#IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAMES JOURNALISM

[undead-potatoes]

Now that honest reviews of the Wizard Game are coming out and people are giving it the mid scores it deserves, all the rabid fans are attacking journalists for being “biased” and not giving the game a better score, unlike the 9/10 scores that where all completely unbiased and objective and not affected by nostalgia at all and I can feel my brain mass seep out of my fucking ears jesus

[racoonrookie]

ooc. everyone is entitled to their opinions but if you hate ashley i'm going to fight you we are going to fight

[new-dungeon-toilet]

[lizardsfromspace]

So a game dev vented about how every Youtuber they asked to cover their game demanded to be paid for it, and everyone's mad at them? Like, dunking on them as if it's self-evidently awful mad at them?

People DESERVE to be paid for their work! HOW DARE YOU expect them to cover your game for FREE!

Which, they do deserve to be paid for their work. One problem though:

CRITICS AND REPORTERS DON'T WORK FOR THE PEOPLE MAKING THE WORK THEY COVER

Not only don't they, but until the sludge world of influencers we have now, a critic being paid to review something was widely seen as a major ethical breech! It was seen as a sign not to trust either party! But now if someone says "hey, it's bad actually to pay people for reviews" it gets excoriated as part of some "how dare you not pay people for something that, historically, you never would have paid for". Do these people think Siskel and Ebert only covered things when the studios paid them too

I swear influencer marketing and reviews used to be different, but now they're not, and in fact, it's problematic if someone's not being paid off by the company they're covering, apparently. It's amazing that people hold up Youtubers as "more" honest about games, while also saying that any company that doesn't pay them off for reviews should be shitlisted for it.

God I wonder how many people now advancing "it's evil if you don't use paid shills" were Gamergate chuds ranting about "ethics in games journalism" over nothing conspiracy theories back in the day

[opencommunion]

via RNN:

The eternal martyr Basil Al-Araj wrote abundantly before his ascension in March of 2017. In his posthumously published book, "I Have Found My Answers," (a line from his will) he spoke of war during the 2014 zionist aggression on Gaza, just prior to the IOF ground invasion on July 17.

Basil guided us with eight rules and insights on the nature of war. He wrote:

—

Since there is talk of a ground operation, several points must be considered:

1. The Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strategies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza. War is never based on the logic of conventional wars and the defense of fixed points and borders; on the contrary, you draw the enemy into an ambush. You do not stick to a fixed position to defend it; instead, you perform maneuvers, movement, withdrawal, and attack from the flanks and the rear. So, never measure it against conventional wars.

2. The enemy will spread photos and videos of their invasion into Gaza, occupation of residential buildings, or presence in public areas and well-known landmarks. This is part of the psychological warfare in guerrilla wars; you allow your enemy to move as they wish so that they fall into your trap and you strike them. You determine the location and timing of the battle. So, you may see photos from Al-Katiba Square, Al-Saraya, Al-Rimal, or Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, but do not let this weaken your resolve. The battle is judged by its overall results, and this is merely a show.

3. Never spread the occupation's propaganda, and do not contribute to instilling a sense of defeat. This must be focused on, for soon, we will start talking about a massive invasion in Beit Lahia and Al-Nusseirat, for example. Never spread panic; be supportive of the resistance and do not spread any news broadcast by the occupation (forget about the ethics and impartiality of journalism; just as the zionist journalist is a fighter, so are you).

4. The enemy may broadcast images of prisoners, most likely civilians, but the goal is to suggest the rapid collapse of the resistance. Do not believe them.

5. The enemy will carry out tactical, qualitative operations to assassinate some symbols [of resistance], and all of this is part of psychological warfare. Those who have died and those who will die will never affect the resistance's system and cohesion because the structure and formations of the resistance are not centralized but horizontal and widespread. Their goal is to influence the resistance's support base and the families of the resistance fighters, as they are the only ones who can affect the men of the resistance.

6. Our direct human and material losses will be much greater than the enemy's, which is natural in guerrilla wars that rely on willpower, the human element, and the extent of patience and endurance. We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers.

7. Today's wars are no longer just wars and clashes between armies but rather are struggles between societies. Let us be like a solid structure and play a game of biting fingers with the enemy, our society against their society.

Finally, every Palestinian (in the broad sense, meaning anyone who sees Palestine as a part of their struggle, regardless of their secondary identities), every Palestinian is on the front lines of the battle for Palestine, so be careful not to fail in your duty.

[sjbattleangel]

Moon Studios' Thomas Maher supports a hate movement

As someone who adores the Ori games, this is just awful in so many ways.

"Cancel culture" DOESN'T EXIST. What you're talking about is people demanding certain figures of power and influence to be held accountable for spewing bigoted hate speech or causing a toxic environment.

"Woke culture"? You mean a culture that acknowledges the existence of marginalized communities i.e people of colour, disabled people, queer, gender-non comforming people. Yet to you, that's somehow a terrible thing.

How dare you use a powerful poem dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust-the horrific tragedy of the history of humanity-to complain about your first-world persecution complex! To whine how sad it is that cishet white men like you own-*gasp*-slightly LESS of the world! Oh woah is me! You don't deserve to utter those words. Also, wanting more diversity, representation and equality in video games, game development and games journalism ISN'T THE SAME AS NAZISM! And don't me give that "The Nazis were socialists" bullcrap! THEY WERE FAR-RIGHT FASCISTS! You should know better. You're Austrian for crying out loud!

Having a women and minorities exist in video games and development isn't an "agenda". It's called KNOWING PEOPLE OTHER THEN CISHET WHITE GUYS EXIST. Also, "Hollywood" and "west coast developers" have nothing to do with this. Society is just changing, becoming more inclusive for the better and entertaining of all mediums are reflecting that. And that's great! Unless you have a problem with that.

Your friends were never "ridiculed" because they "didn't conform". Far from that tragic martyr rubbish you claim. They were rightfully reprimanded and fired for being bigoted jerks who didn't respect the humanity of marginalized people....just like you.

If you really believe the existence of minorities are "political", then I have nothing to say but SCREW. YOU.

Overall, there's just no way of putting it: Thomas Maher is member and supporter of Gamergate.

Despite what they might tell you, Gamergate isn't and never was about "ethics" or "wanting fun apolitical entertainment". It is, has been and always will be a white supremacist hate movement (alongside Comicsgate and The Fandom Menace) dedicated to chasing women, LGBTQ+ people and BIPOC out of gaming and fandom. Its members and ringleaders are and have always been LITERAL NEO-NAZIS. Even when boycotting certain games over the supposed diversity consultants or the inclusion of minorities, they can barely hide their hatred.

Oh, and once again, THESE PEOPLE ARE LITERAL NEO-NAZIS:

(As evidenced by the "Embrace Tradition. Reject Modernity" white supremacist slogan*.)

Remember, if you still want to play his games, that's fine. I don't have the power to stop you. Just be warned that this developer stands with a hate movement.

*Hey, Nazi-turds, Japan and Korea aren't your Aryan utopias nor are their people your precious Aryan supergods!

[bfpnola]

Trans Reads is an ambitious project created by and for transgender people to openly access writing related to our communities. We believe education should be free and writing shouldn’t be behind a paywall. Transreads.org provides the opportunity to access, discuss, and distribute texts for free.

If you’re looking for books, chapters, texts, essays, or articles by, for, or about people who transverse or transcend western gender norms, you’re in the right place!

Trans Reads was formed through the work, consulting, and creativity of an anonymous group of trans people of various genders and races around the U.S. involved in organizing, academia, and trans liberation efforts. Trans Reads was launched in 2019 following increasing violence against trans people alongside the lack of accessible resources for trans people to learn about our own community.

There is a serious barrier for most trans people accessing content from our community. Trans people on average have less disposable income, time to read and purchase literature, and knowledge of the available texts. We created Trans Reads to address this problem directly. We offer the largest collection of free trans texts on the internet.

Get Involved:

Trans Reads is almost entirely generated through user content. By uploading, you can help a trans teen in a rural area learn about other girls like her. You could help a trans student who can’t afford a textbook easily pass their class. You can even share your own writing with the world on an easy-to-use platform exclusively for trans content. You can help grow our collection on our upload page. If you are interested in helping us upload texts for our collection, you can reach out on our contact page.

Ethics:

We are faced with the common ethical question about hurting the sales of trans authors. However, the largest ever study on piracy actually found that the piracy of copyrighted books, music, video games, and movies has no effect on sales. In the case of video games, piracy actually helped sales. As far back as 2002, we can see piracy boosting sales of media. Trans Reads strongly encourages you to purchase the books that you enjoy here or find other ways to support the author.

Academic authors rarely – if ever – see income from sales of their books, articles, or chapters. Most want to remove the paywalls withholding their content. Trans Reads is open to collaborating with authors, publishers, and journals on making this a possibility through our website.

History:

In 2014, Leslie Feinberg published the 20th-anniversary edition of Stone Butch Blues, one of the most influential works of transgender literature. The novel was a way for trans, gender nonconforming, and queer people to realize ourselves. It told us we aren’t alone. However, when the publisher went bankrupt, Leslie had to struggle to regain ownership over hir own novel.

“I had to work to recover my rights to Stone Butch Blues. When the first publisher went into Chapter 11 court, I had to spend thousands of dollars of my wages on legal fees to recover the right to this novel… While very ill in Spring 2012, I recovered my rights again.”

Ze didn’t want the book to be released as a film adaptation exploiting hir story for straight fantasies. Ze also used the opportunity to make the book more accessible. First editions shot up into hundreds of dollars. The least expensive print versions are still over $30 on Amazon. This simply isn’t affordable to most queer and trans people. The fight ended with Leslie publishing hir novel on hir website as a PDF, a strategy of reclaiming transgender narratives from greedy publishes by collective ownership of the text.

Trans Reads is dedicated to the memory of Leslie and all those who feel alone. Most individuals don’t have institutional access and cannot afford to pay for texts. Transreads.org allows visitors to effortlessly read texts by, for, or related to trans people online for free as PDFs. Trans Reads is the space where anyone can easily discuss, add, or download trans content.

This project is intended to foster discussion around the current state of learning. We refuse paywalls and withholding education. Trans Reads provides the opportunity to access, discuss, and distribute texts related to our community on its website in a matter of seconds.

Knowledge, learning, and community must be de-commodified for our collective liberation. Take it from Leslie:

“And on the day those paper deeds of ownership are torn up, it won’t matter about protecting Stone Butch Blues anymore from commercial exploitation.”

Authors shouldn’t live in fear of their work being exploited or inaccessible. Trans Reads is just one small part of trans autonomy from corporate publishers. However, it is a necessary step toward engaging with our radical history, politics, and futures.

Click here to upload a text.

[mamawasatesttube]

So i was just rotating your "Jack drake lives au" in my mind and at the same time remembered those panels of superman shaking hands with Some Fucking Guy (i think he was being a bitch to Lois or smth) and he makes direct unflinching eye contact with the tight lipped smile and his grip is a little too tight to be friendly

Anyways im not saying he hates Jack but i do think Kon off-handedly mentioned the "joke" about his nail polish and Clark went "oh really now?" And didnt forget

So rip Jack at that family dinner night bc not only is Lois waiting for an excuse to obliterate him but Clark is right there with her and if jack thinks that Good Ol Country folk Ma and Pa will back him up then hes in for a surprise lol

oh yeah absolutely!!!! the thing is. literally Nobody likes jack in this au ksjdhfkd like kon and dick absolutely have texted each other to bitch about him, ma openly shakes her head when she hears about how he treats tim (and she WILL speak her mind if he ever tries to shut that sweet boy down in front of her!), cass literally won't speak to him bc he failed the vibe check so bad, etc...

and like. no one is telling tim this. they Know it'll make him feel like he has to defend his dad bc he loves him! but sometimes tim mentions oh he can't join for games this friday night, he and his dad are going on an early morning fishing trip. and cass just meets kon's eyes across the room behind tim's back and rolls her eyes so hard.

but yeah. clark will mostly let lois handle the obliteration with ma's backup as needed bc he knows she's got this. his form of expressing his severe disapproval of jack, his views, and his parenting? supporting tim. thanking him for doing the dishes after dinner, praising his work ethic, ruffling his hair and telling him he did a great job with that case he wrapped up last week, etc. it makes tim go "!!! :D!!!" like that pic of the cat getting patted. tim has always craved approval and affirmation and affection from people around him and he gets it in spades from the kents. and jack sees his son light up and open up around these people way more than he does with him. it's not a good feeling.

it's just tough bc like, tim doesn't want anyone getting mad at jack. but the idea of anyone getting mad at jack on his behalf is also just such a shock to him. he's not used to that. he feels like he has to manage jack and be responsible for him in a lot of ways (if jack says something shitty in front of lois, tim cringes because now jack is gonna get his ass handed to him and feel humiliated, and that's his dad and he was trying to help, and also he feels like it's on him that his dad is being like that. why? oh you know.) (its the unnamed emotional abuse, thats why.)

but also clark and kon watch lois ask tim how his degree is going now that he's in engineering school, and lightly rib him and ask if she can't poach him into investigative journalism instead, because she doesn't usually take interns but she'd make an exception! and tim cocks his head like a dog and says well, maaaybe he'd be down to consider an internship if she's serious? it does sound cool. what are the details? and jack, who barely gets more than one-word answers when he talks to tim about his future, is just kinda seething. heart rate goin up bc hes mad. and kon and clark just exchange extremely amused glances across the kitchen and sip their hot chocolates.

like the tim and jack dynamic is complicated; it'd be a lot easier if the love wasn't so real but it is present. its just that jack is soooo emotionally immature and grounded in Classic American Manhood and ideas of fatherhood. and the fact that tim is growing beyond that and not fitting in the mold he's "supposed" to eats at him. its a tragedy but also we are all pointing and laughing at jack every time superfam make him grind his teeth.

[gsirvitor]

As someone who's extensively looked into both sides of GamerGate, you are incredibly wrong about it lmao.

GamerGate is what I said it was.

Corruption in gaming journalism and competitions, lead to a demand for disclosure and ethics reform, what sparked the fire?

A game developer slept with a journalist who then gave her game very favorable reviews. She also got a gaming fundraiser shut down just before starting her own gaming fundraiser.

Then, a PR agent slept with the head judge of a game festival and her clients' games won.

Outrage spread among online forums.

The two women above, as well as others related to the industry jumped into the heated discussion online. A few receive death threats. All sides condemn harassment and threats.

Gaming journalists published articles declaring "gamers are dead" and painted them as "cis white male misogynists who hate women in their previously-male-dominated industry." The allegations of corruption were not addressed.

Gamers were outraged at the "anti-gamer" sites who ran the articles stereotyping and shaming their own fan bases.

10+ sites all ran similar talking-points on the same day, revealing an industry-wide issue. People dug deeper into the web of industry relationships and uncovered more conflicts of interest, but also a suspicion that radical, anti-male feminists were driving the narrative in the press.

Gamers were upset that leftists were deflecting the issue of corruption and turning it into one of misogyny and harassment of females in the industry. Articles that emerged in the BBC and Guardian do not mention the original issue of corruption, but focused on the few death threats.

The female author of the Guardian article was shown to be financially supportive of the women she defended in her article. She was called out on it publicly.

Gamers were convinced this was proof of the corruption.

Leftists are still convinced this is proof of the misogyny.

In response to Leftists accusing the #GamerGate movement as being driven by mostly "cis white males," minority gamers who supported the movement tweeted with #NotYourShield to tell the Leftists they don't need anyone speaking for them.

It surfaced recently that Zoe Quinn, had been generally an unethical person. According to her exboyfriend, she slept with five different guys in the indie game and games journalism areas while they were still in a relationship.

Quinn also, allegedly, wanted one of the people in charge of GAME_JAM's "head on a stick" after the failure of the event. Following this event, Quinn set up her own game jam called Rebel Jam with a donation link that goes straight to her own PayPal account. She also did not have any information on the page relating to when the event will be held and what it will contain.

In the midst of this, a group called The Fine Young Capitalists started up a rival game jam to Quinn's for which they received a lot of backlash for from Quinn and her supporters.

It is important to note that Quinn's supporters did this under the flag of "they're an oppressive group" despite the fact that TFYCs are predominantly a female-oriented group.

4chan's /v/ message board, up in arms over the corruption in games journalism that had surfaced already as a result of this scandal, decided to flood TFYC's indiegogo campaign with donations that would go to colon cancer research.

4chan eventually raised enough money to get the highest perk available from TFYC's indiegogo, the option to create a character. So 4chan took this opportunity to rub it in the world's face, and created a character called Vivian James.

Concurrently to all of this, there was essentially a media blackout concerning the Zoe Quinn scandals. Quinn, through this, became a face of feminism in the indie games world, much like Anita Sarkeesian, who has also had a lot of questions surrounding her kickstarter to fund Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, a webseries that breaks down tropes that are harmful to women in video games. Despite having finished her kickstarter in June of 2012, she's only released 6 videos.

There's a fear imposed on indie games developers who disagree with these faces of feminism because then they are seen as misogynistic or bad people.

Along this timeline, people started looking more closely at games "journalists" and found that the very people who were reporting on these games had a vested interest in the games as they had put money into the dev's pockets through donations. Not only was there this, but the tight-knit world that is indie game development led to this web stretching far and wide.

Oh, and a lot of these games "journalists" came out and said that gamers, the very people they are supposed to have an interest in, are "the worst" and "a dying indentity" and other harsh words, considering their demographic.

[tabletoptrinketsbyjj]

Trinkets, Books, 13: An eclectic library of dusty tomes, fictional textbooks, pocketbooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, booklets, leaflets and magical manuals. Paper leaves and the binding surrounding them can help define a character, kick off a subplot, fuel a fetch quest or simply serve as a generic macguffin. Commonly seen in video games such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft and Skyrim, book items are a way to subtly world build while still handing out sellable loot. A wizard has a spellbook, a cleric has a holy text and now you have a trinket list.

A pulpy horror book filled with short stories made to terrify adolescents and thrill young adults. A creature who reads the book suffers from a Random Nightmare later the next time they sleep.

A large reference book on the subject of minted coinage within the realm. The top of each page has an illustration of both sides of a coin from a rubbing of the original, lovingly and delicately inked. Below is everything anyone could possibly want to know about the coin: number of dies in the designs, the date each went into service, the date each was taken out and destroyed, dates of repairs and re-engravings on each, quantities of each kind of coin struck. There is even a statement about whether or not there are known counterfeits. According the inside cover, the tome belongs to the Royal Assay of the city of TunFaire in the kingdom of Karenta.

A brand new copy of “Volo's Guide to What to Expect When You’re Expecting” with a couple of pages dog-eared in and “Congratulations!” written on the inside cover.

On the Sending Out of the Soul: An eight-page pamphlet on astral projection. The first seven pages of the pamphlet contain vague mystic writing; however, the eighth page details a formula for effecting astral travel. Among the required ingredients are a brazier and a mild hallucinogenic herb. The formula is always successful but has an unforeseen side effect: it invokes the horrid Outer God the Hydra. Knowledgeable PC’s are aware that the pamphlet first appeared a few generations ago and circulated among occult groups. Most copies were destroyed in the wake of a series of grisly murders.

Dictionnaire Infernal: A full description of the hierarchies of demons. This edition includes sixty-nine illustrations of demons by Louis Le Breton a skilled warlock, infamous for trading his soul for legendary artistic talent rather than arcane power or material wealth.

A journeyman’s guide to the proper practices of the guild who oversees the use of Random Artisan Tools. The travel volume includes how to care for your tools and how to interact with other crafters to seek replacement tools and have worn ones maintained. Other chapters detail acceptable prices for goods sold and services rendered along with advice on any specific ethical concerns the guild may have on trading. Most of the book contains descriptions and diagrams on how to perform basic tasks with the tools to the guild’s standards.

A small book, entitled "The Torrid Affair of Knight Gawain,". When placed on its spine it automatically falls open to particularly risqué page.

A personal journal owned by a psychiatrist who was studying the concept of nightmares and their metaphysical properties. The doctor recorded dozens of firsthand accounts of her patient’s slumbering terrors within this volume as well as notes on the patients themselves and how the dreams affected them. A person who peruses the journal for more than a few minutes suffers from a Random Nightmare the next time they sleep. Upon waking they feel compelled to document their experience on one of the blank pages left near the end of the book.

Alchemy of the Flesh: A dark green tome describing how to use a plethora of humanoid viscera and organs to enhance standard potion brewing techniques.

Tome Of The Endless Tale: A small, worn book with fanciful creatures or locales on battered leather covers, the tome’s pages fill with serialized stories that engage and distract the reader. The Tome focuses on a specific genre (See Note) but the stories crafted within the pages are unique to each reader, tailored by the magic from their own imagination and so vibrant that the book’s tales seem to come to life in the mind’s eye. Once per day, the reader can speak the command word written on the book's inside cover to fill its its pages with a serial story tailored to the speaker. This story typically takes 1 hour to read, continuing from where the last tale completed. ---Note: The DM can choose a genre or roll at random; 1, Adventure 2, Romance 3, Mystery / Crime 4, Horror 5, Thriller / Suspense 6, Fantasy 7, Science Fiction 8, Historical fiction.

—Click Here to be directed to the Hotlinks To All Tables post, which provides (As you might have guessed) convenient links to all of the loot and resource tables this blog has.

—Click Here for additional Book Descriptions to give these objects even more personality.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A pulpy horror book filled with short stories made to terrify adolescents and thrill young adults. A creature who reads the book suffers from a Random Nightmare later the next time they sleep.

A large reference book on the subject of minted coinage within the realm. The top of each page has an illustration of both sides of a coin from a rubbing of the original, lovingly and delicately inked. Below is everything anyone could possibly want to know about the coin: number of dies in the designs, the date each went into service, the date each was taken out and destroyed, dates of repairs and re-engravings on each, quantities of each kind of coin struck. There is even a statement about whether or not there are known counterfeits. According the inside cover, the tome belongs to the Royal Assay of the city of TunFaire in the kingdom of Karenta.

A brand new copy of “Volo's Guide to What to Expect When You’re Expecting” with a couple of pages dog-eared in and “Congratulations!” written on the inside cover.

On the Sending Out of the Soul: An eight-page pamphlet on astral projection. The first seven pages of the pamphlet contain vague mystic writing; however, the eighth page details a formula for effecting astral travel. Among the required ingredients are a brazier and a mild hallucinogenic herb. The formula is always successful but has an unforeseen side effect: it invokes the horrid Outer God the Hydra. Knowledgeable PC’s are aware that the pamphlet first appeared a few generations ago and circulated among occult groups. Most copies were destroyed in the wake of a series of grisly murders.

Dictionnaire Infernal: A full description of the hierarchies of demons. This edition includes sixty-nine illustrations of demons by Louis Le Breton a skilled warlock, infamous for trading his soul for legendary artistic talent rather than arcane power or material wealth.

A journeyman’s guide to the proper practices of the guild who oversees the use of Random Artisan Tools. The travel volume includes how to care for your tools and how to interact with other crafters to seek replacement tools and have worn ones maintained. Other chapters detail acceptable prices for goods sold and services rendered along with advice on any specific ethical concerns the guild may have on trading. Most of the book contains descriptions and diagrams on how to perform basic tasks with the tools to the guild’s standards.

A small book, entitled "The Torrid Affair of Knight Gawain,". When placed on its spine it automatically falls open to particularly risqué page.

A personal journal owned by a psychiatrist who was studying the concept of nightmares and their metaphysical properties. The doctor recorded dozens of firsthand accounts of her patient’s slumbering terrors within this volume as well as notes on the patients themselves and how the dreams affected them. A person who peruses the journal for more than a few minutes suffers from a Random Nightmare the next time they sleep. Upon waking they feel compelled to document their experience on one of the blank pages left near the end of the book.

Alchemy of the Flesh: A dark green tome describing how to use a plethora of humanoid viscera and organs to enhance standard potion brewing techniques.

Tome Of The Endless Tale: A small, worn book with fanciful creatures or locales on battered leather covers, the tome’s pages fill with serialized stories that engage and distract the reader. The Tome focuses on a specific genre (See Note) but the stories crafted within the pages are unique to each reader, tailored by the magic from their own imagination and so vibrant that the book’s tales seem to come to life in the mind’s eye. Once per day, the reader can speak the command word written on the book's inside cover to fill its its pages with a serial story tailored to the speaker. This story typically takes 1 hour to read, continuing from where the last tale completed. ---Note: The DM can choose a genre or roll at random; 1, Adventure 2, Romance 3, Mystery / Crime 4, Horror 5, Thriller / Suspense 6, Fantasy 7, Science Fiction 8, Historical fiction.

A cloth-bound book of short stories by famous pulp novelist Cissifin Judeel. The volume is in excellent physical condition.

A bound section that includes chapters six, seven, and nine of some kind of book on mechanical engineering, seemingly torn from a larger work. They describe in enormous detail how to construct an intricate clockwork mechanism, but what it’s supposed to do is left unclear – and, besides, with chapter eight missing you wouldn’t know how to build one of the most important parts…

A cookbook, containing stunningly delicious recipes which, unfortunately, require extraordinarily rare and hard to find ingredients to make. It is no doubt someone's life’s ambition to cook and eat all of them at least once.

An anonymous epic poem about the Brass Spear Prince, full of stirring speeches and descriptions of battle scenes. For many noble travellers, this inspiring story is the reason why they became an adventurer in the first place.

An old bestiary, full of detailed information about monsters and magical beasts. Its sources appear to be approximately one-third hard evidence, one-third rumour or hearsay, and one-third the author's own fevered imagination, with no indication in the text as to which is which. It's information could easily save your life one day if you can only work out which parts of it are actually true...

A strange book whose pages are thin, blank stone tablets bound with knotted leather cords. Skeletons and zombies bow and grovel in the presence of the book.

Phoenix Breviary: A hand-size book bound in what appears to be black ostrich hide. Its pages are empty. Placed in a fire, the book will be unharmed and reveal the canonical hours of a banned cult for as long as it is surrounded by flame. Anything written in it will disappear until revealed similarly.

A joke book, full of genuinely hilarious (If rather mean-spirited) jokes. There are enough one liners alone for hours of belly-laughs and the text would be extremely valued to a jester or entertainer.

An anonymous journal, which records in obsessive detail the suspicious activities of a variety of seemingly-innocuous local citizens, whom the author seems to have been keeping under close observation. Either he was totally paranoid, or they are engaged in some kind of conspiracy. Maybe both.

An instruction manual, which describes in lunatic detail how to build a giant mechanical owl in order to further the cause of righteousness in the land. (The causal relationship between these two things is not made clear.) Chapters 3 through 9, which cover the construction of the owl’s internal mechanisms, have been ripped out.

A book of abstruse speculative philosophy, heavily annotated by some previous student. The annotations to the early chapters are detailed and lucid, but as the book goes on they grow increasingly incoherent, finally lapsing into ravings about a Beast and a City made of Red Steel. Due to the quantity of crazy annotations on its final pages, the last sections of the book are effectively illegible. You've never seen another copy.

An antiquarian manuscript whose author attempts, from the surviving literary and numismatic evidence, to deduce where the major strongholds of the local sorcerer-kings were back in the Age of Wonders. If she’s right, then there are at least three in the area which have been completely forgotten about, one of which is now buried under the streets of a major city…

The memoirs of a famous explorer, describing his many travels. The last chapter describes his plans for his final expedition, from which he never returned. But if the reader can work out where he went wrong, then maybe they'll have better luck…

A catalogue of birds found in this and adjacent kingdoms. Holding the book makes you want to obsessively tick off every species you manage to spot. A former owner of the book seems to have ticked off far more of the really rare ones than you, which causes oddly strong feeling of jealousy. One day, you will surpass him!

A child's sketchbook. On every page that isn't just unintelligible scribbling is a horrific monster.

A book of rather moving and helpfully non-specific love poetry. Memorize some of it for next time you need to persuade someone just how much you adore them!

A notebook in which someone has recorded, in great detail, the gastronomic preferences of a whole range of important and powerful people who live in a nearby large city. Very handy if you want to make a good impression - or to set someone else up to make a bad one!

An extremely spicy erotic novel about the life and loves of a famous courtesan. You keep it with you for, um, further research purposes.

A book of woodcut illustrations, more than a century old, depicting various fantastical monsters. One of them shows a particularly grotesque many-tentacled beastie fighting with a figure in spiked armour, who (Unlike every other figure in the book) has a string of nonsense words engraved beneath them. Disturbingly, these words form an anagram of one of the PC's names.

A book of heretical, politically seditious, and intermittently obscene drinking songs, complete with musical scores. Owning it is highly illegal, but you can’t bear to part with it: after all, it might well be the only copy which survived the purge…

A children's story book with a pressed faerie sprite between the pages...

An engrossing and well-written mystery novel: it's not very deep or clever, but pick it up and you'll soon be wondering where the last six hours went. Handy if you need someone to be distracted without realizing it.

Naga Naga Yo Fraga Blaga: A book whose cover is designed to look as if it was made from green scales, and its pages have golden edges. The volume talks at great length about an ancient race of serpentine creatures of great intellect and natural mastery of sorcery.

Of Gospels and Prophets: A stark white leather cover with gold filigree encompasses this religious reference book. The book does not delve deeply into any specific topic, rather approaches the “mile wide, inch deep” style with no more than 3-5 sentences on any of its entries.

Demozain: A book written by a dozen ur-priests. It makes no attempt to hide the ritual that would summon a sentient black hole to consume a world, but between the lines it reveals secrets of where the gods truly get their power.

A palm-sized notebook that always has at least one more blank page.

A blank spellbook bound in scarred wyvern hide.

Libro Venenum: A vile text filled with pages of aged papyrus and wrapped in dried lizard hide. Translated it proclaims to be the Book (of) Poisons and must be handled with absolute care. The reader is insight into the long-forgotten art of toxic magic, practised primarily by hags.

Folio Malevolence: A profane book whose spine is crafted from the bones of tormented fairies. The pages are all exposed with no actual cover and emit a foul odor. Upon close examination one can see skin has been stretched and matted onto the parchment. The runes on these pages make the reader feel uneasy and waves of hatred flow over them. Good aligned characters will feel immediate aversion to the text. The text itself orders the reader to let malevolence overwhelm then and to lead a life of malice and constant all-consuming rage at the world and everything in it.

A diary that begins quite normal, even boring, but becomes increasingly nonsensical, and the final few pages are indecipherable scrawlings.

A heavy book titled “The Many Faces of Perun”. Dozens of flowers are pressed between its pages.

Opuscule Covetous: A small notebook created with haphazard pieces of vellum tied together with gold wire. If the pages are spread out they appear to be covered in numbered pictures. Anyone who puts the pages in the correct order will see the drawings magically animate. The story they show will be capturing and include scenes of immense wealth and decadence. Those viewing will be intoxicated with avarice and immediately desire the treasures presented in the story. Unbeknownst to the cursed readers this is an elaborate trap set by a witch. What appear to be treasures are actually items the witch herself desires but cannot obtain. Examples would be a sacred holy relic, a newborn child or perhaps a lock of hair from a person pure of heart. No matter what the item they will always appear as something else to the afflicted character. The curse will cease once one or all of the items are obtained and presented to the witch.

A bound album of various portraits and sketches of individual local people and families. Someone went through and meticulously clipped out the heads of all the people in the pictures, leaving the rest of the scenes intact.

A ledger listing quantities and types of Random Humanoid Race bones and teeth along with dates, costs, and prices of sales and purchasing.

A book of anatomy with detailed drawings on xenomorphic creatures completely alien to this plane of existence.

A book of genealogical research of a prominent family in the nearby city, mostly consisting of a bound collection of public announcement posters and firsthand accounts of the local historical society.

The Parchments of Pnom: A manuscript written by Hyperborea's leading genealogist and soothsayer. It is written in the "Elder Script" of that land and contains a detailed account of the lineage of the Hyperborean gods, most notably Tsathoggua.

A beginner’s guide for people learning to play the Random Musical Instrument. The slim volume includes diagrams with all the parts of the instrument along with instructions for proper maintenance and care. Past the introduction the book contains the basics of how to play, along with a dozen simple songs that even someone who is unskilled in the performing arts could learn to play by reading the book and putting in a few weeks of regular practice.

A lengthy tome that boasts as its title “A complete history of the Random Humanoid Species”. The thick tome is dense with small, fine handwriting and goes into impressive (If dry) detail on the known origins of the people along with the high and lows of their past.

A military historical reference book focusing on the construction, maintenance and historical and modern use of the Random Weapon as it pertains to various forms of warfare.

Book of Dzyan: This work is an ancient text from a far away land, which contains “unwelcome truths”—cosmic revelations inimical to any human mind, which the Book tries to reconcile. As such, it describes accounts of mental and physical rites which are protective to mortals, as well as otherworldly threats and how to deal with them. Anyone who casts bard spells can research the spell contrary melody in this book to learn it in place of a 5th-level spell known.

A child’s sketchbook that features named stick figures of various people in a dozen different hands. The cover is marked with a surprisingly ornate rune, almost beautiful, though reading it makes one’s eyes droop.

De Vermis Mysteriis: An eldritch and bizarre spellbook, written by Ludvig Prinn, an ancient alchemist and necromancer who was burnt alive as punishments for his crimes against nature. Its pages are full of spells and rituals that summon strange entities, familiars, and creatures from beyond space and time. It also has a number of rituals for contacting and dealing with Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, and their minions.

A tiny leather bound book that contains a piece of writing such as a story, a poem, a manuscript, or a recipe. Each day, a new piece of writing magically replaces the previous one.

A cookbook, heavily bookmarked and written on, with pictures to accompany each recipe in the book. Licking the pictures allows you to find out how each dish tastes. Writing new ingredients in the recipes alters how the pictures taste. The back of the cookbook has empty pages to allow people to write down their own custom recipes. A few of the pages already have recipes written on them, some of which sound absolutely revolting.

A small novel, in which its 100 pages are used to describe a pebble. It consists of a single run-on sentence, and the description is often repeated throughout the book.

A leather bound book that bursts into flames when opened and extinguishes itself when closed. The book itself is completely fireproof.

A translation manual that teaches the basics for a long lost language. The guide assists the reader in translating basic words and phrases from the lost language into a commonly known language. This manual has significant values in archeological and research circles.

A bible that contains the founding texts of a now extinct religion that was wiped out long ago. This tome chronicles the origins of a murderous and wild sect that broke off from a popular, but now dead, religion. It gives notes on famous individuals this sect claims to have killed, their method in doing so and gives small insight into where more information about this sect may be.

A humble prayer-book bound in homespun cloth. Even with all your knowledge and sophistication, these simple hymns still have an almost supernatural power to soothe your troubled mind.

The Book of The Keeper of The World: A yellow book that is almost as bright as the sun itself. A bloody skeleton is on the cover with a text in an unreadable arcane language, presumably the title. Eating pages of this makes something in the world just disappear out of everyone's mind, a nothingness filling the place it used to be.

A reprint of a banned book, the last copy thought destroyed decades ago.

A ratty journal overflowing with loose sheets of yellowed paper. They are filled with maddened scrawl and diagrams and calculations and degenerate ranting.

A heavy book filled with Holy Scripture from the Loregiver and proclamations of Fate.

A holy text containing the sacred oaths of the first paladins from each paladin order in the multiverse, listing those of Good alignment as examples to strive for while warning against falling to the dark temptations of those who made their oaths for personal gain or other dark desires.

A book containing a list of artifacts designed for dark purposes, primarily those associated with Evil deities, as well as instructions on how to destroy these items. Several items on this list have already been crossed off, presumably destroyed by previous holders of this book.

A large tome that contains what is likely the largest repository of knowledge on healing salves in existence. It lists out materials, costs, where to find each ingredient, and how to combine these ingredients. There is virtually no ailment that cannot be cured by at least one of these restorative mixtures should the text prove accurate.

A small prayerbook that contains a single long incantation that can be used to contact a celestial who specializes in helping unfortunate souls tricked into a contract with a devil find a way out of their unfair bargains.

Book of Ashur: An arcane tome, bound in ancient dragon hide that contains much wisdom on the conjuring and subjugation of spells.

Liber Noctus: A decrepit tome that bristles with dark secrets and eldritch powers. Reading from the grimoire summons dark thoughts and grim deeds.

A blessed tome containing tales of ancient valour, glory, and self-sacrifice are bound to inspire those of noble heart to greater deeds.

A large book, bound in human skin according to the note tied to it, supposedly it was owned by an ancient necromancer during the age of thunder but its impossible to open as the spirits bound by it will lash out at the carrier. At the bottom it reads that it's currently on loan from Candlekeep.

A thick, heavy leather-bound book that contains illustrations and descriptions of over 3000 different kind of animals, plants, fungi, and minerals that can be used as alchemical ingredients, and how to safely collect, preserve, and store them. It was written by a renowned dark elf alchemist and explorer in the north lands. He spent decades studying and experimenting with the various creatures and plants that inhabit that environment, and compiled his findings and recipes in this book.

A worn-out leather book that has a map of the southern land on its cover. It contains detailed descriptions and directions on how to find and harvest rare and expensive alchemical ingredients that grow in remote, dangerous or hidden locations in the southern land.

A green book that has a dwarven hammer as symbol on its cover. It contains detailed secret information on how to use dwarven alchemy, with a specialized focus on creating oils and elixirs to mix into liquid metal alloys during the forging of weapons and armor.

An old yellowish book that has an elegant symbol on its cover. It was written by a legendary elven alchemist who mastered the art of creating healing potions, over the course of more than half a millennia of dedicated focus.

A collection of slim volumes on a variety of topics, including a registry of the nobility, City Watch commanders, and other notable citizens. Blank pages, a vial of ink, a pen. A number of interesting maps.

A single tome that is a combined multi-volumed summa of unified theory of arcane & divine magic, mechanical physics, psionics, and the cosmos.

An old, small, leather-bound, time-worn book with a goat’s head tooled into its cover. The leather is badly foxed and the pages are barely readable. If studied carefully it seems to be the journal of a fiendish cult.

A sketchbook half-filled with disturbingly accurate anatomical studies of various people, the copper plates that cover it etched with a pleasingly abstract rendering of a human heart.

A strange esoteric translation manual that teaches the basics for a long lost language. The guide assists the reader in translating basic words and phrases from the lost language into a commonly known language. This manual has significant values in archeological and research circles.

A hand-written guide by a purportedly self-taught monk on how to manifest and nurture ki powers. Although the information is not grounded in traditional aesthetic principals, anyone with knowledge of ki will recognize some validity to the methods being discussed. It is from an unknown author.

A religious text of an extinct cult that was wiped out long ago. This tome chronicles the origins of a murderous and wild sect that broke off from a popular, but now dead, religion. It gives notes on famous individuals this sect claims to have killed, their method in doing so and gives small insight into where more information about this sect may be.

A bound set of written texts, recording the beliefs of a famous lone wanderer and philosopher. The individual is well-known throughout the land for his beliefs and exploits but it was previously unknown that he had personally committed any of these things down on writing.

A book of spells with particularly elaborate verbal components written in an unknown but important-looking script. Arcane PC's can determine that only one or two minor spells actually work. Extremely close inspection will reveal that the rest of the "incantations" and "magic words" are actually disguised and encoded reports from a deep-cover spy

A worn, leather-bound journal filled with notes and sketches, offering insights into the daily life of its previous owner. There are many blank pages. Reading from the journal causes miniature illusions to appear for others showing the details of the event written, whether truthful or fanciful.

An alchemical codex containing the formulae for various poisons.

A dusty, ancient tome filled with arcane knowledge and forbidden secrets, written in a strange serpentine language and illuminated with intricate flowing illustrations.

A notebook that contains private notes from a psychiatrist about a patient. The first two pages are banal and clinical; by the fifth, they are inscrutable ramblings.

An identifiable book with a dozen assorted silver nails impaling it. The nails look disorderly and haphazardly hammered, with many bent in strange angles. The book is constantly wet, and the title is illegible.

An arcane spellbook that doesn’t seem to have belonged to a single wizard, bearing many different hands and styles across undoubtedly centuries. Many pages are damaged, arcane scribblings made illegible by time and deterioration. On the pages that remain, it seems that many of the spells appear modified in some way.

A well-worn and obviously fake booklet on how to talk to ghosts.

A bound journal filled with sketches of plants and animals.

A medical journal written in a dead language. It's filled with diagrams and drawings of medical dissections of inhuman alien creatures.

The Book of Fate's Mercies: A book that details incidents where people were saved from death by random chance. For example, a barking dog caused someone to walk just a little quicker down the street, which moved them out of the path of a stampeding horse. The last story in the book is about you, potentially causing you to be extremely aware and reactive but utterly paranoid and agoraphobic.

An inconspicuous diary of a young girl named Fyla. At a young age Fyla's talents allowed her to see into the abyss and corrupted her mind. She wrote in detail about the monsters under her bed and her fears of what awaited her when they would finally come for her on her 18th birthday.

The Book of Wisdom: A tome that contains a collection of sayings, stories, poems, and hymns from every known culture, religion, and philosophy. New entries appear at random, as new Wisdoms are collected and recorded by other disciples carrying a copy of the Book of Wisdom.

A spellbook made from high quality blank parchment is covered in tiny runes. When one of these small inscriptions is pressed the parchment changes color.

Tome Of The Spellblade: A soft-covered leather bound treatise containing writings describing, in the most basic terms possible, methods of magical fighting. Even so, the material is fairly dense and requires definition and reiteration of various terms and ideas. Fortunately, it also contains many detailed diagrams.

Fearful Codex of Ancient Wisdom: A weighty volume bound in pale, scaled leather of unknown origin. This magical tome contains a wealth of knowledge both mundane and esoteric, and is inhabited by an archival spirit that will direct the reader to their desired content on request. Unfortunately, the spirit has undergone a great deal of trauma over the millennia and the "fearful" part of the title is now literal. Attempting to simply open the codex and read normally will reveal nothing but blank pages, with perhaps a fleeting glimpse of text slithering away to pages deeper in the book. Only through persuasion can you access the codex. The book has definite dislikes, some of which follow: Being read by firelight is terrifying - paper burns! Natural light is better, but being read outside in the weather is undignified and risky. Magical illumination is best, preferably indoors and someplace quiet. Any kind of liquid nearby is alarming - ink runs and paper is ruined! Don't even think about eating while you peruse the codex. The book doesn't really like to travel either and would prefer to tucked away safely in a library somewhere when not in use. It enjoys the company of other books but isn't fond of other magical tomes, even non-sentient ones. It's also really, really phobic about the number eight, and invariably uses constructions like "two cubed" or "nine less one" in its own text when needed.

[bathroomcube]

if i were president i would repeal freedom of speech apecifically for men who want to talk about games journalism. they get put in jail the moment they peep a word about "ethical gaming journalism" and they get shot in the head if they mention anita sarkeesian

[dumbdisassterbi]

🌱 Hello Friends! 🥀

I am not a new studyblr, but I'm becoming active for the first time in a long time so, I want to make an introduction!

A little about me:

I am in third year undergrad

I am an english major with minors in communications, PR/Journalism, and american and british literature

I am from the U.S.

I am self-studying italian to connect with my family, specifically my grandparents

I attend a Catholic school, but I'm not catholic, and I am a commuter student

I work in a bakery part-time (I get to design cakes)

My hobbies include:

Reading

Crocheting

Video Games

This semester I am taking:

Irish Literature

Modern Drama

Grant and Proposal Writing

Environmental and Economic Ethics

Introduction to Theology

[cool-island-songs]

I feel like people never really pay attention to the fact that Tweek never said they should date for the town. Tweek said he wanted to fix things for CRAIG. Which opens up a new angst potential where Craig thinks it's not fake dating, but pity dating.

oHhohHHOHHH??? i'm ngl anon... that's a spicy meatbol

ok let's flesh this one out a bit. craig finds that everyone naturally sympathizes with tweek during the whole t x c debacle... he's a really good actor after all, and people like him and don't call him a dick to his face

craig who thought he was the cool guy realizing tweek is actually the naturally affable one. girls like him, kids like him, puppies like him, classy mfs like tolkien like him. what does craig have. his guinea pig?? cLYDE??? craig convincing himself tweek is taking pity on him, lending him his social shine like craig thought he had been doing for tweek all those times (remember when they were metro together? ;-;)

then when tweek walks out on him over the franchise plan, it just confirms what craig's always known: tweek would move on some day. sure, he says it's about ethics in video game journalism superhero movie franchising, but craig knows better. he thinks he's so much better than craig, doesn't he? so morally perfect even though he's probably holding stupid mysterion's hand now instead

well, whatever. tweek's lame anyway. craig doesn't care about him. craig doesn't care about anyone!! he's just gonna say a bunch of cool, definitely genuinely really apathetic guy stuff like:

u kno.. to show how much he doesn't need tweek or miss him everyday or anything

[gacha-incels]

you can see more than a few similarities between the “original gamergate”, the DOA “gamergate 2” and what’s been happening with the misogynist men freaking out about 🤏 in South Korea. This time the western gamergate incels hate “woke” and “cultural Marxism”, before this it was “SJWs”. In practice their hatred is targeted on the same groups no matter what the year. In SK it’s “megal femi/ feminists” (megalia feminists) and “PC” (politically correct). These men pretend to care about things like “ethics in gaming journalism” or “extreme misandrist feminists”, the topics are smokescreens they use to legitimize their violent hatred of women, minorities, lgbt, the disabled, etc. as shown above with the quote from the Discord chat. I think the shock for many people regarding the Korean incel situation is that the companies they target very often will grovel and beg for their forgiveness, thus validating the delusion of some radical feminist boogeyman placing secret signs in gacha games or cartoons.

for the western gamergate men, their white supremacy is also a huge factor. They form communities and shape their own identities based on hatred and fear.

The “threat” in this case of “gamergate 2” is Sweet Baby Inc.

From the way social media is set up now, it’s easy for these men to rapidly fall into extreme echo chambers. They are angry about the hardships of life and are champing at the bit to direct that anger at an easy, identifiable cause. Can’t find a job? It’s too hard to recognize and understand the force and destructive nature of capitalism, it’s not a concrete thing you can attack right now and they have typically already been indoctrinated to believe anything criticizing capitalism is some scary evil communist ploy. So they turn their ire to an easily identifiable group, like immigrants attempting to live and work in the US. Why are these people trying to escape their countries? Don’t think about it! Can’t get a girlfriend? Surely it can’t be that you need to improve yourself, socialize and not see women as conquests? No, it’s the fault of those damn feminists! Of course these are flippant simplifications of issues that can be studied and analyzed in regards to society, family, religion etc and how propaganda from these sources can beget the type of male who is primed for indoctrination as well but I’m trying to be brief. A lot of this hate and fear also comes in tandem after any type of hard won victory (no matter how small) for any demographic these men are not a part of, they see it as some catastrophic loss of power because they are so used to absolutely everything being made for them or in their power. They think society runs “correctly” because they hold absolute power, so they push back (often violently) on anything they deem an challenge to this. In terms of videogames, this is why they believe just having a main character who is not a white male means “society hates men”or “games are not made for ‘us’ anymore”. You can see this type of attitude emerge in Korean men as well, regarding backlash to more women entering the workforce and gaining more rights. the following is just one example-

After a short period of time, men in these spaces get so indoctrinated that actual facts are false to them if it goes against what they WANT to believe. They don’t want to challenge and evaluate their own thoughts because it’s easy to keep hating. If you’re from the US (or familiar with its political landscape over the past decade+) and this reminds you of the alt-right playbook, it’s because Steve Bannon saw the original gamergate and utilized the force of these angry males.

As the excerpt stated, these men see videogames as “a final escape for a generation of angry young white men,” essentially power fantasies that still reinforce and flatter their sense of importance over the “other”. (Of course the Korean incel demographic is not white and is not living directly in a white supremacist western society so this isn’t a 1:1. regardless that does not stop them from being racist.) In some ways this is from lack of inclusion of some demographics, in some ways it’s reinforced by having the “other” be in what these men see as their rightful place in society. So because of this, you see a LOT of these men foaming at the mouth when they believe a female character design is not “sexy” enough, because her job is not to be a character in a story, it’s to titilate the male viewer while he plays he game. She is made FOR him, for his pleasure first and anything else second. If she isn’t hypersexualized then she does not exist, she is failing the one job she has in these men’s eyes. You can see this in the way men talk about the upcoming “Stellar Blade”game from the developers of the gacha game “NIKKE”. Gaming presents this “sanctuary” for men, many eventually cutting themselves off from reality to live in this fantasy world- an act that can be dangerous for those around him.

Anyone who is new to gacha games, I need you to understand this is how the typical male gacha gamer views an all-female cast especially- they are there to titilate the perceived male user while he “buys” them, gives them orders in gameplay and reads the story. It’s still their male power fantasy, this is why tensions are extremely high when they think a “feminist” works on the game, and/or they think a male character looks “weak” or is sexualized in the same way women are sexualized. They want a clear divide of the sexes (designs of powerful men VS very thin, highly sexualized women), and this type of design threatens that. You can read more on gacha designs here on this blog, I don’t want to rewrite that whole post here. When they think a character is not sexy enough, they will illegally mod the game to change that, you can see in this image the Genshin Impact (a game the korean incels have now dubbed as a “femi game”) character “Shenhe” whose outfits were not deemed sexy enough, so the men modified the clothing on the left (costume and original outfit) to the “clothing” on the right while also increasing her bust size significantly.

This isn’t meant to be an analysis but rather a basic overview and reiteration of some aspects that made up the western “gamergate” situation using plain language. I linked the sources for everything directly on the images. Whenever I do an actual analysis there of course will be more sources and less copy&pasting directly from them lol

[blazehedgehog]

(Not a bait question, I hope!) Is it me, or is the hatred towards Game Journalists the result of the Alt-Right's Anti-Intellectual "philosophy" infecting the gaming community? It feels like ANY intellectual reading of gaming is hated unless it's "non-offensive" (i.e. doesn't mention politics). Journalists get the brunt of it for daring to criticize gaming on the daily, even if they agree with gamers. (I.E. BG3's rave reviews being ignored in favor of a single article about it being too hard.)

I mean, depending on the read, that's where it started, with Gamergate in 2014. The whole thing was about "ethics in game journalism", remember, which mainly existed to drive a wedge into the community in order to create a smoke screen to harass minorities and women.

A campaign to make people angry about something, but when you tried to clearly define what that something was, nobody could agree. This tied into the general idea that "gamergate had no leader" -- it was a decentralized campaign of hatred that basically let you make up whatever you wanted to be mad about that day. A blank check to gatekeep and be a bigot in subtle (and not so subtle) ways.

A lot of what became the ("alt-") right wing extremist playbook had its first dry run with gamergate. And a lot of GG's hardest core members seemed to transition over pretty smoothly. It was the birth of the "angry white man" that is maybe a little too obsessed with whether or not Brie Larson should be Ms. Marvel. People who willingly slid down the slippery slope and went "weeeee!" as they dove.

And, for the record, I'm sure some people in gamergate were feeling valid unrest about a variety of different topics. But it has become clear to me that a lot of people make assumptions about things they do not participate in, nor understand, and that those assumptions are often wrong. So even the people inside of gamergate, with real valid fears about actual journalism ethics were probably afraid for the wrong reasons about things that might not have even been real problems -- and fearmongers ended up exploiting that to fuel the movement.

That campaign of misdirected fear and hatred is exactly what the alt-right movement was, and to some degree, continues to be. Shut-ins who don't understand how the world actually works, chasing their own tails over self-made anxiety and paranoia, in it so deep they don't even remember which direction is up anymore. And they're angry about it. So, so angry.

[resonancewitness]

an attempt of making sense of being a RPfan reconstructing an untold story

using this space as I intend to, to make sense of my own experience in writing

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, way back when neither ao3 nor the Journal of Transformative Works yet existed, a dear friend of mine wrote a PhD in Fanfiction Studies under the advisorship of the very one and only Henry Jenkins. 

The new notion that she was exploring in her work was the notion of “charactereme”, an invariant of a character description that makes the character easily recognisable. What makes a Snape? What makes a Hermione? She based her research on HP fandom, very strong and popular at that time.

As far as I understood her line of reasoning, the charactereme consists of the canon (books) core or expanded canon (books + movies + games + interviews by JKR) core, and of the fanon addenda, the conventional agreed info. Say, Snape’s title is the Master of Potions (canon), heretofore he has a Master’s degree and for that he would have had publications in peer-reviewed journals (fanon) (and from this we can infer that Hermione, being Hermione, probably read them). 

Other than that, the individual traits, experiences etc. can be brought in, inferred by any given fanfiction author on the basis of their preferences and personal experience. For example, we do not know if Snape can sing or play a musical instrument, this is not mentioned in canon as far as I remember. Abiding by the charactereme makes the specific rendition of a Snape-in-a-fanfic either “in character” or “out of character”. The non-mentioned accidental traits (like singing) can become the plot-driving devices in some fanfiction stories (for example, “The Phantom of Hogwarts”). 

In this particular fandom where I am currently in, the canon is still in the making, as well as fanon, as well as the individual reading-into in personal reconstructions of the untold story. I find it extremely fascinating, especially for myself to delineate the boundaries between canon, fanon and individual inferences. For me canon is first-person utterances and other performances of identity claims (taking into account that the narrators sometimes are unreliable, as in obfuscating or outright lying) and the unedited videos of not-playing-a-known-role, especially when something bursts through an established mask/ social or public persona; fanon is conventions on existing interpretations (non-washable candies + rumours that eventually got somewhat confirmed); the rest is individual readers’ inferences and preferences. 

As a writer, I can totally understand the urge to reconstruct the untold story in writing, inferring and reading-into the motivations and inner experiences of the protagonists that make certain actions, however odd they may seem, inevitable, the only ones possible in the situation. 

But here I am thinking also about the demarkation line between attempts at “unauthorised biography” — and true fanfiction, where we take the charactereme and put it in a “what-if” situation of somewhat different circumstances — and see how they, being themselves “in character”, would deal with it. 

And also I am thinking about the difference between “imaginary character fanfiction” and “still alive real people fanfiction”, which for me is mainly an “ethics of perception/ ethics of publication” issue. 

Am I capable in my mind to keep separating the “image of the protagonist(s)”, the characteremes that exist and keep developing in my mind along with the developing canon and fanon, from the fact that these protagonists are derived from real people whom I don’t know and most probably never will? 

Say, the Hermione Granger that I know and love is not exactly the same Hermione that JKR presented to us, but this makes no difference whatsoever, in the wider scope of things. I know that I read-into the image of Hermione something that would make her more relevant to my own personal experience; she would be a perfect mould for the “self-insertion of the author” (me). As my friend wrote in her PhD, self-insertion of the author is needed either to "be the protagonist" or to "be with the protagonist". Very good for me, isn’t it? I can take the charactereme of an invented character and play with it to satisfy my own needs, no harm done to anyone. "In writing this piece of fanfiction, no Hermione Grangers were harmed".

But reading-into the images of real people something that I want them to be to satisfy some of my internal need? What being aware of this means to me? Can I keep separating and allowing to co-exist my playing with their images with genuine respect to them as people? What inner stance I need to take to keep witnessing something precious, to keep reconstructing the untold story, to be touched and transported by it, sometimes in a form of creative writing of attempts at unauthorised biography excerpts, never to be published, — and still maintain mindful awareness of this being what I am doing, no more, no less?..