Post by Beelzebibble on Apr 7, 2016 15:59:29 GMT -5
Look, okay, we just celebrated, like, our twenty-fifth anniversary as a community or whatever, awesome, break out the party favors, go us. We can sit around telling each other how great we are all day. Fine. I'm on board. But all I'm saying is, where's the membership? What do we have to show for all these decades? Like fourteen active posters? We should be sitting on a MOUNTAIN of members by now. We should have so many members busting down the door, desperate to cut off a slice of this hot message board action for themselves, that we've got to preemptively ban a certain percentage of people every day just to keep this place from exploding. Like if their username contains the string "Hitler", or "ISIS", or "men's rights", or something, then we just go right ahead and ban them on sight. You know what I mean? Why aren't we there yet? Why aren't we rich and fat with subscription fees like those Something Awful guys? WHY IS IT ALL SLIPPING THROUGH OUR FINGERS.
Well, you know me. I'm not the guy to ask a question I don't already know the answer to. All it took was a couple minutes of hard thought-thinkin' for me to peg the problem. It's this RP business. I'm sorry, but this shit is just way too complicated. I try to read this stuff and my eyes just glaze over instantly, like two little munchkins at the doughnut factory. Everyone's got these ideas, and they're trying to go really fancy with their words to express these complicated concepts, and it's totally unreadable. I mean, nobody here is the next Dostoevsky, okay? We're not sitting on the trove of literary genius that will one day change the world. Let's drop the high and mighty for a second.
You ever read those Twilight books? My god! Stephenie Meyer is practically an illiterate! And the people loved it. I mean forget about truckload, they were buying those books by the trainload. There were so many people busting down the door at Barnes & Noble, desperate to cut off a slice of that hot vampire action, that they had to start preemptively refusing to sell to people if they were wearing t-shirts that said "Hitler" or etc. etc. etc. Okay? And Stephenie Meyer did that without ever, ever, successfully using a big word to mean what I guess big words are supposed to mean. Almost without fail, she went for the most artless, clumsy, fifth-grade prose she possibly could. You want to know how much money those books made her? I can't even say it. I can't even say it. If you speak that figure out loud, it summons the money demon out of a mirror, and if you're not a 1%er then he just stabs you right there.
People want dumb, is what I'm getting at. All we've got to do is dumb this RP nonsense down a little bit, make it a little more accessible, you know, lower the barrier for entry, and suddenly we could be running a community so big we could actually declare war on some of the smaller countries in Southeast Asia. And in that spirit, I present to you this. It is a text editor that flags any word you type in that's not one of the thousand most common words in English. You paste a big chunk of RP in there, you see what gets flagged, and you delete it and rewrite it until you can figure out a way to phrase it that only involves the most common words in the language. Boom. Everybody can read it, everyone can join in, everybody has a good time, dollar signs. Got it? Cool.
But you know me. I'm not the guy to suggest doing something I haven't already done. I already took this sucker for a test spin. Let's just poke a look at the results, shall we. This is Thyra's speech from (Dis)Orientation. What the hell's going on with that title, by the way, with the parentheses and everything, I mean we'll definitely have to change that, but never mind. That can wait. Just feast your eyes on the populist masterpiece below.
Thyra nodded, and rose from her seat. She approached the box for speaking, the excited talk of the students immediately falling to a quiet sound full of thoughts.
"Good morning, and hello, students and teachers of the Terminer School for Different Children. I am so glad that all of you could make it today, and I am excited when I look forward to working with each of you in the coming year. I am Thyra Russell, Person Who Handles Things and acting Person Who Leads of the school until further notice."
"We, ah, do have a Person Who Leads being paid by the school right now, but at this time they are in deep space in order to keep away a space rock as big as Kentucky which is approaching this green and blue space ball. So for as long as anyone can see, I will be doing both jobs."
She took a deep breath in, and took a drink from the not too warm or cold glass of water at the side of her box for speaking.
"Obviously, you all know the reason why you are here. However, so as to make things clear, allow me to make things clear. The reason we made this school is to help you to do the most that is possible with your lives, which means not only being your teachers in a usual class setting, but also being your teachers in how you should use your Powers, and also how fit into the world of people without ending up on the news in Winstone."
"Do not get the wrong idea that this is 'Charles Xavier's School for Raising Many Bright Kids as a Powered Force that Acts Like a Fighting Group No One Knows About'." Thyra raised her face, and took off her dark glasses with a slow move. Her gaze passed from student to student as she continued speaking. "You all have been smiled upon with amazing powers, and the things you have aren't possible to imagine. However, the world has grown to expect things of us that are not good. They see us as people who want to scare others, people who will do any work for money, people who make a living of killing others, people who take things that are not theirs, a group of stupid fighting people who are out for blood and who approach every problem by using our inner powers to do mean fighting acts."
"By and large," Thyra turned her eyes toward the floor, “they're right."
Dark quiet words could be heard all around the room.
"Enough." Thyra made her shoulders straight, and raised her voice. “I've been there, in the thick of it, ever since my powers became able to be seen at ten and two years old. I grew up in this. Me… my family, and everyone who lived in the houses around me were caught in the fight between two groups of Powers who hated each other, and I was the only--"
Her voice broke. Blinking the tears out of her eyes, she began again.
"I was the only person who lived. There was almost no one to set me on the right road, and I only ended up where I am today because I happened to run into a group of Powers who were trying their best to make the world a better place. God only knows where I'd be without their help and words. Hundreds, hundreds of hundreds of other Powers will never have that good thing."
"The way we Powers make life work causes us to look like children, mean people who don't use their heads, and people who hurt others. When those who don't have powers say that we're just a lot of people who don't care about being good and just go around killing others, what we've said is 'Okay, sure, how much are you willing to pay me to kill someone?' By the time I was ten and six, I had met more than five times ten people who liked to kill others over and over again. Every single close friend I had while I was growing up had done things they shouldn't have and that they could have been locked up for. We think that because we've got powers that make us very good at fighting, that should always be the first thing we try."
"I founded this school so that you all would have a chance to do better than that. The thing I hope for... the thing I ask God for, is to show not only you, but also the rest of the green and blue space ball, that there is a better way. We don't have to live our lives not knowing anything and just hurting others, we can be something so much more than what we've tried to be, than what all people expect of us. This is your chance to change everything."
Thyra carefully locked eyes with each student, her gaze open and warm.
"Please change everything."
Well, you know me. I'm not the guy to ask a question I don't already know the answer to. All it took was a couple minutes of hard thought-thinkin' for me to peg the problem. It's this RP business. I'm sorry, but this shit is just way too complicated. I try to read this stuff and my eyes just glaze over instantly, like two little munchkins at the doughnut factory. Everyone's got these ideas, and they're trying to go really fancy with their words to express these complicated concepts, and it's totally unreadable. I mean, nobody here is the next Dostoevsky, okay? We're not sitting on the trove of literary genius that will one day change the world. Let's drop the high and mighty for a second.
You ever read those Twilight books? My god! Stephenie Meyer is practically an illiterate! And the people loved it. I mean forget about truckload, they were buying those books by the trainload. There were so many people busting down the door at Barnes & Noble, desperate to cut off a slice of that hot vampire action, that they had to start preemptively refusing to sell to people if they were wearing t-shirts that said "Hitler" or etc. etc. etc. Okay? And Stephenie Meyer did that without ever, ever, successfully using a big word to mean what I guess big words are supposed to mean. Almost without fail, she went for the most artless, clumsy, fifth-grade prose she possibly could. You want to know how much money those books made her? I can't even say it. I can't even say it. If you speak that figure out loud, it summons the money demon out of a mirror, and if you're not a 1%er then he just stabs you right there.
People want dumb, is what I'm getting at. All we've got to do is dumb this RP nonsense down a little bit, make it a little more accessible, you know, lower the barrier for entry, and suddenly we could be running a community so big we could actually declare war on some of the smaller countries in Southeast Asia. And in that spirit, I present to you this. It is a text editor that flags any word you type in that's not one of the thousand most common words in English. You paste a big chunk of RP in there, you see what gets flagged, and you delete it and rewrite it until you can figure out a way to phrase it that only involves the most common words in the language. Boom. Everybody can read it, everyone can join in, everybody has a good time, dollar signs. Got it? Cool.
But you know me. I'm not the guy to suggest doing something I haven't already done. I already took this sucker for a test spin. Let's just poke a look at the results, shall we. This is Thyra's speech from (Dis)Orientation. What the hell's going on with that title, by the way, with the parentheses and everything, I mean we'll definitely have to change that, but never mind. That can wait. Just feast your eyes on the populist masterpiece below.
Thyra nodded, and rose from her seat. She approached the box for speaking, the excited talk of the students immediately falling to a quiet sound full of thoughts.
"Good morning, and hello, students and teachers of the Terminer School for Different Children. I am so glad that all of you could make it today, and I am excited when I look forward to working with each of you in the coming year. I am Thyra Russell, Person Who Handles Things and acting Person Who Leads of the school until further notice."
"We, ah, do have a Person Who Leads being paid by the school right now, but at this time they are in deep space in order to keep away a space rock as big as Kentucky which is approaching this green and blue space ball. So for as long as anyone can see, I will be doing both jobs."
She took a deep breath in, and took a drink from the not too warm or cold glass of water at the side of her box for speaking.
"Obviously, you all know the reason why you are here. However, so as to make things clear, allow me to make things clear. The reason we made this school is to help you to do the most that is possible with your lives, which means not only being your teachers in a usual class setting, but also being your teachers in how you should use your Powers, and also how fit into the world of people without ending up on the news in Winstone."
"Do not get the wrong idea that this is 'Charles Xavier's School for Raising Many Bright Kids as a Powered Force that Acts Like a Fighting Group No One Knows About'." Thyra raised her face, and took off her dark glasses with a slow move. Her gaze passed from student to student as she continued speaking. "You all have been smiled upon with amazing powers, and the things you have aren't possible to imagine. However, the world has grown to expect things of us that are not good. They see us as people who want to scare others, people who will do any work for money, people who make a living of killing others, people who take things that are not theirs, a group of stupid fighting people who are out for blood and who approach every problem by using our inner powers to do mean fighting acts."
"By and large," Thyra turned her eyes toward the floor, “they're right."
Dark quiet words could be heard all around the room.
"Enough." Thyra made her shoulders straight, and raised her voice. “I've been there, in the thick of it, ever since my powers became able to be seen at ten and two years old. I grew up in this. Me… my family, and everyone who lived in the houses around me were caught in the fight between two groups of Powers who hated each other, and I was the only--"
Her voice broke. Blinking the tears out of her eyes, she began again.
"I was the only person who lived. There was almost no one to set me on the right road, and I only ended up where I am today because I happened to run into a group of Powers who were trying their best to make the world a better place. God only knows where I'd be without their help and words. Hundreds, hundreds of hundreds of other Powers will never have that good thing."
"The way we Powers make life work causes us to look like children, mean people who don't use their heads, and people who hurt others. When those who don't have powers say that we're just a lot of people who don't care about being good and just go around killing others, what we've said is 'Okay, sure, how much are you willing to pay me to kill someone?' By the time I was ten and six, I had met more than five times ten people who liked to kill others over and over again. Every single close friend I had while I was growing up had done things they shouldn't have and that they could have been locked up for. We think that because we've got powers that make us very good at fighting, that should always be the first thing we try."
"I founded this school so that you all would have a chance to do better than that. The thing I hope for... the thing I ask God for, is to show not only you, but also the rest of the green and blue space ball, that there is a better way. We don't have to live our lives not knowing anything and just hurting others, we can be something so much more than what we've tried to be, than what all people expect of us. This is your chance to change everything."
Thyra carefully locked eyes with each student, her gaze open and warm.
"Please change everything."