{"id":55274,"date":"2023-03-28T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2023-03-28T04:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=55274"},"modified":"2023-03-18T18:12:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T22:12:08","slug":"money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=55274","title":{"rendered":"Money"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, it’s been nine months since Dad’s been gone, and about seven since I began writing here. This has offered a lot of time to mope and brood, or, you know, ‘think’, whatever you want to call it. In that time, I’ve had a lot<\/em> of writing ideas. Everything from games I’ve had thoughts on, to projects I’ve been working on; D&D, commentary, Minecraft, you name it. I’ve had enough material that I could likely kick the site back into at least three or four posts a week, but…Houston, we have a problem.<\/p>\n

See, there’s sort of an elephant-in-the-room issue that makes talking about, well, anything <\/em>feel redundant and repetitive. I want to talk about my love-hate relationship with Stardew Valley, my reasoning for having a thousand ‘smart’ devices, my favorite children’s MMO, and every issue I have with Wizards of the Coast. But, at the end of the day, what I have to say about all those things has a common denominator which would get old to write about very, very fast.<\/p>\n

Everything is a monopoly, and every creative decision I want to talk about boils down to money, not actual people. People are interesting, they make independent decisions and sometimes bonkers bad ones. Nuance and storytelling, ignorance and narrow world views, those are things we can talk about. Why CEO #34 made a piss-poor decision that will only really<\/em> hurt employees and consumers and land him with a four week paid holiday isn’t fun and snappy conversation, it’s fucking depressing.
\n<\/p>\n

I won’t lie to myself and wish I was was alive and grown three decades ago when money hadn’t sunk its claws into the video game market. I’m queer and physically disabled, the testing to confirm my diagnoses didn’t even exist back then, but, god, I wish things were more interesting now. Why does the protagonist feel so bland in (insert franchise here) game? Oh, that’s easy: money. Why doesn’t this really cool tech exist even though it would help a lot of people? Oh, another easy one: money.<\/p>\n

This means even bad decisions on a writer’s part make me feel like shit to complain about. Because, you know what, if it’s stupid enough to feel like I have a real opinion on it, at least that’s a human error. It’s sort of like a mistake in your box of grocery store sugar cookies. Like, oh wow, it’s different from the others, cool. As long as it’s edible I don’t really care, and the error makes it more interesting than the two hundred other boxes.<\/p>\n

Like I said, I’m not as politically averse as my dad was, but that doesn’t mean I want to turn this into an anti-capitalist, angry echo chamber. I am frustrated, but frankly I’m not changing the world by bitching about it, all I’d end up accomplishing is being pissed off all the time and taking a bunch of internet people with me.<\/p>\n

So, here’s what we’re going to do. Because there are<\/em> still opinions left to have, and it sucks to feel like I’m at the mercy of this stupid elephant. This post is here, and I will jovially link back to it when money is the core of an issue, acknowledge it, and move on. CEO #34 gets enough attention, and my energy is better put enjoying the bit of humanity left in this stupid industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, it’s been nine months since Dad’s been gone, and about seven since I began writing here. This has offered a lot of time to mope and brood, or, you know, ‘think’, whatever you want to call it. In that time, I’ve had a lot of writing ideas. Everything from games I’ve had thoughts on, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[618],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epilogue"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55274","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=55274"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55304,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55274\/revisions\/55304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}