Shadowstalker16: Welcome to the internet. You may be surprised to know all of the internet isn't gamergate or vice versa.
Vainamoinen: How many fingers you have to point in all those directions at the same time. I think we can reasonably narrow "all of the internet" down considerably in the case of Alison Rapp. To an intersection of game aficinados, social outrage activists and "SJW hunters". Sure, you may find some of those people at KiwiFarms, certainly.
Brasas: I think a key disagreement is where you say the key to change is humanization. Really? How very idealistic. Here in reality you don't (normally) get from war to peace via love (read: humanization): Make love not war is prima facie ridiculous except as a catchy slogan.
Vainamoinen: Humanization isn't "love", the role of humanization in conflict resolution is difficult to overstate, and –
Brasas: war peace cease fire truces destruction enemy fight total victory war it is I hope my side wins
Vainamoinen: – the war rhetorics can finally fuck off. Go to 8chan with that shit.
Brasas: The "good days" of SJ subversion are over, and the signs of growing pushback are everywhere.
Vainamoinen: Concerning narrative media, I am defininitely seeing a pushback, spearheaded by anti-intellectual and decidedly fascist forces. I say 'spearheaded' because they often supply the argumentation and the enemy concept. This was particularly obvious in the 2015 Hugo Award fiasco, where actual fascists devised the pushback plan, democratic processes were violated to make this pushback appear much stronger than it actually is, and the pushback was directed against what the medium happens to stand for. I sure hope that's not "your side" in the "war you hope you win".
Brasas: That said, in this broader cultural perspective I don't think GG is so significant.
Vainamoinen: Maybe. It certainly kicked something off. It certainly was a revelation as to the dangers, multiplicity and prevalence of harassment methods that still loom large on the net today. It also gave us the opportunity to assess what’s broken and needs to be fixed and, hell, the opportunity of your much asked for
self reflection. *gasp*
Before gamergate, maybe Candace Owens would have succeeded with her harassing website Kickstarter. Maybe people – your SJ subversionists, if you wish – would have donated the crap out of that Kickstarter in hopes of ending online harassment by recreating the snitch culture of the GDR. Maybe they would have cheered with Owens: "online anonymity is the problem, let's get rid of it". Maybe they would have thought that personal revenge must be the solution to the problem of journalist corrup.... I mean, internet abuse. Heck, without gamergate, maybe that Kickstarter would have even been ToS-compliant because the company had never been made aware of privacy issues (it's a US based enterprise after all).
The significance of gamergate, you may agree, lay in its symptomatic nature. You will probably not agree when I say that I found it to be a symptom of targeted, harassing and abusive outrage in geek culture as a whole, at home in practically all ideological camps. Which remains the problem.
Brasas: But I say that from my perspective of seeing the new methodologies applied in the name of a specific brand of justice as ridiculously negative, problematic, counterproductive, and totalitarian.
Vainamoinen: As you may have come to understand in the last two years, I don’t see methods of societal analogy, a far greater diversity and an attempt at inclusion in fiction as negative. I see them in part as building pillars of narratives, and for some genres, like science-fiction, I consider them a raison d’être. Least of all, I see those methods as anything “new”.
Some methods applied by some enraged gamers against private people, journalists, developers and other creatives in the name of diverse brands of justice — like inclusion and feminism, but definitely also free speech, journalist ethics, and especially the fight against the SJW conspiracy — are indeed deeply problematic.
Brasas: You guys simply cannot be that oblivious that your moral certainty is partially responsible for the pushback.
Vainamoinen: Where convictions are strongest, challenge is inevitable. I'm always honored being addressed as several people, though maybe not as honored when it's just 'guys'.
YaTEdiGo: if you are going also to blame a whole community for despicable acts
Vainamoinen: Thanks for already quoting that I don't.
YaTEdiGo: People like you would BURN HIM in hell just if he slightly disagree...
Vainamoinen: So Ed Greenwood only wrote all that because he was anticipating criticism from the SJW press, and not because he was effectively defending the narrative integrity of his creation? Reality check: This was NOT the backlash we have encountered. These were not the threats we have encountered. If you're looking for stake burning threats to the creators for BG:SoD, look to Vox Day.
YaTEdiGo: Rey in Star Wars will be forgotten as a Marie Sue if Disney doesn´t fit the mess Force Awakens is in the next two movies.
Vainamoinen: Concerning the term Mary Sue, I'm a traditionalist. So, no, Rey can't be a "Mary Sue" projection figure for the author(s) because the TFA Star Wars fan fiction was written by three dudes.
YaTEdiGo: She is a gamer, I need to agree with this, she is part of a community that turns the back on her, because some few assholes, they dont deserve other adjective, didn't found any other better argument to criticize her bad work at Depression Quest than saying "oh women cannot make videogames"
Vainamoinen: For once, you could have made that argument about Quinn without ostracizing Anita Sarkeesian off hand. I guess it's a reflex of sorts. Whatever, Depression Quest was what it was meant to be. The message is the game, the message is very strong, and communicated strongly via simple mechanics. I would under no circumstances suggest that an actually depressed person play Depression Quest, because it is just so intense once you get into it. And it was and still is, after all, a game you can play for free.
To criticise Depression quest as a "bad game" just because it didn't feature complex graphics and complex mechanics is, for my taste, a good bit too close to Davis Aurini's world of ideas, that of the SJW game developer with her degenerated art. :|
Yes, you do. Also making constant assumptions like thinking for us that Depression Quest is bad because it has bad graphics when many of us love tons of crappy graphics shit in this website, and NO a good message doesn't make a game or a movie GOOD, actually bad messages in a good movie or game are far more powerful that forced messages in channels that simply don´t fit, same as thinking that Dragon Spear criticisms came from hate-speech and bigotry, when the same people that criticized accepts transsexuals in other games without any problem. You make TONS of assumptions in order to blame a community because you are just full of prejudices.
Reality Check, Forgotten Realms have tons of characters changing sex since the beginning of times, there is no need to forced inclusivism also not even having in consideration what is possible to do in the Lore. Yes, you burn people in the internet for less than wear a pin-up shirt, so what do you expect Greenwood to say? He is wise enough to say the truth, the truth that Forgotten Realms was always inclusive, but what he dont say, because probably he dont want to have problems with the MORAL POLICE is that the writing in Dragon Spear is silly and out of the context and lore of the universe. There is no need for transsexuals in Forgotten Realms, because is an universe where Gender is nothing more than an easy choice, and a magic spell, and you are the bigoted one if you are unable to understand this. Ah! and before you walk hypocritally over it, I remember you again the heavy argument that almost nobody ever protested about transsexuals in Witcher 3 and Inquisition because just fits perfectly the lore.
No, MaREY SUE, is what STARWARS bring to fill their pockets, is a bad developed character to please an easy audience, feminism was invented already with GREAT characters that struggle, like Ellen Ripley, but well, seems generations are turning more and more stupid in the name of the market. Common pop-culture thinks like me, not like you
minute 4 20 meanwhile the movie just unbalanced and makes Leia be not much more than a mother and a house keeper, but hey, is a "feminist" movie, LOL