Spawn into the Land In-Between Ideas, near the UT College of Fine Arts (COFA) charm stone [a.] Venture south until you reach the Vestige of Silence [b.] There you will use a Snake Oil Brinestone to conjure three career paths for the Music and Sound Emphasis of the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies (DAET). This is a gauntlet anointed upon you and your cooperative player, Sophia, by the newly crowned Snake Oil Queen. The right half of the Broken Tenitūra Medallion will be inside a chest near the pulpit.
Head south for a short distance to the Church of the Profane [c.] There, take three sips of the Three-Sided Elixir and LyrnWyrm will be summoned. Exhaust all dialogue with LyrnWyrm until he asks you, “…did you fuck her yet?” Inscribe events in journal, ensuring that the date of your inscription is 10-11-17.
Continue south to the Blind Thought Ruins [d.] LyrnWyrm secretly followed you there. These four things must occur to progress: 1) create a two-year plan for DAET Music and Sound asked of you by LyrnWyrm. 2) write requested copy for new Music and Sound job posting. This will trigger 3) LyrnWyrm’s re-writing of the job post to accommodate the hiring of a friend, using job description rationale written by LyrnWyrm’s friend. Finally, 4), LyrnWyrm will make another sexualized comment about a student. Make note in journal.
Make your way south until you come upon the Cave of Smoldering Equity [e.] Rest at the Charm Stone. There you discover someone has anonymously accused you of bartering sex for co-operative gameplay with you. This triggers the IP Address puzzle which is solved by quickly running between the Cave of Smoldering Equity and the nearby Hallowhorn Tor-Grounds [f.] to the immediate south several times.
Upon solving the IP Puzzle, LyrnWyrm and Snake Oil Dean are informed. Travel to the southernmost point of the Land In-between Ideas and find the hidden door through which you dive into the Bay of Apathy. Be sure to have the necessary vitality to swim across the bay with one breath.
From landfall, take a short hike to the Ciggy Enigma Pillar [g.] where you are asked by the Snake Oil Queen to confront the Tarnished GIF Makr, now identified as the solution to the IP Address puzzle. You dare not approach him in combat or your game will end. Instead, travel northwest to the Illiturgical Theatre [h.] Send an email to LyrnWyrm expressing disapproval of his plan to alter a job post to accommodate his friend.
You will be granted access to the Spinnaker of Languid Silence [i.] There you will summon in Sophia enter a dizzyingly cyclical battle against falsehoods, scapegoatery, the autocratic scuttling of both puzzles previously solved and curricular magic learned on your journey. The battle comes to an end when the Snake Oil Queen enters within a vortex. She jettisons you to the nearby Forest of Gaucherie [j.] There, the Snake Oil Queen takes both you and Sophia into her golden paper mâché arms like twins and in a motherese of wolfsbreath, she sheepishly recites a poem, with a lullaby dirge of lutes and hurdy gurdys as accompaniment:
This is just temporary.
I would ask you to hold on.
We are working thru a solution.
It is the first time the LyrnWyrm has ever been challenged
and he is floundering.
Kuhnyve and myself are all involved.
I will keep throwing my body in front of yours...
so just sit tight.
Don’t even respond to his requests. BTW –
you have a right to be frustrated.
A cutscene reveals the Forest of Gaucherie as a metaphor for the divorce mediation you find yourself in. It is dense. Despite evidence that you are successfully handling your duties, LyrnWyrm will accuse you of being overworked. By all measure, you are exceeding all expectations. You are the hero. That is the only reason why you bought this game.
After the cutscene, venture northeast to the Sobbing Hamlet Effigy [k.] There, summon Sophia from the nearby Golden Omen Lake as a co-operative by completing the Roux-Utero Ritual. You are both asked to meet with the Snake Oil Queen in her Chamber of Lanyarded Secrets [l.] You will immediately spawn there. Exhaust all dialogue explaining how LyrnWyrm scuttled your journey’s progress at the Spinnaker of Languid Silence. The Snake Oil Queen will then instruct you to travel Northwest to Recursive Crossroads [m.] There you will be accused of copyright infringement by the Tarnished GIF Makr. A spell will be cast by the GIF Makr causing the action of traveling west to stop after fifteen paces and incessantly loop until you rest at the nearby Charm Stone.
Now trek southwest to the Respite Memory Ruins [n.] There you will have the option to take the Path of Sanity northeast, beyond the UT Tower and leave the Land In-Between Ideas all together or venture southwest to the Thought Designed Peak [o.] But you are a fighter. You believe in yourself, but you must have both halves of the corruptor heart medallion to proceed. At the Thought Designed Peak, you alone will meet with the Snake Oil Queen and the LyrnWyrm for what the Queen refers to as a “heart to heart”. Hoist both halves of the corruptor heart medallion.
The Queen will vanish, leaving you and LyrnWyrm alone, at which point The LyrnWyrm will begin attacking you with new move-sets that include the clutching of printed emails in both fists and screeching of saliva’d obscenities. He picks you up, slaps you hard against his open palm like a pack of cigarettes (a move referred to in an ancient tongue as “packing”) before removing one to smoke. And then the LyrnWyrm, in a final death blow, smokes you.
You will die and respawn alone at the Thought Designed Peak Charm Stone. Travel northwest through the OstraNestum-Proving Mountains, dodging and shielding against a barrage of volleys from Unsalted Peanut Onagers overhead. Reach the Patience-Drain Abyss [p.] Level up, placing more points in arcane stats. You will need plenty of arcane if you ever hope to finish the Land In-Between Ideas level of the game.
Make your way north to the Heretical Ice Monastery [q.] There, meet with abbot Evans who instructs you in the way of the Caucus of Academy Sovereignty and gives you an AAUP amulet and pamphlet. First equip amulet, then discard the pamphlet to fast-travel to the foot of the UT Tower [r.] After completing the Burning Orange Blood Ritual, you will be granted access to meet with Janet Dukerich, UT Austin Vice Provost for Advocacy and Dispute Resolution. There, you will complete the Land In-Between Ideas level by giving her the letter you wrote that describes the dysfunction in your department, which is also the foundation for the design of the game level you are currently playing.
Finally, fast-travel to the Isle of Coordinated Isolation [s.], the location of the next game level. Farm for vigor if need be—there you will face the death of your daughter, a proposition by Kuhnyve, Lord of the Tenitura to show allegiance to the newly empowered LyrnWyrm, and the termination of your game’s starting class to further advance.
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This was an impossibly turbulent and difficult time for me as a professor. I was suffering depression and anxiety because of my interactions with UT Austin administrators. I began to worry about the effects all of this was having on my teaching and on the student experience. It was an unfounded concern. In its response to my retaliation lawsuit, one of the seven discrete, pretextual excuses UT Austin gave for my termination was that my teaching during this period was “floundering”. However, my teaching surveys for this period were very strong, with no signs of floundering.
But it’s funny how words get used and reused. Pennycook’s behavior in the spring of 2018 would prompt Doreen Lorenzo to send me the following text on February 13, 2018. For me, this is the single most painful piece of evidence I will place in this book. It shows a completely unwavering support for (and acknowledgment of) everything that Sophia and I were reporting to fine arts administrators and reminds me of just how diametrically everything became its opposite sometime over the summer of 2018:
We felt like the Pennycook problem would finally get addressed and that he would be retiring early, and everything in the department would start singing crystalline barbershop refrains. But that is not how spurned fully tenured faculty with chips on their shoulders roll.
So then came the DLC[1] for the game, designed during the summer of 2018 by pinky-swearing academic administrator big bosses who conspired to set the DLC to automatically download and update the game in the wee hours while the hero peacefully slumbers, unawares, near a campfire and Charm Stone, under a black night, with but one twinkling luminous pixel, in the Land In-Between Ideas.
[1]Downloadable content. It denotes supplementary game content that players can install after the original release of a video game. This additional content may include new level, characters, weapons, or cosmetic alterations like skins.
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