Best posts made by Trundlebot

The last episode wasn't dumb because rape is so much worse or more shocking than other things- including other rapes- on the show.

The last episode was dumb because Sansa's character arc being nothing but getting horrifically abused in each of the seven kingdoms is dumb, it undid any empowerment she gained from her story last season, and focusing on Theon instead of Sansa indicates that it's his redemption arc they want us to care about and they're just using Sansa being raped as a tool in a male character's development all of which is super ugh.

I'm still going to watch the next episode but it's dumb writing.

@tragedyjones said:

I will never not post this when given a vague chance:https://youtu.be/68_Y-xh3XAI

Okay I laughed pretty hard at that.

@HelloProject said in Comic book diversity:

My official black person statement re: diversity in comics, is basically this entire Cracked article:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/one-quote-that-explains-why-comics-suck-at-diversity/

In addition to +1'ing this, I would also add that the form of narrative media, especially spec-fic, in the past couple of decades has been steadily shifting towards 1) Big Dumb Epics as the default and almost obligatory plot structure (everything has to be leading to some big central plot resolution that explains and resolves everything and saves the world from being blowed up etc..) and 2) Surprising the audience as the paramount goal of the writers. Usually a far more important goal than actually coherent and consistent world or character building.

There are problems with these trends in general, but they're especially a problem in the American comic book industry, aka, as it relates to super-heroes, because these are not the actual strengths of super-hero stories. The day to day saving-some-nice-old-lady-from-muggings stuff is actually what defines a superhero and sets them apart from any other generic speculative-fiction hero. I mean, I guess the costumes and aliases are part of it, but they don't work by themselves, they only solidify part of the tradition of superhero as crime-fighter; in a slightly more advanced school maybe evil fighter, in a broader sense, like you can have a superhero tackle political corruption, corporate predation etc..

But the form of the super-hero story is such that they are and should be primarily concerned with their job and not a single easily definable, well-demarcated and doable task. Superman's job isn't over when he defeats Lex Luthor, even assuming Luthor won't escape. Batman's job isn't over when he defeated the Joker, even if the Joker is dead. A superhero's job is more nebulous- to fix society, according to whatever meaning that has to that particular superhero. That especially doesn't lend itself well to the sort of condensation that Big Dumb Epic Plots do of making a single Big Bad whose defeat will restore goodness and order etc.. This is why it is dumb to gripe that Batman should just kill the Joker. Batman's enemy isn't the Joker, it's crime, it's violence, it's the powerful preying on the weak. Yeah, locking up the Joker seems futile when you know he'll just escape again, but the entire crusade is largely futile anyway. It can't actually be won or completed, even by heroes that do kill like the Punisher or Wolverine or whoever. In both cases you end up having to ask questions about whether the crusade itself isn't actually causing more problems than not, whether the "hero" isn't becoming a social problem of the same order as the things they fight against. You can't do that with some big evil alien overlord that's going to wipe out humanity or whatever, obviously that outcome is a whole lot worse than just trying to stop it.

I guess the surprise thing is less structural maybe, just that it's become such a pathetic and self-satirizing go-to at this point, starting with the "Death of Superman" and reaching its apex with the death-of-Captain-America-no-really-you-guys-we-mean-it-this-time-for-reals

@Sammi said:

Another way of putting it: this writeup makes those changelings who feel compassion and ethics more keenly than others into the Fairest.

The problem is that that's not all that it makes them. And there are seemings where this problem is more apparent still.

Like, let's take Beasts. The idea is that Beasts now I guess flip out at being caged and confined and love flaunting social norms. Okay. But lots of animal-based concepts might not be about that at all. Lots of communal creatures- wolves, rabbits, ants, whatever- might love the idea of finding people they can trust and pledge with, except that mechanically they're not allowed to do that. Maybe I want to play, for instance, a spider ling as a genteel, refined housekeeper inviting people into her parlor, a woman who's nothing but civilized and refined, except that mechanically is a punished concept basically. Or an actual karma chameleon who blends in everywhere he goes and tries to be exactly what people want him to be but nope not that either apparently.

Like this is actually a pretty big leap backwards, it's basically the Pooka problem all over again. After the always-the-most-popular Sidhe, Pooka were usually the most popular splat on oWoD Changeling games, due to all the variety of animals you could build. Except... whatever animal type you made, you were pretty strong corralled by the mechanics and flavor to make a silly shit-stirring trickster type. "Animal type changeling" wasn't a theme you were free to play around with however you wanted; if you were a trickster type you were supposed to be Pooka, and if you were Pooka you were certainly supposed to be a trickster type, no matter what the actual associations with your animal type were or what themes you wanted to explore.

I once mav'd a serious-rp set-pose into a pwp TS scene and felt strangely really embarrassed about it.

Plot? What Plot?

Basically hardcore butt-banging yaoi scene interrupted by like four paragraphs of florid srs-face purple setting pose.

Singling out rape RP as if it's special makes sense if it is special, which it is.

I am sympathetic to the idea that theoretically storylines involving rape could be interesting and worth exploring.

The actual practice I've seen and apparently most other people have seen is an endless succession of clusterfucks and drama bombs that make prohibiting all rape storylines out of hand the eminently sensible decision.

One can speculate why it's so constantly a source of friction that actively harms games while contributing nothing of value, while other storylines with equally horrific and horrible things happening to PCs and NPCs aren't, but it's just pretty much an empirical observation. Rape storylines are awful and harm games.

It's basically the same reason most games don't allow underage PCs, right? In theory those can be played well. But this is mostly not what happens.

Also Dex-Starr is great. Dex-Starr good kitty.

@Sammi said:

@Thenomain said:

And this is where I roll my eyes and sigh. With the decision now out of my hands once I choose a Seeming, it limits exactly the kinds of things I like to RP.

Your Seeming is supposed to be a representation of your character's personality. If you make morally grey choices, you're a Darkling. If you hide your weakness, you're an Ogre. If you lead by example, you might be Fairest.

Why is that a good thing though? Why is that an improvement?

The enormous freedom of creativity in character creation was one of the big draws to me for 1st Ed Lost. It was the main thing that compensated for the constant drumming on trauma-drama theme stuff, actually.

And it looks a lot like they're reducing creative freedom and intensifying the trauma drama, which is the exact opposite of the way I was hoping the new edition would go.

I mean sometimes "a power ring did it" is a stupid answer, but the reason it's stupid is because of theme issues and what makes for a satisfying story that's easy to understand, not actual physics or "realism."

I agree that the conversations at the speed of light thing is not one of those things though.

Characters in narrative fiction can always talk to each other over barriers of language, culture, and raw physics because characters talking to each other is for the audience, not for the characters.

I thought Changeling was one of the original five games? Or are they bumping it for Hunter or something.

Honestly if they were going to dump one of the original five I'd think they'd start with Wraith though. I mean it was a cool game but it never had much interaction with the other lines.

Old rhyme might be appropriate here:

"There are men in the village of Erith
That nobody seeth or heareth
And there looms on the marge
Of the river, a barge
That nobody roweth or steereth"

1. It's worth pointing out that male and female athletic performance gaps basically boil down to hormones, not, fundamentally, skeletal or muscular structure. Basically, testosterone is a hell of a drug.

2. Very few of the people that have, for instance, won medals of honor were exceptionally beefy and strong. Tons of cases of of exceptionally brave and successful soldiering for instance are from tiny wiry dudes who are certainly not outside the range of normal female physical capability. When they're able to or force a way to fight plenty of women have historically excelled on the field of combat- and more so if we're including like generals for instance. Like Lyudmila Pavlichenko, Joan of Arc, Boudica, the Trung Sisters, etc.. So basically, historically success at fighting and leadership in battle isn't determined by who can throw a ball the farthest as it turns out.

3. Also while in the real world, the most effective natural performance enhancing drug is testosterone, that really isn't relevant once you start adding mystical mumbo jumbo, alien super strength physiology, etc., etc..Like expecting the Hulk to be automatically stronger than She-Hulk per se isn't really based on anything but laziness of expectations. I won't say sexist ones, but, you know. Sexist ones.

So yeah, #BioFacts is a silly reason to act incredulous that girl superheroes might beat up boy superheroes or be better at the job.

eta: That may not even be exactly what anyone itt is doing but I encounter this argument enough that I'm going to rant against it anyway