So I was reading the newspaper and on the sports column, one of the guy was writing that how this week is when the Special Olympics begin, so that means it’s easy going for him for the next week because he just has to write about a heartwarming story of a guy who ran a marathon with a pogo stick because he didn't have legs or whatever, but instead he’ll actually try to write something else that was not a filler piece. I don’t remember what the article is about, but that’s a very good point. Recently I saw Diablo 3 making a tribute to someone on their team who died and they made an announcement about how Kanai’s Cube is named after some guy with the same name that died. I mean, I get that they probably did it thinking they’re doing a good thing as opposed to publicity stunt, but this isn’t exactly a new idea. I’m remembered of a scene in Azumanga Daioh when Yukari is watching TV with her colleague and it’s like ‘after the commercial break, a heartwarming rescue of…’ and then Yukari turned the channel to something else, saying she’s not interested in that. There’s nothing additional to this. She just didn’t like it and didn’t want to waste time watching it.
There was a time in EQ1 where there was this healer who was diagnose to be terminally ill and she still healed (and sucked at it), and for that matter I have no idea if the healer was really female or really terminally ill. Or maybe during that time when you’re doing WoW for the world first kill of whatever, your MT walked 5 miles in snow uphill both ways and were shot by anti-gaming fanatics but he still made the raid and MTed the boss for the world first kill, and promptly died as the boss went down and we let the loot expire in his honor. Okay the latter probably never happened, but if it did, is that an awesome story or a dumb one? Well it probably depends on whether you’re a fan of WoW or not. Even if you take the generic ‘guy takes a bullet for the team’ war stories, if you ask the guys on the other side of the war they’d obviously tell you that guy got in the way and died foolishly or even made things worse because more of the bad guys survived due to that one guy. These stories are inherently subjective and yet it almost feels like whoever wrote them is like, “Soandso died! You must be a bad guy if it didn’t move you!” It seems like a crutch when you have no argument/talent/whatever. If it’s fiction just make someone die heroically or blow up or whatever (One Piece tends to do this a lot, without anyone actually dying). If it’s real life and everyone is bashing you, just tell them that you were so dedicated to your task of selling hot dogs that you didn’t get to see your mother on her death bed because you can’t let down the guys who were depending on your hot dogs to survive (that was probably one of the stories Bill Plaschike wrote for LA Times, it’s like every guy that worked for LA Dodgers had a story like that).
If I don’t like you as a writer I’m not going to care about you writing about a guy running a marathon without legs (especially if your writing still sucks). If I don’t like your game I don’t care how many programmers died to deliver this code. I’m actually sort of a sucker for sob stories, but don’t expect me to just magically lower all my standards because you had a sob story. Those who do the greatest good are the ones you don’t know about (and this applies to evil just as well). If there is truly a great good behind whatever the topic is, you wouldn’t have to remind us how soandso was heroic/brave/funny/whatever because it would be obvious just from the deeds.
There was a time in EQ1 where there was this healer who was diagnose to be terminally ill and she still healed (and sucked at it), and for that matter I have no idea if the healer was really female or really terminally ill. Or maybe during that time when you’re doing WoW for the world first kill of whatever, your MT walked 5 miles in snow uphill both ways and were shot by anti-gaming fanatics but he still made the raid and MTed the boss for the world first kill, and promptly died as the boss went down and we let the loot expire in his honor. Okay the latter probably never happened, but if it did, is that an awesome story or a dumb one? Well it probably depends on whether you’re a fan of WoW or not. Even if you take the generic ‘guy takes a bullet for the team’ war stories, if you ask the guys on the other side of the war they’d obviously tell you that guy got in the way and died foolishly or even made things worse because more of the bad guys survived due to that one guy. These stories are inherently subjective and yet it almost feels like whoever wrote them is like, “Soandso died! You must be a bad guy if it didn’t move you!” It seems like a crutch when you have no argument/talent/whatever. If it’s fiction just make someone die heroically or blow up or whatever (One Piece tends to do this a lot, without anyone actually dying). If it’s real life and everyone is bashing you, just tell them that you were so dedicated to your task of selling hot dogs that you didn’t get to see your mother on her death bed because you can’t let down the guys who were depending on your hot dogs to survive (that was probably one of the stories Bill Plaschike wrote for LA Times, it’s like every guy that worked for LA Dodgers had a story like that).
If I don’t like you as a writer I’m not going to care about you writing about a guy running a marathon without legs (especially if your writing still sucks). If I don’t like your game I don’t care how many programmers died to deliver this code. I’m actually sort of a sucker for sob stories, but don’t expect me to just magically lower all my standards because you had a sob story. Those who do the greatest good are the ones you don’t know about (and this applies to evil just as well). If there is truly a great good behind whatever the topic is, you wouldn’t have to remind us how soandso was heroic/brave/funny/whatever because it would be obvious just from the deeds.
