Sunday, January 7, 2018

Lost Corners: The Skyrim dog tale


I was not surprised when the Library of Congress announced recently that it's changing course and will no longer archive every single public tweet. It seemed like a Sisyphean task from the start. It's simply not feasible to store and catalog the hundreds of millions of Twitter posts each day, and this move will also save future historians from having to sort through 23 billion tweets along the lines of "OMG is that [bleeping] referee blind??"

I have little doubt that the important tweets will be saved. Between the efforts of the Internet Archive, the historians who curate everything uttered by very stable geniuses and yours truly, who prints out funny tweets and sticks them inside books, I think we'll be good.

But there could, of course, be Lost Corners. That's a great danger, now that the Library of Congress has jumped ship. So this ongoing Papergreat series will continue to work to shine a spotlight on portions of the internet that might disappear in the digital sands of time. Or in the fires of World War III.

In this case, it's a 2016 Twitter thread by Patrick Lenton (@PatrickLenton), that lends some comic insight into the immersive depth of play offered by modern video games — The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in this particular instance.

Patrick was just minding his own business, trying to save the world from ogres and dark wizards, when the game presented him with a dilemma.

He detailed that development, starting with this April 4, 2016, tweet...



I have collected Lenton's entire story, verbatim, as detailed in his long Twitter thread. Some of it is very R-rated, but that's the tale that's being told. This isn't exactly a Ruth Manning-Sanders fairy tale, though I think it says as much about our times as her stories say about the cultures and concerns of the past.

worst part of Skyrim was when I found that dog whose owner died in a cabin, and then I of course had to adopt the dog bc i'm not a monster

and I fucking love this dog, but i'm wondering around trying to solve quests and save the world and junk, but this good dog

his good dog always tries to help out fighting giants and dragons, and it's like 'NO DON'T HURT MY DOG'

and i have to fight like 300% harder to save my dog from being eaten by a dragon and i've honestly never been so anxious

so then I find out that I can build a homestead and my dog can live there, so the next four days of my life are building shit

while bandits and dragons still attack my dog while i'm bloody mining ore and building a goddamn solarium for my pooch

and then the dog won't stay in the house, and I discover I have to adopt a child first, and the child has to like my dog

so i go to an orphanage, to discover they are being mistreated by an evil woman, so I kill her

but then I can't adopt a child any more because they are free! So I wander Skyrim looking for a parent-free child somewhere

and I don't even like children

and then finally I find some girl begging in Whiterun, and she's all like 'thanks Mum!' (I play a lady cat-wizard)

and then I discover that the girl WON'T MOVE INTO MY HOUSE BECAUSE I DIDN'T MAKE A PROPER BED FOR HER

SO I DECIDE TO BUILD A NEW HOUSE, ON A FUCKING LAKE BECAUSE I FIGURE IT WILL BE A GOOD PLACE TO RAISE CHILDREN OR WHATEVER

BUT FIRST I HAVE TO BECOME A THANE OF FALKREATH AND DO ALL THESE QUESTS TO HELP PEOPLE BEFORE THEY GIVE ME A PLOT OF LAND

and my dog is STILL following me around STILL nearly dying in every fight, and I'm just a tense, scared motherfucker

anyway, then I meet another goddamn dog on the road, but it's a fucking demon dog, and it comes with me too

and it's like - months have passed by in the game, the world is being invaded by dragons, and I'm just focused on real estate

finally i build my new lakefront house, and go find my daughter (who has been living on the streets for about two months)

it's like - LITERALLY, beggars can't be choosers, but bc i didn't make a nice bed for her, she sleeps on a bench in Whiterun

and she moves in to my house, which is right next to a cave of wolves and a necromancers summoning circle, but whatev

and I walk into the house, with my goddamn dog, waiting for her to adopt my dog so I can go save the world

and she's ADOPTED A FUCKING RAT

AND SHE'S FLOUNCING AROUND WITH A GIANT RAT

in the meantime, I get married to a lady named Mjoll the Lioness, bc she's hot to trot and will be a good lesbian mother

and weirdly, her 'friend' Aerin, moves into our house too

and it's like - do we have a polyamorous relationship and are raising our homeless daughter and her rat? bc that's cool

so I'm like 'i'll go and find a brother for my new daughter' and he can adopt the dog. Hopefully.

and it works out - the boy wants my dog, my dog likes the boy, everything is fine, the dog has been successfully adopted.

and finally i can go back to being the saviour of Tamriel.

although I then discover that Mjoll's "friend" Aerin keeps yelling 'stupid dog' at my gorgeous dog.

so I waited until he was outside and I try to make him fuck off back to his OWN HOUSE

my theory was that I could shout him into the lake? anyway, I misjudged and shouted him into the necromancer circle

and he died

and my wife saw me kill him, and attacked me, and I didn't want to kill her, so i ran away

so I just never went back to my house, but even though I destroyed my marriage and killed a man

i know that my dog is safe.

THE END. THANK YOU

1 comment:

  1. I KNOW THAT DOG. At first I thought the photo actually went with the tweets and I about lost my mind that there was a dog out there that looked JUST LIKE COBY. But then I figured it out. (It's 11:20 p.m. and I am not doing my best mental work at this time.)

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