Shitting on the Prime Directive with Nagito Komaeda

Or, this would have been an Evenicle post, but none of you know what Evenicle is

The most vicious takedown I’ve seen of Nagito Komaeda’s personality is that he only values people as abstract figures, not as people. In his view, a great person is made greater by facing tragedy and overcoming it, so if someone he respects suffers a loss, he celebrates it. He doesn’t really get the idea that other people feel bad about loss, or that they resent him for treating their suffering like a good thing. Their feelings aren’t just irrelevant to him. They’re invisible, because feelings aren’t a part of his worldview.

Shit like Star Trek or Enchantress from the Stars* is built on a worldview of gradual positive progression. People suffer, and because of their efforts to alleviate their suffering, society grows greater. So you can’t act to help them, or their society won’t grow. Suffering feels bad and people don’t want it, but that’s not relevant to the grand sweep of history, so it’s ignored. And that’s why the Prime Directive makes you as morally bankrupt as fucking Komaeda.

*My entire grudge against the Prime Directive began with Enchantress from the Stars.

(no subject)

To explain my previous post about why you can’t get too brutal in RPG Maker: in a standard RPG Maker game, you don’t input each character’s actions when their turn comes up. You input every action your entire team will make, and then they act one by one, as does the enemy. So if the enemy suddenly takes off half your health bar, there’s a delay before you can course-correct. A sufficiently speedy enemy can hit you before any of your characters act, and you didn’t have a heal queued, and then you try to heal and it hits you again before you can do so. That’s why everyone needs to be durable enough to survive a few hits. Otherwise it’s just frustrating and unfair.

You may object that Etrian Odyssey makes you input your whole team’s actions, and it has bosses that take off half your health whenever they want. To which I say, case in fucking point.