#tangential learning

Only been in this fandom a short while, and this is the folklore I've been running into so far. I love any fandom that can tangentially teach me mythology/folklore.💖

Shortly after I graduated from university, YouTube was slowly starting to gain more and more content creators that were creating videos to educate, or encourage viewers to learn and think. One of those early channels was Extra Credits, and one of their earliest videos was about tangential learning.

Tangential learning is when people take time out to self-educate themselves after being introduced to a topic within a context they already enjoy. At the time I had watched that video (well over a decade ago), I had understood the concept and had experienced it as a child, but never in the context of video games. Which was what Extra Credits was discussing, the possibility of using video games to encourage players to self-educate themselves.

This was more likely due to the kind of games I liked to play. I often played puzzle games, farming games and role play games. While role play games could have real world references, it would have never occurred to me that they were real world references worth looking up. 

And then… Book of Hours happened to me. The game Book of Hours is set in an alternative version of our world where the occult plays a large role underneath people’s daily lives, and the mysticism and unknown that come with the occult is real. Specifically, the game is set in an alternative version of 1930s UK. This means that occasionally the game’s text will use words that are not in common usage or terms that I’m familiar with. 

While I have enough reading comprehension to at least get the gist of what the text is telling me, I’ve been invested enough into this game that I will write that sentence down and question mark the word that I don’t know. After I’m done playing, I have been taking time to look up those words or terms. Sometimes reading through the wiki page if something catches my attention.

Yeah, what yoshikofortnite said!👏 Also, we all got a lot of tangential learning out of Hetalia, and learning history is always good.