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Utilitarian thoughts on The Forgotten City
Aug. 1st, 2021 10:02 pmA different analysis of three reasons the city was doomed from the start. Based entirely on the standalone game. Spoilers galore:
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Feb. 10th, 2021 02:18 amI'm reading Heaven Official's Blessing. Some stories are against Utilitarianism on a moral level. This one, at least at the point I've reached, is against it on a metaphysical level.
One of the characters phrases the question this way: if you have two men who're dying of thirst, and one cup of water, who do you give it to? The main character's answer is "get another cup." The point that keeps getting hammered home is that just because he wants another cup doesn't mean the universe is obligated to give him one. He keeps getting into situations that could have been resolved cleanly with another cup, except there was no other cup, and his attempt to find or make one achieved nothing. One character straight-up tells him that there is never such a thing as making more happiness in the world, only moving happiness around, and one person's Omelas-like suffering cannot be fixed without inflicting it on another.
But the point is ALSO made that the people who keep saying there is no other cup are the people who have enough cups for themselves. And at least one of them was clearly in the wrong when he avoided suffering by inflicting it on those around him. So I'm really curious how this is going to play out.
One of the characters phrases the question this way: if you have two men who're dying of thirst, and one cup of water, who do you give it to? The main character's answer is "get another cup." The point that keeps getting hammered home is that just because he wants another cup doesn't mean the universe is obligated to give him one. He keeps getting into situations that could have been resolved cleanly with another cup, except there was no other cup, and his attempt to find or make one achieved nothing. One character straight-up tells him that there is never such a thing as making more happiness in the world, only moving happiness around, and one person's Omelas-like suffering cannot be fixed without inflicting it on another.
But the point is ALSO made that the people who keep saying there is no other cup are the people who have enough cups for themselves. And at least one of them was clearly in the wrong when he avoided suffering by inflicting it on those around him. So I'm really curious how this is going to play out.
Fiction against Utilitarians: Bioshock 2
Dec. 1st, 2020 08:42 pmAll I can do is summarize this, because it’s the perfect way to take a metaphor and make it absolutely literal.
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Sep. 9th, 2020 05:22 pmSome more spoilery thoughts: End Roll is what happens when you literally can't imagine any form of justice other than retribution.
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Fiction for Utilitarians: Blasphemous
Sep. 28th, 2019 12:53 am
"Let me grieve, let me suffer
For one wound on me is one less on you
Let me bleed, let me feel
For a cut on me is a caress for you
Let me cry, let me moan
As all of my tears are only for me."
I find it jarring how many reviews of Blasphemous deny that it has any meaning or message. The general impression seems to be that the purpose of the game is to be violent and gruesome, and all the stuff about religion is a way of tying the violence together. To the contrary, I see Blasphemous as discussing worship of objects, worship of suffering, and the ways in which those two things tie together.
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Fiction for Utilitarians: Elsinore
Jul. 26th, 2019 01:07 amThis just beat Majora's Mask, Oxenfree, AND The Sexy Brutale for best time-loop game I've ever played. (I've yet to play Outer Wilds.)
In four days, almost everyone in Elsinore will die, and you're the only one who remembers. They don't respect you, but they also don't notice you, skulking around in the shadows and overhearing their secrets. Can you make them listen, or will they dismiss you--for your race, your sex, your status, or their certainty that they know what they're doing? Which lives can you save? Which horrors can you prevent? And where do you want this story to end?
(I told my mother this is a game about having all the information and none of the power to get people to act on it. She said that sounded like her life.)
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In four days, almost everyone in Elsinore will die, and you're the only one who remembers. They don't respect you, but they also don't notice you, skulking around in the shadows and overhearing their secrets. Can you make them listen, or will they dismiss you--for your race, your sex, your status, or their certainty that they know what they're doing? Which lives can you save? Which horrors can you prevent? And where do you want this story to end?
(I told my mother this is a game about having all the information and none of the power to get people to act on it. She said that sounded like her life.)
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Dec. 26th, 2018 02:56 amI’m not gonna give Trillion: God of Destruction a full Fiction for Utilitarians writeup, because frankly, it doesn’t deserve it. It’s Compile Heart trying to rip off Disgaea, and that means a low budget, repetitive combat, and gratuitous hot springs scenes. But I respect this game’s fuck-you attitude to A Million is a Statistic. "We killed off ten thousand nameless generic soldiers in the span of a minute, and you didn't even blink. So here's a plot contrivance that means only one champion can fight the enemy at a time. We'll build them up over a span of in-game weeks, show their flaws and virtues, and force you to care about them. Then, when you inevitably screw up and get them dismembered, we'll move on to the next doomed heroine without so much as time to mourn."
There's a double-edged question here, both what each protagonist cares enough to die for, and what you as a commander are willing to sacrifice them for. No cost is too great to save your land and your people, is it? And maybe the next offensive will succeed where the last one failed. Maybe this time, you're not just sending them to their deaths. But four or five gravestones in, the cemetery is looking a little crowded, and it's hard to argue that you're still making a dent. Some of your noncombatant characters question whether to even keep fighting, while others have to be talked out of a futile charge at the enemy, both of which are suicide by a different name. And for that matter, the game doesn't shy away from the pathos in its "piggies," disposable soldiers almost guaranteed to die in each battle, all of whom volunteered while knowing the stakes.
(There's also an essay to be found in the game's use and subversion of the seven deadly sins. The designated "greedy" character gives generously, the "wrathful" character makes cool-headed decisions, the "lustful" character loves purely and wholly, etc. But it's fucking Compile Heart, so I won't put that much effort into it.)
There's a double-edged question here, both what each protagonist cares enough to die for, and what you as a commander are willing to sacrifice them for. No cost is too great to save your land and your people, is it? And maybe the next offensive will succeed where the last one failed. Maybe this time, you're not just sending them to their deaths. But four or five gravestones in, the cemetery is looking a little crowded, and it's hard to argue that you're still making a dent. Some of your noncombatant characters question whether to even keep fighting, while others have to be talked out of a futile charge at the enemy, both of which are suicide by a different name. And for that matter, the game doesn't shy away from the pathos in its "piggies," disposable soldiers almost guaranteed to die in each battle, all of whom volunteered while knowing the stakes.
(There's also an essay to be found in the game's use and subversion of the seven deadly sins. The designated "greedy" character gives generously, the "wrathful" character makes cool-headed decisions, the "lustful" character loves purely and wholly, etc. But it's fucking Compile Heart, so I won't put that much effort into it.)
Fiction for Utilitarians: Thalia’s Musings
Dec. 8th, 2018 07:08 pm
When I was a child, Greek mythology confused me. Human heroes tried to be like the gods, and they were cast down for their hubris. But gods acted like gods all the time. Why wasn’t it hubris when they did it? Thalia’s Musings is the first story I’ve read that examines that question.
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Fiction for Utilitarians: The Sexy Brutale
Dec. 8th, 2018 07:06 pm
At the mansion known as The Sexy Brutale, time twists and turns on itself. The guests and the staff all have a role to play, and they speak the same lines and perform the same motions time and again. Each night, every guest is brutally murdered, and each day, they wake up and start all over.
You are an intrusion in their perfectly constructed world, the one person who stands outside the script. You can’t talk to them, or even be in the same room as them. But it’s up to you to help them from the shadows, and find some way to stop the events that lead to their doom.
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The cycle of life and death has been broken. The souls of the dead vanish, and the living are born hollow and empty. Society decays without a new generation, while the survivors squabble over who or what caused this. But by chance or fate, you may have stumbled across the real culprit …
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I finally beat Persona 5. I’m still gathering my thoughts for a full post, but one thing I can say–Paranoia Agent just got one-upped. Hard.( Read more... )
Fiction for Utilitarians: Invisible Man
Dec. 8th, 2018 06:33 pm I picked up a lot of my thinking about identity from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.
For the educationally deprived among us, the title character of Invisible Man calls himself that because people don’t see him. They can see that a person is present where he is, but they see that this person has dark skin, so they perceive a Black Man. They ascribe to this person the traits and qualities they assume all Black Men must have, and they interact with him as they would interact with any Black Man. Not all of them see the same Black Man or expect the same things from him, but they all have expectations he won’t or can’t match.
The ways in which he, and other black men, negotiate this space of invisibility are varied and sometimes self-defeating. Sometimes he plays along with other people’s expectations so he can benefit from them, while other times, he goes against his own desires just to avoid being stereotypical. People he trusts use him, betray him, or simply fail to understand what he’s trying to express, and every time he thinks he’s found a life and a purpose, it’s yanked away. In the end, the story itself is his purpose, because by telling it, he can hopefully make you understand him and see him as he is.
(It’s a side topic, but the character who fascinates me the most is Sybil, an innocent, wholesome young woman who’s completely divorced from the fact she has a libido. Bad girls want sex, and she’s not a bad girl. But her perception of a Black Man is a physically powerful rapist, so if she hangs around Black Men enough, maybe one of them will rape her and she’ll be helpless to stop him. She’s built so many walls that could easily be broken if she were willing to ask for and openly enjoy sex, but she’s not a bad person or someone who intentionally causes harm. The narrator even likes her, though he doesn’t have it in him to play along with her delusions.)
Anyway, this is why I talk so much about invisibility in the context of bigotry, and why I think the root of so many problems is the failure to understand that another person truly exists. A lot of arguments I see, on Tumblr and elsewhere, are based in the idea that *Outgroup* can be boiled down to one or two simplistic archetypes that act or think identically and should be treated identically. But people exist beyond archetypes, and if you don’t observe them on an individual level, there are a lot of things you’re never going to perceive.
Fiction for Utilitarians: Loophole
Dec. 8th, 2018 06:22 pm
I once read a book called Little Fuzzy, which was about the discovery of childlike animals that might or might not be sapient. It’s one of the few science fiction classics from before the 1970s that’s aged well, and I fully intend to write a post about it if and when I ever reread it. In the meantime, the closest thing I’ve seen to another story like Little Fuzzy is a fanfic for a webcomic I’ve never read.
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