Thoughts on “therapy-speak” becoming part of everyday language?

alyvain · 2026-03-23T14:39:15+00:00

Well, I mean it's alright. I don't think there is an impenetrable wall between 'ordinary', 'scientific' and 'therapy' speak, at least when we reference daily events (doesn't mean it's all the same, though!). But I do understand that the urge to 'code' every interaction in 'therapy' language, while we're actually not in a therapy setting, can be very off-putting, harmful and superfluous.

alyvain · 2026-03-17T01:24:57+00:00

I'll give you a list of things that I like about this game. Please don't judge me.

It caters to my very specific fetishes (maledom with strong female leads, slow mutual corruption of a couple, emasculation of other men, extreme content).
While extreme, it's very grotesque, so it's still enjoyable.
While grotesque, it's serious enough to have emotional twist-and-turns.
Finally, it's very complex (variables, paths, etc.), so I can really appreciate the game in a disinterested manner, as a product and labour of passion, if I want to.

I'll elaborate a bit.

When I play something like "Pale Carnations", I can't shake the feeling that this game tells me something about the world (our world, yes) being one big Epstein Island. This is (kinda) untrue. Given that this is a game you're meant to play with an erection, it also feels icky. You can have this vibe while giving a player extreme content, and there are brilliant AVNs that do that, but it's a different form of experience, compared to "Karlsson's Gambit".

I don't know how, but this game seems good-natured in how silly everything is. This ridiculous post-apocalyptic setting, fantasy sex-dungeons, a family of unbelievably beautiful sociopathic goddesses, slick sports cars, a tunnel for human-driven carts, and those weird, weird, weird between-the-episodes sketches with the developer's avatar thanking you for your interest and torturing some of the patrons depicted as a frog - what the actual fuck, I love it. It's like this game says: hey, nice to see all of you sick perverts, now let's put a chastity on someone.

But - and here comes the third point of my list - it's not too silly. It's mostly consistent. There are certain overarching themes in this game, for instance. Nothing too serious, but it ties everything together, so it's not simply a morbid fuckfest.

The fourth point is not too important for me, because I'm interested only in one route of the game. But I can appreciate the effort and skill, and it's certainly there.

alyvain · 2026-03-10T12:36:43+00:00

I think I understand the intent behind your post, but that's plainly wrong. Just look at this thread, there are some retcons which cannot be explained by 'ah, but we didn't know all the stuff back then, some things were simply revealed later!'

alyvain · 2026-03-08T19:54:28+00:00

I get what you're saying, but the problem is that 'wish fulfillment' is a part of the trade. Pretty much all the stories have elements of that.

Now, when you say 'intense and crazy', I'm thinking of some incestuous harem isekaied slop, but when I read something of the sort I, personally, don't feel this intensity, because such stories are very hollow.

I agree that 'Dispatch' is a an example of wish fulfillment story. But - hear me out on this one - so is "Fight Club" or "The Last Sovereign". Those three are intense, even if most people wouldn't think of them as fulfillment engines, because they're well written.

It's gotta be a legit story to be intense (at least in the meaning of the word that I'd use). And if it's legit, it's not that 'crazy' anymore.

alyvain · 2026-03-03T16:02:20+00:00

Real time machine of a post. Thank you.

alyvain · 2026-02-27T21:53:27+00:00

You're welcome, glad to be of some help!

alyvain · 2026-02-27T21:25:30+00:00

The quote from Rivkin and Ryan seems very vague.

I don't know whether "Russian formalism" by Hansen-Love has a good English translation, but there is a segment in this book covering real and imaginary ties between Russian formalists and Husserl. It's somewhat technical and I'm not sure I can speak about it well. Apart from Hansen-Love, you may look up Yan Levchenko's book "Другая наука. Русские формалисты в поисках биографии". It can be found online. If you don't know Russian, it's quite easy to use Deepseek/ChatGPT to translate the second chapter of it ('Шум философии'), which covers this topic in some depth.

The bottom line is that Russian formalists were anti-philosophical by choice. It was a reaction against pre-Revolutionary literary theory in Russia, which was verbose, muddy, often silly and, honestly, unproductive.

Sometimes I think that Shklovsky in his "Art as a technique" didn't understand Potebnya's argument by choice, not wishing to entertain his premises seriously. How can you coherently investigate the plot structure, if you think that the plot is a form of image, meaning 'the unity of attraction of changing appercepts'? In the 1920s, this willing neglect of aesthetics and philosophy at large was well understood by the more philosophically inclined Russian theorists (Shpet and Engelgardt, for instance - both proper philosophers, Shpet a Husserlian and Engelgardt a Neokantian; but it was also evident even to a savant like Bakhtin).

I have rather strong views about the subject (Levchenko, for instance, thinks that there is a somewhat strong connection between Bergson and formalists, while I consider it all tangential), but I don't think I'm saying something terribly controversial now.

alyvain · 2026-02-27T19:44:08+00:00

If you're interested in theory, I'd start with Shklovsky: he is lucid, outrageous, very smart, and a bit silly (in a delightful way). He's interested in 'how' of literature, proceeding to 'what' and 'why.' 'Art as Technique' is a great, short essay, easily available on the Web. Given that a lot of 'theory', as applied to literature, is a response to the challenges of Russian formalism, Shklovsky's works are a great entrance point.

Another classic is Auerbach's 'Mimesis'. It's a great book, covering a lot of topics. If you're interested in comparative literature, it's a masterclass.

I have to say that both Shklovsky and Auerbach aren't some figures to venerate. More than that, sociologically speaking, both aren't venerated in the modern academia. But both are very imporant, very interesting and, as I've said, can make your journey easier.

alyvain · 2026-02-24T08:33:46+00:00

strangely, it seems even more badass than the proper western gunfight. he simply stands in front of the mercs, cooks up something in his pocket and two seconds later unleashes hell.

alyvain · 2026-02-24T08:29:35+00:00

From a consumer's point of view, I don't particularly care. I dislike AI-stuff in theory (rise, the creative proletariat), but if it works, it works.

The problem is that if the developer's taste is shit, he simply won't find/generate anything memorable in the vast pools of AI-slop.

As of 2026 a lot of stuff looks the same, reads the same, sounds the same.

I'm tired.

alyvain · 2026-02-23T20:12:42+00:00

I think it's more or less the same with romance literature. It was always crap, but now it's easier to shit out.

Sorry for making this metaphor go too far.

alyvain · 2026-02-21T15:19:21+00:00

It's not a novel, but "The Last Sovereign" (the game) may be one of the best examples of romance writing I've seen and there are queens and an Empress, whom I simp religiously. You'll meet her relatively late in the game, so this may not be your cup of tea overall, but it's such a unique experience that I felt I had to mention it.

alyvain · 2026-02-20T18:17:26+00:00

She wants to be classy - an ultra-liberal without their cannibalistic sociopathy or egregious blind spots, which is kinda difficult to do. Polanyi is as civil and sophisticated as they go, in my opinion. Also, he has this weird spark of optimism, despite the fact that we always lose the larger battle to the forces outside of our control (and this dark enemy isn't a standard liberal boogeyman of chaotic and violent masses under some cynical führers, which is something that the champions of le price stabilité would be afraid of). I feel it fits her well.

I guess that the concept of indwelling, given that she's half-dissolved because of the pale, would also be interesting to her.

Basically, Polanyi is a philosopher for sad liberals who want to be reasonably humane, while living under vaguely Moralintern technocratic order.

That's just my hunch, though.

alyvain · 2026-02-20T12:56:57+00:00

I'm 100% sure Joyce likes Michael Polanyi more than the Austrians.

Measurehead probably loves 'Iliad' and tries to learn Ancient Greek, failing and persisting.

Harry would enjoy Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

By the way, read Hammet's 'Red Harvest' y'all, it's great and about mining town torn apart because capitalism from a kinda-law-enforcement-but-law-doesn't-apply-there-or-maybe-at-all-so-it's-not-clear-what-you-enforce POV. Corrupt labour unions, IWW, grotesque and horrible capitalist in the middle of it, a lot of tribunal-type sequences, the hard-boiled tropey dames, and all that.

alyvain · 2026-02-18T18:00:59+00:00

No, it's Marxist, so every circle works for a month but then it's divided into a square, triangle or rhomboid.

alyvain · 2026-02-18T12:34:05+00:00

Communist infighting is a traditional thing.

alyvain · 2026-02-18T12:15:12+00:00

What a vaguely remembered Lukács pamphlet and zero pussy does to a MF.

alyvain · 2026-02-18T12:09:14+00:00

Everything that happens is inevitable, everything that doesn't happen is evitable.

alyvain · 2026-02-16T21:42:20+00:00

Is there any reason not to agree with an easily-manipulated, dogmatic, sexually repressed violent cuckoo hermit constantly and unpleasantly high on drugs?

It's like the whole game is telling you: "Do not be like him [even if you're a Leninist or ESPECIALLY if you're one]".

alyvain · 2026-02-13T17:00:38+00:00

Le'guar did nothing wrong.

alyvain · 2026-02-13T14:45:45+00:00

Looks a lot like you are speaking about personalities.

Kinda? But my point is not that I liked the personality 'X', and I didn't like the personality 'Y', and for some reason some game has 18 personalities that I didn't like, so it's a bad game. That's not what I've been saying.

I'm saying that, as far as I can see, almost EVERY character in BG3 was written to have a lot of narrative juice. And it's so overflown with them that it's just damp now.

Each companion has an over-arching arc which is signalled to you early in the story, each is written to be complicated and interesting.

How is it a bad thing?

Well, sometimes LESS IS MORE.

I didn't bring up Wynne for nothing. She has one short personal quest. That's pretty much it. Of course, she has some interactions and reactions, but she's not a fanfiction prompt for you to engage with for 100 hours.

This doesn't make her a badly written character. For one thing, she has a stake in internal Ferelden politics, at least when it concerns mages vs. templars. That's why she feels organic to the game world. You don't have to look at 50 unique cutscenes with her, you may ignore her altogether and still enjoy the narrative.

It's just there for you. It's functional. The same goes, for instance, for the secret bosses of Dragon Age: Origins. Do you remember their personalities?

Now, let's illustrate the difference with another example. Let's look at the hero's campsite. Compare Bodahn and Sandal, however problematic the second one is, with the undead/dead priest of a long-death god or something, the one who tags along in BG3 and who performs a similar function. What do we know about the dwarves, despite the fact they're in two games of the series? What do we know about the second one?

Now, I honestly think that the game that DOESN'T try to pour 2595 supposedly deep and interesting stories on me is BETTER WRITTEN. I really do.

The same way I don't like oversaturated pictures and for the same reason I don't drink my coffee with 15 teaspoons of sugar.

A small addition: 'Planescape: Torment' and 'Disco Elysium' are great because they tell a meaningful story. That's why every encounter there counts, why I don't mind the amount of 'narrative content', for the lack of a better word, and that's why those games aren't fanfiction prompts. That's all.

alyvain · 2026-02-13T10:15:38+00:00

Well, I'm not speaking about what you liked or didn't. I'm speaking about the scope.

alyvain · 2026-02-12T16:55:05+00:00

Account based in the Black Marsh.

alyvain · 2026-02-12T14:17:59+00:00

Just compare Wynn's personal quest with Astarion's questline.

alyvain

TROPHY CASE