this isn't America, it's the internet, and one of Cheese's points. Different counties have different levels of liberty for different demographics. For example Russian Gay Propaganda Law.
You can not assume every person that visits this board (or plays this game) shares western liberties.
I've been skimming (Gen Con ate into a lot of my time this weekend), so I won't comment on most of this thread, but I do want to defend myself when it comes to that pair of tweets that existed for maybe twenty minutes and that will probably follow me to the day I die...
1. There was a link attached to the tweets in question. It was an important link. That link is always omitted whenever people bring up those tweets; I don't know why, I have some guesses, but all I know is that whenever it gets brought up, the content of that link is completely ignored. And that link was very specific--it was a message board where people were being especially descriptive in their abuses of me and my co-workers. The board claimed to be affiliated with GamerGate, which I took at face value. The tweet was not meant to suggest that the whole hullabaloo was "Beamdog vs. GamerGate"; as near as I can tell, that's not what was happening at all. The phrasing was misleading, which certainly didn't help the situation, but context is important.
2. I'm not personally aware of whatever problem it is people have with Anita Sarkeesian, other than failing to create all of the videos she promised following her successful Kickstarter campaign. I've read about them, but I have not seen any of those problems first-hand, and the few accounts I've read have been ambiguous enough that for all I know they could be exaggerated. What I am aware of is that Feminist Frequency is an organization that, among other things, cares about online abuse. My goal was not to call down the fury of Anita Sarkeesian on the internet trolls (which is what a lot of people continue to suggest, several months later); my goal was to raise more awareness of the kinds of abuse we were facing.
3. At the time, I had maybe fifty followers on Twitter, most of them professional acquaintances. It did not occur to me that people might be looking for fuel. This was clearly a mistake on my part. There's a tipping point when it comes to social media--below a certain threshold, Twitter and Facebook are essentially private spaces to communicate with friends. Above that threshold, suddenly those spaces "become" public.
That last one was a hard lesson for me to learn. There's a forgiveness that you can expect when communicating with friends, a certain amount of consideration when it comes to what you say and how you say it. That same consideration is completely absent when the communication is public.
As for locking threads versus merging them... Part of that is oddities in Vanilla's forum software; merging threads, especially ones that are active at the same time, always ends up with a jumbled mess of posts. It's ultimately cleaner to close the duplicates and post a link to the "master" thread, rather than try to combine them. From the outside it looks like censorship, and I'm aware of that, and it's definitely an issue. All I can say is that wasn't the goal, has never been the goal.
Ahh Buttercheese, long have I admired you for your gentle wit and creativity and am glad that you have shared your views. I don't really agree with all of them( Only with some of your conclusions in this particular post, I do like how polite and considerate you always are, I just disagree with some of your opinions here.), but I appreciate your thoughts on the matter just the same. It was an emotionally trying time in April 2016 and I can understand why, being that you did have strong and heartfelt opinions at the time would wait until now to express them.
It is my belief that what we witnessed here in "The Great Troll Invasion of 2016" was symptomatic of a larger global-societal problem. The developed world has entered into a new age of connectivity and information. The rate of societal change is moving faster than our current political, religious and economic models can sustain. This has led to a reactionary response throughout the developed world and especially in the 'West".
The Gamergate/Transphobic/Homophobic/Misogynist/Nationalist/Religious reaction to change is just emblematic of these underlying reactionary forces. Everything is changing and this, naturally frightens people.
As much as I'd like to maintain some form of moderation in dealing with people who have opposing views, I don't think we can ignore the fact that real people are suffering. People should be able to be true to themselves and be accepted and treated with respect for everything they may contribute to society. I've seen too many friends of mine suffer through the years and this makes me think all the bullying, exclusion and ridicule needs to end. The only way to address this issue is for artists (Game Creators, Film Makers etc) to be proactive and promote diversity and inclusivity within their works. This also means others of us need to challenge these reactionary forces whenever and wherever they show themselves.
I am however saddened to hear that you were subject to bullying and harassment by a "Social Justice" online mob. I'd like to think that this doesn't make the underlying ideas and motivations that compel these "Social Justice Warriors" wrong, it just makes them overzealous and wrong in that particular instance. As we have seen, people get pretty heated about these issues online and the little I do know you, I can't imagine you ever posting anything so cruel and offensive to warrant such treatment.
I don't like hearing about all the "American", "Canadian", "German", "Italian", "British", "Russian" and "Foreign Folklore"thing. As far as I'm concerned we all share a passion, interest for "Baldur's Gate" , Fantasy and Folklore. There is nothing different or foreign about any of that for me, or for you or for any of the other fair "Forumites". All of it belongs to us and we belong to all of it. Welcome to the Baldur's Gate Community. I am pleased and proud to know that we are part of the same community! Welcome to the age of connectivity.
Right. Just how, there's nothing wrong with gay people, they just don't belong in this army. There's nothing wrong with blacks people, they just don't belong in this restaurant. There's nothing wrong with women, they just don't belong in these voting booths. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Sorry, no. You're drawing a line around a whole group of people based on one characteristic
As opposed to writing a whole article on peoples reaction to that one characteristic? Or focusing on the rights or protections of a whole group of people based on one characteristic?
I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure most of my forebears were catholic. But why woulkd it matter if they were white? or protestant? Surely you are not drawing a line around a whole group of people based on one characteristic?
Why are you drawing lines around groups of people at all? Why are you even spending the energy to do that?? It's just people.
Because we are discussing it? Because people are interesting? Because it has attracted a lot of attention and continues to do so? Why are you spending energy to reply?
Please don't attack me for things I didn't say Please don't deliberately misrepresent what I said Please don't make assumptions about me or my background, Please don't use my, or anyone else's background to discredit what they are saying
I'm not sure if you are trolling, but I would say that your reaction is exactly what forces these discussions to become so divisive to begin with.
This sexsism thing does feel like it was overdone a bit in SOD and it is rather unpleasant if you start to think about it. I'm talking not only about the famous Mezheena but also about Dorn, Hexat, Corwins "last love" In my defense, i do have actual homosexsual friends. Some time ago i did watch one of those "angry reviews" and one person mentioned pretty simple thing: People just want to relax, enjoy playing this game after day at work, school, or university, they dont want to get educated about sexsism,transgender or whatever in a game.
This sexsism thing does feel like it was overdone a bit in SOD and it is rather unpleasant if you start to think about it. I'm talking not only about the famous Mezheena but also about Dorn, Hexat, Corwins "last love" In my defense, i do have actual homosexsual friends. Some time ago i did watch one of those "angry reviews" and one person mentioned pretty simple thing: People just want to relax, enjoy playing this game after day at work, school, or university, they dont want to get educated about sexsism,transgender or whatever in a game.
Fiction has always been a fertile ground to explore controversial topics (e.g., Plato's Stepchildren). There is no reason video game writers should be excluded from that.
People just want to relax, enjoy playing this game after day at work, school, or university, they dont want to get educated about sexsism,transgender or whatever in a game.
The problem with this mindset is that from a writer's perspective it's a Morton's Fork situation.
If you put gays, lesbians, bi, trans in your game you're accused of SJW pandering.
If you don't, you're accused of being a bigot, performing minority erasure and other things that can honestly ruin your career.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's because when all's said and done, there's no such thing as a game without politics. As long as there's a narrative (and sometimes even when there isn't) you make a political statement not only via the elements you include but also via those you don't include.
A lot of people have been going on about how disliking Mizhena automatically makes you a transphobe, but honestly, assuming that makes you ignorant and short sighted. Yes, some of the Mizhena haters most certainly are transphobic, however, I would like to believe that those are just a small - alas vocal - minority.
So instead of you taking actual transphobes to task - and believe me, they're not so subtle about it that you can misread what they mean when they say they want to delete the character from the game, or be allowed to kill her without losing Reputation - you're claiming people who defend the character are ignorant and short-sighted? Are you serious?
I don't know where you were when SoD launched, but I can tell you this: it wasn't "some" Mizhena haters who were transphobic. Not by a long shot. The vast majority of people who made her the center of their case against SoD, Amber Scott and Beamdog weren't ambiguous about where they were coming from, and it was a place of hate and exclusion. Not sure why you're here trying to ameliorate that when their comments are still up here, on GOG and on Steam.
Wizards of the Coast and Ed Greenwood themselves have come out saying that D&D and the Forgotten Realms have always included transgender characters. Let me call out bullshit on that statement.
I'm sorry, who are you again? Did you create the Forgotten Realms? Are you part of the company that produces D&D content? Do you have any actual credentials here besides "player" and "creator of excellent fanart"? Because if you don't, I'm not sure why you think we should substitute your judgement for Ed Greenwood's or Nathan Stewart's.
Sure, we had Corellon Larethian and co. for the longest time, but the beauty of Dungeons and Dragons is, that it’s what the players want it to be. For some players it’s orthodox dragon hunting and dungeon crawling. For some it’s a Game of Thrones inspired hellhole. For some it’s a world of rainbows, bunnies and sunshine. For some it’s the place where they can be who and whatever they want. The list goes on and on.
And this? Right here? Is where your whole argument falls apart. Because when you say "the players", it's abundantly clear you don't actually mean all players - because 1) all other things being equal, one can assume there are transgender D&D players; and 2) there may very well be heterosexual players who enjoy playing transgender characters. You are making the self-serving argument that these players who can shape D&D into whatever they want it to be all want it to be the way you want it to be.
Following your logic? Amber Scott and Andrew Foley were the Dungeon Masters who wanted their D&D to have transgender characters. Do they not have the same right you claim "the players" have?
I am dead sure that for a good chunk - if not the vast majority - of players, transgender characters never made an appearance in their games and even if, just as fuels for jokes. Until the very recent years and months, most players didn’t even know what modern, “american” transgenderism is after all (myself included).
Citation needed. People have been talking about transgender characters in video games since freaking Birdo. The fact that you know nothing about it is entirely your problem, no?
A lot of us non-left-extremists had our fair share of not so pleasant run-ins with self-proclaimed “Social Justice Warriors”, most of which ended badly. I myself became target of a witch hunt on Tumblr a few years back, where I openly called out a bunch of people who said that all non-trans people should die. Literally and repeatedly. A few years ago, Tumblr was FULL of posts like these and they usually were widely celebrated.
Oh, you poor thing! You took a position against a bunch of people spouting nonsense and got yelled at for it on the Internet? Cry me a river.
See, the larger problem here is that you're using codewords that don't actually mean what you think they mean. "Social Justice Warriors" is a label that is almost always applied to people who take positions in favor of inclusion and diversity - in other words, generally being okay with the idea that other types of people are allowed to exist both in real life and in fiction. "Non-left-extremists" basically means "Yeah, but they don't have to be all in my face about it, y'know? Isn't there a box we can put them in so I don't have to see it? Why do they have to be in my games/movies/TV shows/comics?"
So you should be able to understand why I am a tiny bit squeamish about social justice as a whole.
The hilarity here is that you're arguing the transphobic Mizhena-haters were just a vocal minority and don't actually represent what most people were thinking, while at the same time claiming your experience is somehow representative of "SJWs" as a whole. Double standard much?
Cases like these are not the exception. They happen all the bloody time. Remember Feminist Frequency and Anita Sarkeesian? Yeah.
Do I remember the death threats, the abuse, the neckbeards going on a jihad because a woman said video games weren't perfect? Sure do. Not sure how that helps you, though.
Of course people are gonna have a negative reaction towards a character like Mizhena, especially in a game series that previously treated transgenderism as a joke. Edwin’s Nether Scroll quest, anyone? And the girdle of masculinity-femininity is a tool for literally punishing players for not identifying magical items. Baldur’s Gate is a game that treats sexchange as a punishment.
And for a game that came out in 2000, that was - if not acceptable - at the very least a common trope. News flash: some time has passed since then.
Again, look at how you're basically giving people a pass for their so-called "negative reaction", which included death threats sent to Amber. Instead of dealing with that, instead of asking yourself where that exaggerated hatred comes from and why you're justifying it, you're doubling down on that. Please.
There are as many different views and reactions as there are players. And if you believe that not agreeing with one side of the argument makes you automatically part of the other, then you my friend are an idiot. Plain as that. The entire issue is as colourful as all of the LGBTQ+ pride flags combined.
Funny how that kind of complexity doesn't seem to apply to the side you don't personally agree with because of your past experience. You name-drop Anita Sarkeesian as if that's somehow self-explanatory - no different views and reactions there? Hmm.
I know for a fact that the majority of players don’t even really care that Mizhena was included.
Your problem here is that you can't prove this supposed fact. You know why? Because the first reviews for SoD across all platforms mentioned Mizhena by fucking name as a reason for downgrading the game. Even if these voices don't represent the overall BG fandom - and I'm certainly willing to believe that's the case - you can't exactly prop up some invisible majority to counter the very real, very detailed and very graphic backlash from dozens, if not hundreds, of people (most of whom, to be fair, had clearly never played the game as they were spouting absolute bullshit like "BG has never had sexual references before!").
Some of us were initially put off when meeting her but moved on with a shrug. Some of us were genuinely happy. Some of us couldn’t care less. Some of us didn’t even find out that Mizhena is trans. But all of us - within the active community at least - had to witness this ugly gross mess of a shitstorm that took over the forums and the social media.
Maybe you should take that up with the people who launched the shitstorm in the first place instead of blaming Beamdog for somehow triggering it? Maybe you should be asking what was wrong with those people instead of claiming Mizhena and her creators brought that on themselves?
Baldur’s Gate is an old game. Baldur’s Gate is a traditional game. In fact, it prides itself on how traditional it is and the fact that it’s so traditional is the main selling point for most players today.
Not all traditions are positive. Not all traditions need to be upheld. Time marches on, people learn things. Well, maybe not you, if you're holding up BG as some kind of proud conservative icon of the past when even the originals allowed themselves to be as transgressive as they could for the time they came out - or have you forgotten the classic line "Hey sexy, do you want to take a look at me ditties?"
This game was around before social issues like transgenderism were openly discussed in the media.
I'm going to gently suggest that you might want to do a bit more homework before making factually-incorrect statements like that, just so you don't openly embarrass yourself. BG came out in 1998; if you think "social issues like transgenderism" weren't being discussed beforehand, you clearly don't know enough about the subject to be talking about it.
This might come as a shock to some of you, but Baldur’s Gate has fans all over the world, not just in the US of A and Canada. And even more shockingly, the rest of the world only rarely shares the same issues as North America. North America is not the hub the world.
And? No work of fiction can be global in its appeal, or take all cultural trends into consideration - especially given how those trends can be completely contradictory in different places in the world. If you don't agree with North American values, maybe you shouldn't be playing North American games instead of complaining that that culture's products should kowtow to yours..
And if you are going to argue that Baldur’s Gate and D&D are games from North America, then I have to remind you that these games are almost entirely based in foreign folklore, culture, history, religion, mythology and literature.
And if you want to have a long, detailed conversation about transgender characters in history, religion, mythology and literature, we can absolutely do that. You won't like the outcome, though.
Now let’s get to the only thing that should have mattered. Mizhena’s character and dialogue. She is not well written. No matter how I look at her.
And, see, if you had started with this, and kept it to this, we'd be having a completely different dialogue right now. But I'm supposed to take this criticism at face value, after you've just gone on a New Testament-length screed about how transgenderism wasn't talked about before 1998 and BG is traditional and all SJWs are bullies but not all Mizhena-haters are transphobes? Yeah, no.
Fantasy and Roleplaying should be about playing 'Who you are' or 'Who you are not' in a weird and wonderful world, full of interesting characters. It's a valid point that if all the characters you met were the same it would get boring. You need a mix of characters to populate the world otherwise you'd end up with 'villages/planet of hats'-syndrome with every character in a village having the same single defining characteristic.
Aside:
Star Trek plays on the planet of hats, unfortunately... where are the Klingon farmers? Surely not all Klingons are proud warrior types running around fighting honourable fights? Deep Space Nine did a great job of trying new things - in fact, I think a lot of the characters were outcasts from their society at one point or another; they deliberately tried to create drama by having their characters reject the hat. That's where good drama and stories come from.
Second Aside:
Sten's dialogue in DAO says this well:
Warden: "Tell me about the Qunari..." Sten: "No." Warden: "Well, that wasn't what I expected to hear." Sten: "Get used to disappointment. People are not simple. They cannot be defined for easy reference in the manner of: 'the elves are a lithe, pointy-eared people who excel at poverty.'"
Likewise, the opportunity to play 'Who you are' should be representative of the audience playing - and people have all flavours. Whilst a vast majority may be straight, white males, a large number are not. And even those straight, white males come in different types. There are geeky ones, brawny ones, fast ones - all sorts.
So, 'Who you are' and 'Who you are not' is and must be extremely varied.
For me the failure was not that Mizhena was there, but that they should have given her more room.
Mizhena was a good idea, poorly implemented, but one that's entirely consistent with other characters/conversations of Baldur's Gate. There are numerous character interactions that are just as personal in fewer lines (and some not even requiring the PC to open the conversation, they are forced onto you, like the guard in Cloakwood Mine f.ex).
I don't think looking for blame is productive, and people are fully entitled to their opinions, however wrong I may think them. I would say that it is only by exposure to different people that tolerance and acceptance come about, and that's ideally done in real life, media, fiction, the news, wherever...
And, ultimately, if the concept of transgendered, or gay, or black, or six-fingered, or people called Larry, upsets you then do/find something that doesn't upset you. I'd hope you try to empathise and understand those differences... whatever they may be. But it's your choice and you can choose to be offended, or not.
I mean, just imagine how it must feel if you were actually called Larry - it can't be easy with everyone hating on you like that.
We have had more than 15 years to do so. And in that time we have developed a pretty clear picture of what the characters in Baldur's Gate are like. And in our head our own interpretation of the characters have become some sort of canon.
And now Siege of Dragonspear comes along. It fills in some blanks on characterization, that does not agree with how we filled them in, all those years ago. Suddenly characters appear to be out of character. We do not recognize some characters anymore because we (used to) interpret them differently. To our perception, change is occurring.
And with change comes fear. Why? Because change almost always means some sort of farewell.
Imagine how some of us felt when we learned that a guy best known for low-budget splatter movies was going to direct the Lord of the Rings. The first movie was not as bad as we expected, but the influence of Bad Taste and Braindead was clearly there. That influence got much stronger towards the end of the trilogy.
Still, most of us chose to enjoy the movies. They were good movies, the core story was the same, and the attention to details showed how Jackson respected Tolkien's work.
That's how storytelling works. When you take somebody else's story and try to continue or retell it, you can never be truly faithful to the original. You can't separate the story from the storyteller. Stories evolve over time, as new people tell them and add their own interpretations to the story. Old versions of the story remain for those who want to hear them, but new version often replaces the old one as the definitive version of the story.
It's usually best to accept change as the way of life.
In the last post that @Dee closed, I posted a quote in the newest Dungeons & Dragons Players handbook regarding gender and how it is inclusive for all non binary gender types. The book even lists examples of how these could be played out (my favourite being a female dwarf with a beard always getting offended when she is called by masculine pronoun).
Official licenced products (which SoD is) needs to follow this and IMO, encourage it, to let players know these types of players are acceptable in all D&D licenced worlds.
Yes, that is true and that's how it should be. The problem is, that a good chunk of the old player base don't want to go with the times, especially after the 4th edition desaster. Not to forget that SoD is still 2nd edition.
The argument regarding "this isn't how a transgender acts when confronted by strangers" also annoys me. As everyone likes to point out, this is fantasy. How people react in Forgotten Realms is different than how people act in the real world. If transgender people are accepted without question on Toril, then they would be more inclined to be open with what they are, because it isn't a big deal.
That's also what I was thinking after the encounter. But how many players are actually aware of that? Aparently not so many if there was such an outrage.
With that said, how this character was introduced, and the lines she was given were poorly implemented. Not everyone has read, or even cares, about 5e Handbook and what it says. So it needed to be established, in game on how the world reacts to transgender characters. DA:I did this nicely with Krem having the PC casually mention it (later after he had been introduced) and having another character (Iron Bull) explain how Krem was accepted in Qun culture.
Something like this should have been introduced in SoD (or prior EE releases) to establish this as canon on the world of Toril. There would be less of a backlash on how Mizhena responded to the PC if how she portrayed herself was already normal in society. It wasn't, so it left the door open to argument on how a transgrender character is accepted in the world, going back to the player's own head canon (like Buttercheese called BS on) instead of licenced canon.
Yes, pretty much. I mean, there would have been people hating on her either way, but at least no one could make the argument that it feels out of nowhere.
This is where I disagree with you. I think beamdog handled the situation extremely well, except for Dee's attempt to bring "SWJ" into the argument through twitter.
The moderators did a good job of streamlining the discussion into 2 or 3 different discussions. Repeitive topics were closed (as they should have been. Add to the conversation going on, do not attempt to start another one) and people who were trolling, or breaking site rules, were being dealt with quickly.
Well, I can only judge from what I've seen, and that was everyone paniking. Though yes, it could probably have gone worse.
I also find it extremely hypocritical for a side that is flooding sites with fake reviews to take offense from a developer asking people who have actually played the game to consider writing a review for it. What Trent said was twisted and taken out of context and used by a vocal minority to attempt to demonize the company more.
See, I didn't even know about the out-of-context part even though I tired to be up to date.
Before this uproar, I had never heard of gamergate or Social Justice Warriors, nor did I care too. Anytime someone mentions one of these two terms in their first line, I skip the post. Anything you have to say is meaningless if you boil your argument down to an acroymn.
Yup, that's what I used to do, but I know better now. I just hope more people will start catching on.
I personally believe all consumable media needs to as inclusive as possible. No one chooses how they are born so they shouldn't have to be judged by it. A transgender person isn't a political statement. They are a human being, like everyone else.
Ehhhh, no. Artists should be able to create what they want, how they want, without feeling bound to any obligations. Free speech can't be selective, otherwise it's not free speech. And while people most certainly aren't political statements, characters can very much be. Let's look at Wonder Woman for example, she was very much designed as a political statement in favour of feminism. (Wether or not she always succeeds at that notion is a different question.) The beauty of fiction is, that it lets the artist present concepts that are alien or foreign to people in a context they may better understand. Let's look at Dorian from DA:I. His entire personal quest is meant to show the player just how much it sucks to be gay in a society that doesn't support gay people and even further shows it on a personal and familiar level. Just think of all the players who till that point had at best just a vague clue what that must be like. Dorian is a perfect example of how you utilize a character to bring your political statement across. I am not saying it's the only possible way, but this one works. Plus, he is just a great character in general, so that just makes it even better.
Whenever I hear someone say "I don't want this political crap in my games" I cringe. Because it isn't a political statement. People are just using the word politics to hide behind bigotry and exclusion.
In a lot of cases yes, but I don't think it's all of them, that would be overgeneralizing it. I don't agree with the statement itself, but there are some valid points behind it. For a lot of people BG has something "innocent" to it (be that valid or not is a different question) and the timing for Mizhena made it look like she is nothing more than a statement. I don't know if I agree with that, but that doesn't make it not valid.
I wouldn't call the introduction forced considering it's a passable line of dialoge from some minor character in some expansion of a game. If the main quest of SoD was to earn enough gold for your main character to undergo a sex-change operation, I would call that "forced"
Exactly, it wasn't actually forced. Mizhena is a tiny tiny NPC who barely plays a role. The problem are entirely the players' expectations and associations.
2. I'm not personally aware of whatever problem it is people have with Anita Sarkeesian, other than failing to create all of the videos she promised following her successful Kickstarter campaign. I've read about them, but I have not seen any of those problems first-hand, and the few accounts I've read have been ambiguous enough that for all I know they could be exaggerated. What I am aware of is that Feminist Frequency is an organization that, among other things, cares about online abuse. My goal was not to call down the fury of Anita Sarkeesian on the internet trolls (which is what a lot of people continue to suggest, several months later); my goal was to raise more awareness of the kinds of abuse we were facing.
I am not gonna delve into what all went wrong with Sarkeesian and Feminist frequency, but everything sorrounding her was a mess. Yes, there is no apology for the abuse she had to face. But she has shown that she is not capable of helping in such a situation and even known to make things worse. Getting her help wouldn't have made things better for Beamdog and Amber, they would have just lured in more trolls and haters, adding more oil to the fire. Worst case szenario, turning both the company and her into the new laughing stock of the internet.
Drama like this must never be fueled from above. Let the haters hate. Stay calm and collected. Wait till it blows over. Don't feed the trolls.
Yes, it ****ink blows that it has to be this way, but I don't know any more effective way to handle shitstorms like these.
3. At the time, I had maybe fifty followers on Twitter, most of them professional acquaintances. It did not occur to me that people might be looking for fuel. This was clearly a mistake on my part. There's a tipping point when it comes to social media--below a certain threshold, Twitter and Facebook are essentially private spaces to communicate with friends. Above that threshold, suddenly those spaces "become" public.
There is nothing private about the internet, sadly
That last one was a hard lesson for me to learn. There's a forgiveness that you can expect when communicating with friends, a certain amount of consideration when it comes to what you say and how you say it. That same consideration is completely absent when the communication is public.
Well, at least you did learn, so you got at least something positive out of it. Let's hope you never have to use that newly aquirired wisdom though.
this isn't America, it's the internet, and one of Cheese's points. Different counties have different levels of liberty for different demographics. For example Russian Gay Propaganda Law.
You can not assume every person that visits this board (or plays this game) shares western liberties.
Baldur's Gate is a game made by Americans. (Yeah Canadians, you count.) And I don't understand your point. Russia has laws that persecute gay people? So what? All sorts of places have that. That's not representative of a particular viewpoint or sensibility; it's just shitty, cruel persecution.
America also used to have laws that persecuted gay people. And laws that persecuted black people, and Asian people, and women, and Native Americans, etc. etc. etc. America didn't get rid of those laws because it became more "liberal." It became fairer, more just, and less cruel. It became better.
You can certainly ask, "why should I have to be a good person if I don't want to?" And hey - you don't have to be good. It's a free country. (Well, mine is, anyway.) But DON'T come around gently asking people to respect your desire to be a jerk.
The point was not saying that in other countries and cultures people should be allowed bigots. The point is that in other countires and cultures are different problems and these problems have different priorities. And that in different countries and cultures certain topics are seen and defined differently. As an example: Here in Europe our biggest problems currently are terror, islamophobia, xenophobia and the refuge crisis. Pretty sure most people here couldn't care less about the social and political problems of North America (with the exception of Trump in the USA maybe). Now imagine how things look like throughout the rest of the world, I bet they care even less.
Just to clarify, this is not about Mizhena and SoD, this is about the media in general.
PS: About BG being "American", that is only partially correct, as I pointed out. It is deeply rooted and inspired by foreign folklore, culture and stuff. That, and BG is an internationally sold and marketed game. If a developer/ publisher cares about their foreign audiences, they should cater to them as well. If not, that is of course their good right, but they can't expect said audiences to be happy.
@shawne I would really like to respond to your post, but you have misunderstood and twisted too many of my words and I don't really see how I can untangle that, because you only seem to see in my words what you want to see. I can simply urge you to either walk away or to reconsinder what I said.
Hey, I just want to thank all those of you for being calm and collective here. I am really not trying to get you guys to share my opinions, I am aware that some of them have to be mislead or based on false assumptions. I just want everyone to bring in their own views, so that we can together paint the bigger picture and that we can all learn to understand each other and what went wrong.
It especially means a lot to me that those among you I call my friends are speaking up even when they do have differing opinions.
Holy ****, was that corny. I need to go punch something and watch exploding cars.
I have seen many posts made by people that thought that Trent Oster should not have handled things the way he did. Personally, he gained my respect by doing what he did. Though I don’t like the thought of people posting positive reviews for no other reason but to counter the negative ones, and some of that happened, that isn’t what he asked for.
He asked for the people who actually were enjoying the game to post a review. I can’t fault him for that.
To me, he showed respect to the players who were unhappy, rather then just disregarding them. I respect that.
I can understand that some might think of it as backing down on the transgender issue, but I don’t feel that he did that either. He simply said that the character needed more work.
By removing Minsc’s gamer gate reference, he removed something that was providing fuel for the fire. It was poking and reopening a wound, giving the gamer gate people more ammunition.
I have to admit that at first all the thread closing that I saw really bothered me. Having had time to think about it, and more importantly, having seen how they have handled it since then has changed my mind. Things were out of control back then. They were doing the best they could to temporarily plug holes in the dam. They are letting people speak their mind now.
This whole thing reminds me of what happened when Coke tried to change their formula, some years back. This quote from the New Coke Wikipedia sums it up.
New Coke was only on the market in the United States for a short period, but it remains influential as a cautionary tale against tampering too extensively with a well-established and successful brand. It was discontinued internationally in July 2002.
For Beamdog, this is their product. Their livelihood. Not just their artistic vision. As a modder I have the luxury of including anything I want to include in any mod I make. I don’t think that is true for game developers. Especially with an established game.
To me, expecting a company to defend what they are doing all the way to the poor house is ridiculous. If enough people don’t like a product, any product, the company fails. I don’t want to see this company fail.
@shawne I would really like to respond to your post, but you have misunderstood and twisted too many of my words and I don't really see how I can untangle that, because you only seem to see in my words what you want to see. I can simply urge you to either walk away or to reconsinder what I said.
Doesn't matter if she is trans or straight or gay or hispanic or caucasian or black or jewish or asian or samoan.
And this is somehow good because fantasy scenarios are about diversity. That's why we have places like Waterdeep, places like Kara-Tur, etc. The more the merrier.
Particularly I couldn't care less. The way I see you guys are making a storm inside of a glass of water.
Next time you want to make a statement about something you clearly know very little about, try a five-second Google search, get some actual facts. Or be strong and wrong in your ignorance, and then claim misrepresentation. Your choice, of course.
I'm sorry, who are you again? Did you create the Forgotten Realms? Are you part of the company that produces D&D content? Do you have any actual credentials here besides "player" and "creator of excellent fanart"? .... You are making the self-serving argument that these players who can shape D&D into whatever they want it to be all want it to be the way you want it to be. ... The fact that you know nothing about it is entirely your problem, no? ... Oh, you poor thing! You took a position against a bunch of people spouting nonsense and got yelled at for it on the Internet? Cry me a river. ... Instead of dealing with that, instead of asking yourself where that exaggerated hatred comes from and why you're justifying it, you're doubling down on that. Please. ... Funny how that kind of complexity doesn't seem to apply to the side you don't personally agree with because of your past experience. You name-drop Anita Sarkeesian as if that's somehow self-explanatory - no different views and reactions there? Hmm. ... I'm going to gently suggest that you might want to do a bit more homework before making factually-incorrect statements like that, just so you don't openly embarrass yourself. BG came out in 1998; if you think "social issues like transgenderism" weren't being discussed beforehand, you clearly don't know enough about the subject to be talking about it.
No comment on the strength of your argument. I only wish to point out the extremely disrespectful tone of this post.
No comment on the strength of your argument. I only wish to point out the extremely disrespectful tone of this post.
I was respectful and polite the first five times these BS arguments came up. Now I'm less so. Last I checked, Google is free - somebody wants to make political statements, they can do the homework or sit the hell down.
I think it's fair to say that in general the public is more culturally aware of transgender issues today than they were twenty years ago; if a person has to use Google to find out that those issues were being discussed, that says a good bit about the cultural awareness at the time.
I don't think that it's fair to be attackative toward @Buttercheese just because she wants to have an open discussion about the topic. If you think she's mistaken, why not try informing her (and the people who agree with her) about your perspective? No one is helped by tearing people down, especially when you know they're not trying to hurt anybody.
@Dee: One doesn't have a discussion by throwing around a lot of misinformation - intentionally or otherwise - and then opting out of a response when they get challenged. I'm sick of this forum being used as a platform for validating every bass-ackwards GamerGate-adjacent position of "Oh, Baldur's Gate never had sexual references!" "Oh, Baldur's Gate used to be traditional!" "Oh, Ed Greenwood's talking bullshit about D&D!" "Oh, those transphobes on Steam were just a vocal minority, SJWs are the real problem!"
That's not a discussion. That's a pack of lies being tossed around for the express purpose of protesting the existence of a minor NPC. It's the same arguments we've seen with Hexxat, the same arguments we've seen with Dorn. Verbatim. Cut-and-pasted. So no, I'm not inclined to be tolerant of intolerance anymore.
Comments
You can not assume every person that visits this board (or plays this game) shares western liberties.
1. There was a link attached to the tweets in question. It was an important link. That link is always omitted whenever people bring up those tweets; I don't know why, I have some guesses, but all I know is that whenever it gets brought up, the content of that link is completely ignored. And that link was very specific--it was a message board where people were being especially descriptive in their abuses of me and my co-workers. The board claimed to be affiliated with GamerGate, which I took at face value. The tweet was not meant to suggest that the whole hullabaloo was "Beamdog vs. GamerGate"; as near as I can tell, that's not what was happening at all. The phrasing was misleading, which certainly didn't help the situation, but context is important.
2. I'm not personally aware of whatever problem it is people have with Anita Sarkeesian, other than failing to create all of the videos she promised following her successful Kickstarter campaign. I've read about them, but I have not seen any of those problems first-hand, and the few accounts I've read have been ambiguous enough that for all I know they could be exaggerated. What I am aware of is that Feminist Frequency is an organization that, among other things, cares about online abuse. My goal was not to call down the fury of Anita Sarkeesian on the internet trolls (which is what a lot of people continue to suggest, several months later); my goal was to raise more awareness of the kinds of abuse we were facing.
3. At the time, I had maybe fifty followers on Twitter, most of them professional acquaintances. It did not occur to me that people might be looking for fuel. This was clearly a mistake on my part. There's a tipping point when it comes to social media--below a certain threshold, Twitter and Facebook are essentially private spaces to communicate with friends. Above that threshold, suddenly those spaces "become" public.
That last one was a hard lesson for me to learn. There's a forgiveness that you can expect when communicating with friends, a certain amount of consideration when it comes to what you say and how you say it. That same consideration is completely absent when the communication is public.
As for locking threads versus merging them... Part of that is oddities in Vanilla's forum software; merging threads, especially ones that are active at the same time, always ends up with a jumbled mess of posts. It's ultimately cleaner to close the duplicates and post a link to the "master" thread, rather than try to combine them. From the outside it looks like censorship, and I'm aware of that, and it's definitely an issue. All I can say is that wasn't the goal, has never been the goal.
It is my belief that what we witnessed here in "The Great Troll Invasion of 2016" was symptomatic of a larger global-societal problem. The developed world has entered into a new age of connectivity and information. The rate of societal change is moving faster than our current political, religious and economic models can sustain. This has led to a reactionary response throughout the developed world and especially in the 'West".
The Gamergate/Transphobic/Homophobic/Misogynist/Nationalist/Religious reaction to change is just emblematic of these underlying reactionary forces. Everything is changing and this, naturally frightens people.
As much as I'd like to maintain some form of moderation in dealing with people who have opposing views, I don't think we can ignore the fact that real people are suffering. People should be able to be true to themselves and be accepted and treated with respect for everything they may contribute to society. I've seen too many friends of mine suffer through the years and this makes me think all the bullying, exclusion and ridicule needs to end. The only way to address this issue is for artists (Game Creators, Film Makers etc) to be proactive and promote diversity and inclusivity within their works. This also means others of us need to challenge these reactionary forces whenever and wherever they show themselves.
I am however saddened to hear that you were subject to bullying and harassment by a "Social Justice" online mob. I'd like to think that this doesn't make the underlying ideas and motivations that compel these "Social Justice Warriors" wrong, it just makes them overzealous and wrong in that particular instance. As we have seen, people get pretty heated about these issues online and the little I do know you, I can't imagine you ever posting anything so cruel and offensive to warrant such treatment.
I don't like hearing about all the "American", "Canadian", "German", "Italian", "British", "Russian" and "Foreign Folklore"thing. As far as I'm concerned we all share a passion, interest for "Baldur's Gate" , Fantasy and Folklore. There is nothing different or foreign about any of that for me, or for you or for any of the other fair "Forumites". All of it belongs to us and we belong to all of it. Welcome to the Baldur's Gate Community. I am pleased and proud to know that we are part of the same community! Welcome to the age of connectivity.
Or focusing on the rights or protections of a whole group of people based on one characteristic? Why does it have nothing to do with me?
Why would it matter if it doesn't have anything to do with me? No I'm not Are you referring to me? I'm from the UK
Are you referring to beamdog? They are canadian I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure most of my forebears were catholic.
But why woulkd it matter if they were white? or protestant?
Surely you are not drawing a line around a whole group of people based on one characteristic? Because we are discussing it?
Because people are interesting?
Because it has attracted a lot of attention and continues to do so?
Why are you spending energy to reply?
Please don't attack me for things I didn't say
Please don't deliberately misrepresent what I said
Please don't make assumptions about me or my background,
Please don't use my, or anyone else's background to discredit what they are saying
I'm not sure if you are trolling, but I would say that your reaction is exactly what forces these discussions to become so divisive to begin with.
If you put gays, lesbians, bi, trans in your game you're accused of SJW pandering.
If you don't, you're accused of being a bigot, performing minority erasure and other things that can honestly ruin your career.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. That's because when all's said and done, there's no such thing as a game without politics. As long as there's a narrative (and sometimes even when there isn't) you make a political statement not only via the elements you include but also via those you don't include.
I don't know where you were when SoD launched, but I can tell you this: it wasn't "some" Mizhena haters who were transphobic. Not by a long shot. The vast majority of people who made her the center of their case against SoD, Amber Scott and Beamdog weren't ambiguous about where they were coming from, and it was a place of hate and exclusion. Not sure why you're here trying to ameliorate that when their comments are still up here, on GOG and on Steam. I'm sorry, who are you again? Did you create the Forgotten Realms? Are you part of the company that produces D&D content? Do you have any actual credentials here besides "player" and "creator of excellent fanart"? Because if you don't, I'm not sure why you think we should substitute your judgement for Ed Greenwood's or Nathan Stewart's. And this? Right here? Is where your whole argument falls apart. Because when you say "the players", it's abundantly clear you don't actually mean all players - because 1) all other things being equal, one can assume there are transgender D&D players; and 2) there may very well be heterosexual players who enjoy playing transgender characters. You are making the self-serving argument that these players who can shape D&D into whatever they want it to be all want it to be the way you want it to be.
Following your logic? Amber Scott and Andrew Foley were the Dungeon Masters who wanted their D&D to have transgender characters. Do they not have the same right you claim "the players" have? Citation needed. People have been talking about transgender characters in video games since freaking Birdo. The fact that you know nothing about it is entirely your problem, no? Oh, you poor thing! You took a position against a bunch of people spouting nonsense and got yelled at for it on the Internet? Cry me a river.
See, the larger problem here is that you're using codewords that don't actually mean what you think they mean. "Social Justice Warriors" is a label that is almost always applied to people who take positions in favor of inclusion and diversity - in other words, generally being okay with the idea that other types of people are allowed to exist both in real life and in fiction. "Non-left-extremists" basically means "Yeah, but they don't have to be all in my face about it, y'know? Isn't there a box we can put them in so I don't have to see it? Why do they have to be in my games/movies/TV shows/comics?" The hilarity here is that you're arguing the transphobic Mizhena-haters were just a vocal minority and don't actually represent what most people were thinking, while at the same time claiming your experience is somehow representative of "SJWs" as a whole. Double standard much? Do I remember the death threats, the abuse, the neckbeards going on a jihad because a woman said video games weren't perfect? Sure do. Not sure how that helps you, though. And for a game that came out in 2000, that was - if not acceptable - at the very least a common trope. News flash: some time has passed since then.
Again, look at how you're basically giving people a pass for their so-called "negative reaction", which included death threats sent to Amber. Instead of dealing with that, instead of asking yourself where that exaggerated hatred comes from and why you're justifying it, you're doubling down on that. Please. Except, of course, that's exactly how you're framing it. But please, continue. Funny how that kind of complexity doesn't seem to apply to the side you don't personally agree with because of your past experience. You name-drop Anita Sarkeesian as if that's somehow self-explanatory - no different views and reactions there? Hmm. Your problem here is that you can't prove this supposed fact. You know why? Because the first reviews for SoD across all platforms mentioned Mizhena by fucking name as a reason for downgrading the game. Even if these voices don't represent the overall BG fandom - and I'm certainly willing to believe that's the case - you can't exactly prop up some invisible majority to counter the very real, very detailed and very graphic backlash from dozens, if not hundreds, of people (most of whom, to be fair, had clearly never played the game as they were spouting absolute bullshit like "BG has never had sexual references before!"). Maybe you should take that up with the people who launched the shitstorm in the first place instead of blaming Beamdog for somehow triggering it? Maybe you should be asking what was wrong with those people instead of claiming Mizhena and her creators brought that on themselves? Not all traditions are positive. Not all traditions need to be upheld. Time marches on, people learn things. Well, maybe not you, if you're holding up BG as some kind of proud conservative icon of the past when even the originals allowed themselves to be as transgressive as they could for the time they came out - or have you forgotten the classic line "Hey sexy, do you want to take a look at me ditties?" I'm going to gently suggest that you might want to do a bit more homework before making factually-incorrect statements like that, just so you don't openly embarrass yourself. BG came out in 1998; if you think "social issues like transgenderism" weren't being discussed beforehand, you clearly don't know enough about the subject to be talking about it. And? No work of fiction can be global in its appeal, or take all cultural trends into consideration - especially given how those trends can be completely contradictory in different places in the world. If you don't agree with North American values, maybe you shouldn't be playing North American games instead of complaining that that culture's products should kowtow to yours.. And if you want to have a long, detailed conversation about transgender characters in history, religion, mythology and literature, we can absolutely do that. You won't like the outcome, though. And, see, if you had started with this, and kept it to this, we'd be having a completely different dialogue right now. But I'm supposed to take this criticism at face value, after you've just gone on a New Testament-length screed about how transgenderism wasn't talked about before 1998 and BG is traditional and all SJWs are bullies but not all Mizhena-haters are transphobes? Yeah, no.
You need a mix of characters to populate the world otherwise you'd end up with 'villages/planet of hats'-syndrome with every character in a village having the same single defining characteristic.
Aside:
Second Aside:
Sten: "No."
Warden: "Well, that wasn't what I expected to hear."
Sten: "Get used to disappointment. People are not simple. They cannot be defined for easy reference in the manner of: 'the elves are a lithe, pointy-eared people who excel at poverty.'"
Likewise, the opportunity to play 'Who you are' should be representative of the audience playing - and people have all flavours. Whilst a vast majority may be straight, white males, a large number are not. And even those straight, white males come in different types. There are geeky ones, brawny ones, fast ones - all sorts.
So, 'Who you are' and 'Who you are not' is and must be extremely varied.
For me the failure was not that Mizhena was there, but that they should have given her more room.
Mizhena was a good idea, poorly implemented, but one that's entirely consistent with other characters/conversations of Baldur's Gate. There are numerous character interactions that are just as personal in fewer lines (and some not even requiring the PC to open the conversation, they are forced onto you, like the guard in Cloakwood Mine f.ex).
I don't think looking for blame is productive, and people are fully entitled to their opinions, however wrong I may think them. I would say that it is only by exposure to different people that tolerance and acceptance come about, and that's ideally done in real life, media, fiction, the news, wherever...
And, ultimately, if the concept of transgendered, or gay, or black, or six-fingered, or people called Larry, upsets you then do/find something that doesn't upset you. I'd hope you try to empathise and understand those differences... whatever they may be. But it's your choice and you can choose to be offended, or not.
I mean, just imagine how it must feel if you were actually called Larry - it can't be easy with everyone hating on you like that.
Still, most of us chose to enjoy the movies. They were good movies, the core story was the same, and the attention to details showed how Jackson respected Tolkien's work.
That's how storytelling works. When you take somebody else's story and try to continue or retell it, you can never be truly faithful to the original. You can't separate the story from the storyteller. Stories evolve over time, as new people tell them and add their own interpretations to the story. Old versions of the story remain for those who want to hear them, but new version often replaces the old one as the definitive version of the story.
It's usually best to accept change as the way of life.
Yes, that is true and that's how it should be.
The problem is, that a good chunk of the old player base don't want to go with the times, especially after the 4th edition desaster. Not to forget that SoD is still 2nd edition.
That's also what I was thinking after the encounter. But how many players are actually aware of that? Aparently not so many if there was such an outrage.
Yes, pretty much. I mean, there would have been people hating on her either way, but at least no one could make the argument that it feels out of nowhere.
Well, I can only judge from what I've seen, and that was everyone paniking.
Though yes, it could probably have gone worse.
See, I didn't even know about the out-of-context part even though I tired to be up to date.
Yup, that's what I used to do, but I know better now. I just hope more people will start catching on.
Ehhhh, no. Artists should be able to create what they want, how they want, without feeling bound to any obligations. Free speech can't be selective, otherwise it's not free speech.
And while people most certainly aren't political statements, characters can very much be.
Let's look at Wonder Woman for example, she was very much designed as a political statement in favour of feminism. (Wether or not she always succeeds at that notion is a different question.)
The beauty of fiction is, that it lets the artist present concepts that are alien or foreign to people in a context they may better understand. Let's look at Dorian from DA:I. His entire personal quest is meant to show the player just how much it sucks to be gay in a society that doesn't support gay people and even further shows it on a personal and familiar level. Just think of all the players who till that point had at best just a vague clue what that must be like. Dorian is a perfect example of how you utilize a character to bring your political statement across. I am not saying it's the only possible way, but this one works. Plus, he is just a great character in general, so that just makes it even better.
In a lot of cases yes, but I don't think it's all of them, that would be overgeneralizing it. I don't agree with the statement itself, but there are some valid points behind it. For a lot of people BG has something "innocent" to it (be that valid or not is a different question) and the timing for Mizhena made it look like she is nothing more than a statement. I don't know if I agree with that, but that doesn't make it not valid.
Drama like this must never be fueled from above. Let the haters hate. Stay calm and collected. Wait till it blows over. Don't feed the trolls.
Yes, it ****ink blows that it has to be this way, but I don't know any more effective way to handle shitstorms like these.
There is nothing private about the internet, sadly
Well, at least you did learn, so you got at least something positive out of it.
Let's hope you never have to use that newly aquirired wisdom though.
The point is that in other countires and cultures are different problems and these problems have different priorities. And that in different countries and cultures certain topics are seen and defined differently.
As an example: Here in Europe our biggest problems currently are terror, islamophobia, xenophobia and the refuge crisis. Pretty sure most people here couldn't care less about the social and political problems of North America (with the exception of Trump in the USA maybe).
Now imagine how things look like throughout the rest of the world, I bet they care even less.
Just to clarify, this is not about Mizhena and SoD, this is about the media in general.
PS: About BG being "American", that is only partially correct, as I pointed out. It is deeply rooted and inspired by foreign folklore, culture and stuff. That, and BG is an internationally sold and marketed game. If a developer/ publisher cares about their foreign audiences, they should cater to them as well.
If not, that is of course their good right, but they can't expect said audiences to be happy.
I am really not trying to get you guys to share my opinions, I am aware that some of them have to be mislead or based on false assumptions. I just want everyone to bring in their own views, so that we can together paint the bigger picture and that we can all learn to understand each other and what went wrong.
It especially means a lot to me that those among you I call my friends are speaking up even when they do have differing opinions.
Holy ****, was that corny.
I need to go punch something and watch exploding cars.
He asked for the people who actually were enjoying the game to post a review. I can’t fault him for that.
To me, he showed respect to the players who were unhappy, rather then just disregarding them. I respect that.
I can understand that some might think of it as backing down on the transgender issue, but I don’t feel that he did that either. He simply said that the character needed more work.
By removing Minsc’s gamer gate reference, he removed something that was providing fuel for the fire. It was poking and reopening a wound, giving the gamer gate people more ammunition.
I have to admit that at first all the thread closing that I saw really bothered me. Having had time to think about it, and more importantly, having seen how they have handled it since then has changed my mind. Things were out of control back then. They were doing the best they could to temporarily plug holes in the dam. They are letting people speak their mind now.
This whole thing reminds me of what happened when Coke tried to change their formula, some years back. This quote from the New Coke Wikipedia sums it up.
New Coke was only on the market in the United States for a short period, but it remains influential as a cautionary tale against tampering too extensively with a well-established and successful brand. It was discontinued internationally in July 2002.
For Beamdog, this is their product. Their livelihood. Not just their artistic vision. As a modder I have the luxury of including anything I want to include in any mod I make. I don’t think that is true for game developers. Especially with an established game.
To me, expecting a company to defend what they are doing all the way to the poor house is ridiculous. If enough people don’t like a product, any product, the company fails. I don’t want to see this company fail.
It's just a minor NPC in a game. No big deal.
Doesn't matter if she is trans or straight or gay or hispanic or caucasian or black or jewish or asian or samoan.
And this is somehow good because fantasy scenarios are about diversity. That's why we have places like Waterdeep, places like Kara-Tur, etc. The more the merrier.
Particularly I couldn't care less. The way I see you guys are making a storm inside of a glass of water.
Next time you want to make a statement about something you clearly know very little about, try a five-second Google search, get some actual facts. Or be strong and wrong in your ignorance, and then claim misrepresentation. Your choice, of course.
I don't think that it's fair to be attackative toward @Buttercheese just because she wants to have an open discussion about the topic. If you think she's mistaken, why not try informing her (and the people who agree with her) about your perspective? No one is helped by tearing people down, especially when you know they're not trying to hurt anybody.
That's not a discussion. That's a pack of lies being tossed around for the express purpose of protesting the existence of a minor NPC. It's the same arguments we've seen with Hexxat, the same arguments we've seen with Dorn. Verbatim. Cut-and-pasted. So no, I'm not inclined to be tolerant of intolerance anymore.
Side note: Aren't they? Let's see: Not trying, indeed.