[Written 2 days ago. Forgot to post]
Insomnia fuels more gaming thoughts - mostly due to poking around The Old Republic, Star Wars site (it's got a webcomic I want to look into - see, relevance, eventually)
But it's not 'ooh pretty' that's spawned this bit of thought. It was clicking on a blog entry where someone was excited about 'three blue drops' in one session.
Aside: Yes she explained stuff enough for me to get context, but I'm not explaining because I don't give a damn.
What struck me was her utter excitement and not only completing a quest that involved killing things and gaining profit from them, but killing this rare creature, before anyone else showed up to claim the kill, and her getting profit from it.
And I was shivery disgusted.
Her excitement pinpointed the conquest for me.
Two clicks before her, I was reading this idiot (from Az), I'm not about to link who was going on about What Would Jesus Drive, and part of his spiel was :
He doesn’t put water jugs out along the border because he believes in upholding secular laws, i.e., rendering unto Caesar. Crossing a scorching hostile land to trespass on a neighbor’s land isn’t the kind of thing he would condone and smacks of putting his father to the test. He would give anyone a drink of water and a lift to the next town, where he would gently turn them over to the proper authorities and say a prayer for their safe return to their family.
As a carpenter, he has built his share of fences to keep things in and keep things out, but he stakes his reputation that having a well-built fence keeps things neighborly. Although he strongly advocates free will, putting boundaries on some things helps people stay on the right path, and even though his father’s prayer contains the words “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” he wasn’t talking about that kind of trespassing.
He enjoys his freedom and would give the shirt off his back to a stranger, but he isn’t to be taken advantage of either, stressing that we live in the world we create — for better or worse — we know the basic rules and they do not include coveting our neighbor’s land or property.
The italics are the part I was originally going to quote, the smaller text what I'd reference. But I thought perhaps it needed to be seen all at once, to understand my response of:
Have you checked your answering machine? I’m SURE Jesus called to tell you America’s First Nations AND Mexico want their land and property back, with interest.
Also Africa is holding on his line two, she says “Give me my children back!” -
Between those three, and all their works, blood, sweat and tears you’d be living in a stone hut in Europe somewhere. Maybe. If wars for ‘more’ hadn’t killed off your line generations ago.
Feel lucky China isn’t even bothering with you.
Aside: Yes, sometimes I respond to idiots just because I wouldn't feel right not to and then I never check to see wth blibberblabber they said back.
But let's go back to the excited WoW-er and her 'blue drops', two due to killing some rare creature.
Maybe other folk wouldn't have connected the two and ended up thinking - Conquest For Profit. But I did. And I really don't care that the beings being killed are monsters, because that's too close to savages and that description is too close to what's been used to describe me and mine, and many people I care about; 500 years or not (and sometimes just yesterday).
And suddenly I start to wonder if my subconscious has been dealing with this, as I'm dealing with feeling bored and thinking the game mechanics are pointless.
And I realize that I'm likely never going to look at any game, where there's killing of an indigenous species for points, money, loot/special items, in the same way again.
And then it gets worse.
Because I realize that I already know this, because I love the webcomic GOBLINS which is all about the ingenious species trying to survive against and rebel against a system that sets up their very lives as xp for low level adventurers. That very theme is why I love that comic so much - kill the Goblins, loot their society of precious artifacts is the INSTITUTION being fought against.
And I wonder, how many times a day, a week, a month, I need to forget that fact (and it's facets), in order to enjoy a pastime without my head exploding at the culturally indoctrinated Conquest against those differently technologically enabled; against the minority indigenous.
It's like the Matrix, except you never get out and if you're not careful you can forget you're in the machine and forget why that matters and forget the whole thing's rigged.
And I start thinking about Resident Evil 5 and Reclaiming Africa
[Comments so very, very off]
