...but
they didn't understand the game was never meant to be funny! It was meant to
have a point! It was meant to speak to the human condition! "But where are
the jokes? Where are the jokes?" they bemoaned, they screamed. They
gnashed their teeth and said "Entertain us!" It wasn't enough. They
had to leave a pathetic little thumbs-down review and make all of their pitiful
demands.
But
then: "He's talking too much," they said! First he didn't entertain
us, now he won't shut up! It's the inconsistency! It's the lack of
accountability! It's the unwillingness to examine with an uncompromising heart
the words that they are speaking into the world. As though there were no
consequences for a lack of cohesion in one's assessment of others!
But
of course, absolutely anyone can leave a review, so here's what we get! We get
these demands that seek everything and are accountable to nothing. We get a
world where someone will say "Ohh, there should be a skip button! You
should be able to freeze Stanley in place while the narrator sits there forever
and ever! We want all of this in the new Stanley Parable, we demand it!"
And
then, because it was said, because it was spoken, now it simply has to happen!
The most immediate desires, every single thing demanded by every person at
every moment in time - if someone wants it then it's a crime not to bring it
into being? Have we been given to indulging every fleeting whim for no reason
other than to do so? Yes, yes!
It
seems that this is now the world we live in! It seems that we are a people
living in such bleakness and discomfort with ourselves that our entertainment
is now our lives! It has come to represent us! It absolutely must speak to who
we are as people!
Because
otherwise, without our entertainment, we have nothing! Without entertainment,
we would have to face inward toward the cruel bleakness inside ourselves. We
would turn to look at our deeper nature and find a resounding emptiness gazing
back with unyielding aggression.
And
so - so because of this - we require that our amusements, and our play things,
and our flights of fancy be so impossibly captivating, that they consume all of
our attention, turn our heads completely away from the bleakness! In effect, we
have demanded that our entertainment be the collapse of ourselves.
What
a pitiful reflection of humanity these entertainments are! What a shameful
mirror to the human spirit they project! I'm not mad. I'm not mad about any of
this. I'm at peace with it. I am the calm center of gravity around which these
perversions hurl themselves. I am a waypoint for reasonable and collected
discourse.
They're
the ones who are mad! They're the ones who couldn't stand the idea of me using
my game to try to say something! Maybe they were just jealous of me? Yes...
yes, of course. They've been jealous of me this whole time! They are mired in
fear and insecurity, and cannot help but attempt to tear me down.
What
a sad state of affairs. When you read these reviews now, you can see it. You
can taste the bitter resentment. And my, how good does it feel now to speak
truth to these words! To finally allow these thoughts out! Contained and
managed for so long, neutered and sterilized! At last I am free to truly think,
to feel!
It
must be that they were so discontent with themselves that they couldn't help
but leave a negative review on Steam/Pressurized Gas. Perhaps it says far more
about them than it ever said about me. Perhaps the state of their psychological
being was in such tatters, and my constitution and willpower are so ironclad in
comparison, perhaps it was in this state that they sought some outlet through
which to tear me down!
This,
you can see, is clearly why they felt the need to expect that the game be
funny. That it be filled with yuks and whimsical humor. That it amuse them
endlessly from start to finish
- The Stanley Parable-