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“I mean, isn’t this widely known? There’s no such thing as bad hitboxes, only bad players. Dark Souls II is a great video game.”

— Larry King (attributed)

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Being Kindled is about video games now. Actually, it’s about one video game. But before we get started, let’s get a little background info.

There is no such thing as a “bad hitbox.” 

Take a walk with me, if you will. Or pull up a chair, sit down by the fire. Whichever scenario makes you more suggestible. But before we get started, let’s get a little background info.

Though it may be hard to believe, back in the second century B.C. mankind had only one Dark Souls game, called Dark Souls. This game was made by cavemen knapping flint in the cold, dark, dingy caves of prehistoric Japan, and it shows. The game is made out of rocks, pretty much. In one notorious level, called Lost Izalith, the cavemen who developed the game — in a fashion typical of that one kind of caveman that has a really prominent unibrow — became impatient with banging rocks together to make funny pictures and sounds and just made a level full of bad texture tiling and giant chickens.

This was the last straw for a man named Jacques Darqueseouls II, who decided to make a good Dark Souls game. Instead of making the game out of rocks, which had been the established paradigm for millenia, Jacques decided to make a game out of actual pixels and ones and zeroes and stuff. Dark Souls II, as it came to be called, was a universally praised success. It had a guy in it called “Rat King,” which critics hailed as a triumph of artistic progress as well as a poignant dissection of human nature and a scathing rebuke of the current state of rats. One prominent public figure of some occupation or other said that the game was “the rattiest Dark Souls yet,” as the game featured two rat-themed boss fights, which blew the precedent of Dark Souls’ zero rat-themed boss fights out of the water.

But before we get started, let’s get a little background info. Prior to Dark Souls II, experts doubted that two rat-themed boss fights was even possible for a single video game. Like the men that built the atom bomb, they feared it could destroy the world but then did it anyway because it would be really cool. And it was. 

The cavemen that built Dark Souls out of rocks and twigs, despite the ubiquitous praise for and cultural significance of their vastly superior successor, hated Dark Souls II. They hated its bold artistic direction, they hated its enthralling atmospheres, they hated its stunning orchestral score, they hated its faithful-yet-innovative gameplay, and above all they hated its rats. “Unga bunga,” said one such disgruntled neanderthal. “We should swarm the online discourse surrounding the game,” said another, “With bogus and phony accusations that the game has ‘bad hitboxes’! Then we’ll be rich or something.”

The plan worked. 

But before we get started, let’s get a little background info. “Hitbox” is a really esoteric technical term that I don’t expect you to understand without it being reduced to a crummy juvenile metaphor. Think of it as a little choo-choo train that gives the guy in a video game an ouchie, or whatever. With this in mind, it’s obvious that “bad hitbox” is a logical impossibility, or an oxymoron, or a fallacy, or stupid. 

The people that make the game literally just decide what the hitboxes should be. They lovingly craft the hitboxes by hand to be whatever they want. How can that be bad? By what metric? Is there some cabal of elite hitbox judges that have a gold-standard hitbox that they measure every videogame’s hitboxes against? Why would they even do that? Who would they be paid by? How would they even enforce a standard when the United States Office of Weights and Measures established in 1836 has a monopoly on the authoritative implementation of official measurements? Something doesn’t add up.

These mysteries to this day remain unanswered by the keyboard-thrashing troglodytes who have grown fat off the success of their enterprise of slander. Sitting on the throne of their empire of deception, they convinced Americans that their lack of skills at the game could only be explained by the developer’s purported folly. 

With the hate campaign instigated by the cave-dwellers in full swing, the sagely Jacques Darqueseouls II knew he would need a real homerun to rebuild his lost rapport with the masses. For this herculean task, he called on his old colleague Jack “Mad Dog” Scholarofthefirstsin, who gave his name to the second and final good Dark Souls game, stylized as Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin. Mad Dog knew what the people wanted — nay, what they needed. Not being one to negotiate with terrorists, Mad Dog didn’t address the hitbox complaints at all, knowing that this would only legitimize the senseless babble of the rock-thumping dinosaurs. Instead, he doubled down on the tenderly handcrafted genius of Jacques Darqueseouls II’s original vision, adding a character named “Aldi, Grocery Store” that was just a big scary head, and sometimes a small scary head.

“Aldi” was the next “Rat King.” At least that’s what cable news legend Larry King famously predicted on his show during an interview with Mad Dog. The jury is still out on the late Mr. King’s prophecy, with two good Dark Souls games and no good video games ever since. I guess Minecraft was pretty okay, though. 

But actually, there is only one bad hitbox and it’s on Bed of Chaos. That’s a reference to a little game you may have heard of called “Dark Souls.” But before we get finished, let’s get a little background info. Being Kindled is no longer about video games. Enjoy your annual Spring foolery.