Fortress of Perpetual Midnight - April 3rd, 2008

After the problem that prevented me from entering the first time, I found that Paizo also has a few free items† so you can find out about their setting and thus write things about stuff they already own, which is what helped me in the other one. One of the interesting things that I noticed is that the Queen of Korvosa is rumored to be sleeping with her female bodyguard. (Although it's only one sentence, at least they didn't feel the need to throw in anything claiming that's any more scandalous than any other affair, like in the one I mentioned earlier.) In any case, given the depictions of the King (it's debatable whether he was still alive at the time of the portrait) and Queen, one can hardly blame the rumormongers—or the couple, if it's true.

Of course, they're trying to run a business, so the information in the free stuff pales in comparison to the commercial products. Interestingly, they've chosen to do most of their background expansion in their adventure serials. As you can see from its pilot, the current one centers on city and the Queen. (The latter part is expanded in later issues, but those are heavy spoiler information.) In addition, I have an idea for an adventure set in Korvosa, so it may be worth buying those and/or the city guidebook to build up my knowledge for the next RPG Superstar contest.

In addition to this, Paizo is also making its own version of the RPG based on D&D v.3.5, so it will not have to be heavily updated. Sadly, they aren't allowing others to use it, so anyone else using the d20 System will have to do the same themselves to avoid having to make new rules every time the Wizards decide to replace the base. The guys who tried to make a better ruleset* (and succeeded, except that they didn't fix the most fundamental flaw enough; it's also compatible with Pathfinder) also require you to make a deal with them to use their enhancement, unlike the d20 System and OGL themselves.

*By the way, I hear that the original True20 setting includes a lot of characters who don't make pointless restrictions on whom they love based on what equipment they have.‡ I might look into that, too.

Edit (2008.04.05): †‡Updated here

It was somewhat ironic that the two letters to the editor that were printed in the hard copy of the J&C for the 1st (the two at the bottom here) were both in praise of bigotry because Jesus says so (?). I decided to hurry up and type this one once I found out that they actually don't allow you to view articles for free after a week has passed (thus showing that my job isn't quite as pointless as I thought). This factor means that I have no way of looking up exactly the context of the latter letter, but the former provides much material for me.

( For reference purposes )

Admittedly, the writer is not hateful in any way, and in a way, this makes it even more disturbing. She believes that she is right, and that her policies are for the good of the people involved. She doesn't say anything about religion, instead citing that it's "unnatural" and that the solution is to develop new artificial drugs to make the "patients" natural again, and that it is the right way of the world to be horrified and devastated when someone you know turns out to be gay. However, her assertion that something outside the norm is unnatural makes it difficult for me to think that she believes in evolution, which narrows the field somewhat. (I just heard on TV a few hours ago that 39% of Americans surveyed claimed to be Creationists, and that was somewhat disconcerting to me.)

These beliefs that you are right based on faith are a sticky subject. By definition, you believe that your beliefs are correct, and in the case of many Christian denominations, that means you believe that anyone who disagrees is going to hell unless you save her. This means that it is only morally right to make other beliefs illegal. The remark about usurping the Constitution above is related to the popular opinion that the Founding Fathers only intended freedom of religion to include Christianity (despite many of them being Deists), a claim that is obviously impossible to prove either way at this point. Personally, I believe that rights apply to everyone except those who harm others, not just those who are believed to be harming others by certain people, and that if the letter of the Declaration and Constitution doesn't mean that (which I think it does), it should be amended so.

Another difficult question is the problem of how people come to have faith in the first place. By definition, it cannot be based on any physical evidence, which is also the argument against attempts to disprove religion. Consequently, the primary way people develop their beliefs is through what they experience, mostly through following what they're told by the people they respect during their developmental years. I'm not a scientist, so if I had been born one generation earlier on my father's side, I would probably be a Christian. My staunch atheism is based perhaps entirely on the fact that I was raised among people who relied on physical logic rather than spiritual things. This has of course been a problem ever since the first two religions encountered each other, so unsurprisingly, I don't have a solution for it just yet.

I also take issue with the assertion that an individual's coming out will always destroy those close to her. I can't see why this would be the case except if the kith and kin in question believe there is something wrong with it, which many do not. This thus ends up being another claim that other beliefs are wrong. I know I can't say much from personal experience, but in my narrow-diametered circle of acquaintances, I have seen half a dozen homes wrecked, including my own. In all but one case, this was because the straight man of the house had a different idea of fidelity than anyone else. (People weren't too straightforward about the exception, but I gather that it was already a same-sex couple.) I think that denying and suppressing what one is only leads to things getting worse, as I imagine is much of the problem with all those Catholic priests and Ms. Winfrey's school in South Africa.

As I've had in my notes for many moons and never gotten around to fleshing out into a post, it would really be nice if I could find a secular state somewhere to live. I know that wouldn't solve anyone else's problems, but at least I wouldn't have to deal with them. That's my answer to most of life, after all.

On a somewhat darker (or at least neutral) note, Ms. mizuno_youko just posted an interesting link.