I never assist slavers

Yesterday's post got me thinking about the way I play video games. I thought I had posted on this before, but I couldn't find anything on it, so here goes:

No matter my intentions going into a game, I always play the "good" guy.

I play a lot of games that permit choice - you can rob, kill, help out the bad guys, or run errands to help a town whose water supply is poisoned, a person held captive or cursed, what have you. Pretty much no matter the setting - outer space, post-apocalypse Washington, New Vegas, or mythical land - I choose to help out the good guys. Sometimes I do it with a gruff attitude and with little leeway for what my character will put up with and little remorse for negative consequences, but I almost always chose to try to help. Sometimes I'm what you might call a reluctant good guy, but I'm always what you would call - I think - a good guy.

- I never assist slavers. In fact I relish in wiping them out.
- I never provide comfort the the bad guys. I don't always actively wipe them out (until they turn actively hostile), but I don't help them.
- I usually donate money to the poor, and though I usually suspect there is some "in game" angle, I do so even when there isn't an obvious end game in the game.

This isn't to toot my own horn. I actually think the behavior cuts both ways - its a pro and a con, in other words. It shows both what is best and what is worst about me. And sometimes, it reflects the moral black and whiteness that composes the gray of my real life, as it did with Boone. Because although he had murdered woman and children, he regretted it now and I took him on as an ally. I helped him kill the person who sold his wife into slavery (the laws of good and bad are a little loose in post-apocalyptic worlds missing a court system, in my estimation). I genuinely wanted to help him wipe out the Legion who had taken his wife. And I was sorry to see him die.

And its not just companions in general - I got a second, a robot, and lost him in the first mission with little remorse. I'm now on my third companion, mostly because I know want a companion in tow. Partly for the company, partly for the help carrying stuff and partly because I'd like to replace Boone. But she's kind of annoying.

Another example: I freed some slaves from the first batch of Legion I happened upon. Boone was in tow, though I had stowed him away up on a cliff. This was both to prevent him from dying in a battle against unknown forces and also benefited his style. But as the family fled a soldier I missed started shooting at them. I killed him, but not before he took out the mother. That broke my heart and I kicked myself for it. I couldn't find the other two, so I assume they got away. But I honestly wished I could have protected her.

It's an interesting psychological study, I think. Or maybe I just don't get out enough.

Boone has died

... and with those words I had a very weird experience.

Boone, I should explain, was a companion in the game Fallout III: New Vegas. He had been with me for about half of the game at that point. He was quiet and personal and conflicted: not only had he participated in slaughter as a military man, his wife had been sold to slavers and he killed her to save her. His was a sad story of regret, loss and the resulting demons.

My affection for him was heightened because he had helped me out of several tight spots in the game and I gave him all the scavenged stuff to carry, effectively doubling my carrying capacity.

But then I made a bad decision and we ended up in the middle of a pack of wild dogs. Close combat where Boone's sniper rifle skills amounted to very little help. And then he was dead. And I was actually a little moved. Not to tears; I wasn't really sad. But I certainly felt a sense of loss. I felt enough that I ceremoniously dropped a hat he had given me with his corpse and placed his sniper rifle in an unused locker in the shack I use as home base. Then I took a moment and moved on. He had just gotten finished telling me that he felt bad things were due him because of the bad things he had done. I guess he was correct.

Miss Takes

Posting again about yesterday's error because my comment got a little long:

The misspelling is unacceptable (especially in today's world of spellcheck; unless "presindet" is a word). As an editor I'm sure that is what sticks in my commentor's craw the most.

For me, though, its the content. Spelling mistakes, regretablly, happen. But either we are getting enough calcium or we aren't. To say we aren't, and then quote a reputable source as saying we are, well, what should I believe - and is the article worth anything?

This error actually smells of writer bias to me: the "we don't get enough" line was probably written as the story idea/hook, then the author found out that, oops, we actually do get enough. Both lines stayed in the story. Its just sad that either the author and editor missed it, or left it in because the "shortage" line creates drama.

This happens in drug stories A LOT, too. Legit news outlets run stories about "Pill Parties" where kids just bring pills, put them in a bowl, and then pass the bowl around. None of the stories ever have a witness account by either the journalist or a student. And yet they publish them - mostly based on a "crazy drugged out kids" meme that isn't true and in the case of Pill Parties certainly has no evidence to back it up. But the author follows this bias, possibly without even knowing it exists, without thinking about the flaws in this story. And the flaws go way, WAY, beyond not having a real source outside of other news stories and third hand reports. Just think about what would have to occur for this type of conduct to exist. It just doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than two minutes.

Writing and editing failure

A WebMD story featured this as its second sentence:

Although Americans have improved their calcium intake in recent years, we're still not getting enough to maintain our bone health.

Ooooh. Scary. We should rush out and buy some calcium supplements straight off.

Or should we? This is from the fourth graph of the story:

The Institute of Medicine notes that most in the US get enough calcium except for girls 9 to 18 years old.

So which is it? Or is the "we're" in we're still not getting enough referring only to 9 to 17 year-old girls? The article is written by a woman, but since it is unlikely she's between those ages, and since its not a women's or girl's magazine, I'd assume the "we're" refers to the previous "Americans have improved" line.

I suppose you could argue that calcium is a bigger issue for women, especially at that age when bone is being grown and cemented for later on in life, and thus that the "we're" is referring to women in the group with the largest risk of calcium deficiency. But if that's the case, the "Americans have improved" should probably be "America women have improved."

Someone (the writer? the editor?) messed up here. And it wouldn't be such a big issue if plenty of health-scare/drug-scare stories didn't often have holes this big in them.

Something... religious

I'm talking about The Road. The trip through the book in two words: seriously good.

Short, sharp sentences create the perfect sense of setting for this post-apocolyptic novel. McCarthy adds to that setting by using archaic words for certain things to really slam home the idea that things are different in this world. It gives the setting a true sense of self: these things he is describing, you know them; you've probably heard the word, but maybe can't quite place it. It's spot on: this is a world you know, but can't quite place as the one you live in. I think this also adds to the feeling that things are breaking down. The current words are no longer "the" words.

McCarthy also forgoes several forms of puncuation mostly commas and parenthesis. And while he uses contractions such as can't and don't, he cant seem to fit in the apostrophe. This was, at first blush, troubling. But I eventually became accustomed to the style. And I think it makes sense: it once again lends itself to the breakdown in society, post-apocolyptic scene; one where contractions would exist but an apostrophe would mean little.

That's not to say that I found it all perfect. The smashing together of words was a littleoverdone. It seemed like a failed attempt to add to the scene, but not only was it seemingly random, I'm not sure what it was trying to say. In the post-apocolyptic future words are said together, faster? What?

I've seen complaints that the dialogue is overly simple and blocky. Whether you agree with the style or not, I think the it represents a purposeful choice. In a post-apocolyptic world devoid of almost any life and in which survival is goal A, B and C, conversation would be limited and simple, I imagine. The boy and father spend literally all their time together, and without neighbors, work, art or any of the other peripherals of life, there would be precious little to discuss.

And while some complained about the repetitive use of ash and grayness, I have news for you - in what appears to have been a post-nuclear winter world, ash and gray are probably not only paramount in your mind, but just about the only thing in your vision. You may not like the ascetic, but I don't think you can complain about the choice. It's like reading a Stephen King novel and complaining about the horrors explained within. Or reading Grisham and complaining about all the legal aspects.

I loved the immersion I got out of this book enough that I immediately searched On Demand to see if the movie was playing. Sadly, it was not, but I'm going to keep my eye out for it.

Boys will be Xs, but Y is that?

In this case, at least.

I'm foregoing the usual Religion/Buddhist Thursday post to comment on the linked article. Its about three people - two brothers and a paternal uncle. The brothers are married to women.

All three have all the traits of being male. As the article states:

Both brothers are married to women, and they and their uncle have the sexual anatomy, behavior, growth, and skeletal development of males. All have normal health and intelligence.

Except that all three lack the Y chromosome that makes a male a male. Instead, they have two X chromosomes, the genetic marker of women.

Holy Shirts and Teas

Because I'm too busy to post the post I should post (on 2011 resolutions) that everyone else has already posted, and too void of ideas to post anything else, I'll post these links, which are neat:

The (apparent) bible on how to make a proper cup of tea from Slate.com. Sad to know that my first steeping has apparently been wrong all this time. I'm torn about the article though: I understand it needs to have a wide, broad audience, and thus delving into the nuances of black and green is probably unwarranted. But at the same time, simply stating that tea should be brewed with boiling water without comment about those nuances makes me question the author. Not more than the fact that tea bags are actually discussed as a proper form of tea, but some.

Since lots of people probably got shirts this Christmas: An article on why men should untuck their shirts and leave them that way. Yes, Craig, I'm looking at you.