Comments on: COGs in the Machine: Shallow Bad Guys

By: Teramis

Teramis — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 06:56:34 +0000

Heya, Lynn,
I know the type you describe. There are an awful lot of them playing “hack and slash” type games (and I’ve avoided them like the plague ever since I started gaming in 1979).

But I’ve also met a large number of the story-oriented as well. They don’t always run in the same circles, or cohabit the same space happily. So if you’ve been around settings where you do see a lot of the short-fuse oh-goody-let’s-kill-it behaviors, you are unlikely to encounter the other type at the same time, I think.

Or, maybe you hang with the wrong crowd.

-T.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 17:29:18 +0000

I really don’t know from games, but from what I’ve seen, most people who play them don’t really want a literary–or social–experience. They want the every-thirty-seconds orgasm of killing something or getting something. If they have to stop and learn story, they’ll go look elsewhere. If they start to like, or empathize with, an evil character, they’ll go where the killing feels better to them.

“No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t seem to keep up.” -Lily Tomlin

By: Teramis

Teramis — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:19:33 +0000

I’m going to do the odd thing of commenting on my own post. Regarding this bit:

**
Or to take a page from a closer (and more sobering) reality, maybe he’s like the neighbors in a district of New Orleans who intended to protect their neighborhood from suspected looters, but ended up shooting innocent victims of Hurricane Katrina who were trying to walk to refuge.
**

- I want to point out that these terrible incidents I linked to here are real, they were murderous, and they were racially motivated. Whites fearing the advent of black looters in their neighborhood applied vigilante pre-emptive “justice” in a manner unthinkable in an ordinary state of law and order.

I don’t get into those details or even the racial aspect of it in this post, because here my objective is to illustrate simply how lines can blur between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, and encourage writers to think in deeper layers about their moral dilemmas.

This is obviously a blog oriented towards creative issues, not social justice and other contemporary hot buttons. Nevertheless I wanted to register my continuing personal outrage about those events in New Orleans (well, a whole hellova lot of events there, and not just the ones I linked to). Perhaps when I rennovate another site of mine where I do get into rights and social movement/justice issues, I will update this comment with a pointer to my more proper soapbox for such issues.

If you would like to do something more proactive than simply nod in agreement with my sentiments, I hope you will consider donating to the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, which is responsible for the Defenders Online website (see above link). It features outstanding investigative journalism, not only about those shootings but about many other topics for anyone supportive of civil rights, social justice, and equality.

-Teramis

By: Teramis

Teramis — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:40:25 +0000

You terrible man, you. I’m a huge Firefly fan.

I actually came across that last week (I adore Brust’s writing and follow his work online), and thought no! not til after book’s gone!

If my book is late to the publisher It’s All Your Fault!!!!

By: Bill G

Bill G — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:24:50 +0000

There's a wonderful Firefly fanfic by Steven Brust that I read where an agent of the Alliance government (the bad guys) comes to a planet on a mission to investigate a local businessman who has been trafficking in humans. The agent himself is a fundamentally good man who knows that he's working for a flawed government but believes that he can contribute to the general good by making the universe a better place and using his power for good. Much good storytelling ensues. (Yes, I gave you the link so you can download it and read it. Trust me, you want to.)