Rawle Nyanzi
@Parvenu62
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Author of The Perils of Sasha Reed and The Venus Spectacular. Safetyism in art is evil and must never be tolerated. https://t.co/EL6ZTqA97L
Joined November 2020
Well, *The Venus Spectacular* didn’t make it. But it’s not the end of the world; I’ll work hard over the holiday slump to put together a new work — a work you’ll be hearing about well before the Kickstarter goes up around March/April of next year. I’m not stopping.
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Several people have asked: why does ‘diverse’ content spark backlash now when it didn’t before?. I think it comes down to one thing: removal. In the past, inclusionary moves didn’t try to clear out the previously enjoyed things. Kim Possible did not replace James Bond, she was.
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@BittrScrptReadr It also throws the viewer for a loop. Upon hearing the term “fascist,” you’ll typically think of right-wing culture issues. You won’t expect fascist economic or industrial policy, since “fascism” in the wider culture is never discussed in those terms.
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Recently I saw a YouTube video that disdained “fairytale endings”. It made me think: modern mainstream storytelling is a demoralization machine. All the heroes are bitter, and all the old folks are failures, all to destroy any sense of confidence you may have. (cc @J0hnADouglas)
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I can’t hold my tongue about this any longer. This idea that boys should read what they’re told to read instead of what they’d want to read is toxic and should go away. Some time earlier, I saw a mutual of mine arguing with someone about boys and reading — namely, why fewer and.
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Looks like ignoring the reboots may be a viable strategy after all. (h/t @DavidVStewart’s YouTube channel.)
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@ChillKidActual And they often gloat about taking things away from “chuds” and “manbabies.”.
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@OliverJia1014 It’s all about sticking it to the “chuds” and Gamergate and the like. They make all characters ugly because they want to keep the “wrong” people from playing and enjoying their game. They also want to fight so-called objectification. It’s all a bunch of nonsense.
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@hayasaka_aryan This happened in real life three years ago and everyone ended up hating them.
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@ManletThorin It’s not that it’s new, it’s that it was suppressed in the mainstream; even Dead or Alive fell victim to it. Spicy women were relegated to cheap shovelware titles, and Stellar Blade is the first AAA game in a while to put a spicy female protag front and center.
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I do not know when this idea emerged that all entertainment products must be for all people. The concept of a “target audience” is being eroded; everything made by professionals is *required* to be made acceptable for everyone.
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I say this a lot: if you lived in Nazi Germany, you won’t be the hero that hides Jews or fights the Gestapo, you’ll be saluting with everyone else. You’ll want to keep your job and your social relations, and avoid legal jeopardy. And you will rationalize all the atrocities away.
A lot of young people today think they'd be against Nazism had they lived in WWII-era Germany, but that's highly unlikely. The most horrific part of all fascist and communist regimes is how they turn normal people evil. Anyone is capable of being corrupted or indoctrinated.
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@ManletThorin One could argue that it was grandmothered in since Bayonetta is now considered “acceptable.” But it’s not the norm, especially for new IPs like Stellar Blade.
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@Gravantus @Mirrorswordsman Under scientific materialism, undirected physical forces on a pale blue dot have no morality. Therefore all morality is dreamed up by powerful groups of human beings; therefore, might makes right is the whole of the law, because only the mighty can do as they will.
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Starting to see a new tactic among those who favor ideological control of gaming: accusing those opposed to this of “culture warring” while ignoring the same on the other side. To appeal to people’s weariness with political polarization, the pro-censorship side accuses the.
Liking pretty videogame women and noticing that things seem rather one sided when comparing east vs. west designs in the last decade, apparently makes you a culture warrior now. Fine, doesn't stop people from noticing and pointing it out though :).
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CONSERVATIVES: I’m a REAL MAN who does a REAL JOB. I don’t waste my time with childish stuff like comics and video games — that’s immature. Bootstraps!. ALSO CONSERVATIVES: whErE iS thE gOoD moViEs? whY iS thE tV shOWs sUck? wHy aRe tHE yoUnG foLks leFt-wiNg?.
She’s right. The format itself is just a nostalgic call-back to childhood, no matter how “adult” the subject matter. Why the attachment to this particular inferior form? Read books, watch films with real people, listen to music made by human hands and voices.
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They HAVE Disney without Walt. They HAVE Tolkien without Tolkien. They HAVE DnD without Gygax. They HAVE Star Wars without Lucas. They HAVE Minecraft without Notch. Harry Potter without Rowling is the only thing they DON’T have.
They want Disney without Walt. They want Tolkien without Tolkien. They want DnD without Gygax. They want Star Wars without Lucas. They want Harry Potter without Rowling. They even want Minecraft without Notch.
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@wastelandJD They take pride in the double standard. It’s okay when *they* do it, because “when you’re used to privilege, equality feels like oppression” — the far-left’s all-purpose excuse for acting like hateful jerks.
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@Magus_Janus @AetherCzar @J0hnADouglas It’s also the idea that all humanity hasn’t met some secular idea of perfection (which changes like the wind), so humans don’t deserve to be happy. That’s the mindset behind all these insistences on bad endings.
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@auronburner The hypocrisy is a flex, a way to say that they can lie to you and you can’t do anything about it.
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Happy #FourthofJuly, all! To celebrate, here’s Kamen America, a character by Timothy Lim (@POTUSThump) for your viewing pleasure! (Art by Knuxyy)
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@RedHedgedragon You make a good, and important, point. Appealing to male tastes is seen as bad, and indeed many men pile on when it comes to denouncing things aimed at men.
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Modern TV writers cannot write good social commentary because everything has to be super-obvious propaganda lest they get cancelled for their stories having the “wrong” implications. If it’s *not* propaganda, it’s bigotry and the creatives must be Held Accountable™.
One of the most unfounded criticisms I’ve heard about Mad Men is that the show doesn’t do its black characters justice. But the show is about rich white characters during the 1960s and how they view the world. Their lack of thought around race is entirely the point.
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The entertainment industry also doesn’t want males watching movies/TV, playing video games, reading comic books, and so on. Note that modern professional creatives treat the “male gaze” as a flaw — to them, if you appeal to men directly, you’re doing it wrong. (cc @wastelandJD)
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@pegobry_en The two graphs showing loyalty to family, neighbor, and nation (attributed to the Right, but on the left of this image) vs. loyalty to more distant people (attributed to the Left, but on the right of this image). To be fair the distant loyalty one is inclusive of the inner rings.
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@politicalawake @Black_D_Gamer1 “Fascism” means “anything not progressive or far-left.”.
Alan Moore's Nihilistic View of Superheroes has single handedly been the most damaging thing to the Superhero Genre. Superheroes aren't inherently Fascistic, they are supposed to promote selflessness & Inspire others to do good.
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If you believe sexy female characters should be relegated to porn and shut out of everything else, you only care about control and domination, not art and creativity.
“No one’s against sexy female characters.”. But when you put “sexy female characters” (without quotes) into X’s search bar, you will get *plenty* of people slamming the idea of such characters in video games. Even people who are otherwise against censorship favor banning this.
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A: “I’m not like those knuckle-dragging fascists who ban and burn books. I rewrite them instead.”. B: “Can I read the originals?”. A: “No, they’re problematic! I’ll just…let all existing copies disappear one by one.”. B: “But how’s that different?”. A: “I own the rights!”.
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In modern D&D, there is only one race: humans. Any intelligent monster is required to behave *just like* a human or it is BadThink. “But humans are Lawful Evil because history! CHECKMATE, BIGOTS!”. My response: 1/.
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You *are* heir to a great heritage, whatever that heritage may be. The blood of tenacious men and women who survived plague, disaster, and war courses through your veins. You are a human being, not a “random ape” with no right to pride in your forebears. No ethnicity is evil.
You are not the heir to a great empire. The blood of a noble race does not course through your veins. You're just some random ape who showed up here and started looking for reasons to feel superior to your fellow apes. Give it up and go pet a rabbit.
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This Critical Drinker video explains why canon is important to series. Again, @RAZ0RFIST is vindicated, just as he is with copyright.
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@Smolassus They argue out of both sides of their mouth. Either classic IPs were always woke, or they needed to be changed to remove all the problematic racist misogynist fascism. Heads they win, tails you lose.
The double mind of leftist media critics, illustrated with two comics (not created by me.) See quoted tweet.
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@xavi87319 Women are not inherent killjoys. However, editorial roles in big publishing are dominated by women with extreme feminist attitudes, and they have the strongest disdain for anything that a straight male might enjoy.
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Twitter frens: “If you’re gonna write, you should read stuff from before 1980. I mean, a LOT of stuff. TV and vidya don’t cut it.”. Me: “Why does that matter?”. *Thinks about how soft and samey mainstream work is, and about how weak my prose is.*. Me: “Okay, you have a point.”.
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This lines up well with @Noahpinion’s ideas on how liberal societies don’t *appear* tough, but are quite tough when needed, whereas authoritarian societies signal toughness to scare people when in truth they don’t measure up.
There is a widespread assumption that liberal cultures are kinda sassy while authoritarian ones are tough and virile. I think it is exactly the other way around. The US stroke me as the most exaggeratedly, almost cartoonishly masculine values based society I have ever seen.
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I prefer to see it another way. The most iconic characters in fiction — Superman, James Bond, Batman, Goku, Conan, etc. — didn’t go on Hero’s Journeys. Instead, they’re flat-arc characters who can always be counted on to be who they are. You can be that, anon — reliable.
You want your life to be a Hero's Journey. It probably won't be. But it might be something better. Read on to find out.👇. You know the drill. Joseph Campbell. Hero with a thousand faces. Always three acts. Unprepared upstart leaves ordinary world. Faces tests in the
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This series of pictures proved my previous tweet correct. To get the best images from #StableDiffusion #img2img, give the sketch a simple shape. Instead of using the detailed sketch from before, I made a pixel art sketch. The results were AMAZING. 1/
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Two lessons here:. (1) Astroturfed books don’t sell. Gaming the stores or the algorithms to push your book in everyone’s face will not end well for you. (2) Contrary to popular belief, people *do* read physical books. (cc @TheBizarchives @BrianNiemeier).
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@Craig_Simpson_ Note the pattern here: it’s always a work from the mid-20th century because those are still under copyright, allowing publishers to sell censored versions without someone undermining them by selling the original. The publishers want us to only read woke ideology and nothing else.
Safetyism in art is evil because it renders all artistic creation pointless. Also, a partial refutation of @Raz0rfist’s otherwise excellent video on copyright. (THREAD) cc @wastelandJD @JoshuaLisec @cirsova @BrianNiemeier @WorderFarmer.
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Safetyists often say all art is political. But have you noticed that when presented with works that show hard-hitting sociopolitical issues, the safetyists shrink from them? Depicting social evil, even if to condemn it, angers them. (cc @JoshuaLisec, @KasimirUrbanski mini-thread).
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@PBP1366 Agreed; it’s why I wrote the character of Sasha Reed the way I did. But ordinary people should indeed rise to become something more, not regress into miserable failures.
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Allow me to demonstrate.
Every penis in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, rated.
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A note for worldbuilders: naming places isn’t that hard (you would appreciate the simple practicality of this, @MishaBurnett).
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@ChillKidActual The hypocrisy is a show of strength. “Yes, we’re violating our own principles; what are YOU gonna do about it, manbaby?”.
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@OliverJia1014 It’s like she just looked in a Japanese-English dictionary, spotted the words for “magic” and “place”, then rammed them together. But the fact that the coverage area includes *both* Koreas…yikes. And I sure as hell hope it wasn’t founded pre-WWII.
I'll never get over the fact that J.K. Rowling named Japan's wizarding school "Mahoutokoro.". That's like if a Japanese writer named an Old West setting "Cowboy Town.".
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This is a common misconception about the current media landscape. Sexualization *as a whole* isn’t considered bad, sexualization *aimed at straight males* is. Spicy content aimed at women, or aimed at non-straight people, receives far less scrutiny from progressives. 1/.
For a generation that’s permitted far more sexual freedom than our forebears, it’s weird how many Western game devs are retroactively toning character sexiness down. If the content is for adults there’s no need to disallow fan service. This is the OnlyFans generation after all.
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Wait wait wait. He’s getting mad at indies promoting themselves when no one else will promote them? What does he expect us to do, say nothing about our own work? Get outta town. (cc @cirsova @BrianNiemeier @MrBCWalker @ironagemedia @DeclanFinnBooks @wastelandJD @Fiannawolf2)
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LEFT: How a scene looks in my head.RIGHT: How it looks when I write it
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I’m sorry, but no. This notion that evil fantasy races should never be written limits the imagination in a huge way. As applied to human ethnic groups, yes it is bad. However, avoiding the concept of “evil races” limits us to writing reskinned humans. 1/ (cc @KasimirUrbanski).
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@Thedunkdad I think that’s a big motivation here. People want to make original projects, but are being forced to work on existing IP because it’s less risky. Thus they turn the existing IP *into* their original project.
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Woke isn’t dead — that’s naïve, as you pointed out. What is dead is the illusion that they have majority support, and that disagreeing with woke is some fringe position. When they come at you, you can be secure in the knowledge that they reflect only the opinion of a bubble.
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Safetyism is poison to storytelling because it subjects the boundless vistas of imagination to the petty, pedantic rules of small-minded bureaucrats. (cc @wastelandJD @cirsova @CiderHype @Mirrorswordsman)
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Modern AAA games are commissioned works by rich people who hate gamers. ��The market” and “consumer tastes” have nothing to do with it.
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I believe that this is the main reason for the whole “fantasy races must act like humans” thing in modern D&D. Because everything must be a self-insert, all of the races must be reduced to mere fashion statements so that lore doesn’t get in the way of the desired fantasy.
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Apparently, you’re only allowed to write about medieval Europe or lands inspired by it….…as long as they look like major US cities. If you write about elsewhere, you’re doing a Racism™. Here’s the truth: YOU DON’T NEED TO LISTEN TO THESE JACKWAGONS.
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“pOp cUltuRe iS tOo wOkE!11!!”. So what are you doing about it? I only see complaining, and not action. “Oh yeah, what are YOU doing about it?”. Writing. My efforts won’t affect culture much on their own, but doing something is better than doing nothing. So let’s see some doing.
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@NanjiComics They talk down to boys rather than entertain them. Think about it for a moment — merely saying “this is aimed at boys/men” will likely get you derided as toxic by these sorts.
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My view on this is simpler:. Creative works are under no obligation to reflect your worldview back at you. Speculative fiction is just that: speculative. You can show people doing bad things, or show societies with ethics different from those of a 21st-century liberal democracy.
Anime is created from a Japanese perspective, they don't hold the same neurotic views toward certain concepts that people are browbeaten with in the West. Storytelling the world over doesn't have to adhere to one standard of acceptability.
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Tolkien and Lewis are next on the chopping block. Mark my words.
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The double mind of leftist media critics, illustrated with two comics (not created by me.) See quoted tweet.
You see this all the time. “Comics/games/etc. were *always* woke, chud. But we need to change Beloved IP because the old version you like was SEXIST FASCISM. Get with the times, bigot.”.
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Wouldn’t it be better if the old hero became well-respected and left a powerful legacy instead? To these folks, “getting old” must mean “becoming a bitter, broken failure.” All that awaits you in your old age is a lifetime of regrets, in their mind. (cc @J0hnADouglas).
Lucasfilm might just be the only major Hollywood studio right now consistently telling stories of what it's like to grow old, confronting our beloved heroes' failure to live up to their former ideals. In an industry obsessed with youth, we really shouldn't take this for granted.
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This is why fantasy settings must be Seattle with Elves. This is why medieval London must look like modern London. This is why you can’t show a redeemed racist. This is why old books are censored. And this is why they throw fits over *Berserk.*. Safetyism in art is evil. /END.
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When folks say “Twitter isn’t real life,” it’s not because what you say on Twitter can’t affect your livelihood (it can.). It’s because the takes you see are not a representative sample of how people in your area or country think.
Twitter having so many unhinged people can occasionally gaslight you into thinking that there’s something wrong with you for having completely milquetoast normie takes. “Shoplifting is bad,” for example, is something 99% of people IRL agree with. Here? Yeah, uh, not so much.
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“Sensitivity readers” are a protection racket that doesn’t even protect.
I'm not representing "communities." My characters are individual people with individual experiences and personalities, not members of monolithic groups. I know gay writers who wrote gay characters, and sensitivity readers told them they'd done it wrong. So, no. Kiss my ass.
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I have two theories about original IP:. (1) It’s not that hard to get people excited about new IP. What *is* hard is getting people excited about prose novels. (2) Original IP with a strong visual component, such as comics and video games, have an easier time of it.
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It also explains their hostility to the Christian worldview that informed early D&D. The very idea of human grace and redemption sickens them. Likewise, the idea of creatures that *are not* just humans with horns and tails shows an impoverished imagination. 4/.
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@Black_D_Gamer1 The “go watch porn” response is telling; it implies that all professional entertainment must either be puritanism or pornography, with nothing in between. There is nothing wrong with sexy ladies *outside* the porn context.
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Regarding Jesse Kelly’s comment, the Boomer fear is as follows: “If I don’t kick him out at 18, he’ll just work part time and play video games all day. On *my* dime! He’ll become a squish, and he won’t be able to handle a challenge.”. How do you answer that, Twitter mutuals?.
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@Melentian Another good point, but I think that the erasure is where most of the contention comes from.
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@pegobry_en I have thought about it some more, and I see what you mean. While the study talks about the extent of one’s moral circle (implying inclusion), as a practical matter it’s difficult to hold the outer rings and the inner rings in equal regard. Loyalties must be narrow to matter.
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They take the speculation out of speculative fiction and replace it with Party-mandated slop. The vistas of imagination must line up with the exact social values of 2020s Portland, or it must be purged from every bookshelf and e-reader. Reject propaganda, embrace fantasy. /end.
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@OliverJia1014 We try to forget that. Sonic Mania is the real Sonic 4.
Anybody remember that time Sega released an official Sonic game that looked like a poorly made fan project?
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It’s revealing that those who argue against monster alignment say that humans are inherently Lawful Evil. It shows that they see their fellow human beings as irredeemable creatures worthy only of hostility. They hate you because they hate *people.* 3/.
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The Golden Age of Gaming was the 90s — but not because of the quality of the games. Stinkers existed in that halcyon decade, and in modern times there are plenty of excellent games that stack up with the greats of yesteryear. No, it was a golden age because of the rapid.
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Safetyism in art is evil because it renders all artistic creation pointless. Also, a partial refutation of @Raz0rfist’s otherwise excellent video on copyright. (THREAD) cc @wastelandJD @JoshuaLisec @cirsova @BrianNiemeier @WorderFarmer.
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Why is there so much fighting among indie creatives? A lack of readers. If they had readers beyond other artists or writers, they wouldn’t have time for arguments because they’d have readers to satisfy (I also think this is a big reason why creative people act like jerks online.).
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To the Fandom Menace: While the woke takeover of popular culture disappoints me as much as it does you, understand that the studios were *never in a million years* going to listen to you. 1/.
I'm deeply saddened. So we have Cancel Culture in The Fandom Menace? Really? Hate Snyder, heap abuse on his idiot head, YES, but if you skip watching this movie WB made giving in to OUR demands, you turn a victory for TFM into a defeat, & they will never listen to us again.
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Humans are capable of redemption, and history is replete with examples of humans doing good. The whole point of fantasy races is to think about intelligent species that *don’t* have humanlike natures, and are fundamentally at odds with humans because of it. 2/.
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Too frank a depiction of racism or slavery in any context destroys safetyist minds; see how they treated *The Black Witch*, *Blood Heir*, or D&D lore. To them “political stories” involve cartoon strawmen getting humiliated by the designated Good Guys. 2/.
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You see this all the time. “Comics/games/etc. were *always* woke, chud. But we need to change Beloved IP because the old version you like was SEXIST FASCISM. Get with the times, bigot.”.
I love simultaneously hearing about how right wingers cannot into art and also hearing about how every single guy who created enjoyable genre fiction and games was literally Hitler.
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If a spicy scene or character or what have you is aimed at women or LGBT, the only objections will come from people who oppose LGBT stuff altogether. But if it’s aimed at straight men, you will hear about “objectification” and “harm” and the need to “grow up” all day long. /END.
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I’m not a fan of Warhammer 40K; the hard-edged ultra-masculine space marine vibe never appealed to me. However, its fandom is now having their beloved IP destroyed out of spite. Warhammer has long been derided as fascist, so those changing it want to rub salt in the wounds of its.
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The GoFundMe has been fully funded. Thanks for helping me out, everyone.
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The most obvious case of this is the *Berserk* manga. It does not shrink from showing you the evil that people can do, and yet the safetyists will blast it as “problematic,” as if it presents those acts as something to aspire to. 1/.
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If you don’t see why assisted suicide is barbaric, let me paint a picture for you: You know how cancel campaigns pressure people into resigning from their jobs? Under a liberal assisted suicide regime, that person can be pressured into resigning from life. (cc @JoshuaLisec).
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@OliverJia1014 Plus, the real-life Chinese Communist Party bans witchcraft. That must make School #10 an interesting place. I *would* say that it’s a place for the CCP to train battle mages in secret, but Indians go there too, so no. Or maybe the Chinese students become CCP battle mages anyway.
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It turns out that the biggest problem with generative AI isn’t the oft-cited questions about the meaning of art, the extent of copyright, or the future of human labor. It’s simple spam.
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@belet_seri Good that you mention this; Japan is a country, not a theme park. They sure as hell haven't created anything close to utopia.
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Just thought of something:. Has anyone noticed how many old-time hero teams had their own vehicles? The Scooby Gang has the Mystery Machine, the TMNT have the Turtle Van, the Ghostbusters have Ecto-1, and even the X-Men have the Blackbird. (cc @squidmamaart @wastelandJD)
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@DexLabfan @CrackMcCraigen @cartoonnetwork Deedee (Dex’s sister) being the one to play Racer X’s role is *itself* a reference to Racer X’s identity as Speed’s brother.
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A word of warning: you have to be the type of person that others want to emulate before trying to bring back any old-timey style. Otherwise, you’ll just make it the next fedora — once associated with the manly men of the past, now seen as the uniform of manchildren.
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Safetyists claim to want powerful stories that speak to the issues of our time, but when they get them, they blast the creator as problematic and demand a bubble-wrapped experience. 4/.
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