I'm sorry, but I think when you start comparing people to flat earthers you lose the right to get offended by things like that joke. Besides, I don't see you asking those that liked that post about flat earthers to go retract their likes lest I think they are supportive of that baseless personal attack.
Acknowledge that agency has different meanings to people early on in the discussion and explain the meaning you are using. Talk away about it after that.
I'll put it this way - I have NOT put you on ignore
See below.
Do you think we aren't talking about games as games? Or is that just another particular piece of jargon?
Please don't question ours either.
I don't think it's been you doing what I'm describing below, but since the thread started I've been repeatedly told:
1. I can't talk about different types of agency (because there aren't different types)
2. I can't talk about a difference between generating a chance encounter with a friend and attacking an orc resulting in his death. (because there's no difference there)
3. I can't talk about my definition of agency (because it's not what someone else wants to talk about)
The point is that since the start of the thread talking about what we mean by agency has been shut down and when we finally say this is what we mean and this is what we are trying to talk about, the response becomes that this prevents you from talking about what you want to talk about. I mean if you think us talking about our kind of agency is somehow preventing you talking about yours then I would really love to know how the heck I'm supposed to talk about what I want to talk about.
Except I didn't. An illustration that even flat-earthers think they have coherent positions does not equate to me comparing Bedrockgames's position to a flat-earther's. I even made it a point to say that "everyone" has incoherent positions that they believe are coherent. It's part of the human condition. I'm not sure how that point escaped you. As I have asked you to read what you quoted before, I assume that you most have glossed over that point.
I never claimed that I was. Only pointing out the almost banal point that your belief in the coherence of your argument is not necessarily true because you believe it is. The coherence of people's positions on gaming have been put to the test numerous times in various threads, and sometimes as evidenced by people in this thread, those positions can change.
As a point of contention, "How we always talked about X before" doesn't mean it's the most accurate way or even the best way to talk about a subject. As a point of illustration, how we discuss gender, sex, and sexuality has also changed from "common usage" over the past century as our understanding of the human condition has changed from the so-called "traditional" or "common" viewpoints. Scientists and scholars in a variety of fields have challenged the "common" understandings of these things.
It feels a lot like you are asserting things, then claiming not to assert them. The bottom line is I believe I was holding a coherent position, and you appeared to be accusing me of being incoherent. If you are going to make that kind of claim, I am going to push back.
Which is a terrible point to direct at anyone as it can just as easily apply to you and your positions. And you did direct it at Bedrock.
This at least gets at something. Yes this is one of my criticisms of the kind of discussion that happens around games on forums. It isn't that people are incoherent, it is that, in a long conversation, it is often difficult to defend positions and you often say things that fail to capture what you mean, that miss a flawed assumption in someone's argument, etc. This is why I am also quite skeptical of models arrived at through forum discussions. I would argue is what often happens is, due to the nature of online debate, and text based debate, people stake out positions they feel they must to defend against a point they haven't really been able to analyze fully. That happens. Doesn't mean the point was sound (there are a lot of flawed, good sounding, but specious arguments, in these threads). Doesn't mean the person is being incoherent (they are just dealing with the difficulty of fending off what is essentially having their ideas put on trial by hostile posters
The only way you can talk about literary agency is to treat the characters and the fiction as real and look at it that way. There's really only one form of agency, literary agency is a device by which you reify the fiction so as to evaluate it in terms of agency. It's a trick. And, it's absolutely incoherent to promote evaluation of literary agency and then, to argue against a point of literary agency (the character recalls some fact and acts upon it) you switch to treating the fiction as fiction. It's special pleading, where a thing is this way except when it's not, and the only way to tell which is which is if it agrees with your conclusion or not.
