The Queue: Another day of existing

Another day come, another day gone. That’s how days work, I think.

So let’s Queue.

Are you suggesting they all be converted into the literal Jelly Cat? Dozens, hundreds, thousands of Jelly Cats? Or are you suggesting that every NPC be converted into a Jelly Cat style model? I.e. human-shaped jelly blobs filled with a vaguely human number of bones?

I think you’ve got to go for the latter. Just having everyone be Jelly Cat is going to be really confusing. So you get each race with their own jelly shape and size and bone assortment. Possibly with different shades of jelly, for more variety.

I think this could work. Maybe it’s a genetic mutation sweeping Azeroth — we are all jelly now — and unites the factions and races under a single jelly banner. I could be down with that.

I don’t think the problem is with the word: it’s with the interpretation. Saying “I like X” does not inherently mean “I agree with everything X does” or “I hate Y” — and yet in the polarized gaming community, it’s often taken that way.

And once it’s taken that way, the arguments that follow are inevitable.

We can be particularly unkind to one another, considering that we are all here because we love the same games and the same stories. We have tons of things in common and yet we focus on these sole points: you like something I don’t like or you don’t like something I like.

The problem is the community, and I’m not sure inventing new words will help. Even if we had succinct, precise terminology to clearly say “I think Sylvanas has an interesting narrative, and I want to know what happens next even though what she did at Teldrassil was monstrous,” would someone determined to think that means you support her actions will simply stop?

Gamers are the problem and gamers are the solution. We have to learn to accept others’ opinions and to remember the common ground between us rather than rushing to judgement. And when people aren’t doing that, we need to call them out, teach them (or at least teach anyone watching) that it isn’t an acceptable way to act, and drown out their voices with more positive ones.

Admittedly, that is neither quick nor easy — but I don’t think coming up with a new vocabulary designed primarily to keep people from jumping to rash assumptions is going to solve the problem on its own. We need to make the community itself more understanding.

I only have an answer to the second one: Arfus.

Hahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaa! Ha!

Okay, okay, let me catch my breath over here.

Whew.

No. The answer is no.

If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to be here writing the Queue.

That’s all for today, everyone. As usual, Mitch will be here tomorrow and I’ll be back on Friday. Have a good one, folks.