Realistically, tabletop RPGs are no more capable of emulating the experience of playing a video game than video games are capable of emulating the experience of playing a tabletop RPG, but at least with the former it’s fun to see how they fail.
I remember a lot of heated discussions about the WOW-ification of 4th edition D&D.
People have done that for every new edition of Dungeons & Dragons – we just act like 4th Edition was an outlier because it’s the only one most of the people engaging in that discourse are old enough to remember. 3rd Edition was dismissed as “just tabletop Diablo” when it was initially published in 2000. Hell, when 1st Edition dropped in 1977, it was roundly criticised by for contributing to the videogamification of a hobby which was at the time only about five years old, specifically on the grounds of making heavy use of random dungeon generation tables to automate parts of the GM’s job – you can see letters in contemporary gaming periodicals groping for the phrase “tabletop roguelike”, and failing to come up with it because the term “roguelike” had not yet been coined on account of the fact that Rogue would not be published for another three years.
(Given these examples, you might notice the trend that all of these criticisms are just picking a game or genre that happened to be popular at the time the edition in question was published, regardless of the aptness of the comparison. The comparison of 4th Edition with World of Warcraft is no different; the contemporary popular video game that 4th Edition’s gameplay is actually attempting to emulate is Team Fortress 2.)
My favorite part of the “4e is WOW” thing is that in one of the early preview articles, when talking about the fighter’s mark mechanic, they did mention looking at World of Warcraft’s aggro mechanic…as specifically something they decided not to use for it because they didn’t want GMs to be -forced- into having monsters attack the fighter, hence marking and punishment for ignoring it (Which, IIRC, they stated they borrowed the idea from basketball.)
This mention of glancing in the direction of a popular game and -deciding not to use it- became an early talking point claiming the exact opposite.
It helps to bear in mind that, just like every other edition war, the majority of the people engaging in 4E discourse had never actually played or even read it, and were basing their arguments entirely on a picture of 4E’s mechanics game-of-telephoned to them via other discourse posts. A lot of them weren’t being disingenuous there – they genuinely believed that 4E’s marking mechanic did work exactly like MMO aggro.
I search my name on a regular basis, not only because I am an ego monster (although I try not to pretend that I’m not) but because it’s a good way for me to find reviews, end-of-the-year “best of” lists my book might be on, foreign publication release dates, and other information about my work that I might not otherwise see, and which is useful for me to keep tabs on. In one of those searches I found that Grok (the “AI” of X) attributed to one of my books (The Consuming Fire) a dedication I did not write; not only have I definitively never dedicated a book to the characters of Frozen, I also do not have multiple children, just the one.
Why did Grok misattribute the quote? Well, because nearly all consumer-facing “AI” are essentially “fancy autocomplete,” designed to find the next likely word rather than offer factual accuracy. “AI” is not actually either intelligent or conscious, and doesn’t know when it’s offering bad information, it just runs its processes and gives a statistically likely answer, which is very likely to be factually wrong. “Statistically likely” does not equal “correct.”
Still, I was curious who other “AI” would tell me I had dedicated The Consuming Fire to. So I asked. Here’s the answer Google gave me in its search page “AI Overview”:
I do have a daughter, but she would be very surprised to learn that after nearly 27 years of being called “Athena,” that her name was “Corbin.” I mean, Krissy and I enjoy The Fifth Element, but not that much. Also I did not dedicated the book to my daughter, under any name.
Here’s Copilot, Microsoft’s “AI”:
I have indeed dedicated (or co-dedicated) several books to Krissy, and I’m glad that Copilot did not believe that my spouse’s name was “Leloo.” But in fact I did not dedicate The Consuming Fire to Krissy.
How did ChatGPT fare? Poorly:
I know at least a couple of people named Corey, and a couple named Cory, but I didn’t dedicate The Consuming Fire to any of them. Also, note that ChatGPT not only misattributed to whom I dedicated the book, it also entirely fabricated the dedication itself. I didn’t ask for the text of the dedication, so ChatGPT voluntarily went out of its way to add extra erroneous information to the mix. Which is… a choice!
I also asked Claude, the “AI” of Anthropic, and to its (and/or Anthropic’s) credit, it was the only “AI” of the batch which did not confidently squirt out an incorrect answer. It admitted it did not have reliable search information on the answer and undertook a few web searches to try to find the information, and eventually told me it could not find it, offering advice instead on how I could find the information myself (for the record, you can find the information online; I did by going to Amazon and searching the excerpt there). So good on Claude for knowing what it doesn’t know and admitting it.
Interestingly, when I went to Grok directly and asked to whom the book was dedicated, it also said it couldn’t find that information. When I asked it why a different instance of itself incorrectly attributed a different dedication to the book, it more or less shrugged and said what I found to be the equivalent of “dude, it happens.” I also checked Gemini directly (which as I understand it powers Google’s Search “AI” Overview) to see if it would also say “I can’t find that information.” Nope:
I’m sure this comes as a surprise to both Ms. Rusch and Mr. Smith, who are (at least on my side) collegial acquaintances but not people I would dedicate a book to. And indeed I did not. When I informed Gemini it had gotten it wrong, it apologized, misattributed The Consuming Fire to another author (C. Robert Cargill, who writes great stuff, just not this), and suggested that he dedicated the book to his wife (he did not) and that her name was “Carly” (it is not).
(I also informed Copilot that it had gotten the dedication wrong, and it also tried again, asserting I dedicated it to Athena. I’m glad Copilot got the name of my kid right, but as previously stated, The Consuming Fire is not dedicated to her.)
So: Five different “AI” and two iterations of two of them, and only Claude would not, at any point, offer up incorrect information about the dedication in The Consuming Fire. Which I will note does not get Claude off the hook for hallucinating information. It has done so before when I’ve queried it about things relating to me, and I’m pretty confident I can get it to do it again. But in this one instance, it did not.
None of them, not even Claude, got the information correct (which is different from “offered up incorrect information”). Two of them, when informed they were incorrect, “corrected” by offering even more incorrect information.
I’ve said this before and I will say it again: I ask “AI” things about me all the time, because I know what the actual answer is, and “AI” will consistently and confidently get those things wrong. If I can’t trust it to get right the things I know, I cannot trust it to get right the things I do not know.
Just to make sure this confident misstating of dedication facts was not personal, I picked a random book not by me off my shelf and asked Gemini (which was still open in my browser) to name to whom the book was dedicated.
It certainly feels like Richard Kadrey might dedicate a book in the Sandman Slim series to the lead singer of The Cramps, but in fact Aloha From Hell is not dedicated to him.
Let’s try another:
Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse may be dedicated to his wife, but if it is, her name is not “Kellie,” as that is not the name in the dedication.
Let’s see if the third time’s the charm:
It’s more accurate to say this was a third strike for Gemini, as G. Willow Wilson did not dedicate Alif the Unseen to a Hasan, choosing instead her daughter, whose name that is not.
So it’s not just me, “AI” gets other book dedications wrong, and (at least here) consistently so. These book dedications are actual known facts anyone can ascertain — you can literally just crack open a book to see to whom a book is dedicated — and these facts are being gotten wrong, consistently and repeatedly, by “AI.” Again, think about all the things “AI” could be getting wrong that you won’t have such wherewithal to check.
What do we learn from this?
One: Don’t use “AI” as a search engine. You’ll get bad information and you might not even know.
Two: Don’t trust “AI” to offer you facts. When it doesn’t know something, it will frequently offer you confidently-stated incorrect information, because it’s a statistical engine, not a fact-checker.
Three: Inasmuch as you are going to have to double-check every “fact” that “AI”” provides to you, why not eliminate the middleman and just not use “AI”? It’s not decreasing your workload here, it’s adding to it.
Does “AI” have uses? Possibly, just not this. I don’t blame “AI” for any of this, it’s not those programs’ fault that the people who own and market them and know they are statistical matching engines willfully and, bluntly, deceitfully position them to be other things. You don’t blame an electric bread maker when some fool declares that it’s an excellent air filter. But you shouldn’t use it as an air filter, no matter how many billions of dollars are being spent to convince you of its air-filtering acumen. Use an actual air filter, damn it.
I dedicate this essay to everyone out there who will take these lessons to heart and not trust “AI” to tell you things. You are the real ones. And that’s a fact.
A woman finds a collection of ‘herbs’ her father collected long ago. Some of the names on the jars are: Belladonna, Hemlock, Wolfsbane, Arsenic, Oleander, Foxglove. Ah, she thinks, this explains a lot.
Think about the scene you want to write and make a word list as a warm up exercise. My character discovers a cabin in the woods that belonged to her mother. My word list could start out as:
Yesterday I had to go into Jacksonville for follow-up at Hill Breast Center, but I will go ahead and spoil the ending - everything's fine.
Several years ago I had to go to this place for a biopsy of a particularly dense mass. I was a little anxious about going back, because I remember the first visit taking all day. I don't remember why I was waiting around so long, but yesterday's visit was about 90 minutes. I had a diagnostic mammogram and then an ultrasound, from which they decided no biopsy was needed. I do have some calcifications, but they want me to get some twice-yearly MRIs to check on those, and if after two years they haven't changed, then they're likely to not ever do anything. The main thing they want to make sure of is that a mass doesn't also form in the area. Plus I have unusual amounts of heterogenous density, so I'm even more like trying to find a rock in a bag of jellybeans.
Since I was already so far out, I detoured to go to the new Lotte Market we got in October. It moved into an old Best Buy, so it's enormous. I really want Fox to be able to come along on another visit. They have just about any Asian food you can think of, produce to frozen foods, as well as a big selection of Indian and Hispanic foods. They also have several small food stands inside the store, selling coffee and pastries, Japanese street food, and Korean barbeque. I got a chocolate-filled shokupan roll. They have Ramune-flavored ice cream, live seafood, all manner of fermented foods, fresh mushrooms, fish cake multipacks for donburi, and home goods of all kinds. I was delighted and kept spamming Fox with photos of things.
I had some other stops to make, including REI before I was able to head back home, and it was a long day out for me. I'm somewhat dreading the need to argue with insurance about these MRIs they want, because I know the insurance will say they aren't necessary and won't want to pay for them. And it may get much worse, depending on how policies shake out. But I guess we'll deal with that when the time comes. I'm also not looking forward to needing to get rid of my ear piercings for these scans, but I might be able to find glass or silicone retainers, and just recruit Fox to help me switch everything out.
Anyway, I've always kind of wanted to do this for Christmas - ramen. I can buy bottled broth concentrate (probably miso, which is what Fox and I like best), the noodles, veg, and even a good cut of pork belly for the chashu. I would make my own broth but mine never quite has the richness, and I haven't figured out why.
I'm trying something a little different with writing this weekend. On the one hand, I'm doing a more typical Muna story in line with a challenge on Substack - "Winter myths." Munans still have a tradition of cutting Yule trees and bringing them home, but sometimes conditions in the forest are less than ideal. How is Dee going to explain to a couple of townies that a story from their childhood that was intended to keep them from wandering too far from home, is actually walking the mountains of The Taroc?
A second prompt is poking me to write about Eden Mills' Christmastime celebration in which everyone contributes a dish. Predation cut down the number of chickens at some households, so those with laying flocks are poised to get rich. This one will be more on the comedy side as people scramble to beg, borrow, or bribe their way into enough eggs to finish their baking.
While some things I can use in both St. Felix and Muna, I haven't figured out what role Assassins might play in modern America. Kitty used to say federal-level law enforcement, and while I can see Alia being a white-hat hacker or something, Diagenou is too chaotic to be a LEO. He's probably laying low after making dirty jokes about Trump in Soldier of Fortune. "Hey man, do you fix boat motors?" "Why the hell would you think I fix boat motors?" "I mean, you live on the beach. What are all these boats here for?" he gestures towards several vessels of varying sea-worthiness lined up on the sand. "Trophies."
I just woke up from my upsetting dream in the real upsetting part was that it was a false awakening. First layer was an upsetting dream about Lily. I mean, it was pleasant until I started noticing weird stuff made me realize it was a dream and I tried waking up. I thought I did wake up because in the dream when I was waking up I became aware of the CPAP and I took it off and I got up and I don't remember what happened after that apart from there being more dreams but then I just woke up for real and realized that I had gone through a false awakening.
Except now I do actually remember more. Other things in the dream after the false awakening: couldn't find my phone, there was a guy who was made of wood, only he had one leg and the other leg was a prosthetic, except the guy who was made of wood started out as a guy played by Sylvester Stallone who needed a super macho song to fight to. Oh, and I sucked Will Smith's cock.
Realistically, tabletop RPGs are no more capable of emulating the experience of playing a video game than video games are capable of emulating the experience of playing a tabletop RPG, but at least with the former it’s fun to see how they fail.
I remember a lot of heated discussions about the WOW-ification of 4th edition D&D.
People have done that for every new edition of Dungeons & Dragons – we just act like 4th Edition was an outlier because it’s the only one most of the people engaging in that discourse are old enough to remember. 3rd Edition was dismissed as “just tabletop Diablo” when it was initially published in 2000. Hell, when 1st Edition dropped in 1977, it was roundly criticised by for contributing to the videogamification of a hobby which was at the time only about five years old, specifically on the grounds of making heavy use of random dungeon generation tables to automate parts of the GM’s job – you can see letters in contemporary gaming periodicals groping for the phrase “tabletop roguelike”, and failing to come up with it because the term “roguelike” had not yet been coined on account of the fact that Rogue would not be published for another three years.
(Given these examples, you might notice the trend that all of these criticisms are just picking a game or genre that happened to be popular at the time the edition in question was published, regardless of the aptness of the comparison. The comparison of 4th Edition with World of Warcraft is no different; the contemporary popular video game that 4th Edition’s gameplay is actually attempting to emulate is Team Fortress 2.)
Realistically, tabletop RPGs are no more capable of emulating the experience of playing a video game than video games are capable of emulating the experience of playing a tabletop RPG, but at least with the former it’s fun to see how they fail.
I feel like the folks expressing surprise at how graphic Larian’s new Game Awards trailer is might possibly have forgotten the time they cold announced Baldur’s Gate 3 with a trailer that was literally just a depiction of illithid ceremorphosis so up close and detailed it gave some viewers new fetishes.
I love how sometimes when I post one of my obnoxious player-hostile video game premises I get people in the notes going “wait, this is just unironically a good idea”, but there’s absolutely zero consensus on which ones those are.
What makes your most recent premise player-hostile? Besides the bit about refusing to give a straight answer about what’s going on, it sounds like an engaging puzzle game.
Imagine repeatedly being required to do platforming puzzles with the character whose movement tech is clearly least suited to the task at hand purely in service of a strained bit.
I love how sometimes when I post one of my obnoxious player-hostile video game premises I get people in the notes going “wait, this is just unironically a good idea”, but there’s absolutely zero consensus on which ones those are.
Game which initially appears to be a straight Ocarina of Time pastiche, except following the tutorial dungeon it’s revealed that the obnoxious fairy companion is two-timing the apparent protagonist and actually has like three different Chosen Ones going in neighbouring regions, each fully convinced that they’re the Chosen One and whatever local issue the fairy has them dealing with is the big world-ending threat. Over the course of the game, their paths begin to intersect, resulting in co-op dungeons with entire puzzle mechanics revolving around ensuring that two Chosen Ones are never in the same room at the same time. It’s textually unclear whether anything bad would happen if they found out about each other, or whether the fairy is just keen to avoid awkward questions.
(The final boss is, of course, a multi-phase affair in which each Chosen One is conveniently incapacitated at the end of their respective phase just in time for the next Chosen One to show up. They encounter each other for the first time in the post-victory cutscene, which cuts to black just as the fairy is like “okay, let me explain”.)
Unironically a complete banger of an idea though.
Give ‘em all really distinct mechanics, tie the narrative to the design by forcing the player to occasionally drag the “wrong” chosen one through a given area, crank up the dramatic irony as high as possible by having each of them comment on how “the prophecy” keeps giving them convenient paths forward (when the player knows it was really a DIFFERENT CHOSEN ONE working their asses off)…
The only meme part is the refusal to explain at the end tbh, because “three chosen ones who all need to think they’re solitary” is a premise that promises the masquerade will collapse at some point, and IMO the amount of tension you could wring out of it far outweighs the value of the cut-to-black gag. Have the fairy forget to swap out parts of the prophecy at one point, leading to one chosen one thinking that the prophecy was either changing or had been falsified. Have one chosen one catch a shadowy glimpse of another, resulting in an imagined rivalry with their Dark Mirror. Have one of them figure it out right before the end, resulting in an emotional breakdown until the fairy convinces them how important it is to keep the other two in the dark.
The two are by no means incompatible; you could do all that and still rug-pull the player right at the end by cutting away just as the fairy is about to finally explain the real reason why all of this was necessary (any explanations given earlier implicitly being at least party bullshit).
I’d be half-tempted to have the fairy adopt a different persona for each “Chosen One”, each one alluding to a particular classic incarnation of the type. Like, for one she’s an earnest the-Prophecy-my-Lady tutorial fairy, for another she’s doing a Midna-style bratdom shtick, etc., and then when we see her alone her real personality is nothing like what she’s putting on for any of them. At one point she accidentally does the wrong bit for one of the Chosen Ones and has to play it off as evil mind control or whatever.
(I only hesitate on this point because it would inevitably present a rich mine of cringe comedy, and I know what this site’s tolerance for secondhand embarrassment is like!)
I’m hesitant to cry publisher interference because sometimes developers do just make bad decisions, but it’s striking that Metroid Prime 4 feels so much like certain elements were thrown in purely to satisfy Nintendo wanting it to be Breath of the Wild except with Samus that even IGN tepidly remarked on it in their review.
Game which initially appears to be a straight Ocarina of Time pastiche, except following the tutorial dungeon it’s revealed that the obnoxious fairy companion is two-timing the apparent protagonist and actually has like three different Chosen Ones going in neighbouring regions, each fully convinced that they’re the Chosen One and whatever local issue the fairy has them dealing with is the big world-ending threat. Over the course of the game, their paths begin to intersect, resulting in co-op dungeons with entire puzzle mechanics revolving around ensuring that two Chosen Ones are never in the same room at the same time. It’s textually unclear whether anything bad would happen if they found out about each other, or whether the fairy is just keen to avoid awkward questions.
(The final boss is, of course, a multi-phase affair in which each Chosen One is conveniently incapacitated at the end of their respective phase just in time for the next Chosen One to show up. They encounter each other for the first time in the post-victory cutscene, which cuts to black just as the fairy is like “okay, let me explain”.)
Unironically a complete banger of an idea though.
Give ‘em all really distinct mechanics, tie the narrative to the design by forcing the player to occasionally drag the “wrong” chosen one through a given area, crank up the dramatic irony as high as possible by having each of them comment on how “the prophecy” keeps giving them convenient paths forward (when the player knows it was really a DIFFERENT CHOSEN ONE working their asses off)…
The only meme part is the refusal to explain at the end tbh, because “three chosen ones who all need to think they’re solitary” is a premise that promises the masquerade will collapse at some point, and IMO the amount of tension you could wring out of it far outweighs the value of the cut-to-black gag. Have the fairy forget to swap out parts of the prophecy at one point, leading to one chosen one thinking that the prophecy was either changing or had been falsified. Have one chosen one catch a shadowy glimpse of another, resulting in an imagined rivalry with their Dark Mirror. Have one of them figure it out right before the end, resulting in an emotional breakdown until the fairy convinces them how important it is to keep the other two in the dark.
The two are by no means incompatible; you could do all that and still rug-pull the player right at the end by cutting away just as the fairy is about to finally explain the real reason why all of this was necessary (any explanations given earlier implicitly being at least party bullshit).
Game which initially appears to be a straight Ocarina of Time pastiche, except following the tutorial dungeon it’s revealed that the obnoxious fairy companion is two-timing the apparent protagonist and actually has like three different Chosen Ones going in neighbouring regions, each fully convinced that they’re the Chosen One and whatever local issue the fairy has them dealing with is the big world-ending threat. Over the course of the game, their paths begin to intersect, resulting in co-op dungeons with entire puzzle mechanics revolving around ensuring that two Chosen Ones are never in the same room at the same time. It’s textually unclear whether anything bad would happen if they found out about each other, or whether the fairy is just keen to avoid awkward questions.
(The final boss is, of course, a multi-phase affair in which each Chosen One is conveniently incapacitated at the end of their respective phase just in time for the next Chosen One to show up. They encounter each other for the first time in the post-victory cutscene, which cuts to black just as the fairy is like “okay, let me explain”.)
Fraught and messy though an artistic life may be, is there a drug that can induce the euphoria as energizing as that intensely fragile moment when the muse passes through one and the artist becomes the simultaneously perfect and flawed instrument of expression? No, there is not. Even as the inner voices battle it out, intoning “You suck!” and “Eureka!” in equal measure, creation is—like the loosest of teeth just begging to be toggled by the curious tongue—a joyous torment, in whatever form it takes.
"The funds are meant to alleviate monetary barriers and enhance the fashion industry's talent pipeline." — Rosemary Feitelberg, Footwear News, 30 Oct. 2025
Did you know?
Now for a bit of light reading. Alleviate comes from Latin levis, meaning "having little weight." (Levis also gave rise to the English adjective light as in "not heavy.") In its early days during the 16th century, alleviate could mean both "to cause (something) to have less weight" or "to make (something) more tolerable." The literal "make lighter" sense is no longer used, and today only the "relieve, lessen" sense remains. Incidentally, not only is alleviate a synonym of relieve, it's also a cousin: relieve comes from Latin levare ("to raise"), which in turn comes from levis.
About a decade ago there was some noise made about trying to figure out what day on the calendar Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took place. The day that was decided on by the nerds who think too much about this sort of thing was June 5, 1985. This was decided largely by the fact that the Cubs game Ferris, Cameron and Sloane were seen attending happened on that day, and apparently you can’t argue with the baseball schedule.
I can argue with the baseball schedule, and I will tell you that June 5, 1985 is not Ferris Bueller’s day off. For one thing, anyone who knows Midwest school schedules knows that by June 5th, all the kids are out of school. For another thing, asserting that the Cubs game, which our trio only attend, is definitive, when the Von Steuben Day parade, which Ferris actually inserts himself into, is disregarded, is nonsensical cherry picking of the highest order. The Von Steuben Day parade was as real as the Cubs game, and took place on September 28, 1985. If any real world day has to be picked, I would pick that one.
Except that one won’t work either. September 28, 1985 was a Saturday, for one, and it’s too early in the school year for Ferris’ hijinks, for another. We know Ferris has skipped school nine times by the time The Day Off rolls around, and missing nine days when school has been in for barely a month is a lot, even for Ferris. Ferris is a free spirit, not a chronic truant.
If one must pick a specific day — a questionable assertion, as I will relate momentarily — it would most likely be a day in late April, when Baseball is in season, the kids are not quite yet attuned to things like prom and graduation (and for the seniors, college), spring has sprung in the Chicagoland area, and Ferris would decide that that the day is too great to spend all cooped up in class.
But ultimately, trying to pin The Day Off to an actual calendar day is folly — and not only folly but absolutely antithetical to the point of The Day Off. The point of The Day Off is freedom and possibility, not to pin it down with facts and schedules. Facts and schedules are for classes! The Day Off doesn’t ask for any of that. It only asks: What will you do, if you can do whatever you want?
What Ferris wants is to have a day in Chicago with his best friend Cameron and girlfriend Sloane. Inconveniently that is a school day, and while Ferris has bucked the system before (nine times!), as he says to the camera — Ferris breaks the fourth wall more and better than anyone before or since, yes, even better than Deadpool, I said what I said — if he does it again after this, he’ll have to barf up a lung to make it stick. That being the case, The Day Off needs to be a day more than just hanging with friends. It has to be an event. Making it so will, among other things, require the “borrowing” of an expensive car, the chutzpah to brazen one’s way into a place that will serve you pancreas, the cunning to evade parents and school principals and, significantly, the ability to make your depressive best friend confront his own fears.
Oh, and, singing “Twist and Shout” in a parade. As you do.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came out the summer before I was a senior in high school, which meant when I watched it I was very much oh, here’s a role model. Not for the skipping of school precisely; I went to a boarding school and lived in a dorm, skipping days was a rather more complicated affair than it would have been in a public school. But the anarchic style, the not taking school more seriously than it should be taken, the willingness to risk a little trouble for a little freedom — well, that appealed to me a lot.
Before you ask, no, I did not, become a True Acolyte of Ferris. I lived in the real world and wanted to get into college, and while at the time I could not personally articulate the fact that inherent in Ferris’ ability to flout the system was a frankly immense amount of privilege, I understood it well enough. Ferris gets his day off because he’s screenwriter/director John Hughes’ special boy. The rest of us don’t have that luck. Nevertheless, if one could not be Ferris all the time, would it still be wrong to have a Ferris moment or two, when the opportunity presented itself? I thought not. I had my small share of Ferris moments and didn’t regret them.
(I even got called “Ferris” once or twice! Not in high school, but in college, at The University of Chicago, where somewhat exceptionally among my peers at that famously intensive school, I didn’t grind or panic about my grades, I would actually leave campus to see concerts and plays and to visit a girl at Northwestern, and I got a job straight out of college reviewing movies for a newspaper, in the middle of a recession. I apparently made it all look easy, thus, “Ferris.” Spoiler: It wasn’t all easy, not by a long shot, the girl at Northwestern wanted to be just friends, and I got that job because I was willing to be paid less on a weekly basis than the newspaper paid its interns. I only achieved Ferris-osity if one didn’t look too closely.)
There has been the observation among Gen-Xers that you know you’re old when you stop identifying less with Ferris and more with Principal Rooney (this is also true when applied to the students of The Breakfast Club and Vice-Principal Vernon). I’ve never gotten to that point, but it’s surely true that Ferris becomes less of a character goal and more of a character study as one gets older. Ferris himself understands that he is living in a moment that’s not going to last: As he says in the movie, he and Cameron will soon graduate, they’ll go to separate colleges and that’s going to be that for them. Ferris’ trickster status is predicated in his being in a place and time where his (let’s face it mild) acts of transgression have little consequence. The penalties for him here are of the “I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record” sort, and even those are thwarted by Cameron letting him off the hook for property damage and a soror ex machina moment. Ferris knows it, which I think is why he takes advantage of it. After graduation, things get harder for everyone, even for privileged white boys from the north suburbs.
This might mean that Ferris eventually becomes one of those people who realizes he’s peaked in high school, and what an incredibly depressing realization that might be from him (Cameron, on the other hand, will not peak in high school; once he’s out of his dad’s house he’s going to thrive. Sloane is going to be just fine, too).
I do wonder, from time to time, what has become of Ferris. Many years ago I wrote about what I think happened to Holden Caufield of Catcher in the Rye; I said I expected he went into advertising, was good at selling things to “the youth” and became a mostly functional alcoholic. My expectations for Ferris are similar, although more charitable: He goes to Northwestern, is popular but not nearly at the same level (Northwestern has a lot of Ferris types at it), gets a job in marketing, does very well at it, marries someone who is not Sloane, moves back to his hometown when they have kids and when they get old enough to go to his high school, he bores them with his stories about his time there. The kids, it turns out, didn’t ditch. Ferris has grandkids now. He keeps in touch with Cameron and Sloane through Facebook. They’re fine. He’s fine. It’s all fine.
If it sounds like I’ve given Ferris an ordinary life, well, that’s kind of the point. Early on, I said the point of The Day Off was, what will you do, if you can do whatever you want? It turns out, for all his cleverness and antics and quoting of John Lennon, what Ferris wanted was actually pretty ordinary: To have a great day with his friends, while he still could have a great day with his friends. And, well: Who wouldn’t? Just because what he wants is ordinary doesn’t mean it isn’t good, or that it wasn’t a shining moment that all three of them will be glad all their lives that they got to have. Our lives are made of moments like these, where one day you get to do what you want with the people who matter to you, and you look around and you say to yourself, yes, this.
Most us don’t then mount a parade float and lipsync to a Beatles cover, true, and if we did we would probably get arrested. But this is why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a fable, and why the actual date of The Day Off doesn’t matter. What matters, and why I come back to this movie, is the joy of a perfect day, with the people that will make it perfect. My Day Off isn’t this day off. But I’ve had one or two of them, and, hopefully, so have you.
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