Altruism vs. Arachnophobia
To paraphrase Broken Sword 2: There are only three things I don’t like about spiders. The way they look, the way they move, and the fact that they live in the same gameworld as me.
Dear Fantasyland,
Thank you for your recent plea for assistance, however unfortunately, I must decline. You see, I have recently gazed upon the map of your fair realm, and my eye could not fail to be drawn to your chosen starting location – the giant spider’s cave – or the giant spider temple in the middle of a web-strewn forest shaped, or so it would appear, like a giant spider.
Do you not realise how upsetting this is for many of us heroes? Have you ever looked at a giant spider? Verily, have you even looked at a regular spider, up close? Well, imagine that, only the size of a cow, and trying to chew off your face. My face. You see my problem here. It’s got eight legs, hair, and fangs. Its idea of lunch is to melt its prey and drink it up as if through a straw. It moves at incredible speed, ready to drop down from on high, or scuttle out of a gap when you least suspect it. They gather in groups; in flocks; in crawling, squawking, hero-slaying battalions of eight legged little bastards that scream at our innermost atavistic fears and call back to such deep-seated terror that the strongest of man might fall back blubbering.
You want me to fight an army of these things?
Sod off.
I do not care that you consider the giant spider to be an opening level enemy. Sure, they fall fast enough if you stick your sword through them, but if you want to do that, you’re in for a face full of fangs, of hair, and the barely digested scent of either adventurers or giant flies on their breath. You’ve got to wander around hearing that ‘scuttle-scuttle-scuttle’ against the bare rock, and the constant fear that one may be missing – one big one, or even a small one. A little black widow; the giant spider’s pet, crawling up your back with its fatal sting that no amount of health potion quaffing will be able to amend. Or a tarantula; its big, hairy-
Hold, I cannot go on. My answer is quite simply: no. I will happily fight your demons and your giant snake gods; indeed, should you encounter some form of robot spider, of steel and oil and dark techno-magic, my sword is primed and ready. The Devil himself, horns gleaming in the sulphurous fires, can chance to steal your soul and rend your living flesh, but have you ever heard of him crawling into your lunchbox? No, you have not. And therein lies my point. There is nothing to be ashamed of in arachnophobia; indeed, such fears were all that kept humanity going through the Dark Ages, the Neo-Rennaissance and the Demon War, or so the game manual would have us believe. Why is it that you persist in saying ‘they’re more afraid of you than you are of them’, even when they con purple and automatically aggro my ass? Fool me seventeen times, shame on me…
As a compromise, I may be willing to take up the sword on your behalf. However, I must insist that in the event of an area known to contain spiders, giant or otherwise, a team of peasants must be dispatched to retrieve anything I either require or covet. Some form of magical spell, a ‘cheat code’, if you will, to replace the fanged ones with something less mentally disturbing, such as giant chickens, would also be acceptable. Or a really big can of Raid from the future, or some alternate dimension, depending on the current whims of narrative causality.
Sincerely,
Your Hero
P.S. Don’t even get me started on bloody facehuggers…