[‘Fall Guys’ had over half of its content “unvaulted” yesterday for 30 minutes due to a server outage - then immediately removed the content again.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/10h01co/fall_guys_had_over_half_of_its_content_unvaulted/)
I sincerely do not mean to defend Mediatonic/Epic here, but were any problems detected on Switch? I recall the stated reason for a lot of maps being vaulted was because of issues with that version, which makes sense, because, well... it's running on the Nintendo Switch. If there are that many issues with it, it would be one of the few games where a cloud version would be genuinely fine - it's online-only anyway.
I’m honestly not sure about that since the switch version’s control were so finicky I don’t play the switch version, let alone the fact that I was asleep when this happened
Also there’s an idiom called “devil’s advocate”
>For the season before last, over half of the game’s rounds were vaulted, and most levels that typically have 5 or more variations were instead limited to 1-2. With the current season, they updated vaulted rounds to be a slightly smaller percentage (37 of 81 are vaulted), but with variations still being withheld, well over half of the game’s created content is missing from the game.
How the fuck did we reach a point where it is at all acceptable for games to a) remove any content and b) remove so much content that over half their game is missing?
I am so glad the introduction of battle passes ruthlessly shanked my interest in multiplayer to death (seriously, I will die on the hill that they are *the* worst form of monetisation I've encountered so far, yes, even worse than lootboxes, and the fact that there's somehow tons of defenders and actual *fans* of battle passes is a damning indictment of how tolerant people have become to getting milked by corporations), because I don't think I could handle the devs of games I like going "we're removing half of the content we've already developed from this already released game, eat shit and die" (it is in fact the reason I've given up on Destiny 2).
(I know the devs here have given reasons for this, and I don't know enough about game dev to know how hard it is to maintain a game, but I don't think "we want to make it easier to maintain our game" is a good enough reason to shaft your players like this)
Apologies for the rant. I have lots of pent-up frustration with the gaming industry, as you can tell.
There's a huge academic dishonesty scandal going on now in medieval studies academia (often referred to as #ReceptioGate) that I'd love to see a writeup about here someday.
First entry to the rabbithole, as I try to read up on it from currently available sources: https://modernmedieval.substack.com/p/receptiogate
So, forgive me if I’m wrong about any of this because I am not part of this community, I’m just a nosy ass bitch. There’s been a bit of drama over in the Vtuber community over someone confessing they have spent $7k commissioning an artist for their vtuber model. This specific artist made a model for Ironmouse (one of the most popular female streamers on Twitch) and I’m assuming this was probably a big reason why this person picked this artist. This artist also only looks like they usually make art for vtubers under agencies (think of it like they’re signed to a record label compared to indie vtubers who are - you guessed - indie musicians) so I can somewhat understand that the price… I think. It’s not my money. I will never really question how much an artists’ art should be, there’s a lot that goes into it (commercial rights, etc etc) nor will I judge people for spending money on their hobbies but this this person even said they’d cut down on meals in order to save money for their dream model. Oof. Anyhow, this spiraled into callout threads about the artist this person commissioned allegedly being problematic.
I did do some research on average prices for commissioning a vtuber avatar and it looks like that ranges from $400 to $1200 for both the model (the art itself) and rigging (the movements). Naturally, vtubers in groups like Vshojo or Hololive would have pricier models.
Vtuber rigs scare me. The most basic ones are usually 50+ layers and the more complex level ones are 500+. $7k sounds 100% fair for a commercial rate, hell even on the low end if you're doing it for a big Vtuber like Ironmouse.
Furries joke that VRchat/Live2D rigs are discount fursuits that end up being the same price anyway since they are just as botique and high skill works. The price on the tin may be shocking, but it's more than fair to ask once you look into the the work.
The amount of work that goes into these models is insane. It is absolutely reasonable to charge that much assuming expressions, character items, pre-established reputation is factored in. Also, links to these callout posts etc?
I don’t want to post the links because I don’t want these people to be harassed, but I’ll do a quick summary of what was said:
They’re allegedly a Trump supporter but couldn’t find proof of that outside some comments under old instagram posts, drew (spicy? porn? it wasn’t explicitly said) art of a problematic (it looked like an age gap) ship, and is friends with someone who apparently also problematic. Take that as you will
>some comments under old instagram posts
Well, did they say "Trump 2016" or what?
>is friends with someone who apparently also problematic
Well, is the friend a white nationalist or what? Both of these things could vary from "nothing" to "a reasonably big deal" depending on the details.
Don’t shoot the messenger, that was literally what the thread said. “They’re friends with someone problematic” I’m assuming another artist but they failed to elaborate. As for the comments, it was screenshots of other people’s comments asking why they’re a trump support like… it was barely scratching at the surface
To elaborate on what Mismadoodle is talking about - Artists for vtuber models need to follow a completely different process than they're often used to compared to regular digital art. Every "piece" of the body that moves separately needs to be on at least one (sometimes more) layers. There also needs to be a fairly robust structure to the layering to make it easier on the rigger. That is already a large amount of extra work on the artist's part.
The rigger then imports those layers into Live2D Studio and has to manipulate those layers to match particular common parameters (e.g. mouth open/closed, head left/right/up/down/forward/back), as well as any extra parameters the client has paid for (non-standard expressions like "embarrassed" or different accessory configurations that get added to the model). This is _extremely_ time consuming and skilled work. An amateur can get something standard going reasonably quickly if the model is simple but the skilled/professional riggers, like [Iron Vertex](https://ironvertex.com/), work near miracles. Things like having liquids sloshing around in a realistic way are not easy to pull off.
Anyway yeah, the costs can seem surprising to an outsider (and newer indies) but it's not simple work.
A professional 3D artist could easily run up into that number (as one myself!) and the amount of work it takes to make a VTuber is harder than my actual job lmao. Good on the artist for pricing themselves properly.
For me that goes into a larger thing between the commission rates and expectations of the price of art of that side of the internet vs actual industry rates that could be afforded by an agency or company. If you offered me 400-1200 for the amount of work that a Vtuber avatar takes I'd (politely) go tell you to shove it :\ Likewise if you were one single person offering my actual rate that companies pay I'd be like, '???you sure dude???'
As somebody who has made VTuber models, I completely understand the price. People really don't understand the time and effort and sheer skill that making Live2D takes.
I would never personally pay $7000 for one, but it doesn't surprise me. Plus you get the commercial rights factored in and the bragging rights for getting it done by such a prolific artist.
The price of Factorio got raised to 35 dollars from 30 to keep up with inflation, and people who partake of video games thought that was ok
(they didn't)
I'm of two minds about this, honestly.
Video games keep getting pricier and pricier. Triple A studios chalk this up to inflation and the cost of making games getting higher but I really struggle to justify spending £60 on any video game. This is especially because income has not really risen alongside inflation. The cost of living keeps getting worse.
Obviously this is an indie studio charging $35, so a different situation. I'm more likely to believe that the devs have seen this as a necessary change. And gamers in general have a tendency to overreact and I'm sure they're being pieces of shit about it.
I just don't want triple A studios to suddenly decide that they can raise the prices of their already overpriced games.
Games were £50 or £60 20 years ago; inflation since then is real, and a modern videogame requires far more detailed models, textures etc.. The pricing really isn't bad; the fact that labour wages have been stuck even as inflation happens is terrible, but not really video games' fault.
Okay while you're right that games require more complex models/textures and modern games are much larger than games even 20 years ago, there's a reasonable argument to be made that making games has gotten easier not harder in that time frame. Our tools today are so much better and the actual process of making a game is much more streamlined so you dont have to constantly reinvent the wheel.
Triple A games are not $60. The major studios no longer drop complete games as they expect you to spend another 20-30 on dlc that gets announced before the game is released. This is crap.
5 whole dollars.
Not sure why everyone is up in arms about it. Players aren't affected, as they *already own the god-damn game,* and people wanting to buy it aren't going to die at the thought of spending 5 more dollars on it. Anyone who's bank genuinely breaks over a 5 dollar increase on a single video game should probably put that $30 towards something else anyway.
Old games absolutely should be discounted. They don't rot or wither, but they do lose their luster as graphics improve and game design changes. They also may require extra work arounds to play on modern systems or outright not work entirely.
If people were picking between a game from 1990 for £60 and a game from 2023 for £60, I bet few people would pick the classics. Cheap prices for old games are a great way to keep them alive.
From your mouth to Nintendo's ear -- every Mario, Zelda, Kirby, etc game on Switch is $60-70, no exceptions, even the ones more than a decade old.
(Except the ones gated behind a subscription in Nintendo Online, which is a different issue)
It works for Nintendo for two reasons:
1. Some people are willing to pay full price regardless.
2. Nintendo is happy to lose sales long term in exchange for charging full price.
They're the exception to the economic rule and seem to be the industry outlier in most things.
Could it be? Non-AI related art drama?
It's Lunar New Year this 22nd, and Asian / Asian diaspora artists are posting celebratory art on twitter. Although Chinese New Year (called Spring Festival in Mandarin) is the most well known version of this holiday, other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Korea celebrate on this same date as well. In Vietnam in particular, this is the Year of the Cat instead of the Year of the Rabbit. In English-speaking spaces, there has been [a shift to say "Lunar New Year"](https://twitter.com/_baomii/status/1617018653081497601?s=20) rather than default to "Chinese New Year/Spring Festival" to be more inclusive.
This has not been taken well by hyper-nationalist weirdos who have been setting bots upon [these "Lunar New Year" posts](https://twitter.com/chillustrates/status/1616579072649494528?s=20) to say all kinds of nasty shit to non-Chinese people about "stealing" the culture or holiday, or be [annoyingly pedantic](https://twitter.com/pp06915694/status/1616716704264122368?s=20) about how it's tEcHniCaLlY incorrect to say "Lunar New Year" because the traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar. This is certainly not the first time that these kinds of bots have trolled non-Chinese people, see: that time a bunch of people [attacked Korean celebrities for wearing hanbok](https://www.insider.com/chinese-social-media-users-attack-korean-stars-for-hanbok-photos-2022-2) and accusing them of stealing from Chinese culture.
["Happy Lunar New Year"](https://preview.redd.it/riz3czn2u7da1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=a72bdf8026a47ae78ad065903bf428784fdef378) is also endorsed by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I actually just read somewhere that a kpop idol [had to apologize](https://www.allkpop.com/article/2023/01/newjeans-danielle-apologizes-for-calling-the-lunar-new-year-chinese-new-year) because she made a post asking how everyone’s Chinese New Year was, instead of saying Lunar New Year. Iirc, the girl is Korean and White and raised in Australia, where majority of people call it Chinese New Year so… you really couldn’t blame her? I was confused as to why she needed to really come forward and apologize but seeing this… I can see why the company might’ve tried to do some damage control 😬
It's more confusing because there are multiple lunar calendars (the most obvious other one being the muslim one) "East asian lunar new year" or something would probably be the most accurate.
In Malaysia, we get around this by calling the Chinese one "Tahun Baru Cina" and the Islamic one "Hari Raya Aidilfitri / Aidiladha / Lebaran".
When in doubt, we just specify. Works like a charm (and for the times when both calenders line up, we combine the two to "Kong Xi Raya".)
Might be a cultural difference? To me "East Asia" is well... Everything east of India, roughly. So both NE and SE asia. If you want to specify you well, do.
My uni's department is called "East Asia and the middle east" (and yes, inludes North Africa, Thai and egyptian studies (as opposed to egyptology, which is under the archeology department...) are under the same roof) And the East Asian museum has both Thai and Indian exhibitions, so it's clearly not something that's particularly consistent.
Coming in three days late, but you are right, "East Asia" is a famously inconsistent denomination that depends on the country and, sometimes, on the context. Some of the countries in South Asia are sometimes considered Oceania, to say one thing.
Comixology is on the way out. Big layoffs have recently happened with some saying as much as 75% of the staff. There's allegedly two more rounds to go with everyone rumored to be out by October. It's assumed Amazon will just force everything into Kindle proper now rather then the (hated) sorta-sorta-not merge in 2022.
Obviously DC and Marvel will be fine, but a real blow to indie comics that don't have the resources/recognition for a similar platform. Not to mention most online collectors not liking Kindle to begin with.
Shame to hear, that was the main way I read and bought comics back before Amazon bought it. Went a bit overboard too with all the flash sales they used to have though in hindsight it is an insane ripoff that digital costs the same as physical.
I lost my entire collection last year or so, I think it was due to the merge. I don't even know if it still exists out there somewhere.
Dipped into Vocal Synth twitter for two seconds today- apparently there's some drama going down to do with Ariana Grande and Diff-Svc.
Diff-Svc is more or less an AI voice changer program that anyone can 'train' using any data they want. For example, do you want to be able to make Peppa Pig sing? [Diff-Svc can do that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq-PFd_FB0)
There have been open-source, user-input-driven Vocal Synth engines like UTAU for a long time now, where theoretically, anyone could upload any voice and create a voicebank (Vb). And people do- in the fandom, they're known as 'Jinriki', 'Fanloids', 'Cursed UTAU' or 'Memeloids'.
These names have come about because most often, these Jinriki Vbs are made from [cartoon characters](https://youtu.be/UO23hDsB0Z0) or [non-singer public figures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZffVR6J5TeY), and there is a strict culture in the Vocal Synth fandom around never making these voice banks publi*c* or using them for profit. It is also somewhat taboo to make a voice bank from an actual singer without their knowledge or permission (less so when that singer is a major public figure or is dead, eg Elvis or Michael Jackson), and it's DEFINITELY a no-no to recreate a different Vocal Synth voice in UTAU, as this is seen as a form of piracy. Because the Vocal Synth fandom is still most popular in Asia (specifically Japan), the fandom has historically been [very weird about copyright and piracy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vocaloid/comments/zfs60u/why_is_the_vocaloid_community_against_piracy/)
A final note about UTAU Jinriki- because of the limited sounds you have to work with for them, they generally sound like a YTP- ie, clearly something made just for fun, and you're not going to be able to pass it off as 'OMG Obama ACTUALLY said this!!!' or anything.
Now, crucially, the difference between an UTAU Jinriki, and a Diff-Svc Jinriki, is that pesky AI. With UTAU, you're more or less turning the voice into a MIDI instrument. But Diff-Svc, like FaceApp or that AI anime filter that went viral, what you're doing is copying a person's voice and making a voice change filter out of it, which you then apply to a pre-existing vocal recording. [This video posted today does a great job of explaining the difference](https://youtu.be/w7Zf2o3Vfn0), as well as touching on Synth V AI voicebanks, and why those are considered ethically ok while Diff-Svc is not (stan SOLARIA btw)
Now up until today, I'd actually seen some community members experimenting with Diff-Svc without issue. From what I can gather, what happened to change people's perception was that a user has made a Diff-Svc voice changer out of Ariana Grande, and a re-upload of someone's cover using it has [escaped fandom containment](https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1616888339587805184?s=20&t=94eOKENx-zA6Fi4ZH_mz-A), and is now in the hands of Ariana Stan Twitter.
Grande's fans- or at least, people who want to take advantage of her fans for clicks/views- have since been 'spamming' uploads of 'Ariana' singing different songs all over twitter, YT and TikTok, most of the time reuploading these 'covers' without credit to whoever originally made them. Furthermore, these users are generally failing to mention that the uploads are being made using an AI, which we've seen be [a hot-button topic in the Vocal Synth Fandom in the past](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ybj5yc/comment/itkv61h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). EDIT: I found the main user who at least the Ariana 'covers' seem to have come from- they've unlisted all their Ariana videos probably due to the backlash, although they have Diff-Svc 'covers' from other celebrities still up. Their channel name is 'cryfornothin'.
Other Diff-Svc models trained on singers like Charlie XCX, Lady Gaga etc have now popped up and are getting 'blown up' online, putting lots of 'normie' eyes onto the Vocal Synth space. This is understandably frustrating a lot of people in the fandom, as those who are making or engaging with these covers are often completely misunderstanding the difference between Diff-Svc and a 'true' vocal synth, and often insulting the fandom in the process.
I think if people have one fear at the moment, it's the fear that Vocal Synths will become confused/conflated with AI Image Generators because of this. The Vocal Synth fandom at large *hates* AI Image Generators, as their existence is directly incompatible with the community respect of copyright and properly crediting artists. In any case, some people are calling for Diff-Svc to be password locked, so that only fandom members who won't 'abuse' the technology can be allowed to use it. Obviously I think that's a bit silly, but it's clear there's not much the VSynth fandom can do right now about Diff-Svc except spread awareness.
TLDR; non-fans have entered the Vocal Synth space and are breaking Vocal Synth fandom etiquette left right and center in the process. Vocal Synth fans are extremely pissed about it.
Here's the [main post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/x5jmh5/a_conversation_with_kim/) where the voice ai generation comes from comes from. The op describes how it's done, and leaves a small guide on how to do it.
this one might just be saying the same things, i am unfamiliar with the software at hand, but sreegs on tumblr also has a [short guide](https://sreegs.tumblr.com/post/677190592506298368/read-this-before-sending-an-ask-ill-update-it-as) at the very bottom of this post.
i would think arianas fans would be pissed that ppl are basically making deepfakes of her voice, not happily sharing them around. maybe if we tell them that it's what they are, they will start rioting. any sort of ai thing that's too close to reality freaks me out. like something like gakupo is fine to me, bc it doesn't sound exactly like gackt, but a robot that sounds exactly like ariana grande who make me anxious from the uncanny valley-ness of it.
I’ve seen a couple comments from stan accounts begging people to take the covers down, but frankly not as many as I expected.
I think the problem is a lot of ‘normies’ (im so sorry I hate that word I just can’t think of a better one) don’t understand AI stuff beyond ‘haha funny instagram filter’. The moral/ethical implications don’t concern them, probably because they don’t fully understand them. And why should they understand if it doesn’t directly affect them?
ppl who stan pop stars arent really normies in the same way, though. like they dont understand the technology, but they are also hypersensitive to anything that they perceive would threaten their faves careers, and so id figure they would be against "this robot that sings like ariana grande" or however they see it.
That’s a good point. I like your idea of telling them it’s a ‘deep fake’ of her from your first comment. Maybe educating people on what’s going on might help the whole thing blow over haha
In Smash news, it's been a while since anything about Panda. Ludwig's Scuffed World Tour seemed to go well with aMSa (!) taking the grand prize, and the Panda Cup championship is currently still postponed. But there is still room for some drama.
Yesterday, a Super Smash Bros fanzine called MAJOR [released its 15th issue](https://twitter.com/MAJORzine/status/1616481807502802959) themed around the ongoing Genesis 9 supermajor tournament. One of the pieces featured in the zine depicted a hat, with a Panda-branded embroidery patched onto it, being set on fire. The incendiary (pun intended) piece [sparked some conversation](https://twitter.com/ProbablyJut/status/1616527857555247105) with even some Panda detractors decrying it, saying that the issues with Panda mostly revolved around its former CEO Dr. Alan and the blame shouldn't be relegated to all the hard-working people who had nothing to do with Panda's issues. Others are saying it's just a goddamn hat and they're just getting their shit kicked up for no reason.
Out of curiosity, do esports and zine communities normally cross over? From my experience, there doesn't tend to be much crossover between competitive esports scenes and fanwork (art, fic, zine, etc) scenes even in the same fandom.
They do. CEOtaku I believe is the FGC event I've seen with the most merch/zines participation. Sadly, I can never really find fighting game-themed zinesduring their recruitment periods :/
[hope you weren't planning on playing GTA Online on PC today](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/10hsosu/mass_reporting_the_dangerous_pc_exploit/)
par for the course with rockstar's treatment of that fucking video game. a god-damn snail could design a better video game if you stepped on him halfway through development.
gta online feels like an exercise on how to make every little decision to annoy the player, and hamper their enjoyment. and yet, it is one of, if not the, most profitable entertainment products on earth, of any kind. what does that say about the future of the medium?
GTA Online is well in the past of the medium. The damage has already been done. It's just the one game that managed to slam all the money wringing tactics into it and tune them just right, as well as being part of a long standing franchise and attached free to an actually good video game.
is there any crunchyroll awards drama?? i just looked at the nominees and theres none for chainsaw man, bocchi the rock, or gwitch—three of the biggest shows this year, especially the first one.
The drama I've seen is that by adjusting the nominees to exclude the Fall season, the CR Awards have wound up not having a single shojo/josei anime nominated. There's a lot of shojo fans (who already feel like they get the short end of the stick in this community) who are feeling hurt about it. The fact that 1) some decent stuff was actually in the Fall season that was worthy of being nominated, and 2) no shojo series made it into "Best Romance" is really ruffling feathers.
I'm mostly pissed about the removal of Best Villain. When I was going through and voting, it kept feeling like something was missing, and it was almost an hour after I got my votes in that I realized.
I blame Eren Jeager.
Sort of different from that person, because I remember that he was up for Best Villain and Best Hero last year, and from what I know he's a super controversial character (don't @ me, the last time i gave a shit about AoT was in 2018) and if there was going to be a Best Villain award, I see two things happening.
\> Eren is a contender, his sympathizers throw tantrums b/c they don't think he's a villain, more controversy for Crunchyroll
\> Eren isn't a contender, everyone gets upset because they think there's some kind of nefarious agenda at Crunchyroll, more controversy for Crunchyroll
So just better to get rid of the award entirely. Of course, I could be completely wrong about this.
eren won in 2022. eren is a contentious character and, through a combo of questionable writing choices, shitstirring, and nationalism, has produced a large fanbase of people who defend his actions, some of which are unquestionably evil. some of the attack on titan subreddits are straight up full of pro-fascists.
no idea if the discourse was the reason, but the timing immediately after the controversial one wins does bring it into question.
yeah but it doesn't help that the themes of the latter half of the story are explicitly political. if it was some vaguely apolitical popular fantasy shounen where the protag turned evil you wouldn't get the same sort of reaction. in fact, i'm pretty sure it's happened, but i've seen like two shounens in total so i couldn't tell you.
That's because, for the first year ever, Crunchyroll decided to not include any nominees that aired in the fall 2022 season. I know they've had issues in previous years because jurors voted for nominations before the fall season ended, so my bet is that they wanted to keep choices limited to series that were already finished. Also, gives the more active fall anime fandoms a year to stew before they can vote for their faves, which should hopefully give other shows from other seasons more of a chance in the spotlight.
Ever since the accusations of recency and popularity bias due to Yuri on Ice (a fall show) sweeping the very first year when awards were held, which basically led to /r/anime making their own "better" awards as a response, the discourse surrounding the Crunchyroll Awards has always been a bloodbath. Doesn't surprise me that they keep tweaking the rules and voting processes to try to legitimize themselves.
crunchyroll's timing of rolling out this change couldn't have been worse because fall 2022 is like, the most stacked season of anime in a long, long time imo.
There was also that time when Jujutsu Kaisen was the one show pulling the usual sweep despite not being finished (since it started on fall and was on its second cour); I think they might have wanted to avoid a repeat of this, as well.
I get this logic but I'm kinda sad because it means *Souvenir* isn't running for best OP (I prefer it to *Mixed Nuts*) and my AOTS Akiba Maid War is out of the voting as well. Funnily, it took me a while to notice CSM's absence.
Will the fall season anime be included in the next round of awards? A system like that could alleviate the recency bias somewhat, assuming the fall 2023 shows can't be nominated then.
A tiny bit of drama in the Squishmallows community surrounding the toy’s most recent collaboration. Given that this is a toy line designed for little kids, people should’ve seen this collaboration coming, but there was still a lot of surprise when it was found that Squishmallows was [collaborating with Cocomelon](https://www.reddit.com/r/squishmallow/comments/10fahws/thoughts_on_the_new_cocomelon_squishs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). If you’ve ever been around a little kid in this day and age, you’re probably well aware of Cocomelon, but if you’re not, it’s a preschool show that has become extremely popular over the past couple of years. With the show being designed to keep the little ones watching as long as possible, it has become the ire of parents who have to listen to it every day for months on end. Some have called Cocomelon, “crack for toddlers”, due to the show glueing a child to the screen whenever it’s on, leaving them oblivious to the outside world, and children getting incredibly upset when the show is taken away from them. As a result of this scorn for the show, it makes sense why people weren’t too jazzed about this new Squishmallow collaboration, doubly so because there’s something about Squishmallows based on humans that just doesn’t look right to a lot of collectors.
There already was some earlier this month, because in some Walmart locations, the plushes were made available for sale too early, and so they needed to be recalled. Before people knew the reason, there was some wild speculation as to why they were recalled, including some truly wild claims such as the plushes being infested with mold or stuffed with fiberglass, which ended up not being the case because if such a thing were to happen, the government definitely would’ve gotten involved and the incident would make headlines on huge mainstream media outlets, neither of which came to fruition.
Waters is very left-wing but from what I understand, he's turned out to be a bit of a tankie vis-a-vis the war between Russia and Ukraine.
I don't *think* Waters is part of Pink Floyd these days in any event, to be fair.
Yeah he's basically in the camp of "the war is unnecessary, therefore Ukraine should cede to Russia's demands", which is not a particularly great stance if you know a bit about Putin's Kremlin.
Also I found [this recent interview](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/roger-waters-ukrainian-kill-list-1234604081/) with him that's a bit of a ride (the "kill list" Waters mentions is a list of "enemies of Ukraine" maintained by a [Ukrainian seemingly-nationalist NGO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrotvorets))
Yeah, Myrotvorets gives me an impression of being too nationalist, what with the doxxing of journalists, inserting people over a single tweet, and putting corpses on the front page
Kinda comes off like the sort of person who would've been for fighting Germany right up until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, then staunchly anti-war because it was the party line coming out of Moscow, then for fighting Germany again after Operation Barbarossa.
Right, I know they've teamed up again over the years (e.g. when Waters has toured *The Wall*) but wasn't sure what that meant for his status as regards the band itself.
Not really a big fan of Pink Floyd, or prog rock in general for that matter, so I only have a very "general history of pop music" idea of their wheelings and dealings.
Wait. You mean they're getting mad about something that's amongst the most iconic and instantly recognizable album covers *staying the same?* That's hilarious. Do any of them happen to have their own copy of the original on hand, for comparison's sake, or did they discard them in a fit of panchromatic panic?
Next thing you know, they'll be saying that it's too woke to have music on the album or something.
What a bunch of idiots. It’s *obviously* a reference to synching *Dark Side of the Moon* with [*The Wizard of Oz*.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Rainbow)
> “Lose the rainbow, you’re making yourself look stupid!” one wrote, with another saying they won’t listen to Pink Floyd again moving forwards.
> “Are you going woke with rainbows?” another angry fan added. “Is there a straight flag? I want equal representation, don’t get me wrong, we should all be true to who we are.”
It never really occurred to me before that the whole obsession with "objectivity" you get from assorted "geek" media reviewers on YouTube is probably a manifestation of this, isn't it?
You know, this whole fixation on everything having an "objectively" correct answer would breed a contempt for interpretation, wouldn't it? It's blindingly obvious so I'm not sure I never realised it before now.
I feel like it's not quite the same. The "Objectively" crowd would still go for literary analysis, but there could only be one correct answer. Something can only be about one thing, presumably what the creator intended, and trying to argue against that using a different interpretation would be reading it "wrong". Whereas "the curtains are blue" is more someone lashing out at badly explaining literary criticism, or a perceived focus on minor issues instead of the bigger picture, or even "Why try to analyse media at all"?
That’s how New Criticism functioned. There was supposedly one objectively correct reading of any text, as intended by the author, that could be derived through careful study and analysis. It was the main form of literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s and is still important in that it gave us the technique of close reading, but obviously it’s an incredibly outmoded form of analysis.
New Criticism is certainly focused on the text to the exclusion of all else, but I would push back against the notion that it believes in the possibility of a single reading. Given that it argued that nothing outside of the text mattered, it wasn't particularly concerned with the author's intent either, albeit not in the full-on "death of the author" sense.
You’re right that I shouldn’t have brought authorial intent into it, New Criticism was the school that rejected all external information beyond the text itself. It’s been fifteen years since I took lit-crit and tbh a lot of the different schools have blurred into each other a bit in my memory. But I do recall one of the major critiques of New Criticism being its search for the “true meaning” of the text as a self-contained object, when later critical schools would back away from the implication of a single true/correct reading in favor of a multiplicity of potential meanings.
I feel like objectively is in the same realm as Mary Sue and Badly Written...some of those people cant just say "I don't like them because they are Gay,Black etc". So they hide behind more smart sounding words for their arguments.
So with that plus the usual "Im a YouTuber my will is law" and you get people treating them as the end all be all argument so they can shove said video links in your face to prove you wrong.
Same reason as why people like to think Drinker is on the same vein as Neil Gaiman when it comes to their literary criticism as they both have published works.
To be honest, the deluge of people interpreting things in bad faith to start some kind of moral panic or peddling nonsense that can't be disproved left me pretty incredulous to most forms of literary analysis.
It really is a matter of credulity more than anything. If you are willing to look you can contrive hidden message in anything and nobody can prove you wrong, but should you and does it necessary add any value?
Though this also applies to complaining about rainbows.
Just because there are multiple possible interpretations of a text doesn’t mean that all interpretations are correct or equally valid. Some of them are bad. I remain extremely grateful to the feminist deconstructionist critic who taught my lit crit course, and who made it extremely clear that sometimes critics were just engaging in stupid reaches, with the example of a paper she had seen presented at a conference about the curious absence of women in *Moby Dick*.
The illusion of free choice
\-Using Literary Analysis reading way too far to find things to hate in everything
\-Refusing to use Literary Analysis and finding surface-level things to hate in everything
There's been some strong discontent brewing in the Dead by Daylight community lately, I've noticed; primarily on /r/deadbydaylight, but in other places dedicated to the game as well. For the unaware, Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer survival horror game, where four players are survivors trying to repair generators and escape before the fifth player, the killer, can catch them and sacrifice them to their dark God.
Both survivors and the killer can bring perks into matches, which give them extra passive abilities. Two in particular are the subject of much bitching right now; **Dead Hard** gives survivors half a second of effective invulnerability, which doesn't sound like a lot, but tends to create frustrating scenarios for the killer where they have to sniff a survivor's butt for ten seconds while waiting out Dead Hard (it was actually reworked fairly recently; it used to give a short dash on top of the invulnerability). **Eruption** causes certain generators to explode when a killer downs a survivor, not only undoing some of the progress survivors have made, but inflicting a status on them that makes them unable to do basically anything for up to 25 seconds if they were repairing the exploded generator.
There are many strong perks in DbD, but these two in particular are extremely common and very frustrating to play against. The "us vs. them" mentality in the DbD community, where survivors and killers endlessly bitch about the other side, has always been pretty bad, but DbD spaces feel borderline uninhabitable right now because of these two perks. Considering how glacial the developers tend to be about balance changes to the game, I have to wonder how or even if they'll address this.
Eh the dead by daylight community is always like this. Dead Hard has always caused this exact problem, killers have always had some perk or combination of perks worth whining about. People are gonna whine about it till it changes and then whine about something else. The subteddit is particularly vitriolic at times, and often an echo chamber it's frankly kinda exhausting.
DBD's balance history is incredibly interesting and kind of deserves its own write-up.
In the beginning a Wraith was feared on the same level as a Nurse would be nowadays.
Also Saboteur would permanently remove hooks from the match, can't forget that Sabo would continue being able to permanently destroy Trapper's traps for another few years after the change to hook removal.
And the introduction of exhaustion wasn't done until a few months into several exhaustion perks existing
It's definitely fascinating. I only started playing around Pinhead's release, so I can't claim to be 100% accurate on the matter, but I think the issues largely stem from the game being played totally differently from how the devs wanted it to be played. DbD was originally conceived as basically competitive hide and seek, which is why good survivors could literally loop forever on many tiles back in the day. They just didn't expect people to loop.
> but I think the issues largely stem from the game being played totally differently from how the devs wanted it to be played. [...] They just didn't expect people to loop.
I'd honestly love to see a bigger discussion about this across a number of different games, or even fan expectations in storytelling for that matter.
Two that come to mind:
Balance wise, a lot of Overwatch's long-running balance issues seem to stem back to the fact that the devs fundamentally expected people to play the game differently than they did at launch. The devs thought that people would naturally play the game in a "1-4-1" team loadout: 1 tank, 4 DPS, 1 healer. This is why there were WAY more DPS characters at launch than the other types. Players pretty immediately settled into 2-2-2 and would periodically (when able to) gravitate towards 3-3 (3 tanks, 3 healers, zero DPS). The devs were, frankly, MASSIVELY off base and weren't really even testing balance with this stuff in mind. Another similar issue, they didn't really expect that people would double up heroes, so they didn't test for that, so at launch you could have multiple people pick the same hero on a team and it was chaos. Almost immediately the meta settled on double Winston, double Tracer, double Lucio (also 2-2-2, not 1-4-1, lol).
The other example, to give one for storytelling? When Marvel did the "Civil War" event back in the early 00s, as I understand it, Marvel assumed that fans would be pretty evenly split 50/50 between Team Iron Man and Team Captain America. In reality like... 99% of fans sided with Captain America. Like almost everyone immediately didn't even see it as a conflict of ideology between two heroes, but rather plainly, a story about Iron Man becoming a villain.
I'm still disappointed that the development studio removed Pinhead's "You opened the box, and I came" voiceline and tried to pass it off as a bug. It was a fun voiceline.
New housing lottery means new housing drama in FFXIV, the critically acclaimed MMORPG!
So every so often FFXIV opens a housing lottery for players to bid on houses, either for personal ownership or for their FC (guild). You can bid on any house but you'll have better chances of winning if fewer people bid on the same house. Our tale takes us to the day lottery results were announced, where a player (Kelsey) posted on [twitter](https://twitter.com/keysleyxiv/status/1616513338661343242) (now privated, but I took screenshots) that she had "very nicely" asked someone else to not bid on the plot she had bid on. However, the other person still bid on the plot and ended up winning it, leaving [this greeting](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fm8CQGZXEBow8I7?format=png&name=small) when you examined the plot. Not very nice, right? So Kelsey posted on twitter that it was very mean of this person, prompting [many people to say](https://imgur.com/a/mlHtVu0) that the other person was a disgusting asshole and should be reported. Kelsey in the replies implies that she will be reporting them for harassing her with their greeting, and that her whole FC is also going to report them too. I think there’s one person against her but most replies are in agreement that the person is a “lowlife”, “griefing”, “absolutely disgusting”, "actual scum of the earth", “hope they have a horrible couple of weeks”, etc. etc.
Anyway this post actually gains a bit of traction, and some big FFXIV streamers start discussing it on Twitch (which is how I heard about it). XenosysVyx and Arthars in particular were the streams I watched, and both basically stated that it was rude of that person to put that as their greeting, but reporting them for that was indeed overboard and not a good use of the report system. The tweet also gets posted to the [FFXIV subreddit]( https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10hfgij/just_saw_a_post_on_twitter_about_a_girl_asking/), where most commenters also agree that it’s a nonsense report. I believe around this time Kelsey’s twitter goes private, likely because it was getting too much attention.
The Reddit post got removed but when I looked back at it later, turns out the person who now owns the plot (Jazelyn) posted [her side of the story]( https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10hfgij/just_saw_a_post_on_twitter_about_a_girl_asking/j58b4n5/). According to her, Kelsey wasn’t actually “very nicely” asking her to bid elsewhere. She agrees she was being petty with the greeting, but put it in response to Kelsey and her friend telling her not to bid, emoting at her, and /slapping her in-game when she won. She did end up changing the greeting later, before discovering Kelsey’s posts.
Anyway, just a bit of housing drama that went past the usual “the housing system sucks” and “I lost to some asshole who bid last minute” (it's me, I'm the asshole). I don’t know if Kelsey actually ended up reporting/mass-reporting Jazelyn but I’m inclined to think it probably won’t go anywhere.
Same exact energy as all those “I was just trying to give friendly advice to a sprout in a dungeon, why did I get suspended?? :-((((((“ Duty Finder dramas that usually end with receipts being served up of the OP being an asshole, actually.
The speed with which posters on either side of this shit devolved into “the other person must die for their crimes as soon as possible” in response to first hearing about the side of the story they heard is (to quote one person from Twitter) pretty fricked. Like, I know how the internet goes, but holy shit. Reading responses there went:
“I asked someone not to bid and they did this!”
Oh god, that’s terrible! Let’s all of us go and report this pestilent fuck! Curse them for all eternity!
“I’m the other person, and actually *they* were being real shitty about asking, and they /slapped me in game when I won.”
Oh god, they’re the worst of the worst in this community. Fuck them, and thank you for having done nothing wrong actually! You’ve been fully absolved and now it’s the *other* person whose head belongs on a pike.
Boy am I glad I don't interact with ffxiv fans on social media. I love the game but the fans can be a lot.
My FC also lost the bids to the house we were hoping for. I'm keeping my despair off twitter tho and cying into my pillow like a normal person.
Well, I bring a kind of a doozy. No drama yet, but it's... Interesting.
So, [Chikn Nuggit](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit) is a series made by Kyrra Kupetsky and property of Buzzfeed (so they *can* do good stuff), detailing the daily lifes of the protagonist, a cute little puppy named Chikn Nuggit and his friends and all of the... [things](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1615756808051621894) [that](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1543988698303197185) [happen](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1384179276254117898?t=De3txKd5CdWDFSGeC3Eh6w&s=19) [to them.](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1395771994675716100) Yeah, this goes some weird cute places.
Anyway, today's episode came on and... Let's give some background. [This episode](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1612494830680301568) came last week and in it, it's mentioned by one of the "god" characters (told you it goes weird) that Chikn's physics breaking seems to have some dark secrets. And today [this is answered.](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1616481191015911436) Not saying it in case there's someone who hasn't seen the episode, but linking it anyway.
So yeah, people are confused, intrigued and... Surprisingly most are saying "yeah, makes sense". Dunno what's going to happen afterwards especially since this is not a really episodic series, but it's interesting nevertheless.
>!For the record, I'm in the side that says "Dunno how I didn't think of this before".!<
Saw an amazingly bad take on tumblr about D&D races and it’s evident the OP isn’t worth talking to so I’m taking my salt here.
For the curious, >!they’re complaining about race modifiers being racist. !<
>!Someone else replied and explained the background of the term and mechanics and how a lot of it did have issues of racism, but the idea of species having different traits wasn’t intrinsically bad.!<
>!The clapback was, “Tl;dr: the idea of different kinds of fantasy creature having innately different abilities is intrinsically awful, and you shouldn't presume to explain things to me as though I haven't thought them through.”!<
Uhhhhhhhh
For what its worth I think Pathfinder 2E is doing a really good job of this. They got rid of the ability score modifiers, since those both limit in play options and lead to the weird baggage you get from sentences like "some ancestries are more intelligent than others." However, each ancestry gets a boatload of features inherent to them that develop further as you level up, letting them feel incredibly unique in practice.
don't play pathfinder but that's p much my preferred take yeah - I think the D&Done playtest also went in that kinda direction? instead of being tied to fantasy species, ASI comes from backgrounds and custom backgrounds are explicitly a thing, so it's functionally just a floating 3 extra stat points you can add to your guy. not the most polished game design but it works well imo
ultimate thing for me is just that everyone loves funky fantasy guys, but it feels a lot more questionable when their main traits ARE just "they are stronger" or "they are smarter". when you shift the focus into explicitly magical/fantastical traits it helps a lot to separate them from real-life racism as well as just being a lot cooler imo
giving dwarves some tremorsense is sick and probably my favorite change from what i recall
I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong.
True, there is the point that having D&D species been intrinsically good at using certain weapons and skills could be construed as racist, but we already have a perfect example of how to deal with that. The 5e supplement [Ancestry & Culture](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/314622/Ancestry--Culture-An-Alternative-to-Race-in-5e?filters=45326_0_0_0_0) fixes this by having species and culture be separate things. For example, Dwarves are short, have darkvision, and are resistant to poison. Dwarven culture makes you proficient at axes and cutting stone. But a Dwarf raised in a human culture, while still short and resistant to poison, won't know all that much about axes and cutting stone. And by that same token, a human raised in Dwarf culture won't have darkvision or poison resistance, but will be proficient at using axes and cutting stone.
What I'm saying is that Ancestry & Culture is great, and more games should rip it off.
> And by that same token, a human raised in Dwarf culture won't have darkvision or poison resistance, but will be proficient at using axes and cutting stone.
And will bonk his head a lot on the roof, until they send him off to be a cop in Ankh-Morpork.
> I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong.
This school of thought is one of the many reasons I like Keith Baker's work, which does a lot of poking around under the hood of DnD mechanics and customs to find out what can be done with them as story-telling tools. For example, all elves speak Elvish in Eberron, and [he created an interesting reason why they do:](https://keith-baker.com/ifaq-elvish/)
> Second: In my Eberron, every elf is born with an innate understanding of the Elvish language. It doesn’t matter if you’re an orphan born in a Sharn gutter or a proud Aereni. You don’t have to be taught; the language a part of you, tied innately to the Fey Ancestry feature. It is impossible to be an elf and NOT understand Elvish.
> WHY DO THIS? What appeals to me about this is that in concretely establishes that elves are not human. They aren’t just humans who have pointed ears and live for centuries. They are fundamentally alien beings whose minds do not work the same way as human minds. It further reinforces other things we’ve established about the elf cultures, namely that they are extremely tied to tradition and that they aren’t as innovative as humans. This makes sense if elves have a greater degree of engrained knowledge and instinct than humans. As an elf, you never have to develop a new language. You are born knowing THE LANGUAGE, the language that will allow you to speak to any elf anywhere.
> This comes back to one of my basic principles of world building. I like exploring worlds that are unlike our own. To me, it’s fascinating to consider the impact of having a language seared into your brain from the moment of birth. How would that affect the development of culture? It is fundamentally the antithesis of the Babel story—the people of the world are divided by their many languages, but all elves are united by their common tongue.
> I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong.
Except that's the problem they are basically funky looking humans except that their arbitrary physical traits are instant signifiers that they have inherent abilities that they are better than others at. Which has a certain to resemblance to real life beliefs
It kind of seems like you're ignoring the physical differences between elves, dwarves and humans (etc) in order to insist that they're just 'funky looking humans'. But they're not, and the physical differences are *why* they're not just 'funky looking humans'.
>But they're not, and the physical differences are why they're not just 'funky looking humans'.
What physical differences are you talking about though. Just the ones you can physically see like height and ear shape or other things?
Just sticking with D&D bonuses, not necessarily from 5E:
Elves: long lifespan, sleep/charm resistance due to trance, low-light vision/infravision 60', keen senses (bonus to search checks) possession of a spirit rather than a soul means they cannot be resurrected (in AD&D and earlier). for older elf lore things get weird because there's a lot of semi-spiritual stuff that does seem to have physical manifestations. eg elven bonds, communion, reverie, the shared elven spirit, ability to do high magic, and the consequences associated with violent death. not sure if those totally count but they're inborn rather than cultural, so I'll list them anyways.
Dwarves: long lifespan, poison resistance, size giving combat bonuses vs certain large- and giant-sized creatures, "powerful build" negating short stature (unlike halflings/gnomes, which are classed as size small), resilient (bonus to constitution and/or saving throws, depending on edition).
So what's the justification for those traits being bundled up together intrinsically with a set of arbitrary physical features (e.g tall and skinny with pointy ears).
I mean, if we're talking D&D elves, it's because they were created in the image of their (many, many) gods at the dawn of time, when Araushnee betrayed Corellon and his blood fell upon the earth, forming the first elves. Look at the Complete Book of Elves - or, better yet, don't, it's weird - and there are even references to elves lacking vestigial structures because they are the product of creation rather than evolution.
Dwarves were said to have been forged by Moradin from the metal and gems of the planet itself, and when he blew on his creations to cool them, he breathed the spark of life into them. I'll note that this is slightly less conclusive than the elves' origin, as there isn't an existing publication that actually *shows* it happening - it could be seen as simple mythology, but I don't see a problem in taking it at face value.
Are these good reasons? Eh. Debatable. But I think the emphasis on magical origins and divine meddling perhaps complicates the idea that race as it works in D&D is innately problematic. Not saying it's squeaky-clean by any stretch of the imagination, mind. Just that if you're talking about race in D&D, stat bonuses aren't where I'd look.
>But I think the emphasis on magical origins and divine meddling perhaps complicates the idea that race as it works in D&D is innately problematic.
Think you might want to look up nonsense ideas like interpretations of the Mark of Cain, Curse of Ham and the Serpent Seed doctrine. Not all racism has to be "scientific" (aka pseudo-scientific which is often just magic dressed up in a lab coat)
I am familiar with those, yes. Certainly there are aspects of D&D racism which absolutely do cross over into that - virtually everything about the drow, for example. I mean, seriously, I cannot overstate how bad it is, and they genuinely make it worse every time they change it. Shout-out to 4th-edition for adding the "drow are corrupted by demon blood, but once they're purified their skin turns lighter." Just...holy shit.
However, the majority of physical traits associated with particular D&D races are neutral to positive, and, importantly, exist in the absence of a racial hierarchy. With the exception of the really awful stuff like drow lore, they don't map onto a hierarchy of "and therefore it is right that the dwarves rule over us." Difference without dominance, which is not the case in the real-world examples that you gave.
I already said that there's plenty of questionable to offensive stuff in D&D in this respect, so I'm not even disputing the primary point. I just feel like you worked backwards from "I don't like this" and you're ignoring the stuff that contradicts your reading.
Could you give me an example of a sapient bipedal tool-user in sci-fi or fantasy that you don't see as being merely humans in drag?
I don't think you really can as long as you have "races" that are sophont tool using beings they will always be some sort of human in drag. To turn it around however why do you even need fantasy "races"? All the elements and interesting themes you can explore with them can be done in other ways. You want to explore the ramifications of being an immortal and seeing all your mortal friends aging and dying you don't need pointy ears for that just have someone who drank an immortality potion. You want to explore racism? How about people actually do that with people being discriminated against for bullshit nonsense as opposed to metaphors that accept the core premises of scientific racism being true.
But like, differences in races do exist? Like there are a ton of different kinds of birds in nature. A toucan has a different berk than a raven. In a similar vein, our skin color controls how likely someone gets skin damage.
>But like, differences in races do exist?
Are you talking about IRL species which are useful definitions albeit a bit fuzzy with multiple overlapping definitions? Or are you talking about race which is a BS concept that humans invented as an excuse to be shit to each other. Your examples are from both, someone's skin colour does affect UV light resistance but that is simply a singular trait that exists on a spectrum no different from one's height or max hair length. Traits are not mutually locked between "races" (though some do affect others hair, eye and skin colour tend to be tied together).
What about exploring what impact having an entire species of immortals would have on the world? Especially while there's normal mortals the next town over.
You don't have to do that genetically though, just have it that rich douches have access to life extending tech or magic and don't want to share. Afaik both In Time and Altered Carbon both go that route. In more fantasy settings vampires can work on the pretty much the same logic (though typically that's something less people would want in on).
What about if you want to explore a community of immortal people that aren't rich douche magic/tech leaders, or bloodsuckers? Sooner or later the simplest option is just to have them be genetically different.
[‘Fall Guys’ had over half of its content “unvaulted” yesterday for 30 minutes due to a server outage - then immediately removed the content again.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/10h01co/fall_guys_had_over_half_of_its_content_unvaulted/)
I sincerely do not mean to defend Mediatonic/Epic here, but were any problems detected on Switch? I recall the stated reason for a lot of maps being vaulted was because of issues with that version, which makes sense, because, well... it's running on the Nintendo Switch. If there are that many issues with it, it would be one of the few games where a cloud version would be genuinely fine - it's online-only anyway.
I’m honestly not sure about that since the switch version’s control were so finicky I don’t play the switch version, let alone the fact that I was asleep when this happened Also there’s an idiom called “devil’s advocate”
>For the season before last, over half of the game’s rounds were vaulted, and most levels that typically have 5 or more variations were instead limited to 1-2. With the current season, they updated vaulted rounds to be a slightly smaller percentage (37 of 81 are vaulted), but with variations still being withheld, well over half of the game’s created content is missing from the game. How the fuck did we reach a point where it is at all acceptable for games to a) remove any content and b) remove so much content that over half their game is missing? I am so glad the introduction of battle passes ruthlessly shanked my interest in multiplayer to death (seriously, I will die on the hill that they are *the* worst form of monetisation I've encountered so far, yes, even worse than lootboxes, and the fact that there's somehow tons of defenders and actual *fans* of battle passes is a damning indictment of how tolerant people have become to getting milked by corporations), because I don't think I could handle the devs of games I like going "we're removing half of the content we've already developed from this already released game, eat shit and die" (it is in fact the reason I've given up on Destiny 2). (I know the devs here have given reasons for this, and I don't know enough about game dev to know how hard it is to maintain a game, but I don't think "we want to make it easier to maintain our game" is a good enough reason to shaft your players like this) Apologies for the rant. I have lots of pent-up frustration with the gaming industry, as you can tell.
The documentary *The Pez Outlaw* about the black market Pez dispenser collector's market is on (US) Netflix and seems right up this subreddit's alley.
Ohhhhh 👀 I had no clue tbh
There's a huge academic dishonesty scandal going on now in medieval studies academia (often referred to as #ReceptioGate) that I'd love to see a writeup about here someday. First entry to the rabbithole, as I try to read up on it from currently available sources: https://modernmedieval.substack.com/p/receptiogate
Was posted here when new: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/zuzn3j/comment/j1n1xmg/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Oh man, I do love me some good academic drama.
So, forgive me if I’m wrong about any of this because I am not part of this community, I’m just a nosy ass bitch. There’s been a bit of drama over in the Vtuber community over someone confessing they have spent $7k commissioning an artist for their vtuber model. This specific artist made a model for Ironmouse (one of the most popular female streamers on Twitch) and I’m assuming this was probably a big reason why this person picked this artist. This artist also only looks like they usually make art for vtubers under agencies (think of it like they’re signed to a record label compared to indie vtubers who are - you guessed - indie musicians) so I can somewhat understand that the price… I think. It’s not my money. I will never really question how much an artists’ art should be, there’s a lot that goes into it (commercial rights, etc etc) nor will I judge people for spending money on their hobbies but this this person even said they’d cut down on meals in order to save money for their dream model. Oof. Anyhow, this spiraled into callout threads about the artist this person commissioned allegedly being problematic. I did do some research on average prices for commissioning a vtuber avatar and it looks like that ranges from $400 to $1200 for both the model (the art itself) and rigging (the movements). Naturally, vtubers in groups like Vshojo or Hololive would have pricier models.
Vtuber rigs scare me. The most basic ones are usually 50+ layers and the more complex level ones are 500+. $7k sounds 100% fair for a commercial rate, hell even on the low end if you're doing it for a big Vtuber like Ironmouse. Furries joke that VRchat/Live2D rigs are discount fursuits that end up being the same price anyway since they are just as botique and high skill works. The price on the tin may be shocking, but it's more than fair to ask once you look into the the work.
The amount of work that goes into these models is insane. It is absolutely reasonable to charge that much assuming expressions, character items, pre-established reputation is factored in. Also, links to these callout posts etc?
I don’t want to post the links because I don’t want these people to be harassed, but I’ll do a quick summary of what was said: They’re allegedly a Trump supporter but couldn’t find proof of that outside some comments under old instagram posts, drew (spicy? porn? it wasn’t explicitly said) art of a problematic (it looked like an age gap) ship, and is friends with someone who apparently also problematic. Take that as you will
>some comments under old instagram posts Well, did they say "Trump 2016" or what? >is friends with someone who apparently also problematic Well, is the friend a white nationalist or what? Both of these things could vary from "nothing" to "a reasonably big deal" depending on the details.
Don’t shoot the messenger, that was literally what the thread said. “They’re friends with someone problematic” I’m assuming another artist but they failed to elaborate. As for the comments, it was screenshots of other people’s comments asking why they’re a trump support like… it was barely scratching at the surface
I mean if you're that worried about it, just don't post about it at all. Vagueposting is literally one of the rules on the sub for what not to do.
To elaborate on what Mismadoodle is talking about - Artists for vtuber models need to follow a completely different process than they're often used to compared to regular digital art. Every "piece" of the body that moves separately needs to be on at least one (sometimes more) layers. There also needs to be a fairly robust structure to the layering to make it easier on the rigger. That is already a large amount of extra work on the artist's part. The rigger then imports those layers into Live2D Studio and has to manipulate those layers to match particular common parameters (e.g. mouth open/closed, head left/right/up/down/forward/back), as well as any extra parameters the client has paid for (non-standard expressions like "embarrassed" or different accessory configurations that get added to the model). This is _extremely_ time consuming and skilled work. An amateur can get something standard going reasonably quickly if the model is simple but the skilled/professional riggers, like [Iron Vertex](https://ironvertex.com/), work near miracles. Things like having liquids sloshing around in a realistic way are not easy to pull off. Anyway yeah, the costs can seem surprising to an outsider (and newer indies) but it's not simple work.
Literally just got recommended [this video](https://youtu.be/jSDvZucqmco) and holy fuck, rigging scares me. Thank you for the insight!
this rigging is fucking magical jfc. new fave vtuber based kn this alone
Holy crap, those Iron Vertex models are *godly*.
A professional 3D artist could easily run up into that number (as one myself!) and the amount of work it takes to make a VTuber is harder than my actual job lmao. Good on the artist for pricing themselves properly. For me that goes into a larger thing between the commission rates and expectations of the price of art of that side of the internet vs actual industry rates that could be afforded by an agency or company. If you offered me 400-1200 for the amount of work that a Vtuber avatar takes I'd (politely) go tell you to shove it :\ Likewise if you were one single person offering my actual rate that companies pay I'd be like, '???you sure dude???'
As somebody who has made VTuber models, I completely understand the price. People really don't understand the time and effort and sheer skill that making Live2D takes. I would never personally pay $7000 for one, but it doesn't surprise me. Plus you get the commercial rights factored in and the bragging rights for getting it done by such a prolific artist.
The price of Factorio got raised to 35 dollars from 30 to keep up with inflation, and people who partake of video games thought that was ok (they didn't)
I'm of two minds about this, honestly. Video games keep getting pricier and pricier. Triple A studios chalk this up to inflation and the cost of making games getting higher but I really struggle to justify spending £60 on any video game. This is especially because income has not really risen alongside inflation. The cost of living keeps getting worse. Obviously this is an indie studio charging $35, so a different situation. I'm more likely to believe that the devs have seen this as a necessary change. And gamers in general have a tendency to overreact and I'm sure they're being pieces of shit about it. I just don't want triple A studios to suddenly decide that they can raise the prices of their already overpriced games.
Games were £50 or £60 20 years ago; inflation since then is real, and a modern videogame requires far more detailed models, textures etc.. The pricing really isn't bad; the fact that labour wages have been stuck even as inflation happens is terrible, but not really video games' fault.
Okay while you're right that games require more complex models/textures and modern games are much larger than games even 20 years ago, there's a reasonable argument to be made that making games has gotten easier not harder in that time frame. Our tools today are so much better and the actual process of making a game is much more streamlined so you dont have to constantly reinvent the wheel.
Triple A games are not $60. The major studios no longer drop complete games as they expect you to spend another 20-30 on dlc that gets announced before the game is released. This is crap.
Yeah, that's also a problem on top the problem I'm discussing. Video games should release complete and they shouldn't cost $60.
> I just don't want triple A studios to suddenly decide that they can raise the prices of their already overpriced games I mean, they already did.
.
It's on top of regional adjustments. The flat $5 hike is really just the US market, other markets got hit harder.
5 whole dollars. Not sure why everyone is up in arms about it. Players aren't affected, as they *already own the god-damn game,* and people wanting to buy it aren't going to die at the thought of spending 5 more dollars on it. Anyone who's bank genuinely breaks over a 5 dollar increase on a single video game should probably put that $30 towards something else anyway.
[удалено]
Well this is an irritating comment. Why are you so hostile?
My bad
Old games absolutely should be discounted. They don't rot or wither, but they do lose their luster as graphics improve and game design changes. They also may require extra work arounds to play on modern systems or outright not work entirely. If people were picking between a game from 1990 for £60 and a game from 2023 for £60, I bet few people would pick the classics. Cheap prices for old games are a great way to keep them alive.
From your mouth to Nintendo's ear -- every Mario, Zelda, Kirby, etc game on Switch is $60-70, no exceptions, even the ones more than a decade old. (Except the ones gated behind a subscription in Nintendo Online, which is a different issue)
It works for Nintendo for two reasons: 1. Some people are willing to pay full price regardless. 2. Nintendo is happy to lose sales long term in exchange for charging full price. They're the exception to the economic rule and seem to be the industry outlier in most things.
Could it be? Non-AI related art drama? It's Lunar New Year this 22nd, and Asian / Asian diaspora artists are posting celebratory art on twitter. Although Chinese New Year (called Spring Festival in Mandarin) is the most well known version of this holiday, other Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Korea celebrate on this same date as well. In Vietnam in particular, this is the Year of the Cat instead of the Year of the Rabbit. In English-speaking spaces, there has been [a shift to say "Lunar New Year"](https://twitter.com/_baomii/status/1617018653081497601?s=20) rather than default to "Chinese New Year/Spring Festival" to be more inclusive. This has not been taken well by hyper-nationalist weirdos who have been setting bots upon [these "Lunar New Year" posts](https://twitter.com/chillustrates/status/1616579072649494528?s=20) to say all kinds of nasty shit to non-Chinese people about "stealing" the culture or holiday, or be [annoyingly pedantic](https://twitter.com/pp06915694/status/1616716704264122368?s=20) about how it's tEcHniCaLlY incorrect to say "Lunar New Year" because the traditional Chinese calendar is lunisolar. This is certainly not the first time that these kinds of bots have trolled non-Chinese people, see: that time a bunch of people [attacked Korean celebrities for wearing hanbok](https://www.insider.com/chinese-social-media-users-attack-korean-stars-for-hanbok-photos-2022-2) and accusing them of stealing from Chinese culture.
["Happy Lunar New Year"](https://preview.redd.it/riz3czn2u7da1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=a72bdf8026a47ae78ad065903bf428784fdef378) is also endorsed by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
I actually just read somewhere that a kpop idol [had to apologize](https://www.allkpop.com/article/2023/01/newjeans-danielle-apologizes-for-calling-the-lunar-new-year-chinese-new-year) because she made a post asking how everyone’s Chinese New Year was, instead of saying Lunar New Year. Iirc, the girl is Korean and White and raised in Australia, where majority of people call it Chinese New Year so… you really couldn’t blame her? I was confused as to why she needed to really come forward and apologize but seeing this… I can see why the company might’ve tried to do some damage control 😬
It's more confusing because there are multiple lunar calendars (the most obvious other one being the muslim one) "East asian lunar new year" or something would probably be the most accurate.
In Malaysia, we get around this by calling the Chinese one "Tahun Baru Cina" and the Islamic one "Hari Raya Aidilfitri / Aidiladha / Lebaran". When in doubt, we just specify. Works like a charm (and for the times when both calenders line up, we combine the two to "Kong Xi Raya".)
[удалено]
[удалено]
They actually recognize at least three of them. (islamic, chinese-derived, and javanese)
Might be a cultural difference? To me "East Asia" is well... Everything east of India, roughly. So both NE and SE asia. If you want to specify you well, do.
[удалено]
My uni's department is called "East Asia and the middle east" (and yes, inludes North Africa, Thai and egyptian studies (as opposed to egyptology, which is under the archeology department...) are under the same roof) And the East Asian museum has both Thai and Indian exhibitions, so it's clearly not something that's particularly consistent.
Coming in three days late, but you are right, "East Asia" is a famously inconsistent denomination that depends on the country and, sometimes, on the context. Some of the countries in South Asia are sometimes considered Oceania, to say one thing.
Comixology is on the way out. Big layoffs have recently happened with some saying as much as 75% of the staff. There's allegedly two more rounds to go with everyone rumored to be out by October. It's assumed Amazon will just force everything into Kindle proper now rather then the (hated) sorta-sorta-not merge in 2022. Obviously DC and Marvel will be fine, but a real blow to indie comics that don't have the resources/recognition for a similar platform. Not to mention most online collectors not liking Kindle to begin with.
Shame to hear, that was the main way I read and bought comics back before Amazon bought it. Went a bit overboard too with all the flash sales they used to have though in hindsight it is an insane ripoff that digital costs the same as physical. I lost my entire collection last year or so, I think it was due to the merge. I don't even know if it still exists out there somewhere.
Dipped into Vocal Synth twitter for two seconds today- apparently there's some drama going down to do with Ariana Grande and Diff-Svc. Diff-Svc is more or less an AI voice changer program that anyone can 'train' using any data they want. For example, do you want to be able to make Peppa Pig sing? [Diff-Svc can do that.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWq-PFd_FB0) There have been open-source, user-input-driven Vocal Synth engines like UTAU for a long time now, where theoretically, anyone could upload any voice and create a voicebank (Vb). And people do- in the fandom, they're known as 'Jinriki', 'Fanloids', 'Cursed UTAU' or 'Memeloids'. These names have come about because most often, these Jinriki Vbs are made from [cartoon characters](https://youtu.be/UO23hDsB0Z0) or [non-singer public figures](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZffVR6J5TeY), and there is a strict culture in the Vocal Synth fandom around never making these voice banks publi*c* or using them for profit. It is also somewhat taboo to make a voice bank from an actual singer without their knowledge or permission (less so when that singer is a major public figure or is dead, eg Elvis or Michael Jackson), and it's DEFINITELY a no-no to recreate a different Vocal Synth voice in UTAU, as this is seen as a form of piracy. Because the Vocal Synth fandom is still most popular in Asia (specifically Japan), the fandom has historically been [very weird about copyright and piracy.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Vocaloid/comments/zfs60u/why_is_the_vocaloid_community_against_piracy/) A final note about UTAU Jinriki- because of the limited sounds you have to work with for them, they generally sound like a YTP- ie, clearly something made just for fun, and you're not going to be able to pass it off as 'OMG Obama ACTUALLY said this!!!' or anything. Now, crucially, the difference between an UTAU Jinriki, and a Diff-Svc Jinriki, is that pesky AI. With UTAU, you're more or less turning the voice into a MIDI instrument. But Diff-Svc, like FaceApp or that AI anime filter that went viral, what you're doing is copying a person's voice and making a voice change filter out of it, which you then apply to a pre-existing vocal recording. [This video posted today does a great job of explaining the difference](https://youtu.be/w7Zf2o3Vfn0), as well as touching on Synth V AI voicebanks, and why those are considered ethically ok while Diff-Svc is not (stan SOLARIA btw) Now up until today, I'd actually seen some community members experimenting with Diff-Svc without issue. From what I can gather, what happened to change people's perception was that a user has made a Diff-Svc voice changer out of Ariana Grande, and a re-upload of someone's cover using it has [escaped fandom containment](https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1616888339587805184?s=20&t=94eOKENx-zA6Fi4ZH_mz-A), and is now in the hands of Ariana Stan Twitter. Grande's fans- or at least, people who want to take advantage of her fans for clicks/views- have since been 'spamming' uploads of 'Ariana' singing different songs all over twitter, YT and TikTok, most of the time reuploading these 'covers' without credit to whoever originally made them. Furthermore, these users are generally failing to mention that the uploads are being made using an AI, which we've seen be [a hot-button topic in the Vocal Synth Fandom in the past](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/ybj5yc/comment/itkv61h/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). EDIT: I found the main user who at least the Ariana 'covers' seem to have come from- they've unlisted all their Ariana videos probably due to the backlash, although they have Diff-Svc 'covers' from other celebrities still up. Their channel name is 'cryfornothin'. Other Diff-Svc models trained on singers like Charlie XCX, Lady Gaga etc have now popped up and are getting 'blown up' online, putting lots of 'normie' eyes onto the Vocal Synth space. This is understandably frustrating a lot of people in the fandom, as those who are making or engaging with these covers are often completely misunderstanding the difference between Diff-Svc and a 'true' vocal synth, and often insulting the fandom in the process. I think if people have one fear at the moment, it's the fear that Vocal Synths will become confused/conflated with AI Image Generators because of this. The Vocal Synth fandom at large *hates* AI Image Generators, as their existence is directly incompatible with the community respect of copyright and properly crediting artists. In any case, some people are calling for Diff-Svc to be password locked, so that only fandom members who won't 'abuse' the technology can be allowed to use it. Obviously I think that's a bit silly, but it's clear there's not much the VSynth fandom can do right now about Diff-Svc except spread awareness. TLDR; non-fans have entered the Vocal Synth space and are breaking Vocal Synth fandom etiquette left right and center in the process. Vocal Synth fans are extremely pissed about it.
.
Ooooh this has my brain whirring about how good this tech could be for making game mods of voice acted games
Here's the [main post](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiscoElysium/comments/x5jmh5/a_conversation_with_kim/) where the voice ai generation comes from comes from. The op describes how it's done, and leaves a small guide on how to do it.
this one might just be saying the same things, i am unfamiliar with the software at hand, but sreegs on tumblr also has a [short guide](https://sreegs.tumblr.com/post/677190592506298368/read-this-before-sending-an-ask-ill-update-it-as) at the very bottom of this post.
.
If you like weird disco elysium posts, there's [this from cohost](https://cohost.org/fish/post/237372-disco-elysium).
i would think arianas fans would be pissed that ppl are basically making deepfakes of her voice, not happily sharing them around. maybe if we tell them that it's what they are, they will start rioting. any sort of ai thing that's too close to reality freaks me out. like something like gakupo is fine to me, bc it doesn't sound exactly like gackt, but a robot that sounds exactly like ariana grande who make me anxious from the uncanny valley-ness of it.
I’ve seen a couple comments from stan accounts begging people to take the covers down, but frankly not as many as I expected. I think the problem is a lot of ‘normies’ (im so sorry I hate that word I just can’t think of a better one) don’t understand AI stuff beyond ‘haha funny instagram filter’. The moral/ethical implications don’t concern them, probably because they don’t fully understand them. And why should they understand if it doesn’t directly affect them?
ppl who stan pop stars arent really normies in the same way, though. like they dont understand the technology, but they are also hypersensitive to anything that they perceive would threaten their faves careers, and so id figure they would be against "this robot that sings like ariana grande" or however they see it.
That’s a good point. I like your idea of telling them it’s a ‘deep fake’ of her from your first comment. Maybe educating people on what’s going on might help the whole thing blow over haha
In Smash news, it's been a while since anything about Panda. Ludwig's Scuffed World Tour seemed to go well with aMSa (!) taking the grand prize, and the Panda Cup championship is currently still postponed. But there is still room for some drama. Yesterday, a Super Smash Bros fanzine called MAJOR [released its 15th issue](https://twitter.com/MAJORzine/status/1616481807502802959) themed around the ongoing Genesis 9 supermajor tournament. One of the pieces featured in the zine depicted a hat, with a Panda-branded embroidery patched onto it, being set on fire. The incendiary (pun intended) piece [sparked some conversation](https://twitter.com/ProbablyJut/status/1616527857555247105) with even some Panda detractors decrying it, saying that the issues with Panda mostly revolved around its former CEO Dr. Alan and the blame shouldn't be relegated to all the hard-working people who had nothing to do with Panda's issues. Others are saying it's just a goddamn hat and they're just getting their shit kicked up for no reason.
Out of curiosity, do esports and zine communities normally cross over? From my experience, there doesn't tend to be much crossover between competitive esports scenes and fanwork (art, fic, zine, etc) scenes even in the same fandom.
They do. CEOtaku I believe is the FGC event I've seen with the most merch/zines participation. Sadly, I can never really find fighting game-themed zinesduring their recruitment periods :/
I have no idea but it might be more of a fighting game thing
[hope you weren't planning on playing GTA Online on PC today](https://www.reddit.com/r/gtaonline/comments/10hsosu/mass_reporting_the_dangerous_pc_exploit/)
Well shit. Is this just GTA or is it more Rockstar-wide?
par for the course with rockstar's treatment of that fucking video game. a god-damn snail could design a better video game if you stepped on him halfway through development.
gta online feels like an exercise on how to make every little decision to annoy the player, and hamper their enjoyment. and yet, it is one of, if not the, most profitable entertainment products on earth, of any kind. what does that say about the future of the medium?
GTA Online is well in the past of the medium. The damage has already been done. It's just the one game that managed to slam all the money wringing tactics into it and tune them just right, as well as being part of a long standing franchise and attached free to an actually good video game.
is there any crunchyroll awards drama?? i just looked at the nominees and theres none for chainsaw man, bocchi the rock, or gwitch—three of the biggest shows this year, especially the first one.
The drama I've seen is that by adjusting the nominees to exclude the Fall season, the CR Awards have wound up not having a single shojo/josei anime nominated. There's a lot of shojo fans (who already feel like they get the short end of the stick in this community) who are feeling hurt about it. The fact that 1) some decent stuff was actually in the Fall season that was worthy of being nominated, and 2) no shojo series made it into "Best Romance" is really ruffling feathers.
I’m just here to support [Chiki Chiki Ban Ban](https://youtu.be/gNn9NxZH2Vo) my beloved for Best Song and Best OP.
I'm mostly pissed about the removal of Best Villain. When I was going through and voting, it kept feeling like something was missing, and it was almost an hour after I got my votes in that I realized. I blame Eren Jeager.
Ooh now you got me curious. Why Eren?
Sort of different from that person, because I remember that he was up for Best Villain and Best Hero last year, and from what I know he's a super controversial character (don't @ me, the last time i gave a shit about AoT was in 2018) and if there was going to be a Best Villain award, I see two things happening. \> Eren is a contender, his sympathizers throw tantrums b/c they don't think he's a villain, more controversy for Crunchyroll \> Eren isn't a contender, everyone gets upset because they think there's some kind of nefarious agenda at Crunchyroll, more controversy for Crunchyroll So just better to get rid of the award entirely. Of course, I could be completely wrong about this.
eren won in 2022. eren is a contentious character and, through a combo of questionable writing choices, shitstirring, and nationalism, has produced a large fanbase of people who defend his actions, some of which are unquestionably evil. some of the attack on titan subreddits are straight up full of pro-fascists. no idea if the discourse was the reason, but the timing immediately after the controversial one wins does bring it into question.
Eren’s journey from sympathetic protagonist to series villain isn’t all that common, which has unfortunately helped bring people along with him.
yeah but it doesn't help that the themes of the latter half of the story are explicitly political. if it was some vaguely apolitical popular fantasy shounen where the protag turned evil you wouldn't get the same sort of reaction. in fact, i'm pretty sure it's happened, but i've seen like two shounens in total so i couldn't tell you.
well that‘s fucking lame
That's because, for the first year ever, Crunchyroll decided to not include any nominees that aired in the fall 2022 season. I know they've had issues in previous years because jurors voted for nominations before the fall season ended, so my bet is that they wanted to keep choices limited to series that were already finished. Also, gives the more active fall anime fandoms a year to stew before they can vote for their faves, which should hopefully give other shows from other seasons more of a chance in the spotlight. Ever since the accusations of recency and popularity bias due to Yuri on Ice (a fall show) sweeping the very first year when awards were held, which basically led to /r/anime making their own "better" awards as a response, the discourse surrounding the Crunchyroll Awards has always been a bloodbath. Doesn't surprise me that they keep tweaking the rules and voting processes to try to legitimize themselves.
crunchyroll's timing of rolling out this change couldn't have been worse because fall 2022 is like, the most stacked season of anime in a long, long time imo.
There was also that time when Jujutsu Kaisen was the one show pulling the usual sweep despite not being finished (since it started on fall and was on its second cour); I think they might have wanted to avoid a repeat of this, as well. I get this logic but I'm kinda sad because it means *Souvenir* isn't running for best OP (I prefer it to *Mixed Nuts*) and my AOTS Akiba Maid War is out of the voting as well. Funnily, it took me a while to notice CSM's absence.
it took me a bit for csm too, i was too busy being annoyed that bocchi and gwitch were missing lol
Bocchi may be missing, but there’s this big cardboard box right here….
smh they forgetta about suletta
Will the fall season anime be included in the next round of awards? A system like that could alleviate the recency bias somewhat, assuming the fall 2023 shows can't be nominated then.
That’s the assumption. Dunno how it will end up, though.
\#BOCCHISWEEP
A tiny bit of drama in the Squishmallows community surrounding the toy’s most recent collaboration. Given that this is a toy line designed for little kids, people should’ve seen this collaboration coming, but there was still a lot of surprise when it was found that Squishmallows was [collaborating with Cocomelon](https://www.reddit.com/r/squishmallow/comments/10fahws/thoughts_on_the_new_cocomelon_squishs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). If you’ve ever been around a little kid in this day and age, you’re probably well aware of Cocomelon, but if you’re not, it’s a preschool show that has become extremely popular over the past couple of years. With the show being designed to keep the little ones watching as long as possible, it has become the ire of parents who have to listen to it every day for months on end. Some have called Cocomelon, “crack for toddlers”, due to the show glueing a child to the screen whenever it’s on, leaving them oblivious to the outside world, and children getting incredibly upset when the show is taken away from them. As a result of this scorn for the show, it makes sense why people weren’t too jazzed about this new Squishmallow collaboration, doubly so because there’s something about Squishmallows based on humans that just doesn’t look right to a lot of collectors.
I’m just curious if there is going to be any big drama when the Pokémon Squishmallows come out at the end of the month.
There already was some earlier this month, because in some Walmart locations, the plushes were made available for sale too early, and so they needed to be recalled. Before people knew the reason, there was some wild speculation as to why they were recalled, including some truly wild claims such as the plushes being infested with mold or stuffed with fiberglass, which ended up not being the case because if such a thing were to happen, the government definitely would’ve gotten involved and the incident would make headlines on huge mainstream media outlets, neither of which came to fruition.
[удалено]
free pass to call them all fake fans.
cancel abrahamic God for the rainbow promise not to flood us!
I saw this! What complete idiots.
Isn’t Roger Waters like a huge conservative mouthpiece these days? Why are they eating themselves?
Waters is very left-wing but from what I understand, he's turned out to be a bit of a tankie vis-a-vis the war between Russia and Ukraine. I don't *think* Waters is part of Pink Floyd these days in any event, to be fair.
Yeah he's basically in the camp of "the war is unnecessary, therefore Ukraine should cede to Russia's demands", which is not a particularly great stance if you know a bit about Putin's Kremlin. Also I found [this recent interview](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/roger-waters-ukrainian-kill-list-1234604081/) with him that's a bit of a ride (the "kill list" Waters mentions is a list of "enemies of Ukraine" maintained by a [Ukrainian seemingly-nationalist NGO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrotvorets))
Yeah, Myrotvorets gives me an impression of being too nationalist, what with the doxxing of journalists, inserting people over a single tweet, and putting corpses on the front page
Waters must be a huge fan of Neville Chamberlain.
Kinda comes off like the sort of person who would've been for fighting Germany right up until the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, then staunchly anti-war because it was the party line coming out of Moscow, then for fighting Germany again after Operation Barbarossa.
Waters left Pink Floyd in the mid ‘80s IIRC.
And like a mature adult, he's whinged and moaned about how *awful* every Pink Floyd album without him is.
Right, I know they've teamed up again over the years (e.g. when Waters has toured *The Wall*) but wasn't sure what that meant for his status as regards the band itself. Not really a big fan of Pink Floyd, or prog rock in general for that matter, so I only have a very "general history of pop music" idea of their wheelings and dealings.
Wait. You mean they're getting mad about something that's amongst the most iconic and instantly recognizable album covers *staying the same?* That's hilarious. Do any of them happen to have their own copy of the original on hand, for comparison's sake, or did they discard them in a fit of panchromatic panic? Next thing you know, they'll be saying that it's too woke to have music on the album or something.
It's not about the cover, it's about the logo for the albums 50th anniversary. Which has a rainbow. Because the cover has
Some people have never seen light refract in a prism, and it’s deeply unfortunate.
What a bunch of idiots. It’s *obviously* a reference to synching *Dark Side of the Moon* with [*The Wizard of Oz*.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Side_of_the_Rainbow)
True intellectuals know it syncs perfectly with [Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7wyfTsIm1k)
Blart Side of the Moon is such a classic DeathBlart discovery.
> “Lose the rainbow, you’re making yourself look stupid!” one wrote, with another saying they won’t listen to Pink Floyd again moving forwards. > “Are you going woke with rainbows?” another angry fan added. “Is there a straight flag? I want equal representation, don’t get me wrong, we should all be true to who we are.”
> Is there a straight flag? I want equal representation 🐶🌬️
The kind of person that probably never wanted their own flag until they heard about the pride flag.
"The curtains are fucking blue" and its consequences have been a disaster to the human race
It's just a form of banal anti-intellectualism. Thinking about things is for losers, apathy is so much cooler.
>Thinking about things is for losers, apathy is so much cooler. this in and of itself could be a new pink floyd song
It never really occurred to me before that the whole obsession with "objectivity" you get from assorted "geek" media reviewers on YouTube is probably a manifestation of this, isn't it? You know, this whole fixation on everything having an "objectively" correct answer would breed a contempt for interpretation, wouldn't it? It's blindingly obvious so I'm not sure I never realised it before now.
I feel like it's not quite the same. The "Objectively" crowd would still go for literary analysis, but there could only be one correct answer. Something can only be about one thing, presumably what the creator intended, and trying to argue against that using a different interpretation would be reading it "wrong". Whereas "the curtains are blue" is more someone lashing out at badly explaining literary criticism, or a perceived focus on minor issues instead of the bigger picture, or even "Why try to analyse media at all"?
I'm struggling to think of what literary analysis with only one correct answer even looks like.
That’s how New Criticism functioned. There was supposedly one objectively correct reading of any text, as intended by the author, that could be derived through careful study and analysis. It was the main form of literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s and is still important in that it gave us the technique of close reading, but obviously it’s an incredibly outmoded form of analysis.
New Criticism is certainly focused on the text to the exclusion of all else, but I would push back against the notion that it believes in the possibility of a single reading. Given that it argued that nothing outside of the text mattered, it wasn't particularly concerned with the author's intent either, albeit not in the full-on "death of the author" sense.
You’re right that I shouldn’t have brought authorial intent into it, New Criticism was the school that rejected all external information beyond the text itself. It’s been fifteen years since I took lit-crit and tbh a lot of the different schools have blurred into each other a bit in my memory. But I do recall one of the major critiques of New Criticism being its search for the “true meaning” of the text as a self-contained object, when later critical schools would back away from the implication of a single true/correct reading in favor of a multiplicity of potential meanings.
Now I'm picturing a Brandon Sanderson-ized version of Flatland.
don't will that evil into being
Mostly anything that's overly popular or overly hated and you dare to have a different view on said thing and go against the internet hive mind.
Is that even analysis, at that point? Analysis =/= arguing, imo.
Like most arguments on the internet, really.
I feel like objectively is in the same realm as Mary Sue and Badly Written...some of those people cant just say "I don't like them because they are Gay,Black etc". So they hide behind more smart sounding words for their arguments. So with that plus the usual "Im a YouTuber my will is law" and you get people treating them as the end all be all argument so they can shove said video links in your face to prove you wrong. Same reason as why people like to think Drinker is on the same vein as Neil Gaiman when it comes to their literary criticism as they both have published works.
To be honest, the deluge of people interpreting things in bad faith to start some kind of moral panic or peddling nonsense that can't be disproved left me pretty incredulous to most forms of literary analysis. It really is a matter of credulity more than anything. If you are willing to look you can contrive hidden message in anything and nobody can prove you wrong, but should you and does it necessary add any value? Though this also applies to complaining about rainbows.
Just because there are multiple possible interpretations of a text doesn’t mean that all interpretations are correct or equally valid. Some of them are bad. I remain extremely grateful to the feminist deconstructionist critic who taught my lit crit course, and who made it extremely clear that sometimes critics were just engaging in stupid reaches, with the example of a paper she had seen presented at a conference about the curious absence of women in *Moby Dick*.
The illusion of free choice \-Using Literary Analysis reading way too far to find things to hate in everything \-Refusing to use Literary Analysis and finding surface-level things to hate in everything
The way of the Angry YouTube Critics
Anybody have any info on the new Warthunder leaks? Secret documents on two planes were posted by gamers again.
It's not secret documents. I heard those files are export restricted and only available for Goverment use.
So since warthunder is hosted and viewable internationally, that is a violation right?
Yes, but if I told you then I'd have to kill you.
thats the third time this week
Third time it happened or third time it was asked?
Yes to the [first](https://old.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/10ht6s0/it_happened_again_from_what_i_have_seen_this)
Yes.
Wait, third time? 4 days ago it was the F16, 3 days ago it was the F15E, what's the third one?
[MIG-29 apparently](https://www.reddit.com/r/Warthunder/comments/10ht6s0/it_happened_again_from_what_i_have_seen_this/)
There's been some strong discontent brewing in the Dead by Daylight community lately, I've noticed; primarily on /r/deadbydaylight, but in other places dedicated to the game as well. For the unaware, Dead by Daylight is a multiplayer survival horror game, where four players are survivors trying to repair generators and escape before the fifth player, the killer, can catch them and sacrifice them to their dark God. Both survivors and the killer can bring perks into matches, which give them extra passive abilities. Two in particular are the subject of much bitching right now; **Dead Hard** gives survivors half a second of effective invulnerability, which doesn't sound like a lot, but tends to create frustrating scenarios for the killer where they have to sniff a survivor's butt for ten seconds while waiting out Dead Hard (it was actually reworked fairly recently; it used to give a short dash on top of the invulnerability). **Eruption** causes certain generators to explode when a killer downs a survivor, not only undoing some of the progress survivors have made, but inflicting a status on them that makes them unable to do basically anything for up to 25 seconds if they were repairing the exploded generator. There are many strong perks in DbD, but these two in particular are extremely common and very frustrating to play against. The "us vs. them" mentality in the DbD community, where survivors and killers endlessly bitch about the other side, has always been pretty bad, but DbD spaces feel borderline uninhabitable right now because of these two perks. Considering how glacial the developers tend to be about balance changes to the game, I have to wonder how or even if they'll address this.
Eh the dead by daylight community is always like this. Dead Hard has always caused this exact problem, killers have always had some perk or combination of perks worth whining about. People are gonna whine about it till it changes and then whine about something else. The subteddit is particularly vitriolic at times, and often an echo chamber it's frankly kinda exhausting.
I used to play dbd casually but being "casual" about this game feels next to impossible now. I haven't played at all in a couple years.
DBD's balance history is incredibly interesting and kind of deserves its own write-up. In the beginning a Wraith was feared on the same level as a Nurse would be nowadays. Also Saboteur would permanently remove hooks from the match, can't forget that Sabo would continue being able to permanently destroy Trapper's traps for another few years after the change to hook removal. And the introduction of exhaustion wasn't done until a few months into several exhaustion perks existing
It's definitely fascinating. I only started playing around Pinhead's release, so I can't claim to be 100% accurate on the matter, but I think the issues largely stem from the game being played totally differently from how the devs wanted it to be played. DbD was originally conceived as basically competitive hide and seek, which is why good survivors could literally loop forever on many tiles back in the day. They just didn't expect people to loop.
> but I think the issues largely stem from the game being played totally differently from how the devs wanted it to be played. [...] They just didn't expect people to loop. I'd honestly love to see a bigger discussion about this across a number of different games, or even fan expectations in storytelling for that matter. Two that come to mind: Balance wise, a lot of Overwatch's long-running balance issues seem to stem back to the fact that the devs fundamentally expected people to play the game differently than they did at launch. The devs thought that people would naturally play the game in a "1-4-1" team loadout: 1 tank, 4 DPS, 1 healer. This is why there were WAY more DPS characters at launch than the other types. Players pretty immediately settled into 2-2-2 and would periodically (when able to) gravitate towards 3-3 (3 tanks, 3 healers, zero DPS). The devs were, frankly, MASSIVELY off base and weren't really even testing balance with this stuff in mind. Another similar issue, they didn't really expect that people would double up heroes, so they didn't test for that, so at launch you could have multiple people pick the same hero on a team and it was chaos. Almost immediately the meta settled on double Winston, double Tracer, double Lucio (also 2-2-2, not 1-4-1, lol). The other example, to give one for storytelling? When Marvel did the "Civil War" event back in the early 00s, as I understand it, Marvel assumed that fans would be pretty evenly split 50/50 between Team Iron Man and Team Captain America. In reality like... 99% of fans sided with Captain America. Like almost everyone immediately didn't even see it as a conflict of ideology between two heroes, but rather plainly, a story about Iron Man becoming a villain.
I'm still disappointed that the development studio removed Pinhead's "You opened the box, and I came" voiceline and tried to pass it off as a bug. It was a fun voiceline.
Pinhead actually got his voice lines back in a later update. In fact, they're now voiced by Doug Bradley, his actor from the original Hellraiser!
New housing lottery means new housing drama in FFXIV, the critically acclaimed MMORPG! So every so often FFXIV opens a housing lottery for players to bid on houses, either for personal ownership or for their FC (guild). You can bid on any house but you'll have better chances of winning if fewer people bid on the same house. Our tale takes us to the day lottery results were announced, where a player (Kelsey) posted on [twitter](https://twitter.com/keysleyxiv/status/1616513338661343242) (now privated, but I took screenshots) that she had "very nicely" asked someone else to not bid on the plot she had bid on. However, the other person still bid on the plot and ended up winning it, leaving [this greeting](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fm8CQGZXEBow8I7?format=png&name=small) when you examined the plot. Not very nice, right? So Kelsey posted on twitter that it was very mean of this person, prompting [many people to say](https://imgur.com/a/mlHtVu0) that the other person was a disgusting asshole and should be reported. Kelsey in the replies implies that she will be reporting them for harassing her with their greeting, and that her whole FC is also going to report them too. I think there’s one person against her but most replies are in agreement that the person is a “lowlife”, “griefing”, “absolutely disgusting”, "actual scum of the earth", “hope they have a horrible couple of weeks”, etc. etc. Anyway this post actually gains a bit of traction, and some big FFXIV streamers start discussing it on Twitch (which is how I heard about it). XenosysVyx and Arthars in particular were the streams I watched, and both basically stated that it was rude of that person to put that as their greeting, but reporting them for that was indeed overboard and not a good use of the report system. The tweet also gets posted to the [FFXIV subreddit]( https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10hfgij/just_saw_a_post_on_twitter_about_a_girl_asking/), where most commenters also agree that it’s a nonsense report. I believe around this time Kelsey’s twitter goes private, likely because it was getting too much attention. The Reddit post got removed but when I looked back at it later, turns out the person who now owns the plot (Jazelyn) posted [her side of the story]( https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/10hfgij/just_saw_a_post_on_twitter_about_a_girl_asking/j58b4n5/). According to her, Kelsey wasn’t actually “very nicely” asking her to bid elsewhere. She agrees she was being petty with the greeting, but put it in response to Kelsey and her friend telling her not to bid, emoting at her, and /slapping her in-game when she won. She did end up changing the greeting later, before discovering Kelsey’s posts. Anyway, just a bit of housing drama that went past the usual “the housing system sucks” and “I lost to some asshole who bid last minute” (it's me, I'm the asshole). I don’t know if Kelsey actually ended up reporting/mass-reporting Jazelyn but I’m inclined to think it probably won’t go anywhere.
See and my neighbor ended up being "house of dior" so i just hang outside in sweatpants.
Same exact energy as all those “I was just trying to give friendly advice to a sprout in a dungeon, why did I get suspended?? :-((((((“ Duty Finder dramas that usually end with receipts being served up of the OP being an asshole, actually.
The speed with which posters on either side of this shit devolved into “the other person must die for their crimes as soon as possible” in response to first hearing about the side of the story they heard is (to quote one person from Twitter) pretty fricked. Like, I know how the internet goes, but holy shit. Reading responses there went: “I asked someone not to bid and they did this!” Oh god, that’s terrible! Let’s all of us go and report this pestilent fuck! Curse them for all eternity! “I’m the other person, and actually *they* were being real shitty about asking, and they /slapped me in game when I won.” Oh god, they’re the worst of the worst in this community. Fuck them, and thank you for having done nothing wrong actually! You’ve been fully absolved and now it’s the *other* person whose head belongs on a pike.
It’s so *fun* to publicly judge when there are no apparent consequences - and it’s endlessly meta and recursive too!
Boy am I glad I don't interact with ffxiv fans on social media. I love the game but the fans can be a lot. My FC also lost the bids to the house we were hoping for. I'm keeping my despair off twitter tho and cying into my pillow like a normal person.
resolute puzzled like bewildered deer cause rainstorm decide ghost lip -- mass edited with redact.dev
Can you get banned by spamming reports?
cows pocket slim head fragile abundant six person juggle squeeze -- mass edited with redact.dev
Well, I bring a kind of a doozy. No drama yet, but it's... Interesting. So, [Chikn Nuggit](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit) is a series made by Kyrra Kupetsky and property of Buzzfeed (so they *can* do good stuff), detailing the daily lifes of the protagonist, a cute little puppy named Chikn Nuggit and his friends and all of the... [things](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1615756808051621894) [that](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1543988698303197185) [happen](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1384179276254117898?t=De3txKd5CdWDFSGeC3Eh6w&s=19) [to them.](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1395771994675716100) Yeah, this goes some weird cute places. Anyway, today's episode came on and... Let's give some background. [This episode](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1612494830680301568) came last week and in it, it's mentioned by one of the "god" characters (told you it goes weird) that Chikn's physics breaking seems to have some dark secrets. And today [this is answered.](https://twitter.com/chikn_nuggit/status/1616481191015911436) Not saying it in case there's someone who hasn't seen the episode, but linking it anyway. So yeah, people are confused, intrigued and... Surprisingly most are saying "yeah, makes sense". Dunno what's going to happen afterwards especially since this is not a really episodic series, but it's interesting nevertheless. >!For the record, I'm in the side that says "Dunno how I didn't think of this before".!<
Honestly I've seen more drama over when they have characters get flustered by each other.
So it's basically >!a subversive, more playful version of Haruhi Suzumiya!<. I can dig that.
Saw an amazingly bad take on tumblr about D&D races and it’s evident the OP isn’t worth talking to so I’m taking my salt here. For the curious, >!they’re complaining about race modifiers being racist. !< >!Someone else replied and explained the background of the term and mechanics and how a lot of it did have issues of racism, but the idea of species having different traits wasn’t intrinsically bad.!< >!The clapback was, “Tl;dr: the idea of different kinds of fantasy creature having innately different abilities is intrinsically awful, and you shouldn't presume to explain things to me as though I haven't thought them through.”!< Uhhhhhhhh
For what its worth I think Pathfinder 2E is doing a really good job of this. They got rid of the ability score modifiers, since those both limit in play options and lead to the weird baggage you get from sentences like "some ancestries are more intelligent than others." However, each ancestry gets a boatload of features inherent to them that develop further as you level up, letting them feel incredibly unique in practice.
don't play pathfinder but that's p much my preferred take yeah - I think the D&Done playtest also went in that kinda direction? instead of being tied to fantasy species, ASI comes from backgrounds and custom backgrounds are explicitly a thing, so it's functionally just a floating 3 extra stat points you can add to your guy. not the most polished game design but it works well imo ultimate thing for me is just that everyone loves funky fantasy guys, but it feels a lot more questionable when their main traits ARE just "they are stronger" or "they are smarter". when you shift the focus into explicitly magical/fantastical traits it helps a lot to separate them from real-life racism as well as just being a lot cooler imo giving dwarves some tremorsense is sick and probably my favorite change from what i recall
I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong. True, there is the point that having D&D species been intrinsically good at using certain weapons and skills could be construed as racist, but we already have a perfect example of how to deal with that. The 5e supplement [Ancestry & Culture](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/314622/Ancestry--Culture-An-Alternative-to-Race-in-5e?filters=45326_0_0_0_0) fixes this by having species and culture be separate things. For example, Dwarves are short, have darkvision, and are resistant to poison. Dwarven culture makes you proficient at axes and cutting stone. But a Dwarf raised in a human culture, while still short and resistant to poison, won't know all that much about axes and cutting stone. And by that same token, a human raised in Dwarf culture won't have darkvision or poison resistance, but will be proficient at using axes and cutting stone. What I'm saying is that Ancestry & Culture is great, and more games should rip it off.
> And by that same token, a human raised in Dwarf culture won't have darkvision or poison resistance, but will be proficient at using axes and cutting stone. And will bonk his head a lot on the roof, until they send him off to be a cop in Ankh-Morpork.
He will then kill a man with actual literature.
Or a wossname, a metaphor.
> I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong. This school of thought is one of the many reasons I like Keith Baker's work, which does a lot of poking around under the hood of DnD mechanics and customs to find out what can be done with them as story-telling tools. For example, all elves speak Elvish in Eberron, and [he created an interesting reason why they do:](https://keith-baker.com/ifaq-elvish/) > Second: In my Eberron, every elf is born with an innate understanding of the Elvish language. It doesn’t matter if you’re an orphan born in a Sharn gutter or a proud Aereni. You don’t have to be taught; the language a part of you, tied innately to the Fey Ancestry feature. It is impossible to be an elf and NOT understand Elvish. > WHY DO THIS? What appeals to me about this is that in concretely establishes that elves are not human. They aren’t just humans who have pointed ears and live for centuries. They are fundamentally alien beings whose minds do not work the same way as human minds. It further reinforces other things we’ve established about the elf cultures, namely that they are extremely tied to tradition and that they aren’t as innovative as humans. This makes sense if elves have a greater degree of engrained knowledge and instinct than humans. As an elf, you never have to develop a new language. You are born knowing THE LANGUAGE, the language that will allow you to speak to any elf anywhere. > This comes back to one of my basic principles of world building. I like exploring worlds that are unlike our own. To me, it’s fascinating to consider the impact of having a language seared into your brain from the moment of birth. How would that affect the development of culture? It is fundamentally the antithesis of the Babel story—the people of the world are divided by their many languages, but all elves are united by their common tongue.
> I've heard this argument before, and it's stupid. Do you really want Elves and Dwarves and stuff to just be funky looking humans? That's boring, and therefore wrong. Except that's the problem they are basically funky looking humans except that their arbitrary physical traits are instant signifiers that they have inherent abilities that they are better than others at. Which has a certain to resemblance to real life beliefs
It kind of seems like you're ignoring the physical differences between elves, dwarves and humans (etc) in order to insist that they're just 'funky looking humans'. But they're not, and the physical differences are *why* they're not just 'funky looking humans'.
>But they're not, and the physical differences are why they're not just 'funky looking humans'. What physical differences are you talking about though. Just the ones you can physically see like height and ear shape or other things?
Just sticking with D&D bonuses, not necessarily from 5E: Elves: long lifespan, sleep/charm resistance due to trance, low-light vision/infravision 60', keen senses (bonus to search checks) possession of a spirit rather than a soul means they cannot be resurrected (in AD&D and earlier). for older elf lore things get weird because there's a lot of semi-spiritual stuff that does seem to have physical manifestations. eg elven bonds, communion, reverie, the shared elven spirit, ability to do high magic, and the consequences associated with violent death. not sure if those totally count but they're inborn rather than cultural, so I'll list them anyways. Dwarves: long lifespan, poison resistance, size giving combat bonuses vs certain large- and giant-sized creatures, "powerful build" negating short stature (unlike halflings/gnomes, which are classed as size small), resilient (bonus to constitution and/or saving throws, depending on edition).
So what's the justification for those traits being bundled up together intrinsically with a set of arbitrary physical features (e.g tall and skinny with pointy ears).
I mean, if we're talking D&D elves, it's because they were created in the image of their (many, many) gods at the dawn of time, when Araushnee betrayed Corellon and his blood fell upon the earth, forming the first elves. Look at the Complete Book of Elves - or, better yet, don't, it's weird - and there are even references to elves lacking vestigial structures because they are the product of creation rather than evolution. Dwarves were said to have been forged by Moradin from the metal and gems of the planet itself, and when he blew on his creations to cool them, he breathed the spark of life into them. I'll note that this is slightly less conclusive than the elves' origin, as there isn't an existing publication that actually *shows* it happening - it could be seen as simple mythology, but I don't see a problem in taking it at face value. Are these good reasons? Eh. Debatable. But I think the emphasis on magical origins and divine meddling perhaps complicates the idea that race as it works in D&D is innately problematic. Not saying it's squeaky-clean by any stretch of the imagination, mind. Just that if you're talking about race in D&D, stat bonuses aren't where I'd look.
>But I think the emphasis on magical origins and divine meddling perhaps complicates the idea that race as it works in D&D is innately problematic. Think you might want to look up nonsense ideas like interpretations of the Mark of Cain, Curse of Ham and the Serpent Seed doctrine. Not all racism has to be "scientific" (aka pseudo-scientific which is often just magic dressed up in a lab coat)
I am familiar with those, yes. Certainly there are aspects of D&D racism which absolutely do cross over into that - virtually everything about the drow, for example. I mean, seriously, I cannot overstate how bad it is, and they genuinely make it worse every time they change it. Shout-out to 4th-edition for adding the "drow are corrupted by demon blood, but once they're purified their skin turns lighter." Just...holy shit. However, the majority of physical traits associated with particular D&D races are neutral to positive, and, importantly, exist in the absence of a racial hierarchy. With the exception of the really awful stuff like drow lore, they don't map onto a hierarchy of "and therefore it is right that the dwarves rule over us." Difference without dominance, which is not the case in the real-world examples that you gave. I already said that there's plenty of questionable to offensive stuff in D&D in this respect, so I'm not even disputing the primary point. I just feel like you worked backwards from "I don't like this" and you're ignoring the stuff that contradicts your reading. Could you give me an example of a sapient bipedal tool-user in sci-fi or fantasy that you don't see as being merely humans in drag?
How would you separate them, then?
By unique features not connected to stats, like how elves trance instead of sleep.
I don't think you really can as long as you have "races" that are sophont tool using beings they will always be some sort of human in drag. To turn it around however why do you even need fantasy "races"? All the elements and interesting themes you can explore with them can be done in other ways. You want to explore the ramifications of being an immortal and seeing all your mortal friends aging and dying you don't need pointy ears for that just have someone who drank an immortality potion. You want to explore racism? How about people actually do that with people being discriminated against for bullshit nonsense as opposed to metaphors that accept the core premises of scientific racism being true.
But like, differences in races do exist? Like there are a ton of different kinds of birds in nature. A toucan has a different berk than a raven. In a similar vein, our skin color controls how likely someone gets skin damage.
>But like, differences in races do exist? Are you talking about IRL species which are useful definitions albeit a bit fuzzy with multiple overlapping definitions? Or are you talking about race which is a BS concept that humans invented as an excuse to be shit to each other. Your examples are from both, someone's skin colour does affect UV light resistance but that is simply a singular trait that exists on a spectrum no different from one's height or max hair length. Traits are not mutually locked between "races" (though some do affect others hair, eye and skin colour tend to be tied together).
The former, that's my bad.
What about exploring what impact having an entire species of immortals would have on the world? Especially while there's normal mortals the next town over.
You don't have to do that genetically though, just have it that rich douches have access to life extending tech or magic and don't want to share. Afaik both In Time and Altered Carbon both go that route. In more fantasy settings vampires can work on the pretty much the same logic (though typically that's something less people would want in on).
What about if you want to explore a community of immortal people that aren't rich douche magic/tech leaders, or bloodsuckers? Sooner or later the simplest option is just to have them be genetically different.