for the longest time now, psychology has had a chip on its shoulder about being a feminine-coded 'soft science' such that it became obsessed with only studying things that it could quantify, to try and legitimize itself.

in the process, it abandoned some foundational qualitative concerns that have historically proven critical to psychological functioning. namely, narrative. yes, narrative therapy is a thing, but it's a niche thing. I think that's absurd (obviously).

humans are apes that tell stories. our capacity for narrative is what permits and enhances just about every other extraordinary thing about us, good and bad. we can't turn narrative into a sideplot just because it's difficult to measure with numbers.

like, I'm not fuckin psychic. I'm doing ethology, making and interpreting behavioral observations. I don't immediately know wtf someone's shadow is, or even if they have one, I watch and interact with people and put pieces together. y'all just saw me almost fuck it up.

it's certainly intuitively driven, especially at this early phase. I'll eventually have met at least one of each class, but for the moment I haven't even done that. I'm just making educated guesses based on my tabletop gaming experience lol

there's lots of reasons I bothered the paladin when I did, but the biggest one is that I could tell that's what he was. I knew that like, at least a year before he ever indicated it to me on his own. it's not an ambiguous vibe, it is purposefully unmistakable.

paladins want you to know they're paladins, that's part of why people usually hate having them in their parties lol. really, they're probably tied with bards for most hated class, for very different reasons.

they're the only class that is traditionally obligate lawful good. you can really only look so many ways when you set up camp in the upper left-hand corner of the fuckin alignment chart like that and most of them are a buzzkill for any party set on shenanigans.

but that's because tabletop stories are mostly told from the perspective of privileged adventurers dicking around in systems they aren't invested in, not the enslaved fey population they found at the local jasmal mine. they're pretty hype the paladin just showed up, actually

the rest of the party is likely to whine about the fact that the paladin is not gonna let y'all leave until you free those damn fairies. but paladin don't care, paladin gonna paladin. they are the honey badgers of doing the right thing. they're incapable of half-assing it.

arriving at a point, there were certainly calculations that went into me determining this in the first place and later confirming it, but there weren't any numbers. even after I document it in more detail, there still won't be any math. homeboy was doing paladin things.

if that means psychology will never think anything I'm doing is valid, I'm fine with that. the approval of the academy is a relatively worthless trophy that I never expect to obtain. I'm validated by seeing this stuff work to help other people like it did me.

I wouldn't be here without psychology's negligence of what I'm focusing on, from narrative to authority to the modern impact of parasocial relationships. I have little reason to seek their approval.

not gonna advertise all that, tho. I'll let them do the math