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Welcome to Aidan's BRAIN EMPTYING TIME! *catchy theme tune plays* here's your host: Adonis!

"Hi and welcome to the show! Fear my allpowerful PUN magic!"
*a witch in the audience turns host into a frog*
"Okay! On to today's topic! Today on ABET we will look at the f***ed up literary category of Magical Realism, along with the joys of beta testing games"

NDAs are a bit of a silly concept really, in a world where gossip reigns supreme and the very laws on which the nation you are from advocate free speech (as an illusion, mind you). A certain video game whose name will not be mentioned has a sort of NDAish ruleset, not even solid rules, but more a sincere request. I find it interesting that even though nobody SIGNED the agreement, leaking information on said game is grounds for a permanent ban from the game and its associated 'others'.

So how does the company in question have grounds for a ban when the leak didn't ACTUALLY break any of the agreements set out in joining? They didn't, but they banned the person anyway.

When you invite 100,000bazillion-trillion people to a closed beta test and don't make them AGREE to an NDA, you have no right to complain, let alone BAN, someone when there is a leak. I'm sure some people who are involved in said beta might even berate me for saying as much as I have. But if I get banned, I will be appealing, at length, to higher powers than those in charge of the project in question.

Seriously, Unnamed_Company_A, make a better NDA.

So, Magical Realism.

BBUUUUHHHHHHhg brainmeltingohmygod...

Magical Realism depicts a setting that seems 'everyday' even in spite of the strange goings on in the story.

Take The Snow Child by Angela Carter:
-Count and Countess go riding in winter.
-Count makes three comments about the kind of girl he wishes he had.
-Girl appears, joins Count on his horse.
-Countess gets jealous, tries to ditch girl, Count defends girl.
-Eventually, girl picks a rose, catches a thorn, and just DIES, like is were normal.
-The Count gets off his horse and makes 'use' of the girl's dead body, while the Countess watches.
-Count hands Countess the rose, and she yells that it bites.

Doubleyew, Tee, Eff.

The girl is not real, the necrophilia never happened, the clothes never really magically flew off the Countess and onto the girl (forgot to list that bit), it was all symbolism. We took some deep looks into the story, and in the end it becomes hard to tell if the Count or the Countess is the bad guy here...

Aidan needs to devote all his attention to the pretty ink patterns on cards now, so "it's time to wrap up this imaginary, prizeless gameshow with the usual! See you all next time!"
*bad theme music plays again, ingraining into your mind and bugging you just when you thought you had forgotten the sound of it*