List
Books
The Solar Cycle (yes, ALL of them, I see all of them as one thing)
The Wizard Knight
The Lord of the Rings
A Wizard of Earthsea
Lilith
The Odyssey
Orthodoxy
The Great Divorce
Jurassic Park
The Black Swan
TTRPGS
Crescendo (yes it’s mine tough!)
Burning Wheel
Trophy Gold and Dark
Hearts of Wulin
Crowns
Bleak Spirit
Burning Empires
I think if you know anything about the media listed you’ll know a hell of a lot more about me than I’d care to think. I believe in these things. I can’t help it. It’s what I’m drawn to.
But this isn’t a permanent fixture. I can hack my own brain. And so can others.
“We are all Socialists, wittingly or unwittingly, willingly or unwillingly. Even resistance to it wears its form.”
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
The problem is that Rick Sanchez is in every nerd or geek I’ve ever met. And I can’t really say I blame them for this. You find something you love that all the knuckleheads don’t? Yeah, you’re going to feel superior. That’s how that goes. Hell, I’ve got eight months of Star Wars posts that proves definitively that I’m not just exempt, but a personification of the problem! So there’s shattered remains of a glass house around me that I’m throwing rocks from.
So instead of commenting on others’ glass houses I’ll point at the glass in and around my feet.
There was a point in my life where hardly any interest I had wasn’t formed in deliberate contradiction to the mainstream. I’m one of two people I know of that views all nine episodes of the Skywalker Saga as one cohesive story. I didn’t just play Burning Wheel, I played it to the exclusion of all other games for years, two to three times a week. In religion I definitely fit in the more extremely conservative ROCOR branch of the Orthodox Churches, which boasts a “pristine” liturgy and a supposed rejection of modernity. This pattern could go on and on. And it all adds up to one extremely smug nerd. As I continue to mature I’ve come to realize that not only is the smug attitude not necessary but it’s actively in the way of enjoying life.
So when I say I find most geeks and nerds to be smug and arrogant against whatever their perceived mainstream is I say it as a recovering alcoholic when commenting on the negative effects of alcohol. You should take what I say with salt, because alcohol isn’t bad and neither is realizing the mainstream is wrong.
Yes, if you are in the mainstream of thought you are either wrong or the reasons you’re right are incomplete. Collective thinking doesn’t function very well. I’ve found this to be an ironclad law of thought, about as close to immutable as the rising and setting of the sun. Hell, maybe more so, since the sun will eventually go out, but a group of people will never generate a coherent thought together.
Anyways.
Totally not an involuntary Rick moment I decided to keep! Nope!
I think the thing I keep noticing is in geeks/nerds this tendency to just be smug as hell about how “they” don’t get it. Most of my honest conversations with people of the nerd variety invariably wind up in a sort of chortling at being “in the know”, of being the kids who get it, patting each other on the back for possessing that secret knowledge all the unwashed fools couldn’t possibly have. We’re in the minority because we’re better. We’re different. So different, in fact, that communication of our noetical intuitions is impossible. We need to commiserate our loneliness, but acknowledge our destiny together. I try to resist doing this, but every time I succumb I wind up feeling sick, like I just vomited something that I didn’t like eating to begin with.
Now, if you think yourself a geek or nerd and none of that applied to you? GREAT. You’re a better person than I am, and granted that’s a very low bar but criminy a win is a win! Take it! But for those of you who do feel my little blog post accurate… when did we get so bitter and nihilistic that the only thing that mattered was a bad re-enactment of cultural Marxism? And yes, I said cultural Marxism. It’s a real thing, folks, sorry.
Say what you will about that phrase, but it fits the nerd paradigm to a T. Marxism is a paradigm of persecutors and persecuted, along with a promise of “justice”, which is really just bloody vengeance. The persecutors are blithering idiots. Meatheads. Jocks. The proletariat. We are the persecuted. The unfortunate. The noble and intelligent victims who might win out when everyone else realizes how wrong they are. How we’re really the Brahmans of the age. Y’know, when the Revolution happens. And I don't know a single nerd/geek who isn't holding out for "their" way to win out over what they perceive to be the mainstream idiocy. The assumption itself requires rage and resentment. Someday we'll show them! We'll win!
BUT
“Every Socialist outbreak only blazes new paths for Capitalism.” sayeth Spengler, and so Tuchman shows in the Proud Tower. Marxism, at its base, is a sucker's bet. The rage and resentment that is bred by the ideology cannot be healthy, it cannot express in a positive way, and thus it is easy to manipulate. Throughout most of the 20th century this led to genocides and the creation of invincible/invisible oligarchies that only benefit the rich and powerful. It's not that this is a flaw of Marxism, it is the only place Marxism can go, given that it is the enraging of the masses by its upper class. Marxism in any form has always been a stinging from the upper class on down.... and then it takes over when the lower classes finally react. It is a set up.
And look at how the geeks and nerds have followed the pattern! The persecuted mentality of nerds and geeks has led to its co-opting by corporations, who have squeezed the turnip until our blood came out. Our blood. Not the jocks. Not the conservative idiots who preached that DnD was Satanic. Our properties are being hollowed out by what is actually an evil empire. Our lens has become corporatized and bastardized into a demonic shadow of its former self. And if you don’t believe me, ask yourself: wouldn’t the below scene have outraged your geeky heart as a clear corporate sellout fifteen years ago? Because it still did to me, not even a year ago:
START MID POST CAVEATS
For the record I don’t think Rey is a Mary Sue, in case the idiotic accusation of misogyny comes up. If that's a concern then please find your adult.
Also, I love the Sequel Trilogy. I think Disney did a really good job with it. Seriously. So it’s not even that I think a corporation can do nothing right. Just that, at the end of the day, a corporation is like any other body of people: it wants to survive. And it needs money to do that. And money and soul are almost diametrically opposed. Not quite. But damn close. And so they will squeeze all the crowd-pleasing profit they can out of their properties, so that way you keep coming back to pay them a few more bucks.
END MID POST CAVEAT
When rage is at the heart of your ideology you will be co-opted by the rich and powerful, who will hollow you out and leave you with nothing. The nihilism and resentment shown by Rick has directly led to this day and age, where movie after stupid movie is put out, none of them actually like the source material, but it's pretty! It's got a sweet outside! But there's nothing in there!
This
AAnd THIS coming back to theatres:
I believe to be deeply connected to each other. These people have found the Marxist nothing in our little nerd souls and twisted it to where we'll just dance on a string, if they pull hard enough. Nihilism and resentment don't lead to a noble purpose, or being able to weather the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune, or even to trying to get some form of peace in a world that is manifestly cruel and chaotic.
THIS
Is a parable. It's not a warning, because it's happening to us, right now. And we're the suckers. Marxism is, at its heart and soul, the weaponization of the common classes by a section of the elites against other elites. And then just moving in to take over the pieces. It is not them watching out for the little guy. It is not them trying to help you. The cycle of Marxism has shown this, over and over and over again. They don't want you to hope. Or feel. Or anything.
Just come and watch TV!
Now, the observant... five or however many people read this blog.... will go "Hold up. You're designing a table top RPG. You do reviews of geeky type products whenever the fancy strikes you. You wrote an entire series on specific Power Rangers in Heroes of the Grid." What the hell gives you the right to judge anyone???
To those five people: You're right. I'll get into that before the end. Put a pin in it for the moment however.
Before I joined the Army I was working at a McDonalds. I hated the job with every cell in my body, despite being extremely good at it, so I was grouchier than I normally was. Most people kept a polite distance, except for one particular nerd, Ezra (name changed to protect the innocent). He was.... not nearly as good at the job as I was, but he had this trait of being friendly to the point of irritation.
That's a very low bar for me, for what it's worth.
He was too damn chipper!
Well, eventually he wore out my grump reflex and we started a friendship, of sorts. Ezra talked a whole hell of a lot about pretty much anything on his mind, at a volume and speed that I could barely keep up with, at a pitch that I definitely didn't want to put up with.... but he was kind. He had a good, gentle heart, under the layers of sheer annoyance. And I find true kindness to be in short supply. So I gritted my teeth and decided a bit of kindness was worth the increase in blood pressure.
Oh, and dear God he talked about his girlfriend too much. Who he swore was real! Promise! She's just far away. I could never remember where.
Starved for roleplaying game time I offered to GM a Burning Wheel for Ezra. I didn't expect much from him, to be honest. I kinda figured he'd futz around with the rule system and probably just make something that would help me pass the time. And, really, at that point, I wanted time to pass. It was still a few months before I would be able to leave, and I knew that what would probably be bad Burning Wheel was still better than no Burning Wheel at all. So I pitched the game to him. I explained that Burning Wheel was not Dungeons and Dragons, that he'd actually have to put work into it to get something out of it, and that I'd help him with the rules but I wasn't going to take it easy on him when the dice hit the table. It was up to Ezra to succeed. He nodded, told me he looked forward to it, and we ended the workshift with me having a twinge of guilt. At the time GMing was a way for me to vent just how frustrated I was, so I looked forward to low-key torturing Ezra's character.
No, I don't mean that ironically.
Yes, that's messed up.
I've never claimed to be a good person. Ever.
Ezra made a character who had a cruel older brother, which mirrored some of his real life situation. That should have been a tip off for me. I admit it now. But I was so pent up, so angry, so arrogant, that I didn't really think much about what would drive Ezra to make such a situation. I just decided to make his brother as cruel as possible and then to give Ezra the chance to abandon him. Which is exactly what I did; I had a dark elf kidnap the brother and gave Ezra the chance to rescue.... under suicidal conditions. Eventually Ezra failed the tests, and the dark elf told his character that it was a nice try, but he could either give up or die with his brother. Ezra walked out of the building. I thought I'd won. And it felt good.
And then Ezra set fire to the entire area, using his Firebuilding skill to set up a conflagration so powerful only he could put it out. When the dark elf came out, furious, Ezra offered to put the fire out.... but only once he had his brother. The dark elf laughed grimly, offered his admiration for a job well done, and brought out Ezra's brother.
The thing that impressed me about this whole scene wasn't Ezra's plan, not principally. It was the look on his face when he had initially failed. There was a determination, a total lack of concern, that took me aback. Ezra's character was going to help his brother and damnit if anyone was going to tell him no. To be able to show kindness and help someone who hated him mattered to this irritating young man. It was unthinkable to Ezra to give up. And, while he normally couldn't do anything so heroic, he had a chance to do it here, in this game. He did it with a grace and ease that I honestly didn't think him capable of. The dark elf's reaction really came out of a genuine place of shocked admiration on my part. Without raising his blood pressure Ezra had shown me what a tool I had been. Kindness and forgiveness are real, no matter how they happen.
The thing is that, otherwise, Ezra was a pretty pathetic person. He had that "feel" of a nerd, of someone who had put all his pudgy existence into playing video games and anime and nothing else. His room was lined with differing paraphernalia he'd definitely spent some good money to acquire. With the exception of his girlfriend (who I never saw of a picture of) there really wasn't much talked about other than video games and anime. If there was a drive that Ezra had beyond these things, he didn't show it to me except that one time, in Burning Wheel.
My last memory of him was being shown Halo 4. Which I hated. It felt like CoD. But Ezra was so excited that there was a new Halo I didn't really have the heart to tell him how much I despised the thing he had specifically brought me over to show off. He also showed me that you could now watch anime while you played video games on the XBox, something that I hated even more. But again, he was so excited that a part of me knew it would be wrong of me to shut him down. After a few matches he asked if I wanted to watch Pacific Rim. Considering that's one of my favorite movies...
Eventually it was late and I had to go, having work the next day. Ezra walked me to the door, talking excitedly about the resolution on the TV. And it was nice, to be fair! I'd not seen Pacific Rim look that good since seeing it in IMAX. So I was more than happy to reciprocate. But I realized something really sad in that conversation: Ezra didn't know how to look for anything else. Not anymore. The world was a meaningless wasteland for him, and these few hours he could get with his videogames and his TV was as good as he could see it getting. Ezra wished me luck at MEPS and talked about joining the military himself, probably the Coast Guard. I told him that I'd heard the Coast Guard were all genuine badasses and I'd be impressed at anyone making it through their training. And he'd actually be useful, unlike me, who was going into the Army. Ezra laughed and said something kind and dorky. I forget what it was, only that I honestly felt reassured by him in that moment. I didn't feel too reassured by anybody at that point in my life; the feeling was like water to a man stuck in a desert.
I never saw him again.
I hope Ezra made it out. I hope he figured out how to not be addicted to the machines that sidelined him into a life of insignificance. I hope he went and joined the Coast Guard. I really hope things worked out with that girlfriend, or if not with her that some lady would figure out that Ezra was a genuinely kind soul. But the bitter and mean part of me wonders (with a sneer!) if he's not sitting in that same room, even eight years later, still raving about the latest garbage video game and anime. There's only one direction to the universe, after all, and it's down.
But who knows? 19 years ago I said I didn't want anyone to remember me. I wanted to be dead and forgotten. With a wife and three children that's changing, one step at a time. I'm able to change. Maybe he did too! Hopefully we'll both make it. Kindness should.
Although that doesn’t change the fact that Halo 4 sucked ass.
I generally do not really care about what posts get seen and do not get seen on this blog. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I post whatever the hell I want, whenever the hell I want, however the hell I want. So I was not intending to do anything other than start sharing my response to Dave's Nerd Culture series. They've greatly changed my view on geek and nerd culture, and for the better, and are at the heart of my game design. I merely wrote them because of their deep personal significance to me.
So when people who I sent the link to began to agree, not just wholeheartedly, but sometimes emphatically, I realized that there's a hole in our little corners of the internet: people who like some of the elements of geek/nerd culture, but who like it because they find the Faith (and thus themselves) in it, who are Marxists and secularists, who want things that have a deeper significance. They look and find, becuase God is everywhere, in everything. Geeking out over these things is not a sign of shallowness, but a desire to baptize the nations. To tell the things that people made Yes you too.
It is not a common voice within the geek/nerd circles, and it never was.
But it is there.
So I've decided to hell with it, let's make a little corner of the internet for these folks, The Sub-Creationists! The rules are six, although if I can somehow get it to eight for the symbolism that'd be great. They are:
1. We are centered upon the Great Commission as stated in Luke and John: the forgiveness of sins is what we are about.
This rule is meant to get ride of the Marxists and culture warriors, full stop. We are here because of our shared belief in the healing power of God. A desire to twist that into the culture war is not just unproductive but actively against the spirit of this group.
2. Reality is incarnate; God's spiritual principles and the love and forgiveness those principles give shines through creation and all human sub-creations.
Not only do we believe in this Great Commission, we believe the world is an inherent expression of this reality we have found. Reality is not opaque, it is transparently showing forth the glory of God.
3. As geeks and nerds we find these principles in popular culture and fandoms, and thus find these expressions healthy.
There are folks who are part of the geek/nerd culture who find God's love and His reasonings particularly strong in the stories presented in these fandoms. For whatever reason we find this to be useful in our own development as people.
4. We are a theologically orthodox but inclusive group, faithful to the shared heritage of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Provided anyone not of these traditions holds to point one all is well.
This is not a place to question the doctrines of our traditions. This is not a place to talk about the fallenness of the Church. Or whether or not the Church is inclusive. All such questions are outside the scope of this group. Anyone who is a part of this group accepts their tradition as it was handed to them, and if you have issues with that tradition, this is not the group to voice them. Go talk to your pastors, loved ones, and consult historians and theologians, we are not doing that here.
5. We promote the creation of holistic and wholesome geek/nerd material, which we view to be in line with the principles of point one.
The commodification and commercialization of geek/nerd culture is something we stand against, without exception. We encourage our members to make their own creations, grounded in communicating meaning to people. So there is a creative component to the community. So long as it's grounded in these principles such content is welcomed with open arms.
6. We do not seek to oppose, prevaricate, or argue. We build what we love.
The culture war is over, people. Get over it. To fight and rage at whatever perceived unfairness of the world is not Christian. Forgive, move on, make something beautiful. God will take care of the rest.
This is the beginning. I am not much of a leader. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. But this must be done. And so here we are.
Want to join us? Here's the subreddit. And the Discord. Let's do this thing.
I am very late to this party. I saw this series of videos during 2019, and have been sitting on them ever since, trying to figure out my opinion. Like or dislike his thoughts, Dave the Distributist's thoughtfulness cannot be denied. And this series of videos on nerd culture has continued to rock me to my core, years and and years later. After attempting to write about gaming and other nerd/geek stuff for about five years, I realized that this series of videos is at the very bottom of my worldview. And I had to get it out of the way if I wanted to write about gaming or really anything else.
Thanks, Dave. Thanks a lot.
In highschool I was Eddie from Stranger Things, without the drugs (or the repeated failures at school):
No, really, that was me. Granted, my hair wasn't that long (it's longer now!), but the attitude? Yup. That's it. I mentioned it to a friend of mine who knew me early in college and he about died laughing, because it's really not an exaggeration. I found friends in large part because of DnD, Magic, video games, and Firefly, as opposed to my heavily chaotic and extreme personality. And going into college I found myself really only feeling comfortable in those elements.
But suffering hammers and expands one into something you don't really expect. I found myself wanting more out of my interests and hobbies... and couldn't get it. And had no idea why. And then I found Burning Wheel. There's a few years of posts of that game on this blog. and while I haven't played the game in a while it still holds a near and dear place in my heart. I used the game to explore and process, particularly with The Giggling Dark and The Undertow, both of which I consider the highest points of my GMing Career so far.
All this to say that I never really was into nerd culture for anything other than a vehicle to explore meaning. I've never really experienced the urge to use my interests as an anti-movement, a wish to destroy, to eradicate societal concepts that were persecuting me. If I was against anything it was against being pointless, of having no meaning at all. Whatever burning hatred of humanity I have, it is total, as opposed to directed at one particular social caste. I think humans, in general, suck horribly and I see no reason to exclude one group from that hatred. Not that this is a good thing, mind you, but whatever baggage and damage I have, hating a particular group and resisting them isn't one of those things I have to struggle with.
But I've noticed that I'm not in the majority company of those I share interests with, both generally and with things like RPGs and games and comics and whatnot. The particular areas of "nerddom" I inhabit are more than a bit left-leaning, with an assumed "Us VS Them" mentality that makes running around those circles really hard to manage. I've noticed this alienation for years but could not figure out what to do with it. How do you tell your own "home camp" that you think that everyone sucks pretty damn equally, and that you don't really understand the need to hate conservatives? Or Christians? Or the physically fit jarheads? And that, really, by fixating upon these groups they've just done what was done to them in reverse, and thus made themselves the perpetuators of a cycle that they claim to want to end? It's not that I mind people have different opinions than I, but simply that, if you're going to stand for something, stand for it, as opposed to using it as a weapon to fight someone else.
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I forgot, the evil conservatives and Christians are out to get all progressives and trans people!
And the evil progressives and trans people are out to get all conservatives and Christians!
I literally just had to switch the subject and object of the sentence. Structure's the same. It's the same ideology: abuser vs abused, attacker vs victim. And there's the same stoking of a war spirit, the same "let's just enjoy our shit until we have to kill each other" nonsense going on. Eat, drink, fuck, for tomorrow we kill each other.
And, before any progressive stupid enough to argue with that opens their mouth, this is from one of the bigger RPG Discord groups I'm a part of:
And, while I don't have any examples from conservatives close at hand at the time of the writing of this post, I'm sure you wouldn't have to look very far to find it. These groups of nerds are stuffed to the brim with rage, and the only reason why anyone reading this post doesn't see it is because they're in it. Because it's that obvious.
If you are saying "BUT VIOLENCE AGAINST TRANS AND LGBTQ FOLX IS REAL" you didn't read my last few words.
Try again.
If you still can't see it please go find an adult. No, it's clearly not you. I stated exactly what I meant, word for word. If you think that means I'm downtalking your side, whoever you are, you didn't read for comprehension.
I'm moving on.
Atop all this I kept finding this weird materialistic consumption at the heart of the culture: buy, watch, consume! Now I definitely live in a glass house when it comes to this sorta thing: I'm a sucker for Kickstarters and random shiny games, and I'm keeping up with the Star Wars train and enjoying it. But I don't necessarily view this tendency as a virtue, but as a vicious flaw that I struggle against with all my might, even if it's the weak struggle of a spiritual invalid. But I can hardly go a week without having to roll my eyes at yet another soulless Marvel movie coming out, or some element of "come and be a part of this large corporately sponsored story that's not quite good enough to be nourishing but not quite bad enough to get you to walk away in disgust!", which comes with a wave of toys, collectibles, and licensed properties.
Yes, I know this includes Star Wars.
This was one series of videos I did not want to sit through. I felt distinctly uncomfortable throughout them, but only because I realized I could finally have a language for what I was feeling. There's sometimes you don't want to look a problem in the face, because to see it means you have to change in order to address it. And change can be quite painful and lonely. I've had a lot of both in my life. I'd prefer not to do more.
Fuck.
To live is to be in pain. After more than two decades of trying to ignore this fact of living I've gotten tired of trying to run from it. So. Let's do this.
Fundamentally, generally, I think Dave is right. I've never not seen general geek/nerd culture as much more than a counter-movement against the ideal of an integrated person. And I find that sad! This whole nerd culture thing doesn't have to be anti-integrationalist. I think both soul and body are absolutely necessary. I try not to use my more intellectual interests as a cage to keep the stresses of my body out, but as a way to process them so that I can return to my body, revitalized and ready. Gaming, particularly tabletop gaming, has helped me make sense of my world in a way I couldn't do otherwise. There is something to be said for taking the principles of the world and putting them into a rulebook. There is definitely something to be said for taking the rules of reality and dressing them up a bit differently so you can get a better look at them. Our bodies are exhausting to live in, regardless of why they are. It's nice to get out and about every once in a while, without them. That's a universal, human, need. If I believed in rights I'd not hesitate to call it such. But I don't believe in rights. So I won't be saying such silly things.
I don't know if anyone "On the other side" of this divide would agree with my analysis. But elephants in a room generally don't notice the mice they squish, regardless of how loud they squeak. And I am definitely not that elephant.
