Sunday, November 17, 2024

What is Even Happening?

If the previously concluded election didn't prove we lived in interesting times*, I opened my email this morning to discover this:

I use Outlook for my email. So what?

Yes, the New York Times is covering WoW's 20th anniversary.

For independent confirmation that yes, the NYT is doing this, here's the cover of Sunday's Arts and Leisure section:

Any excuse to visit a bookstore...

You can see Vin Diesel on the cover, South Park, a very stylized Tauren who's more Minotaur than Tauren, a generic-looking Orc (sorry, NOT Thrall), and a Red Flight dragon. I get the feeling the artist is busy shouting "FOR THE HORDE!" somewhere...

But between this acknowledgement of WoW's continued existence, we also have had celebrations of the Granddaddy of RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, and it's 50th anniversary. You know that D&D is finally big enough when it gets the Time Magazine special issue treatment:

I got it at Target --of all places-- about
a month or two ago.

I'm just not ready for this pop culture acknowledgement of our geeky pastimes. 

Poltergeist is kind of appropriate for
all of this. From tenor.com.

I still remember the Satanic Panic, and I know that there are still a significant number of people who still believe that all things RPG are Satanic (my own family included). People who think that those times are gone have never interacted with the Satanic Panic crowd; if given half a chance, they will attempt to assert their own morality on everybody else because they simply can't understand the concept of "mind your own business". Oh, they understand it, but only when it applies to them, not other people. They feel like they're doing the "proper thing" by attempting to impose their morality on others, because they want to share in the path to Heaven with everybody; the concept that religion and faith are a personal matter for other people as well as themselves just doesn't compute.

This. From Medium.com.

Here's to another anniversary in 10 years!



*As the saying "May you live in interesting times" implies.

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