5 ms·

what's the irony here ? asking for a friend.

sdabdoub 9y ago
I'm guessing it's the "could of" instead of the correct "could have" in the GP.
glibgil 9y ago
13 years in a designated place of learning is worth less than 1 year in unstructured freedom, according to OP. It's ironic because for OP a place where you are suppose to learn is not a good place to learn
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  I learned more about technical writing from The Elements of Style and a one-semester university course that I ever did from 13 years of public schooling. I learned more about creative writing from being an immortal on a MUD and contributing to the underground newspaper than from anything I ever did in classes. What I learned from the public school system was that I was not a good writer, and didn't know how to appreciate literature. As it turns out, that was antipodal from the truth. I have since re-synthesized the available data and revised my conclusion: my interests in school simply did not align with the curriculum mandated by school administrators. My grades were a measure of correlation rather than indicative of causation. For instance, my teachers made me read Dante's Inferno. If Dennis Miller ever dropped the name Vanni Fucci into an obscure joke, I would probably get it, still having vague memories of the Malebolge filled with thieves and bitey reptiles. But I consider Planescape: Torment to be a better work of art. It isn't in a standard poetic form, though. Torment is a bit tougher to read in its entirety, and no one would dare to allude to bronze spheres to make a point without some inkling that the audience has played it. It is one thing to be exposed to art that has been blessed as a canonical masterwork in a controlled, sterile classroom environment: it is another thing entirely to recognize art in the wilds of your own life, and to recognize its worth because you feel emotion in its presence. When the system values the former over the latter, it has failed in its purpose. It failed me. So I consider myself fortunate that I taught myself to program in BASIC and C many years before my public schooling system decided to offer a programming course in Pascal. Had that been my first exposure to software development, I would certainly not be here, writing this, now.
  - ashark 9y ago
    > But I consider Planescape: Torment to be a better work of art. It isn't in a standard poetic form, though. Mmm. There's some of that, yes, but I think it'd fail for not being so entirely sublime as the best canonical works of prose and poetry (and art, generally). It avoids some of the drudgery of its genre, yes, but while much of the "waiting for the pathfinding to take The Nameless One from one side of this room I've already seen 10 times to the other" might be fine in a narrow sort of way, given enough of it (and there is enough of it), that probably takes it out of the running for any sort of grand cross-medium canonical great-art-of-all-time collection. Unless you cleverly add constant wonder and discovery or some kind of emotional connection to the gamey-because-this-is-what-games-do bits (or cut them, somehow, without making it Not A Game) it's like a film with a great story and acting, but poorly-selected shot framing and uninspired editing constantly working against it. Say it's in a genre you like a lot, though, and maybe you'd feel put-out that it's not being shown in film courses, because you don't notice the parts that aren't so good or could easily have been much better and better served the film's purpose, and besides most of the movies in the genre you like are that way, so what's the big deal? Certainly you like it much better than Kurosawa or Truffaut or whoever's in the curriculum. FWIW the only real masterpiece of a game I can think of that I've played, in that kind of broad all-of-human-art sense, with a real understanding of its sources, its direction, art in a larger sense, the games that have come before it, and the way games work and how it can use that constantly to its advantage for more than just occupying the player's time, is Kentucky Route Zero. I've never seen the game-parts of games used in such a literary fashion before, with everything else also coming together nicely. Just beautiful. And I've played and enjoyed lots of games. [EDIT] The Witness shows signs of qualifying, too, but I haven't played enough to be sure, and it's the kind of thing that needs good follow-through to fully work. Gotta get back to that one and finish it.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      But that's just it. Different art says different things to different people. To me, Inferno read like historical fan-fiction, where Dante put some well-known figures and some people that he just had some personal grudge against into his own version of Hell. The words were well chosen, but I didn't like it. Yet there it was, in my Norton Anthology. Someone liked it well enough to decide that I had to not only read it, but also dissect it and write BS essays about it. That's a horrible enough thing to do to art you actually enjoy, but to chop up and rehash something you feel nothing for is even worse. From my perspective now, as 2017-me, I wouldn't say that Planescape: Torment was "sublime". But 1999-me thought it was just the best thing to ever grace my hard drive. And 1999-me was able to look back on 1994-me and think "This is way better than Dante's Inferno." Dante took the concept of Gehennom from the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious tradition and turned it into an epic poem. Black Isle Studios took the Planescape campaign setting from D&D 2nd Ed. (aka AD&D) and turned it into an epic CRPG. In it, the ordered layers of Hell had to be renamed to Baator because of the moral panic from D&D 1st Ed. When Nameless One actually (re-)visited renamed Hell, I thought that the pillar of skulls was at least as good as anything Dante ever dreamed up, and the protagonist actually had a plot-essential reason to see it. I think I actually need the gamey bits. I have tried the artsy walking-simulator games where the story is on rails, and I don't like them. For me, an essential part of enjoying the art is in the discovery. I tend to like it more if I had to work to get it. So as tell-a-story games go, I much prefer something like The Stanley Parable over something like Dear Esther.
schoen 9y ago
I think the irony is that "could of" is often considered a nonstandard dialect form of "could have".

I'm guessing it's the "could of" instead of the correct "could have" in the GP.

13 years in a designated place of learning is worth less than 1 year in unstructured freedom, according to OP. It's ironic because for OP a place where you are suppose to learn is not a good place to learn

logfromblammo 9y ago
I learned more about technical writing from The Elements of Style and a one-semester university course that I ever did from 13 years of public schooling. I learned more about creative writing from being an immortal on a MUD and contributing to the underground newspaper than from anything I ever did in classes. What I learned from the public school system was that I was not a good writer, and didn't know how to appreciate literature. As it turns out, that was antipodal from the truth. I have since re-synthesized the available data and revised my conclusion: my interests in school simply did not align with the curriculum mandated by school administrators. My grades were a measure of correlation rather than indicative of causation. For instance, my teachers made me read Dante's Inferno. If Dennis Miller ever dropped the name Vanni Fucci into an obscure joke, I would probably get it, still having vague memories of the Malebolge filled with thieves and bitey reptiles. But I consider Planescape: Torment to be a better work of art. It isn't in a standard poetic form, though. Torment is a bit tougher to read in its entirety, and no one would dare to allude to bronze spheres to make a point without some inkling that the audience has played it. It is one thing to be exposed to art that has been blessed as a canonical masterwork in a controlled, sterile classroom environment: it is another thing entirely to recognize art in the wilds of your own life, and to recognize its worth because you feel emotion in its presence. When the system values the former over the latter, it has failed in its purpose. It failed me. So I consider myself fortunate that I taught myself to program in BASIC and C many years before my public schooling system decided to offer a programming course in Pascal. Had that been my first exposure to software development, I would certainly not be here, writing this, now.
- ashark 9y ago
  > But I consider Planescape: Torment to be a better work of art. It isn't in a standard poetic form, though. Mmm. There's some of that, yes, but I think it'd fail for not being so entirely sublime as the best canonical works of prose and poetry (and art, generally). It avoids some of the drudgery of its genre, yes, but while much of the "waiting for the pathfinding to take The Nameless One from one side of this room I've already seen 10 times to the other" might be fine in a narrow sort of way, given enough of it (and there is enough of it), that probably takes it out of the running for any sort of grand cross-medium canonical great-art-of-all-time collection. Unless you cleverly add constant wonder and discovery or some kind of emotional connection to the gamey-because-this-is-what-games-do bits (or cut them, somehow, without making it Not A Game) it's like a film with a great story and acting, but poorly-selected shot framing and uninspired editing constantly working against it. Say it's in a genre you like a lot, though, and maybe you'd feel put-out that it's not being shown in film courses, because you don't notice the parts that aren't so good or could easily have been much better and better served the film's purpose, and besides most of the movies in the genre you like are that way, so what's the big deal? Certainly you like it much better than Kurosawa or Truffaut or whoever's in the curriculum. FWIW the only real masterpiece of a game I can think of that I've played, in that kind of broad all-of-human-art sense, with a real understanding of its sources, its direction, art in a larger sense, the games that have come before it, and the way games work and how it can use that constantly to its advantage for more than just occupying the player's time, is Kentucky Route Zero. I've never seen the game-parts of games used in such a literary fashion before, with everything else also coming together nicely. Just beautiful. And I've played and enjoyed lots of games. [EDIT] The Witness shows signs of qualifying, too, but I haven't played enough to be sure, and it's the kind of thing that needs good follow-through to fully work. Gotta get back to that one and finish it.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    But that's just it. Different art says different things to different people. To me, Inferno read like historical fan-fiction, where Dante put some well-known figures and some people that he just had some personal grudge against into his own version of Hell. The words were well chosen, but I didn't like it. Yet there it was, in my Norton Anthology. Someone liked it well enough to decide that I had to not only read it, but also dissect it and write BS essays about it. That's a horrible enough thing to do to art you actually enjoy, but to chop up and rehash something you feel nothing for is even worse. From my perspective now, as 2017-me, I wouldn't say that Planescape: Torment was "sublime". But 1999-me thought it was just the best thing to ever grace my hard drive. And 1999-me was able to look back on 1994-me and think "This is way better than Dante's Inferno." Dante took the concept of Gehennom from the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religious tradition and turned it into an epic poem. Black Isle Studios took the Planescape campaign setting from D&D 2nd Ed. (aka AD&D) and turned it into an epic CRPG. In it, the ordered layers of Hell had to be renamed to Baator because of the moral panic from D&D 1st Ed. When Nameless One actually (re-)visited renamed Hell, I thought that the pillar of skulls was at least as good as anything Dante ever dreamed up, and the protagonist actually had a plot-essential reason to see it. I think I actually need the gamey bits. I have tried the artsy walking-simulator games where the story is on rails, and I don't like them. For me, an essential part of enjoying the art is in the discovery. I tend to like it more if I had to work to get it. So as tell-a-story games go, I much prefer something like The Stanley Parable over something like Dear Esther.

schoen 9y ago

I think the irony is that "could of" is often considered a nonstandard dialect form of "could have".