#current discourse

[nazmazh]

So the whole "cozy farming/town building/etc. games are colonialist/imperialist in nature" discourse that's going around these days:

Like, I firmly do believe that it's not the worst thing in the world to examine underlying reasons - Conscious or unconscious - For why something might appeal to you/an audience in-general.

And sure, there probably are some societal factors that lead to certain things being used as shorthand or jumping off points that do often go unexamined - Like, the idea of there being a terra nullis that you can no-muss-no-fuss-no-complicated history of colonialism/displacement/genocide is definitely one that does often just get used unquestioningly. And there certainly could be some interesting discussions about whether or not that should be such a default.

But, like, at the same time - This is explicitly escapism. Fantasy of a sorts (depending on the game/setting, it might explicitly not be the real world). These scenarios, unless otherwise stated are taking place in a true terra nullis - Nobody had to suffer anywhere in this place's history. Build your animal people village or cozy little farm without even having to think about this sort of thing.

But it's not always so simple, is it?

Any game that includes side-tasks centered around finding treasures/artifacts, exploring ruins, etc.? Well, now, that implies that this was not truly a terra nullis after all. And yeah, that can raise some implications. Much of the time, it still falls back to something like *Oh, they all died long, long before you/your current civilization got here - Don't even worry about it!"

And, like, I get it.

You don't want to think about your character's potential complicity/inheritance of a legacy of genocide when you're playing a cozy farm sim game. You just want to make a nice, efficient farm, and arrange found trinkets in a satisfying manner. You just want to curate your village to look like a 1:1 recreation of your favourite Skyrim town, but with silly animal people. Sometimes it's just the skin that's wrapped around your "make the numbers match up in a satisfying manner" exercise. Sometimes it's all about the stories and playing a role as given to you by the set-up.

And that's all fine.

You're allowed to have escapism without having to turn into Chidi from The Good Place, agonizing over whether everything is 100% ethical from all angles and possible implications.

And people are allowed to think about things from those points of view and decide for themselves if they really enjoy these sorts of games after all.

And there are some games out there that do invite you to think about these sorts of things - Sometimes explicitly, sometimes subtly.

Like, I play Satisfactory, which has a few of these elements - Terraforming an alien world - A supposedly true terra nullis as far as the scenario is concerned - And while resource extraction and manufacturing isn't a cozy pastoral farm, there still is a deep level of well, satisfaction, that comes with arranging things just-so, such that you have an aesthetically-pleasing factory colony, and one in which all of your processes' rates sync just right that it all flows smoothly to get you the components you need.

But it's also a running joke of sorts between me and friends who play about well, just how much sprawling machinery you can into a formerly pristine wilderness. The game might not outright say "Look how horrible this all is for the environment here", but you can't really look upon your creation and not see the horrible transformation the once beautiful natural landscape has undergone.

In the end, though - I've only despoiled a digital canvas, so to speak. No guilt needs hang over my head for finding joy in my colossal monstrosity of a factory. (Other than perhaps I need to work on improving my efficiency. I love my tangle of conveyor belts, but maybe I should plan my machines better so that they're not always backed up and stalled out).

And, like, these people complaining about Stardew Valley or Minecraft being imperialist and then saying people shouldn't enjoy them (Admittedly that last bit seems only to exist as a theoretical strawman to argue against and get mad at/about - I can't say I've honestly seen anyone claiming that nobody should be allowed to enjoy them) - Have they run out of complaints about other game genres? I know that nothing should get a free pass by merit of something else being worse, but I am curious as to where their logic would lead in terms of whether any games with any sort of abstraction/story should be enjoyed, ever.

Have... Have they seen other genres of games, at all?

Like, I also love the 4X genre, but that one explicitly encourages imperialism. The Xs include "exploit" and "exterminate", specifically. And yes, there have been criticisms of this genre too, but I can't say I've seen people vilified in the same way as this last round of criticism lobbed at cozy games.

There's plenty of games whose entire goal is just "kill everyone else" - PC, NPC, mob, etc.

Again, though - I'm not outright against criticism/reexamination of things from different angles or anything like that.

Honestly, the sci-fi and fantasy genres have had some absolutely fantastic developments stemming from the line of thinking of "Hey, does it feel a little off/icky to have expressly sapient races that are universally evil/bad and therefore okay to in-turn slaughter without hesitation?" This reexamination has led to plenty of games where Orcs and Goblins and such aren't just stock villains and cannon fodder - They have their own actual motivations beyond "Pillage and kill! Just because!", they're full-fledged factions that can be reasoned with, negotiated with - Dealt with in ways that don't necessitate violence.

Like, sure, if you have a certain style of game, you'll need foes. And making them "monsters" is often an easy strategy to avoid having to think about why it's okay/good/fine to kill them. But if they're all purely mindless or bestial, it gets a little repetitive - So, yeah, you add in ones that can think too. But at that point, they ought to have the capacity to question what they're doing and why, and thus, should have the freedom to not just default to doing bad guy stuff for the sake of it. And then from there - Writing them to always be evil anyway kind of does feel lazy/reductive and willfully, pointedly avoidant on a subject that should be considered.

I don't know if I have a point to all this. Yes, it's fine to enjoy things. Yes, it's often good to question underlying assumptions - Including and often especially things presented as "idealistic" and "harmless". Yes, consumption of media can lead to self-reinforcement if ideas, including potentially harmful or toxic ones. But also, yes, sometimes, things aren't necessarily as deep as they have the potential to be.

Sometimes it's just "If I had a small corner of the world to make my own, what would I do with it?"

Sometimes it is "If I could take over the world and make it align with my vision, what would I do with it?"

Sometimes it is "If I could take over the world and expressly be like, a cartoon supervillain, what would I do with it?"

People's escapism often isn't meant to be problematic. Or examine how things might be problematic.

Sometimes, it is something that would be expressly problematic outside the confines of the theoretical/simulated.

And that's fine.

It's fine.

People are allowed to enjoy problematic things.

People are allowed to indulge in fantasies that aren't completely selfless or altruistic. As long as they're not going out there and actually harming other people/the world/whatever -- What does it ultimately matter?

[keitrinkomfloukru]

[scintillyyy]

i do think that despite certain kinds of grittiness occurring in other 90s comics, and even bat comics, 90s bat comics were genuinely pretty firm on the stance that resorting to killing is pretty categorically unacceptable for a bat-character. it's why knightfall is a thesis for "a batman who only cares to stop crime and will kill is not a good batman". it's why when they had characters like huntress and spoiler who were more likely to ask the question of if "maybe some people should die" they consistently got talked down from it as not the right way and would always back down from killing (and why they were allowed to be batfam characters rather than bad guys--the fact that despite the fact they were willing to kill, they chose not to almost every time) (whether or not you agree with the stance that ostensibly was the main stance). like yes. bruce could be a dogmatic asshole about it to people but also. in the words of the batbible itself.

[becca4leafclover]

EVERYONE SHUT UP ABOUT THE SHITTY GREEN MAN FOR A SECOND

CEASEFIRE DEAL HAS BEEN REACHED IN GAZA!!!!

I THINK THIS IS BREAKING NEWS SO I DONT HAVE A SOURCE ON HERE BUT PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO REBLOG SOME NEWS AND PALESTINIAN FUNDRAISERS!!

EDIT FOUND AN ARTICLE!!

[lacystar]

the issue with the dream smp being named after dream is that . its too narratively fitting to change. it is Dream's smp. and that has the unfortunate consequence of it being named after a scumbag and all of the legendary acclaim and art it gave us being directly linked to him just by name alone. but narratively . its c!dream's smp. "its not Tommy's smp or Tubbo's smp!" HE WAS RIGHT. ITS NOT. THAT IS THE ENTIRE DRIVE OF THE CONFLICT. OF HIS CHARACTER. IT WAS HIS SMP. and now he's just an owner of nothing . of some land but of no subjects. he never had the control wilbur or schlatt or even fucking tubbo had. the server is named after him. so what? there is nobody around him that earnestly depends upon him. nobody that cares. this is All he has. a name. a title. hollow and empty.

[psychotrenny]

Listening to Tumblr Users has taught me a lot of things about Trans Women. For example:

Every Trans Woman I disagree with about video games is a pedophile

Every Trans Woman I disagree with about politics is a Russian psyop and

Every Trans Woman I disagree with about transmisogyny is an androphobe

I can't wait to find out more ^^

[the-agent-of-blight]

also, i really find it interesting how people can genuinely go about saying "Well this group isn't attacked for their identity so they can't be queer " while then turning around and. attacking said group. for their identity. and exemplifying classic __-phobic tropes. It's really dumb. You are being the thing that you claim does not exist

[ursula-legun]

idk man i don't think anti-civ shit should be nearly this controversial.

"some societies, including most if not all contemporary societies, require slavery, state coercion, and/or environmental devastation to maintain the benefits that they provide to their citizens. we think that this is bad, and should not be done, and are willing to give up the benefits that require slavery, state coercion, and/or environmental devastation." -> generally admirable even if people don't put it into action that much; few would say somebody is a bad person for feeling this way.

"most modern technology, including motor vehicles, cheap computers, disposable plastics, our entire global transportation chain, and like half of 'renewable' energy solutions require either environmental devastation, capitalist coercion, or slavery to produce and maintain; i.e., they either cannot be made without destroying species or ecosystems, OR nobody is willing to do them except under threat of death - at least in the ways that we currently know how to produce these things" -> not considered to be in good taste to point out but generally hard to argue; usually handwaved with notions of "green tech" coming in to make things better, that we just need new engineering improvements, that we can harvest from the moon(??), that we can just stay inside all the time(???), etc.

"combining the first two things, we think that the production of these things should stop immediately, and that society should learn how to survive only on things that we know how to create and maintain without slavery or ecocide; at least until such a time as we develop means of production that are communal, and well-integrated into the rest of life on earth" -> generally considered naive and unrealistic but still admirable

"no, seriously, the slavery, societal unrest, psychic flood, and environmental devastation are all real, and directly responsible for the apocalypse that we literally all now acknowledge to be happening right now" -> also generally accepted, generally handwaved with weird "well what can you do?" responses

"so we really think we should stop making these things NOW instead of waiting on more far-fetched solutions that will come too late to save most life on earth." -> well now you're just the fucking devil. I guess.

[rosieofcorona]

hey dante just called and he told me he’s thinking about making a secret tenth circle of hell. for discourse

[tanadrin]

i think one of the most interesting things about generative ai is not just that it was a pretty unexpected thing--seems like very few people were sitting around ten years ago imagining we would have this technology in 2025--but that i think it is also pretty difficult for people who aren't well versed in the technical background to trace how we got here from there, you know? like when the internet became a big thing, i think if you were familiar with the concept of the telephone or even just one computer networked to another somewhere else you could grok the fundamental concept: it's just a bunch of electronic machines connected to a bunch of other electronic machines; it's an extremely cool piece of engineering, but packet-switching is not (at least at the nontechnical level) that conceptually different from a telephone exchange.

and you could extend this backward pretty far. electronic computers from mechanical ones; the telephone from the telegraph. likewise future developments that emerged from the internet: smart phones are not to conceptually different from computers and radios, they just ("just") are very sophisticated devices that use new versions of those older technologies. and a lot of technology is like that. if you understand a cannon you can understand the basic principle of the space shuttle.

gen ai seems... not like that? that kind of, i guess, statistical approach to problems in computer science wasn't invented in the 2010s, i gather it's a lot older, but it was mostly a niche research topic, i think? and there were some nifty demos of still pretty crude versions of stuff like deep dream, but it's not like we'd had twenty years of this kind of stuff being part of the wider milieu of technology in everyday use before gen ai started getting good. it's weird! it wasn't an accident, people had been working on this stuff for a while. but in some ways it feels like the discovery of antibiotics, one of those medical breakthroughs that happens just as kind of an a priori discovery of something useful out in the world.

and because computers are already omnipresent in our lives, unlike a medical breakthrough, it's suddenly everywhere. and yeah often it's used or promoted in ways that are pretty obnoxious, but even still, no wonder it provokes feelings of dislocation and anxiety. technologies which emerged much more gradually into society have provoked just as much unease. and the idea that it might keep getting more useful, as much more useful as computers have gotten over the last, say, 25 years--that's just hard to fathom from any angle. i think it's as hard to estimate what kind of social impact that would have as it would have been to anticipate all the social impacts of the internet back in the 1980s.

and it kind of seems a pity to me that the three camps in the discourse right now generally seem to be "ai is useless and stupid and a fad and a scam", "ai will destroy the human race", and "ai will usher in a post-scarcity utopia," because the possibility that ai is neither a complete mirage nor the end of human civilization as we currently understand it is much more interesting. and much harder to speculate about.

[cemitadepollo]

Some of you aren't being progressive as you think you are.

[silverjirachi]

there’s like this thing in fandom I’m trying to put my finger on that I’m calling the “volatile area” and it’s like the uncanny valley of headcanons and characterization. it’s when someone has a LOT of similar ideas to you, and by all means you SHOULD get along with them, but there are like one or two non-negotiable differences that can range from “completely valid” to “nonsensical” that make you hate them beyond compare. like it literally looks like this:

[fervi-g]

to be read pile

A Lover's Discourse: Fragments // Roland Barthes

Vineland // Thomas Pynchon

Infinite Jest // David Foster Wallace

White Nights // Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When I Sing, Mountains Dance // Irene Solà

[eddiedisasterdiaz]

Someday the fandom is going to have to reckon with the fact that it’s Eddie who’s good at baking (he served two desserts at the s5 dinner with Taylor, including cute little cupcakes) and whose cooking improved to a point where he is good at it, and not just passable, all the way back in s5. Eddie, who hasn’t had a single mention of bad cooking since that dinner where Chris roasted him for previously being bad at it and Buck praised his improved skills. That it’s Buck who is not really that great at baking in s8 (Chim wincing at the lemon loaf, ‘this [scone] is actually good’ said with a little surprise), Buck who has been practicing cooking but maybe isn’t so good at it—three tries to get the lasagna right in s6, burning a different lasagna recipe as recently as s7, being tested by Bobby at the end of s7 to prove his worth as a cook. If he was as good as fandom says he is, I don’t think we would have seen all that.

All this to say, please please stop writing about Eddie burning water. I don’t care how good the rest of your fic is. If I get to a section where you mention that Eddie’s been forbidden from even entering his own kitchen during dinner prep or that he doesn’t know how to even chop a vegetable, I actively have to fight not to just click out of the fic altogether. Canonically, Eddie can cook and bake. Canonically, it’s Buck who struggles more in the kitchen, although once he perfects a recipe it is very good.

[st-just]

On a purely reflexive level I admit I find the people who have a blatantly #problematic fantasy* but then construct these endless epicycles answering every way that it is problematic with a Watsoonian justification for how it's actually totally cool and progressive much more of a red flag than the ones who go 'yeah it's pretty fucked up when you think about it, anyway-'

*here used in the broadest possible sense

[balrogballs]

In the literary fiction scene there can sometimes be this irritating opinion that creating fanworks isn’t bad, per se, and many of them even enjoy reading it — but that it could never reach the emotional depth of published literary fiction/creative non fiction. It’s just an extension of the litfic patronisation, the “ah yes, we are Better than genre fiction” nonsense (as if there hasn’t ever been dogshit litfic), I didn’t do an MFA but it tends to be more prevalent in the MFA crowd, etc. Also could be because I hang around with academics a lot.

Anyway I saw someone express said take just today and frankly it completely boiled my blood lmao because I’ve published a novel that went to auction and is litfic by even the strictest definition of the term, received funding to write said book, as well as landed a handful of nonfic in global litmags…

…but absolutely nothing I have ever written has been as cathartic as working on this personal essay about the process of trying to find a Tolkien character who’s mentioned in a couple of footnotes in the rest of the text so like… crawl into my asshole and die if you think fanworks can’t ever reach the emotional calibre of published work 🤪✨

ok balls rant over have a nice evening 😇✨