#whenever discourse happens it's easy to feel like the fandom is full of assholes

[luckthebard]

I just want to say, as an innocent C2 watcher, everyone always talks about the Marisha hate from C1 but NO ONE PREPARED ME FOR THE LIAM HATE!! I accidentally stumbled upon the old discourse and it was, frankly, disgusting??? I was so shocked. Man we've had some fandom arguments this campaign, but NOTHING like the C1 stuff I was seeing. At least most of the stuff targeted at cast members has been beaten down, holy hell.

Oof yeah, sorry you had to find that!

People talk about the Liam hate less because it doesn’t have that extra layer of misogyny on top like the Marisha hate does, but it was/is absolutely there. The comments section for episode 79 “Thordak” on youtube is a particularly vicious example.  

I think a lot of Liam and Marisha hate comes from the same place, tbh. That theory crystallized for me when some of it bled into early C2. They’re similar in their RP style, and it’s an intense, acting-heavy, immersive RP that can lead to really irrational claims that both or either of them are “too much” or “an attention hog,” or conflate the players’ intention or feelings toward their friends with the characters’. This is also why I think the fandom still blows up whenever Beau and Caleb have a disagreement. Marisha and Liam are really willing to go there, and have their characters butt heads or misunderstand each other, or stew in resentment, with all the fury and passion with which they had their characters connect emotionally and try to support each other through vastly different goals in C1. And it’s not like the other players aren’t committed actors as well, but Liam and Marisha’s similar styles seem for whatever reason the most likely to make the audience uncomfortable. They’re both interested in exploring raw, real, uncertain emotions without easy answers (Beau’s visit to her family was chock full of this!), and that isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Which is fine - as long as there’s not personal hate directed at the players.

The C1 Liam hate also has the unsettling flavor of blaming Liam for his own Depression. I’ve seen some posts from people who used to hate on Liam for being “mopey” (the kindest word used) in the comments of his Between the Sheets episode that basically amounted to “wow, that explains a lot, I was being too harsh on him, turns out he was going through a lot” but I wish Liam (who is intensely private) hadn’t had to air all that to get some kind of understanding. (Liam’s BtS details the personal struggles he was having in C1, if you’re curious.) 

But the Liam hate that always makes me *head-tilt* is the one that still crops up every so often - that he has “main character syndrome” or steals the limelight from the other players. And I just…how do you look at this guy who deliberately starts scenes with fellow players who he knows are a little more anxious about RP (Ashley, Travis, etc.) and come to that conclusion? Ok, yes, LOTS of characters in C2 have emotional, personal RP scenes that involve Caleb. That isn’t Liam inserting himself where he’s not wanted though – that happens because the other players feel comfortable going there with Liam. 

Sorry, this turned into a novel, but I am never going to be over the fact that some people looked at Vax’s arc in C1 – at Matt, looking at his friend who was going through a rough time and trying to help by giving his character a storyline about death and grief and comfort, or at Laura, who gave his character gifts and a purpose in-game to show she wanted him to stick around – and came to the conclusion: “Man, that Liam sure is a selfish asshole.” 

You are correct though - it’s nice that there is, in general, a lot less of this than there was back in the early days of Critical Role.

[heliosphoenix]

The sky calls to us

There’s a reason I keep a separate blog where I choose to chime in on some political happening or other. It’s something I take great care in doing. It’s easy to get it wrong (and in my younger days, I often did get it wrong), so I have to make an effort to get my ducks in a row. Even so, it’s nominally something I try to avoid whenever possible, which is why in my srs business blog’s early days, I was focused more on fandom drama.

The problem though is that now it’s become impossible to avoid. I know there are those of you out there who resent the incursion of real world events onto your tumblr feed, or the Twitter’s or Facebook’s of your favorite celebs. I do as well. I personally would rather talk about anything else and I’m willing to bet they would love to do the same. 

But the world has become so volatile now that it can no longer be avoided. And despite the fact that I had literally gone two months without touching this site, even I couldn’t stand idly by while all of us, every lover of freedom wherever it may exist in the world, were being set up the bomb. 

To say the last 48 hours have been surreal is an understatement. But not entirely surprising.

We resent the incursion of these events onto our feeds because we want the internet to be our shelter from it all. I’m here to tell you that it was irrational to think the internet would be immune.

When the world has decided that compromise is for losers and the only thing that matters is to win at any cost, then it stands to reason that the internet will follow along.

Unless it’s leading the way. And in many respects, it’s leading the way.

So where do we go from here? When I say I haven’t touched this site in some time, it’s not exactly a statement of pride. I won’t lie to you all when I say it’s been hard for me to work up the effort to browse the internet these days. If you went back 15 years or so and told my adolescent self, the 7th grade kid who knew what memes were a full 5-6 years before his classmates did, that there’d come a point in time where he’d want to hide from the internet? He’d call you insane.

Part of the reason I’ve avoided this site is because of the self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head that resulted in the censoring of many blogs I followed (as well as one I ran). But the other part is that I find I no longer have the energy to engage in the sort of thing that passes for “discourse” here like I did in the past. While it is still my desire, if not my duty, to talk with you all with some candor about what is happening in the world today, I’m rather disenchanted by the prospect of posting an article that gives an update on Brexit proceedings or the state of the Russia investigation and coming back to find sizzling hot takes in my notes that make me want to pay a visit to Comrade Smirnoff. 

And I’ll be honest. The prospect of staring down a smug faced Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as they win re-election and continue to be worshiped by the assholes of the world isn’t exactly appealing to me either. 

Any potential benefits of going back to discussing fandom drama don’t really seem that attractive either. My years in furrydom sapped my capacity for fandom politics long ago. I spoke out in favor of bronies because I could see through the lies and manipulations and it got to a point where I said all that a person could reasonably say on the matter. Considering the success of the show and that the public image of the fandom has improved, I’d like to think my efforts were a success. 

I don’t know enough about the other fandoms making waves right now to offer an opinion, and frankly I’m not inclined to engage. I saw the remastered Star Wars trilogy when I was 7 years old. I went to midnight showings for every movie that’s come out since (even the prequels). I would much prefer to discuss the merits of the new movies with my local group of friends instead of coming on here and writing a 1,000 word dissertation on The Last Jedi that would ultimately end up with me getting dragged into an ad-hominem laden argument with 3 other users.

I see some of my esteemed comrades still have the energy for that. Alas, I am no longer that strength which in old days moved heaven and Earth.

Speaking of which: Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous is, as I describe it, a Space MMO. Set in a 1:1 scale recreation of the Milky Way galaxy that is based on actual astronomical data and scientific principles. 

It’s the closest I’ve ever truly gotten, and may ever truly get, to being the captain of a Spaceship. 

A trip out to the Robin’s Egg nebula envelopes you in a sea of gas, tinted blue by the light of a Blue White Supergiant just passing into adolescence. The nebula is home to a sea of young Red Dwarfs, small rocky bodies, ringed planets who’s metal surface is more of a sea of lava, and even a small Black Hole.

But it’s not just a recreational trip, you’re here at the behest of a scientist who’s willing to pay you a lot of credits to fly out to this stellar nursery. Once complete, you head back to your Space Station in Geosync orbit around Earth. A station named after Abraham Lincoln, as one does when naming starports. You drop your passengers off, get your next assignment, and you’re off to another star system 20 light years away.

The internet is able to get away with a lot, namely because underneath all the memes and controversy and drama are a bunch of people (mainly millennials) who occasionally make some money when their video of them yelling about a bad movie or winning victory royale hits a certain number of views on YouTube. It gets away with a lot because fandoms are real, living, vibrant communities that you can feel whenever you go to a convention or post in the appropriate tags.

In Elite Dangerous, you go into the game not expecting much. And you’re frequently rewarded by visiting strange new worlds that you never thought could’ve existed.

There’s a group of trolls in the game, they seek to cause as much mayhem and chaos as possible because they’re upset that the vibe of Elite Dangerous is not what they want it to be. It’s not the bitterly nostalgic vibe of Valve games, or the hyper competitive alpha vibe of Overwatch or Call of Duty. It’s certainly not the paranoid warmongering vibe of EvE online.

Elite Dangerous is a bunch of people exploring the galaxy.

And, I dunno, I feel that as a culture, a society, a civilization, and a species, maybe we could eventually work our way up to that. 

Maybe not.

There’s a system in Elite known simply as “The View.” 1400 light years away from Earth, it contains a ringed planet orbiting around a Blue-White star younger than the ones in Robin’s Egg. If you set down near the pole of this planet, you get a great view of the rings, as well as a Pulsar and, if you’re lucky, two Black Holes.

 When you venture out further, you see many wondrous sights.

A planet covered in water with massive ice sheets at the poles in an almost comical inversion of the future predicted by those fighting climate change.

Binary stars close enough that trying to shoot the gap nearly burns your spaceship to a crisp.

Worlds with magnificent ring systems that put Saturn’s to shame.

Pulsars with massive jets that swirl and twist like cosmic tornadoes.

And those are just the procedurally generated bodies. Stars and planets and others placed where they are because computer models based on hard science said they should be there.

Still plenty of room for real life celestial bodies. Like VY Canis Majoris, one of the largest stars in the galaxy.

Or Jupiter and the Galilean moons.

Or the Black Hole V404 Cygni.

The experience of Elite Dangerous is truly otherworldly, the kind of thing that ingrains itself in your mind and will not leave. The game is unnervingly beautiful not just because of its technical prowess, but because of what it can inspire.

Right now, this is just a video game, but there’s still the chance that there’s beauty in this galaxy that is not only unseen but completely unthinkable. Without Elite, it would be literally unimaginable. 

It’s this inspiration that pushes me forward, that drives me in my attempt to help enlighten those around me, even if at times it feels the struggle will soon be lost. 

This could be our future, but the only way to get there is together.

Somewhere out there in a sea of 400 Billion stars is a world just like this one. 

We owe it to ourselves to give our descendants a chance to visit. Just in case it turns out to be Equestria.