sorcerers are the only mages, apparently

Elder scrolls online rarely ever acknowledges the choices/customizations/achievements of the player character. this is old news.

However, every once in a blue moon the planets align, something breaks, and the game actually reluctantly sees the existence of the player character! But because it's eso, it immediately fucks it up.

Take ember's recruitment quest in high isle for example. She's a mage doing a spell and jumps to mage-splain magic at you (in a world where everyone is always doing magic and everyone has access to the slightest bit of magic all the time forever). Her dialogue assumes your character is a magic-dumb warrior vagabond who has never seen anyone do a spell in their life. Pushing aside the fact this choice does not work in the elder scrolls world, zenimax online studios does not give a shit if you are the master of the mages guild skill line, a seasoned member of the psijics, are hauling a magic staff around on your back, have magicka as your max'd out crazy stat, or even if you are specced into all the magic magickyness your class can provide. Zos expects you to be a warrior vagabond idiot. You MUST be magick-splained at.

There is a single exception to this where your character has the option to say 'hey ember, i know about magic, i do stuff, maybe i can help with this heckin spell rather than doing grunt work?'. You know what the qualifications are to be able to have this option? Your class must be 'sorcerer'.

"What's the problem" you might ask, 'sorcerer' sounds like a mage-y class right? Yeah, in any other game it would be; but the problem with eso is the classes do not matter, and every single class has magic and can fill the mage role. Not to mention sorcerers can also fill the warrior role and not be mage-y at all.

So when ember is faced with, say:

all warriors. all magick-less idiots who have never seen someone cast anything in their lives.

but my argonian stamina-based sorcerer bounty-hunter with bow, longsword, fighters-guild skills, and not a drop of magickal expertise in her?

Master mage. Master magician.

Elder Scrolls Online in-game pronunciations are so wild you guys.

First of all, you have a lot of american voice-actors mispronouncing french-based names.  Lookin at you, Darien Gautier, who fellow bretons (who are supposed to be a french-leaning/based people) pronounce as “Gah-tea-err”.  Now, it might just be latin forever scarring my brain with the first syllable, but shouldn’t it be “Gow-tea-yay”? (Edit: after being reminded of french sound rules (at least canadian french), his name should be pronounced “Go-tee-ay”.)

Then you have a cavalcade of latin-based names with the imperials, which come with their own set of problems. But hey at least Liam O’Brian as Scipion Averno knows to pronounce his brother Iulius’s name as “Yoo-lee-uss”, so that was vindicating and relieving to hear.

You also run into problems when characters have names based on realworld mythological figures, like good ol’ Iachesis in summerset.  Iachesis is a simple misspelling of ancient greek Lachesis, the member of the three Fates who measured the thread of a human life.  So, my own mispronouncings aside (in my head i hear ‘lah-KEY-sis’ ), you might think the “Ia” of Iachesis would perhaps be latin-ized in pronunciation (”ya-kuh-sas”) to at least rhyme with the original name... but nope... instead we have “eye-ka-sis”, which just heckin threw me for a loop.

Speaking of altmer, ffffffffffffffffuck. Fuckin high elves in eso were created just to fuck with my english language expertise, personally. Just to fuck with MEEE, personally.

Now, despite the english language being an absolute clusterfuck, there actually are some rules you can bet your ass on, even for pronunciation.  One of those rules is words that begin as “Ce-” will just about always be pronounced with a soft C.  The c will morph into an s sound.  Think, cerulean, center, central, celery, celebrity. Stuff like that.

High elves apparently fuckin hate this and go out of their way to have a bunch of ‘Ce-’ words that smack you in the face with hard k sounds.  The Ceporah Tower becomes “kep-or-uh”, social signifier ‘cerum’ becomes “kair-um”.  Hell, I made a high elf and button-mashed my way to naming him Cellannian Tilsi, automatically translating the Ce- to an s sound, but APPARENTLY according high elf rules this means his name is actually “Kell-on-ee-en”.  High elves frustrate me, is what I’m saying.

tl:dr; english is a fucky flexible language for pronunciations, i am a canadian english major/classics-leaning snob about it, and the most classically ‘elven’ elves in the game were thought into existence just to fuck with me personally.

um excuse me? most people hate steven and shirley in hillhouse? steven’s most peoples’ least fav character?

how. dare.

nope. illegal.

like, all my complaints and issues with nabokov’s style and how it drained me despite y’know i appreciate its purpose and whatever....

it works in lolita.

because it’s ALL ABOUT numbing your mind into acquiescence.  humbert WANTS you to gloss over everything, priming you to side with him and his grossness.

just. ack it’s good. i feel like it should be required reading for case studies into how abusers construct the world around their victims.  how manipulators interact with others.  it’s extremely accurate and almost screaming at you ‘HEY, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS, GODDAMN STOP FALLING FOR IT IT’S TERRIBLE’.