Crap from Facebook: May 10, 2020

There are other posts, more substantial, which I plan on making. However, it just so happens that I saw a Facebook post dealing with a subject that has been bugging me for a while now: the bizarre, cultish lionization of Mary Shelley's 1818 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This has been a pet peeve of mine ever since I read the book in, um, 2008. There's a confederation of celebrities, literary critics, schoolteachers, and their followers, all hyping up this one book.

I read Frankenstein as one of the options in a "Novels" course at Green River Community College. The instructor was too fatigued to avoid subverting the usual hyperbolic accolades for what turned out to be a lousy read. The book just isn't good. It's the opposite. It's bad. It's poorly written. At one point in the class, we were going of Graham Greene's The Quiet American. And the instructor brought up the character of Helen, someone who doesn't actually appear in the novel, being mentioned only as the wife of the narrator. The only glimpses the reader gets of this character are in brief telegrams she sends to the narrator character. And my professor, pondering those telegrams, asked us which character was more developed and interesting: Helen in The Quiet American or Elizabeth in Frankenstein. At first, I thought he was messing with us! Elizabeth is the love of Victor Frankenstein's life and gets brought up repeatedly. She appears in his narrative and is involved in the plot. Helen isn't even a real character in The Quiet American. She exists only in brief correspondence with a main character, and that correspondence is only indirectly tied to the main focus of the story. It seemed like such an unfair comparison. And then, it caught up to me. My professor was asking this rhetorical question because he was disgusted with just how tedious Frankenstein had been for him to slog through. And in fact, although Elizabeth should have been an enormously important character, the reader got no real information about her. She has virtually no character traits other than "Victor Frankenstein loves her." And that's just one example. For all of its words, the actual story that Frankenstein presents is severely lacking in substance.

My issue isn't that one 19th century book turns out to be lackluster even though other people venerate it. That happens. My issue is that this mediocre book is frequently touted as the foundation of science fiction. As far as I know, this claim was first put forth by Isaac Asimov. And numerous famous people have followed suit. I could list some, but I don't feel like it right now and this has taken quite a tangent from the hilarious exchange I saw posted on Facebook. So, let's have it. I'll post the whole image, then comment on every post in the image, because apparently that's something I am choosing to subject myself to. Actually, I think it'll be fun...









Original post:

Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl.
There are only fake geek boys.
Science fiction was invented by a woman.

Science fiction wasn't invented by any one person. But for the sake of the argument, what if it were? What if that person had been Mary Shelley? Would it really then be fair to say that because Mary Shelley, a woman, invented science fiction, it follows that girls cannot be fake geeks, but boys can? Seems like an absurd leap leap to me. Is being a geek connected specifically to science fiction? Does having the same gender as the inventor of science fiction give you more geek cred than someone who isn't of that gender? Honestly, the assumption that Mary Shelley invented science fiction, while annoying to me because it happens to be an old pet peeve of mine, seems far less egregious than these other assumptions. I would think that even other members of the cult of Mary Shelley (not a real thing, as far as I know) would be critical of these statements.

First response:

[An image, the relevance of which to the context here escapes me. But it seems to have been ignored by subsequent commenters, so whatever]

I don't know what that picture is supposed to mean here. It's of a woman drinking out of a water bottle with a straw. Seriously, I have no idea what was meant here. Let's move on.

Second response:

Specifically a  teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.

Is it too pedantic of me to point out that Frankenstein was published when Mary Shelley was 20? Oops, too late; I just did. Anyway, the notion that teenage geek boys have a particular proclivity for rejecting girls is surreal. The sort of thing that elicits a "What planet have you been living on?" reaction. Also, I'd been meaning to write a blog post about how people who haven't experienced violence and have no reference frame for what violence is like will pick some non-violent thing that they don't like and refer to it as "violence."

Third response:

Isaac Asimov.

That's right, commenter. Isaac Asimov is the person who seems to have convinced most of the world that Mary Shelley invented science fiction. Well done. I'm not hating on Asimov, by the way. He's possibly my favorite author of all time. But he did make some mistakes. And pushing this Mary-Shelley-invented-science-fiction narrative was one of them.

Fourth response:

yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point

In case it isn't clear from the grammar, this "you kinda get my point" person isn't the same person as the original poster. In fact, judging by the handles used here, all of these comments are by different people. No one bothers to post twice in the thread. Anyway, Mary Shelley did write Frankenstein in 1818. Without bothering to look up publication dates, I don't think it was until some time in the 1960's that Isaac Asimov started espousing the narrative that Frankenstein marked the foundation of science fiction.

Fifth response:

If you want to push it even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623–1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole – oft credited as one of the first scifi novels

Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms) was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai's the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide "Isaac Asimov" reblogs and stick it

even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could even have cited Poe or Jonathan Swift as a case but Asimov?

PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelley as the mother of modern science fiction that you didn't even do a frickin google search For Shame

I wasn't going to let this silly image draw a "Crap from Facebook" blog entry out of me, but then I got such a kick out of how this person with a two-word post managed to get such a passionate and wrong-headed response that I couldn't pass it up. I especially like how this commenter started off trying to push the foundation of science fiction back a couple of centuries before Frankenstein and then, after having typed that, became incensed at someone else being "desperate to discredit" Mary Shelley as the mother of modern science fiction.

Anyway, since I might need to spell it out, science fiction didn't really start until well after Frankenstein. Trying to tie the genre to Renaissance-era fantastical works about talking animals and stuff would only strip the label of all meaning. It's painting literary categories with too broad a brush. I would strongly argue against Jules Verne's works being categorized as early science fiction. Oh, Verne and Shelley and those others wrote works that were precursors to science fiction. Sure. But it'd be disingenuous to say that Descartes invented calculus or that atomic theory was founded by Democritus. Well, it's the same here. I don't think that it's helpful to cite a single individual as the inventor of science fiction. The genre emerged over time. There isn't a unique point at which stories switched from being "proto-science fiction" or whatever to being just "science fiction." But even if the shift wasn't discrete, it also isn't right to portray it as taking centuries, either. It happened at some point around the time of Hugo Gernsback. Give or take. I think it would be reasonable to argue that science fiction predated the works of Gernsback and that he merely influenced a genre that was already solidified. But 1818? That's almost certainly at least 90 years too early.

Sixth response:

And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.

This bizarre oneupsmanship Battle of the Sexes thing is amusing, but utimately rather puzzling. Enheduanna, although historically important, certainly wasn't the first person to write something. But what if she was? Or better yet, what if we knew, for a certainty, that writing was first invented by woman? What then? Oh, I'm not saying that it isn't interesting. But what does it have to do with Mary Shelley?

Seventh response:

Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:

Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.

Hey look, someone dug up the quote that Commenter #3 was referring to. Good job? Anyway, I don't know for sure if this was the first instance of Asimov publicly making this sort of claim about Shelley, nor if he was the first person to do so. But he did make similar statements at times ranging from the 1960's to 1980's (apologies if his first published statements on Mary Shelley weren't actually in the 1960's but I just can't be bothered to dig into this for a silly blog post and I'm going by my own hazy recollection), and this seems to have been what kicked off a fad of other famous people making similar statements.

Anyway, Asimov was wrong there. And I don't mean "I disagree with him." I mean that he made an erroneous conflation of Mary Shelley's original text with popular culture portrayals/commentary, and that his claim about what she did in Frankenstein (as seen in the quote) is factually incorrect. Somewhere, probably in Gold, have a similar quote by Asimov with more context (it's probably that exact quote). I can expound on what I mean here and demonstrate that Asimov was mistaken, if anyone is really interested in that. No one will challenge me on this because no on reads my blog, so thankfully I'm off the hook.

And again, I'm really liking how the two-word comment kept getting longer rebuttals until someone finally accidentally gave the context to turn it into a more elaborate, finished statement. No, Isaac Asimov didn't invent science fiction. But Isaac Asimov did invent the idea that Mary Shelley invented science fiction. Or if he wasn't the first person to say it, he was almost certainly the person who popularized it enough for you to have come across it. Also, it's wrong. So there's that.

Eighth response:

 Even Isaac Asimov ain't having none of your shit, not even posthumously.

Let me know when you're all done fist-bumping. Done? Good. Now for the serious part. I don't mean the part I care about. For some reason, that other crap was the part I cared about. It's why I wrote all this. I guess it's an obsession for me. Sorry. But we're done now. Moving on to what really should matter...

If you're chagrined about girls being mischaracterized as "fake geeks" it isn't going to help to mischaracterize boys as "fake geeks." Deep down, you know this. But you went and did it anyway. It's a bad approach. Some would caution you that it's a bad approach because you're getting into a fight that no one wins. They're trying to win you over the nice way. But I'm willing to be blunt. I'll be honest with you. And the truth is: you're getting into a fight that you won't win. This isn't "Mutually Assured Destruction." This isn't "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." I'm not warning you that your attitude is destructive because it will only escalate conflict and cause harm all the way around. I'm warning you that your attitude is destructive because when it comes back around to you, you'll lose. Someone will win. But it won't be you. The reason for you not to get into this fight in the first place isn't because we'll all suffer for it, but because you will lose. And once you do, if I've warned you, I might be able to feel a little bit better about myself, having seen just how badly it went for you.

Ranking All Thirteen Warhammer Quest Warriors

Just for fun, I'm going to rank all thirteen of the official character options for the Warhammer Quest board game. I am not including the semi-official "Citadel Journal" content, mostly because I don't know very much about it. Just the original four Warriors in the base game and the nine character packs that followed.

If I were serious about this, it would have to be a followup to some more informative material, such as an explanation of how Warhammer Quest worked, how unbalanced it was, etc. That sounds tedious, so I will not do it. However, I want to note that I'll take some things into account.

1. Some Warriors have exclusive access to infinite scaling, particularly on Wounds. In actual gameplay, especially at low levels, this was generally irrelevant. The extra Wounds were possible randomly generated outcomes on tables that wouldn't be rolled on very many times. Strategically-minded players had the option to grind extensively, visiting settlements and seeking out opportunities to roll on those tables. Eventually, this could result in extraordinarily high numbers. The only drawback would be slowing level development. Because treasure isn't leveled in Warhammer Quest, it would be advantageous to the other players to do this anyway. So this is weird, tedious, and doesn't capture the way the game was normally played, historically. But it does technically make infinite scaling important.
2. Some Warriors have exclusive access to finitely scaling, but extremely powerful items and abilities. This would have made grinding advantageous in the same way as those with access to infinite scaling, but with more impact earlier and with diminishing returns at some point.
3. Some Warriors have abilities meant for one-shot versions of the game, which don't translate into Advanced or Roleplay versions of Warhammer Quest. In particular, I'm thinking of abilities that allow an otherwise weaker Warrior to "claim" an item. Warhammer Quest was/is usually played as a cooperative game, not as a contest to see which player earns the most gold/treasure.
4. Some Warriors come with associated risks that those Warriors will be lost in some way. I tend to ignore that, because it's a stupid system. Imagine you've fought alongside your companions, traveling around and grinding dungeons. You and your fellow players make it to level 7, when suddenly you get an unlucky roll on a table and your character, without your say-so, decides to leave the party and stop being an adventurer. No thanks. As a GM, I always reworked those outcomes to do something else.

 On with the rankings, proceeding from worst to best...

#13: Witch Hunter
This is one of the Warriors that I have the least experience with, but I really can't justify any other ranking than dead-last. It's not even close. The Witch Hunter is the most extreme example of a problem that plagues most of the Warriors from character packs, rather than the original base game. He has excessive gear restrictions and is given stuff to compensate for it, but that stuff isn't as good as having cosmopolitan item usage. In the case of the Witch Hunter, he can't use armor other than his starting gorget, and he can't use helms. He can't use any melee weapons other than swords or daggers. And he can't use any missile weapons other than his starting pistol, and it seems to be worse than regular pistols, for some reason. He can use most magical items, but not ones meant for wizards.

The Witch Hunter's base characteristics aren't especially bad, but there's no standout advantage here either. So why last place? Well, everyone else has some kind of clear advantage in one category or another. High Strength and Toughness, high Ballistic Skill, exclusive access to certain items, special abilities that compensate for lower characteristics, etc. And to my reading, the Witch Hunter at any level is kind of a low-to-middling overall Warrior with nothing special to call his own. Where another Warrior might have power loaded onto some combination of characteristics, skills, and special unique stuff, the Witch Hunter seems to just get mediocre characteristics and a bunch of minor unique things. He has the Faith mechanic, which looks like it should be part of his core power but doesn't really do much. He has unique amulets, artefacts and symbols, potions, potions and banes, invocations, and skills. The flavor here seems to be that this is a character with an arsenal of tools to combat evil. But none of this stuff is really special.

Technically, the Witch Hunter can get a way to have infinite scaling on Faith. This could be an interesting approach to take, but my intuition is that even an absurdly high-Faith Witch Hunter would be less potent than another Warrior with a comparable time investment.

#12: Bretonnian Knight
Again, maybe my inexperience with this Warrior is affecting my assessment. The Bretonnian Knight has a lot of convoluted unique stuff going on. Strong characteristics and a suite of oddball advantages combine to make him a superior early-game Warrior. The problems come later on, when other Warriors start ramping up in power level. The Bretonnian Knight is hampered by equipment restrictions and his convoluted Honour Point system. Eventually, the flexibility of Warriors surpasses the power of this one, but the Bretonnian Knight isn't bad at everything. He's a decent tank and dedicated melee damage-dealer. The problem is that nine out of thirteen Warrior options are dedicated melee specialists, and some of those have to be the worst at it. Being good with a broadsword when everyone else can find magic weapons with huge advantages over a broadsword just isn't going to work out for this guy.

The scaling on the Bretonnian Knight is all finite and not particularly high. His special bonuses are mostly ephemeral or too situational. Despite a lengthy character manual going over all sorts of exclusives, it's mostly flavor and low-impact stuff when it comes to practical advantages in adventures. The Bretonnian Knight does get one saving grace, though. If he can pick up the "Heroic Death" skill and get some kind of Strength augmentation (probably from a Wizard's spellcasting), he's a potential super-tank. Pack a lot of healing potions and you can keep popping back up whenever monsters deal lethal damage to you. This alone is a great boon. If it were easier to exploit, I'd probably have to rank the Bretonnian Knight higher.

#11: Warrior Priest
I have some misgivings about giving the Warrior Priest a low ranking. He's cool, but ultimately deficient. He should have been designed in such a way that his healing powers would be the strongest out of all options, or at least so that they'd keep up through the mid-game levels. For some reason, he was designed with almost all of his healing loaded onto his Ring of Jade, which is unreliable and even dangerous. His Blessings are mostly a nice utility suite of augmentations for combat, which would be nice to have in a party if he weren't the weakest combatant around. The Warrior Priest's characteristics are alarmingly poor overall. If it weren't for how well a couple of his blessing scale in later levels, he'd easily be at the bottom of this list.

As with other low-ranking Warriors on this list, the Warrior Priest has severe equipment restrictions. He's stuck with his starting breastplate for some reason (but he can wear a helm). He can't use a shield and the only weapons he can use are hammers. Ouch. Not being able to wield a sword makes the Warrior Priest an even worse melee fighter than the Wizard and the Witch Hunter. It's bad. However, he does get access to most magic items, including ones that almost no other Warriors can use except for the Elf Ranger and the Wizard.

The Blessing system is unique and interesting. It makes sense to load much of the Warrior Priest's power onto it. But he can too easily fail to bless anything and the scaling is wonky here. Generally, blessings are underpowered. Power of Sigmar is deplorably weak healing early on, and doesn't scale that well either. The best blessing is obviously Intervention, which is so strong in the late game that it makes the Warrior Priest a valuable party member by itself, even if he does almost nothing else.

This is kind of awkward. Warhammer Quest doesn't have many options for a support-type character. The Warrior Priest is probably the second-best in such a role. So it feels wrong to put him so far down the rankings. But other than Intervention and Damnation, he's not really that good at support! His access to most wizard-style items does boost this somewhat.

#10: Barbarian
If a #10 ranking seems low, I'd note that all four of the original Warriors are totally adequate and have their own nice advantages. The Barbarian is good. Very good. He has great access to items, excellent skills, and impressive characteristics. Below the Barbarian, I had some glaring deficiencies to note. That kind of stops here. The Barbarian really is fine. With the right skill gains and items, he could be a powerhouse, easily.

The issues that give the Barbarian a below-average placement can be summarized like this: he is the baseline for melee combat on which later Warriors were judged. When the character packs were designed, they had to measure up to the Barbarian in some way. They could be a bit worse in one area, but they'd have to compensate with something special. And special things are often much more useful than mundane things. They don't always succeed. The Bretonnian Knight in particular tends to lag behind the Barbarian.

The Barbarian is versatile, but his biggest advantage is probably being able to get lots of attacks. Somewhat frustratingly, some of his power is loaded onto being good with a bow, but not enough for a Barbarian to switch to a dedicated archer. If he had no strong ranged options but better defenses as a tradeoff, he'd probably be near the top of the rankings.

#9: Wardancer
I'd say that here is where the good stuff starts. The Barbarian is kind of an inflection point. And the Wardancer, while an elf, has more in common with the barbarian than with any other Warrior. He'd basically a sword-elf. Everything is about swords. Along the way, for no particular reason, his defensive capabilities are generally above average, despite a prohibition on armor. An advantage of the Barbarian is his potential to use skills for extra attacks. And the Wardancer can beat that. Easily. Woven Mist in particular lets this guy make tons of attacks.

The Wardancer's power is loaded onto his special starting swords, the Twin Swords of Orion. But unlike the Bretonnian Knight, this isn't much of a drawback: the Wardancer can stack so many boosts onto his swords that they're a competitive endgame option.

The Wardancer does get off to a slow start, relative to most other Warriors. His initial Dance of Death skill is unremarkable. But he scales well into later levels. His item restrictions aren't the most severe, but they do probably mean that the Barbarian is better in a solo situation. I'm ranking the Wardancer higher on the assumption that some of those powerful items are going to other characters, such as an Elf or Wizard. Overall, it's probably close. But I'd give a slight edge to the Wardancer.

#8: Dwarf
In terms of raw power from characteristics, skills, and itemization options, the Dwarf is probably best Warrior, or rather,  the one with the highest floor. The only reason I rank other options higher is that, with intelligent decision-making by players, they can surpass the Dwarf. But several options, such as the Barbarian and Wardancer, can't really do that. They're basically inferior the the Dwarf. He hits harder and has better defenses. They can outscale his number of attacks, which is important, but that's about it.

The big advantage of the Dwarf is that he probably gets the least severe item restrictions of all Warriors in the game. So he gets a strong early game from his Great Axe Attack skill, then he can keep augmenting his axe with runes to keep it ahead of other endgame weapon options. Having access to most of the best treasure and getting nearly exclusive access to special dwarf equipment carries this on into the endgame levels. In short, the dwarf packs a punch. He's probably the easiest Warrior to use well, and it's kind of hard to go wrong with him.

Perhaps the Dwarf constitutes another kind of inflection point here. Everything that is worse than him is just generally worse than him. Everything that is better is better because it is contingent on exploiting something. In my evaluation, if you're using a party without a Dwarf and you have anything I've rated lower, you'd better have an understanding of what you're doing and why (such as that you want more extra attacks from the Wardancer or you want the utility of the Warrior Priest's blessings).

#7:Elf
Because they're both original base set Warriors, the Dwarf and the Elf both get some of the game's item system based around them. Both also get their own settlement locations with some exclusive gear options. Both offer strong, unique options. The Dwarf gets more utility and the Elf gets more evasion and healing, but both are flexible. Both scale well with gold. Comparison is tough because where they diverge, the Elf and the Dwarf are good at different things. The Dwarf can stack more armor and, getting runes on his axe, can hit harder. The Elf can negate or mitigate most attacks, and can land more attacks as well. He also gets options to make healing potions and has exclusive access to some great items.

Although it's close, the Elf isn't quite as potent a melee fighter as the Barbarian, Wardancer, or Dwarf. But it's close. The Elf makes up for it by being the ultimate ranged attacker. It's not even strictly necessary. You could have an Elf as a frontline melee Warrior and you'd do fine. He's above average at offense and defense in melee. While he can't soak hits like a Wardancer or Dwarf, he can deflect, dodge, and parry so much that he is basically his own kind of tank. An Elf with his own class-specific gear and a strong magic sword is powerful. And if that were all, he wouldn't be ranked above the Dwarf: those axe-runes are bonkers.

The Elf earns this ranking, in part, by being the ultimate ranged attacker. Bows don't scale quite as well as melee, but in a party of four Warriors, it's nice to have a ranged option, and in a party of more, it's pretty much required. Not everyone can take point. There's no penalty for shooting past your companions, and no one else comes close to dishing out the missile weapon damage of the Elf.

#6: Imperial Noble
The Imperial Noble is a particularly gold-hungry Warrior, but then so are the Dwarf and Elf. As a Warrior from a character pack, much of the Imperial Noble's power is loaded onto exclusive items, and he isn't as flexible with regular treasure. This is always detrimental, but can be compensated if the exclusives are good enough. Unfortunately, they never are. In the case of the Imperial Noble, the exclusives make him the best gun-toting Warrior in the game, but that still puts him behind the Elf and Elf Ranger for missile attacks, because bows are better than guns in Warhammer Quest.

That's the bad. Now for the good. Firstly, the Imperial Noble's exclusive gear options are really pretty good, albeit expensive. If gold as an obstacle is taken into account, the Imperial Noble is more cumbersome than other options. It's harder to make him overpowered than the Dwarf or Elf, and he takes longer to get going than the Wardancer. But all it takes to get more gold is to grind more. And the Imperial Noble benefits from grinding anyway, because other than weapons and some armor, his item restrictions are minimal. Once he has the money to pay for his awesome gear and once he levels up and gets some of his best skills, the Imperial Noble begins eclipsing the competition thanks to his insane amount of attacks. He gets a high Attacks characteristic and his starting ability lets him get even more. With his rapier, he can chain attacks together indefinitely as long as he keeps landing them. The rapier itself is weak, but Warhammer Quest is full of treasures that can make weapons magical, give them bonuses to damage, give them bonuses to hit, and so on. Augmenting the Imperial Noble's rapier with any treasure at all yields huge returns.

Chaining attacks together is the main reason I rank the Imperial Noble so highly. A high level Barbarian might make 5 or 6 attacks per turn, maybe more if he has nice items to pull that off. A high level Wardancer might make 10 or 11, or perhaps more. There's no ceiling and a lot of options to gain extra attacks through various skills and items. But an Imperial Noble could easily be making 20 or 30 attacks in a turn, assuming his target doesn't just get killed outright before he's done, which it will. Considering that the other goodies unique to the Imperial Noble are also decent additions, I am compelled to rate him above almost all other melee attackers.


#5: Elf Ranger Despite the name, the Elf Ranger isn't the best ranged attacker in the game. The regular "Elf" is better at that. Instead, the Elf Ranger is only the second-best ranged attacker in the game, which still puts him way ahead of everyone else. Frustratingly, the Elf Ranger is actually two characters consolidated into one. You can choose to play as either an Elf Ranger Knight or an Elf Ranger Mage. The Elf Ranger Knight is kind of a crappy battlemage with weak magical skills and potent combat abilities. The Elf Ranger Mage is good at magic, but has no particular advantages otherwise. I say that it's frustrating because the player has limited control over how this develops over time. An Elf Ranger is going to gain both skills and spells as he levels up, although he might be lucky and only gain the ones on his intended path.

No matter which "path" you choose, you've got a kind of battlemage character. Sadly, this is unique in Warhammer Quest. The only other magic-using character is the Wizard, who never gets any skills. The Warrior Priest is the next closest comparison, and the Elf Ranger is basically just better in almost every way, with the exception of the Intervention blessing.

Playing an Elf Ranger calls for some careful planning and adjustment. He's hard to optimize. However, I'm ranking him this highly for a reason. Firstly, his starting item is great and either "path" is top-tier for low-level gameplay. Secondly, he can do almost everything the regular elf can do, on top of his own unique talents. If you want a dedicated pure archer, the base set Elf outscales this guy. If you want any utility on top of that, the Elf Ranger is superior. Even as an Elf Ranger Knight, his magic probably outscales the magic of any other magic-using Warrior (including the Warrior Priest). In particular, his Shockwave spell is amazing.

A big part of this ranking is that this character gives you have one of the only possible options for a healer. But it's part of a total package that is excellent. The Elf Ranger is amazing, maybe too good, even. Everything I'm ranking above him is utterly broken, mechanically. The game designers make some mistakes here.

#4: Dwarf Trollslayer
Uniquely among the character packs, the Dwarf Trollslayer gets his full rules published in the Warhammer Quest Roleplay book. I don't know if this means that more thought was put into the design on this one, but I suspect that is the case. He's cool and has just enough unique features to totally separate him from the base set Dwarf. Starting out, the Trollslayer's offensive power is loaded onto different aspects than that of the regular Dwarf. He can't wear armor, though, so his defense isn't as great at first. In the early levels, the consistent damage of the Great Axe Attack and the awesome item versatility of the Dwarf surpasses what his orange-haired berserker cousin can pull off. But that gap closes quickly as they level up.

The reason that the Dwarf Trollslayer is ranked so highly, even above the attack-chaining absurdity of the Imperial Noble, is twofold. Firstly, the Dwarf Trollslayer gets form of infinite scaling on his weapon, and not just the super-slow infinite scaling that sometimes turns up in the game. The Dwarf Trollslayer gets the same access to runes for his axe as the regular Dwarf, but his rules doesn't include the note that he is limited to two runes per battle level, which is specific to the Dwarf himself. This could be seen as an editorial mistake. But even if it is conservatively judged to be one, that only partially slows the Trollslayer down because he also gets his own exclusive runes independently of the ones available at the Dwarf Guildmasters. The runes provided in the Trollslayer shrine are entirely exclusive. While they usually fade away after adventures, there is a 1 in 6 chance for such a rune to become permanent, and they can be stacked infinitely. It doesn't take long for a Dwarf Trollslayer to build up a rune-axe that far surpasses the capabilities of any other weapon in the game (with one possible exception, which we'll come to).

Combining his top-tier melee skills with an obnoxiously overpowered axe and the Dwarf Trollslayer outscales the base set melee characters easily, and laughs while doing it. Now, that's pretty great, but I don't know that I'd rank it above the likes of the Imperial Noble's nigh-infinite attacks or the Elf Ranger's Swiss Army Knife of skills and spellcasting. But the Dwarf Trollslayer can also get a skill called Deathsong. This skill is superb on its own: he can drop to 1 Wound instead of 0, then he gets a 1 in 3 chance to keep doing so on subsequent hits when he's at 1 Wound. But there's more. The Dwarf Trollslayer has a unique ability to instantly consume stonebread whenever he wants to. The regular Dwarf has to spend a turn and not do anything else for stonebread to heal him. But the Dwarf Trollslayer can just eat it on the spot. This was written in as an afterthought to set him apart from other dwarves (he's so damn badass the he can just pop the whole thing into his mouth and chew it up). But the practical implication of his is that he can eat stonebread whenever he's at 1 Wound, then the next attack to hit him will drop him to 1 Wound. Stonebread is cheap. Stonebread is plentiful. As long as he has a supply of Stonebread, the Trollslayer cannot be killed through normal means. He is effectively the best tank in the game. Well, maybe not quite. But we'll come to that.

#3: Chaos Warrior
The Chaos Warrior is either the most intense infinitely-scaling option in the entire game, or the worst one, depending on how you look at it. I'm splitting the difference and ranking him third. It's kind of meaningless call, really. The Chaos Warrior is so different from all other options that he defies comparison. I mean, he is good at melee fighting and bad at almost everything else (he can gain some magic). And he gets no skills. And the worst item restrictions of all characters in the game. Pretty much all of his power is loaded onto Chaos Attributes and Chaos Artefacts.

The Chaos Warrior can't use magical treasure, but can accumulate Chaos Artefacts. Early on, this doesn't come close to outweighing the disadvantage. However, the Chaos Warrior has a unique feature that lets him get chances to combine Chaos Artefacts. It doesn't always work, but you can grind like any other character. Eventually, this will let you consolidate multiple weapons and pieces of armor into gear that outscales everyone else's best options.

Attributes can be either good or bad, or a mix of both. You don't control which ones you roll, but they average out in your favor and you get chances to lose unwanted attributes. This would be another form of infinite scaling, but it comes with a strange and poorly designed counterbalance in the rules for the Chaos Warrior, called "Joining the Ranks of the Damned." Once you have too many Chaos Attributes, there's a chance that you'll just up and quit. I thoroughly dislike this mechanic, but it was written in to stop Chaos Warriors from being abuse stacking attributes. It's an extreme measure and one that introduces problems. If you ignore it, a Chaos Warrior can repeatedly grind visits to Chaos Temples between adventures, spending all of his gold to infinitely stack attributes and artefacts. The attributes are good, but the artefacts are where the real power lies. If you apply the rule as written, because you might get attributes and not artefacts, you could be unluckly and end up getting stuck, never able to level up without risking the total permanent loss of your character. Your companions can't resurrect you: you're not dead.

I don't know how to rank the Chaos Warrior if the "Joining the Ranks of the Damned" rule is applied judiciously as written, nor if some less harsh limit is imposed instead, as that would depend on the details. You might be OK, or you might be even weaker than a Witch Hunter (not at first, you wouldn't). If no restrictions are made, though, the Chaos Warrior is at least third in these rankings. And with enough grinding for that infinite scaling, he could be higher.


#2: Pit Fighter
I mentioned that nine out of thirteen characters are melee specialists. One of those is the best, and it's not a close contest. Starting out, the Pit Fighter is a less flexible take on the Barbarian. It takes a lot to compete with the likes of the Chaos Warrior and the Dwarf Trollslayer. The Pit Fighter accomplishes this with training points. His level-up system allows him to do something that scales finitely, but with massive impact.

The Pit Fighter was an attempt at making a melee character with unprecedented customization. You could pour points into whichever characteristics you wanted to emphasize. Now, extra training points aren't hard to grind for and even a few per level make a huge difference. But even if you never got any extra points, spending them on damage dice means you can get a character that hits harder than anyone else. The Pit Fighter even gets special gear restrictions and starts out in debt to make up for how overpowered he is. By late game, the drawbacks are mitigated and it's all upside.

Trying to put this into perspective, I'll compare the base stats of a level 10 Barbarian with those of a level 10 Pit Fighter who maximized grinding for training points. So that's a very extreme case, but there's also not much to stop it from happening other than a ruling by the GM. If you don't know, higher is better on all of these numbers except Ballistic Skill and Pinning, where it's the other way around.

Barbarian
Wounds: 10D6+9
Move: 4
Weapon Skill: 6
Ballistic Skill: 2+
Strength: 4
Damage: 3D6
Toughness: 4
Initiative: 6
Attacks: 4
Luck: 3
Willpower: 4
Skills: 7
Pinning: 5+

Pit Fighter
Wounds: 10D6+17
Move: 4
Weapon Skill: 10
Ballistic Skill: 6+
Strength: 12
Damage: 10D6
Toughness: 12
Initiative: 12
Attacks: 12
Luck: 10
Willpower: 13
Skills: 9
Pinning: 0+

That sort of fully maximized Pit Fighter would take a very, very long time to build. But you can afford to skimp on a lot and still have godlike characteristics. In fact, let's compare those numbers to the most powerful monster in the roleplay book, the ultimate challenge, not meant to be fought except by a full party of high-level Warriors, and meant to challenge even them.

Bloodthirster

Wounds: 125
Move: 6
Weapon Skill: 10
Ballistic Skill: Automatic
Strength: 8
Damage: 8D6
Toughness: 7
Initiative: 8
Attacks: 10
Luck: N/A 
Willpower: N/A
Skills: N/A
Pinning: N/A

This is ignoring the numerous impressive abilities of the Bloodthirster and its powerful equipment. But don't worry, the Pit Fighter will have nine skills on top of his starting skill, and will by this point have top-tier equipment. In fact, he would slaughter the Bloodthirster before it could move.

#1: Wizard
The Wizard was my chosen character when I started playing Warhammer Quest. But do not mistake my ranking here for a bias of magic over other aspects of combat. Even accounting for the Pit Fighter's potential to gain higher characteristics than boss monsters, the Wizard is still the most powerful Warrior, and it's not close.

Where to start? I guess let's start with the small stuff. First off, his characteristics aren't that bad. You might think that as a primary spellcaster, he'd be a puny weakling. But this isn't D&D. The explanation Games Workshop gave is that this isn't an academic or battlefield mage, but a dungeon-delving wizard, hardier than most. Or something. Anyway, he gets no skills and his characteristics are mediocre, about on par with the Witch Hunter. Give him some good equipment and he's fine in melee combat, not that he needs to be. He can use the best magic swords in the game, so his offense is mostly just held back by his below-average Weapon Skill. On defense, he's notably deficient without magic, but could mitigate some of that with items, particularly a Wizard's Staff.

Of course, he's the best healer in the game. And of course, it's not close. If you just used a Wizard as a dedicated healer, he'd be great it and a valuable member of a party. He easily outscales the Warrior Priest and the Elf Ranger Mage in this category, and those are the only other healers. Well, an Elf can brew up healing potions, but that gets outscaled as well.

And then there's he unrivaled utility. The wizard has access to a spell for virtually any situation. As gameplay progresses, he can find ways to not only edit his spellbook, but to expand it. Given enough grinding for items, a Wizard will have whichever spells he wants. Except why settle for that when you can just keep grinding and get all of them? There's no limit. Opportunities to learn new spells without trading in old ones are uncommon, but they can be found. And a mid-level Wizard can easily just solo dungeons until he has what he wants. Seriously.

That's right, you can solo dungeons. My preferred method was to cast Spear of Light to kill stuff, then Invisibility to negate all attempts at retaliation. Sure, some monsters have magic resistance, but that's never perfect and you have all the time you want to reposition and wear them down. Getting equipment to reroll the Power Phase helps. Other Warriors can probably also solo dungeons once they reach a certain point, but none as safely and easily as the Wizard.

Oh, and you do get infinite scaling on Wounds. It's a possible outcome when you roll on the table for the Wizards' Guild Consultation in a settlement. You can get up to 3 additional Starting Wounds every time. It's in the same place where you get exclusive potions and recharge your staff, so why not? Speaking of exclusives, many potent treasures are specific to the Wizard. But the real power comes when you start stacking some of those rare magic-enhancing treasures like, Wand of Diabolum and Chalice of Sorcery, on a Wizard with an expanded spellbook. You can basically take over the game, casting tons of spells each turn and protecting yourself from all possible attacks.

The CPA

If I remember correctly, I first started playing Magic: the Gathering almost immediately following the release of their introductory Portal product in May of 1997. At first, I mostly just wrangled my younger siblings to play with me. Later I played at the local game store (it was called "The Game Stop" and it was located at 132nd and 240th in Kent) as well as at the after-school game club in Eighth Grade and Ninth Grade. I went to a different high school from my Magic-playing friends and kinda-sorta took a break for several months before finding the Magic players in high school.

The earliest successful online community for the game was "The Dojo." I was there, but not very much. And then it closed down. In the early 00's I looked for other websites to fill that void. I joined a few, some of which I remember. I think all of those sites are now defunct. In 2003 I discovered the Casual Players Alliance. It was an offshoot of The Dojo. I lurked for a bit, then tried to set up an account and join the site. Back then, my household internet was still through AOL, and there was a software issue with AOL that prevented me from setting up my account at the time. I didn't know that AOL was the source of the problem. Not right away. In January of 2004, I had an AIM conversation with the founder of the site and he figured out the source of the problem.

So now I've been a member of the CPA for over sixteen years. It's been a pretty small community for most of that time, but it is, or at least was, the oldest active online Magic community I'm aware of. There are definitely other sites that were spawned from older sites, but until yesterday, I could go to the CPA and see posts written as far back as1999, and even respond to those threads if I wanted to.

I joined the CPA a little before I started the Livejournal that preceded this blog. And I've been one of their most active members. It's kind of been a major part of my life for the past 16 years, but not one that I bring up on this blog, ordinarily. Well, I've written way more there than I ever did here.

Yesterday, someone managed to gain access to an old, abandoned admin account at the CPA, and used this to go on a spree of deleting data. No matter what happens, much of the recent content will probably be lost for good. But I've heard that we may be able to get a backup from last summer restored.

Schloss Grünfluss one year and one month later

As ever, I am bad about updating this blog. I had an idea for a "one year later" post, which would have been written on January 25th, but of course I let it pass me by. It's February 25th, so we'll settle for that. I moved into my house, in Auburn, one year and one month ago. I guess I blogged about it more like a year and half a month ago, but shut up.

Auburn has been pretty great. I've really settled in here and kind of fallen in love with the town. Corny to say, but there's a grain of truth to it (a big old corny grain). Ten years ago, I don't think I could have pictured myself saying that. But hey, cut me some slack: it's not my fault that I grew up in Kent. I was understandably biased by that experience, but now I've changed my ways. I've seen the light. Auburn is a good place to live.

I didn't really know what else to write about other than the fact that I've been living down here in the glorious nether reaches of King County for over a year. So I'll cut this one short.

Crap from Facebook: November 25th, 2019

There is, as they say in the bullshit business, "a lot to unpack here." Let's see...

The use of "snowflake" as a term of derision is different from the context of Palahniuk's line from Fight Club. In the popular political discourse of today, "snowflake" has become a demeaning term for one perceived to be too fragile, too sensitive. This invokes the ephemerality of snowflakes, their delicate structure. The quote from Fight Club isn't doing that. It goes...

You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

 There's no emphasis on fragility in that. Instead, the focus is on uniformity and mundanity. All credit due to Chuck Palahniuk should go to him. He's a good writer and the quote has strong resonance. The book was successful and the movie based on it is a kind of cult classic or whatever. I'd happily concede that some of the recent popularity of "snowflake" as a term of derision was probably inspired by that line in Fight Club. But people using the term aren't "quoting" him. The usage is different. In fact, they're quoting the same people that Palahniuk was quoting when he wrote that line.

For decades, the term "snowflake" was applied to people, particularly children, with the emphasis being placed on uniqueness. The line in Fight Club works because the reader would have some cognizance of this older, more established usage. The character in the book, Tyler Durden, is posing a direct, scathing rejection of a classic, formulaic platitude. In the more recent usage in political discourse, rather than making a direct comparison, people are subverting the older usage by putting a new twist on an old metaphor. To put it bluntly...

-Some starry-eyed educators told a bunch of kids: "You are inherently special and unique just being who you are. Like a snowflake, you're different from every other snowflake in the universe."
-Then Tyler Durden (in a work of fiction) told a bunch of grown-ups who'd heard that message: "You are not like a snowflake. You're a lump of meat that is going to fall apart someday. And that's not special."
-Then as the term got thrown around over the next 20 years, people started using it as an insult, saying essentially, "Yeah, you know what? You really are like a snowflake: fragile and weak."

So no, mocking someone as a "snowflake" isn't quoting Fight Club.

Also, Fight Club isn't a satire. I'm not even going to waste my time with that claim. Not every book has to be a satire. Get over yourself.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed on Chuck Palahniuk's behalf that his sexuality is being brought up in this context. He only came out as gay because he believed that he was about to be outed by others. He doesn't style himself a "gay writer" or focus on gay issues. Throwing "gay" in there is irrelevant and my suspicion is that the person who wrote this crap is trying to cast everything in some kind of trite, simplistic political drama where everything is Right vs. Left. The "Right" is supposedly the side using "snowflake" as an insult and they're also supposedly the side that is anti-gay, so this person wants to mock them for "quoting" a gay man. This kind of sleazy discursive diversion really gets on my nerves, and was ultimately what motivated me to open up my blog and write about it. It's bad behavior and should be called out for what it is.

And while I'm here, Fight Club has nothing to do with fascism. Stop projecting your fantasies onto everything.

But mostly, I find it hilarious that when I went and looked at the comments on Facebook, a recurring theme was that people who tried to rebut some of this crap were generally dismissed as having only seen the movie and told that they needed to read the book. But Tyler Durden doesn't blow up any skyscrapers in the book. It's a pretty important plot point that's basically impossible to miss. So several people, including the original author of this little gem, are all advertising to anyone who's actually read Fight Club that they are pretending to have read the book, but did not actually read the book. And that's just marvelous. Right there, I have beautiful validation of why I should keep using Facebook. Where else could I find such high-grade bullshit?

And hey, let's make is a double feature. So here's some more crap...


I keep seeing posts along these lines and even though I'm used to it, I am a bit baffled anyway, perhaps because this just isn't how I was raised. My parents were/are devoutly religious, but they never wanted or expected the public school system to be part of that. I realize that a bunch of Christians got all huffy over the whole kerfuffle with Madelyn Murray O'Hair back in the 60's and 70's, but this whole thing always struck me as a no-brainer. Your local schoolteacher might have different views on religion than you do. And if not, maybe some day that could change (you won't always have the same local schoolteacher). So the more religious you are, it would seem that the more you'd want your local schoolteacher not to be involved in the religious education of your children. Ergo, this aspect of the First Amendment protects you. Q.E.D. Easy, right? Except apparently that's an unpopular view?

It strikes me as bizarre, but I guess I'm grateful that my parents weren't like this.

Oh, and people killed a whole lot of kids in schools long before 1963. So cut it out with the historical revisionism!

Singular "they"

Yeah, it's been over a month (I wrote, as I started this post, which I am getting back to after another month). I totally forgot what I was supposed to write about. Well, now I remember. And looking back, pondering the things I thought about writing when I first thought of writing this post, really, it's been longer than a month. Much, much longer.

I am not the person who should be writing this post. I say this not out of misgivings or in anticipation of any regrets. It's just a job I'd think others would be better qualified for. It's something that someone, somewhere else, should have already written. And I haven't seen it. So it falls to me. I have an amateur interest in language. Grammar is a hobby I might dabble in, but I am not an expert. And it's worth it to have an expert write this. Instead, you get me. And for that, I apologize in advance.

Much has been written regarding the singular usage of the "they" pronoun (along with its other common forms, "them" and "their"). Generally, these screeds fall into two categories.

1. Proclamations that prescriptions against the singular usage of this set of pronouns is silly, senseless, stupid, and utterly without merit. It is declared that the trend in general usage favors this and that the antediluvian snobs who protest such usage are fighting a losing battle. Eventually they'll all die and the rest of us can move on.
2. Dissertations on the longstanding historical usage of this set of pronouns. Did you know that it goes all the way back to Chaucer? Shakespeare did it too! My Grandma did it. It's already a part of the language, really. Prescriptions against it are the shrill commandments of ivory tower academic patriarchs or something. They just want to police everyone else's language. For reasons.

Both versions have sufficiently saturated the internet to the point that I'd have thought some annoyed grammar hero would have set the record straight. And if one has, it's really too bad that I've missed it. Fortunately, both versions are pretty easy to rebut. I will do so now.

1. I'm not dead yet. Also, don't be an idiot. Debates over language usage aren't settled by vague declarations about extrapolation of future trends. Yes, language does evolve. But the fact that you're bothering to call your opponents names and dubiously declaring victory on the spot is an indication that this is not, in fact, settled. You don't see people publishing articles declaring "thy" to be a dead pronoun.
2. Every essay, journal article, blog post, etc. that argues for the long-established accepted usage of singular "they" quotes the same passages from the same authors. It's like five references that get quoted by all of these people. OK, there are more, but all of them, even the Chaucer one that's so popular, display notional agreement. It is disingenuous to cite a bunch of quotes displaying notional agreement and then use that as support for your claim that a pronoun should be used without notional agreement.

You wouldn't know it from reading the crap I post in blog stuff, but I can be a grammar nerd when I want to be, and for a while I took formal writing pretty seriously. From a very young age, this sort of thing was something I was actually good at. I'm derailing this post to talk about myself, and I probably shouldn't. Oh well. As a kid in school, there were some skills I struggled with, so I took pride in the things I was good at. Usually I was the best in my class at spelling and grammar. My reading comprehension scores were off the charts. In first grade, I was tested as having a ninth-grade reading level. When I was in high school, we all took the STAR Reading test. I had the highest score out of my whole senior class. So yeah, I was that guy, I guess. I was also confident in my skills. Overconfident, actually. And when it came to this one academic subject, yeah, maybe I was a pretty bright kid. But some of the teachers had studied the subject in college, and had been teaching it for longer than I'd been alive. So there were occasions on which I boldly assumed I had everything figured out, that I was the untouchable Grammar Ace, and then I'd be informed that I was wrong. Making a little mistake didn't bother me. Never has, never does. We're human. We make mistakes. It took more than that. One of these occasions was in eighth grade, concerning the usage of the pronoun "their."

For now, let's just assume we're operating under a prescription that has "they" and its other forms as a plural pronoun. Consider the antecedent "everyone." Does it take on a plural pronoun or a singular one? In my eighth grade class, on my reading, I went with plural. I used "their." Can't remember what the whole sentence was, but it doesn't really matter. My teacher corrected me, and I was taken aback. It turns out that "everyone" is a nuanced word. I was interpreting it as synonymous with "all." But he insisted that it meant "each." The reality is, it depends on context. The word can be synonymous with either of those. If it was read as meaning "all" then "their" would have been appropriate. But if it was "each" and not "all" then it should have gotten "his or her."

I accept that one could outsnob me and insist that the "one" in "everyone" necessitates an "each" reading. My teacher did just that. But I find that this misses the point. Sometimes "everyone" really is "all." And that's where notional agreement comes in. There's probably going to be a tone-shift now because I wrote everything above this line about a month ago. I ran out of time and figured I'd get back to it soon. Well, it's later now. Or something. Look, this is just how I operate. Deal with it. I've made all of this seem highly technical, but really, it's blisteringly obvious. The proponents of singular "they" who cite Shakespeare or Chaucer or other old-timey writers as evidence of how such usage has always been part of the language must be aware of how obvious it is that the sentences they cite are not singular cases and not plural cases, but generalized cases. It happens all the time, and in fact I just did it in the previous sentence without thinking about it.

As with most linguistic rules, there are grey areas. Like dangling participles or terminal prepositions, some instances of a seemingly singular "they" would easily be parsed by any speaker or reader of English, cause for commentary only among the neurotic or the pedantic. Other instances stick out like a sore thumb. And still others are in between. That doesn't mean we throw prescriptivism out entirely! I explained the importance of prescriptivism in my previous post. I can't help but think that the educated parties advocating for all-out adoption of "they" as a singular pronoun are being disingenuous on this. They'd be aware of the confusion stemming from this usage and the irregularities involved. Even now, despite a severe push to normalize singular "they", we can't get a consensus on whether it's "themself" or "themselves." And that's because English is a natural language. It evolved. It isn't built logically and attempts to brazenly alter the structure of the language to suit some faddish sensibilities comes with consequences. For decades, the battle over singular "they" was really about just that. And really, it still is. But the other side pulled a dirty trick in recent years.

They shifted the focus of the debate to be about compassion. They took an issue of grammar and changed the subject, changed it so that the debate was about gender and gender identity. But it was never really about that. I could say more, but perhaps I've said too much already. We'll see how this unfolds.

Prescriptivism

Now that I think about it, I'm surprised that this isn't something I've already blogged. I suppose that I had reservations about it before. But now I need to! This is meant to serve as a prelude to my next post. Once that post shows up here, you'll be able to see why.

To my consternation, prescriptive linguistics seems to be popularly maligned. As a longtime prescriptivist, I've engaged in much head-shaking and protracted sighing over this matter, but I tend not to involve myself in real dialogue on the subject, which might be why I haven't taken the time to write a blog post about it.

Back in 2011, I took a descriptive linguistics course. I was delighted that the professor offered the point of clarity that descriptivism and prescriptivism are not enemies, but tools with different uses. Descriptive linguistics is based on empirical observation and objective study. It collects and analyzes information. It maps how language is used and builds systematic terminology for language. Prescriptive linguistics is based on decision-making. It uses collates known information and uses it to dispense instruction and guidance.

There is a popular, yet fatuous association of prescriptivism with a cabal of stuffy old men in ivory towers hellbent on turning English into Latin or something. The historical evidence for this is, at best, dubious. The rise of prescriptivism probably owes much more to technological innovation than anything to do with Latin. Some day I should expound on that. Perhaps I shall.

I guess that the important point I want to get at here is that prescriptive linguistics is important. In a sense, it is more important than descriptive linguistics. Descriptivism can be informative and interesting, and can even lead to practical applications. But prescriptivism streamlines communication. And it has been effective communication that has enabled and propagated these other innovations.

Prescriptivism is, or should be, concerned with clear and effective communication. I think that too many people have a negative impression of it because of how they were taught in school or because of postmodern musings that use prescriptivism as a scapegoat for real problems. I find this to be misguided. Language, especially English, is dauntingly complex. We should be keenly aware of navigating this landscape effectively. When I am speaking or when I am writing, I would hope to avoid confusing my audience or inadvertently distracting them away from the message I'm trying to send. In that endeavor, we could all use prescriptions. They serve as landmarks.