{"id":54751,"date":"2022-09-11T12:28:22","date_gmt":"2022-09-11T16:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54751"},"modified":"2022-09-13T17:39:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-13T21:39:40","slug":"the-thieves-guild-because-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=54751","title":{"rendered":"The Thieves Guild: Because Reasons"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was fourteen years old and playing Skyrim for the first time. My poor, ancient computer just barely chugged through it, constantly crashing during loading screens or during important cutscenes; and I was in love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had played games I\u2019d loved before (mostly Nintendo classics like Super Mario Sunshine and Ocarina of time) but Skyrim was my first real love in the video game world. There was something special about it, I would put on headphones and just vanish for hours into this little world, like a book I couldn\u2019t put down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of this was likely due to the fact that I played it during a tough part of my growing up. It was 2011, about the time in the <\/span>Twelve-Year Mistake<\/span><\/a> when we kids got the news; the house we grew up in was being foreclosed on, and there was nothing we could do about it. Being 14, or anyone, that was world-shattering, and Skyrim offered escapism from that whole mess.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It also offered a way for me to connect with my dad. He binge-played Skyrim at the same time I did, the first and only time we would ever line up on a game we were playing that obsessively. I could double up on my obsession by going down to his office, and watching him play his game, and then, when I was done, I could go play it myself. We didn\u2019t talk much, he was often mentally working on columns in his head as he played, but that time meant the world to me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This all compiled together to be just, in hindsight, what must have been the funniest moment of parenting ever for my dad.<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019d spent weeks, months, silently playing this game in tandem. Him writing articles that helped keep our family barely afloat, and me disassociating wildly at the wild areas between Whiterun and Riverwood and pickpocketing away the clothes of every town guard in sight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Hee hoo<\/div>
Hee hoo<\/div><\/p>\n

So I can\u2019t imagine his horror when we finally sit down to actually talk about the damn thing, that he finds out all I\u2019ve been doing in all this time is making character after character to replay my all-time favorite quest line; <\/span>the thieves guild<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before he could stop me, I announced loudly that it is my favorite quest in the whole game. The conversation went something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

INT-The Kitchen-Day<\/p>\n

Shamus is making his tea, making pleasant Skyrim conversation with his oldest child, who he is excited to find has \u2018woken up\u2019 to media and can talk about it on his level. At last, the goal as a parent, raising a kid that can talk in-depth about retrospectives. He is visibly proud.<\/i><\/p>\n

Bay:<\/h4>\n

And the thieves guild!<\/p>\n

(He has just finished writing a five-part series over the many issues with the thieves guild, he is excited. His kid has noticed the problems with the wreck of a quest line! He didn\u2019t even have to point it out to them! He has succeeded as a parent!)<\/p>\n

Shamus:<\/h4>\n

Oh! Yes! The writing!<\/p>\n

(Shamus has interrupted in his excitement. Bay cuts him off in theirs.)<\/p>\n

Bay:<\/h4>\n

Yes! The writing! Right?! It\u2019s awesome!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(Shamus visibly deflates, he has failed. There is nothing he can do, perhaps his other two children will actually have their cognitive reasoning skills grow in. Disappointing.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

He tried to set me straight after that and sent me off to read his analysis. But at the end of the day, I still stuck to my guns; the thieves guild was the best damn piece of writing in the game, and now I would be attempting to defend it objectively. <\/em>So, so much worse.<\/p>\n

Spite drove me to try and defend every plothole, try and find every redeeming feature within it. Something had to be objectively good about this quest, this story I loved so much. Hindsight tells me that I had a crush on KarliahWhy? Oh god, why?<\/span><\/span><\/span> and that the quest writing succeeded at making me feel like I could do something. I was in a place where I felt powerless and frustrated, and a quest in which I could take a clear problem, and fix it, was cathartic at the time. Sure, there were others, but that one was uniquely suited to appeal to me particularly. It’s right there in the writing about the Twelve-Year Mistake<\/span><\/a>. The money is going somewhere, we can’t figure out where, and we’re going broke.<\/p>\n

The gold! The jewels! The money for the electric bill! The resolution of this screenshot! Gone!<\/div>
The gold! The jewels! The money for the electric bill! The resolution of this screenshot! Gone!<\/div><\/p>\n

The writing of the thieves guild made no sense, but hell, nothing did to me yet. At fourteen nothing makes sense anyway.<\/em> If I can accept all the other bullshit the real world is throwing at me, why can’t Karliah have a magic paralyzing poison dart we never see again?<\/p>\n

I was likely also fixated on it due to the gameplayStealth will always be my first love. When done right, that is.<\/span><\/span>, but it was the writing he had criticized, so that’s where I focused. I read his analysis, I knew he was right, and that was almost more irritating. He had commenters like this from time to time, people he often thought of as ‘die-hard fanboys’ of a certain subject. He would be frustrated when they would sing the praises of a game he was trying to complain about, and worse, tell him he was an idiot for complaining. As a writer who worked particularly hard to be objective about things like pointing out plotholes and gameplay issues, it could be frustrating when people got defensive about what he was working on. He tried to keep others in mind, be mindful of games with large fanbases, and yet still:<\/p>\n

‘No, you don’t understand! The poisoning of the keg made sense because…because reasons!’<\/p>\n

Yeah, plus his own kid doing it.<\/p>\n

I see where he was coming from, it must have felt like arguing with a conspiracy theorist. No matter how many good points he made, someone was there willing to fight tooth and nail about it, lost in what appeared to be a delusion beyond his fixing.<\/p>\n

It makes me sad that we disagreed on the subject. Neither of us knew it at the time, but it turned out to be a truly unique chance to connect with one another. We played other games we both liked, but only with Skyrim did we discover and obsess over it at the same time. If only I’d swallowed my pride we could have looked at another quest to talk about, if only he hadn’t bothered himself so thoroughly with the fear of raising an idiot. Maybe we could have just enjoyed the connection it gave us. But I digress.<\/p>\n

I’m going to complain about games here, and unfortunately for you all, I’m not quite as politically avoidant as he wasAlthough I hate conflict just as much as he did. I pinky promise, when I bring up hot-button topics, I am suffering just as much as you are.<\/span><\/span>. I’m going to talk about things like the writing, the gameplay, and when it failed a group of players, even of the minority sort. But rest assured, I’m not calling anyone ‘bad’ for liking any game. Even if it was poorly written, or ableist, or sexist, or what have you. It’s not on the consumer to feel guilty about that, it’s on the people in charge of making the damn things to do better. At worst, the only thing that’s on the consumer to do, is to be understanding when people do complain, and advocate for better where they can.<\/p>\n

But sometimes, a game is just good, ‘for reasons’, and that’s okay. The thieves guild still rocks in my book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was fourteen years old and playing Skyrim for the first time. My poor, ancient computer just barely chugged through it, constantly crashing during loading screens or during important cutscenes; and I was in love.\u00a0 I had played games I\u2019d loved before (mostly Nintendo classics like Super Mario Sunshine and Ocarina of time) but Skyrim […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618,16],"tags":[209],"class_list":["post-54751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue","category-personal","tag-skyrim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54751"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54789,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54751\/revisions\/54789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}