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SJW term

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  • deltagodeltago Member Posts: 7,811
    Assassin Creed syndicate had a male/female protagonist.

    But ya, places like Codex and 4Chan allowed this attitude to fester and grow, and show people “oh others think like me too, it must be right,” it allowed them to organize and it allowed people who may not agree with their stance be bullied out of the conversation and if a person didn’t want to be labeled as something negative (because majority of them are insecure) you’d reform to what’s being presented.

    That mentality has now seeped into other parts of the internet.

    My opinion is to ignore it. If someone won’t buy a game because it has “Gender Studies” they don’t have to. They’ll eventually run out of things to play as they realize the world doesn’t revolve around their preferences.

    killerrabbit
  • semiticgoddesssemiticgoddess Member Posts: 14,903
    Yeah... I've heard people express some similar sentiments here and there. "I have nothing against [insert minority group]; I just don't think there's a legitimate reason they should exist in video games." There's this idea that there needs to be some sort of justification in order for a given minority to show up in a game.
    ThacoBellkillerrabbitDreadKhan
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @Kamigoroshi I'm still confused as to what was "changed" about Safana. As far as I can tell, she is the exact same character she was in BG1, just with more lines.
    killerrabbitDreadKhan
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    @ThacoBell Again, there hasn't exaclty been much else posted by the Beamdog staff about "what" or "how much" Safana's initial character was modified for her comeback. All we know for certain from that interview is that she supposedly got "a way better personality upgrade". Meaning changes definitely took place on the planning board. The details of that however are only known to Beamdog itself.
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    @jjstraka34 I get what you are saying, but really, that is just ridiculous. Do arguments become valid simply on the ground some wa...ne individual think they are? Is like, if I say "I hate the color blue" and someone makes a game in which you can put blue clothes on the player character, is that game then political? NOOOO!!! I fail to see how people getting upset over something which isn't political makes it political.

    P.S. I do not understand how every other poster missed this, but in the original BG, Safana is not a nymphomaniac, she is a tease. She wants you to think you can have her, but she is just playing you. Basically, she puts you in the friend zone.
  • killerrabbitkillerrabbit Member Posts: 402
    edited October 2018
    Before the banhammer arrives . . .

    Issue one

    This isn't a hard one. SJW is clearly pejorative term. It doesn't matter what definitions the people peddling the pejorative come up with if, if no one to whom the term applies uses it in an unironic sense and the people affixed with the descriptor dislike it, it's a pejorative plain and simple.

    I can come up with a nice definition of "right wing wingnut" and show you photos of people with "(right arrow image) (wingnut image)" bumper stickers but that doesn't mean that mean that it's what conservatives call themselves.

    It's just an updating of "politically correct" you *might* be able to find one or two people who were applying the term to themselves in an unironic fashion before it became a pejorative but it is entirely false to say that pc (or SJW) was in widespread use before the right picked on it.

    Issue two

    As others have said Safana is the same. Her upgrade came in the form of a third dimension. We learned something about her relationship with her mother and gained a bit of insight into why she uses her sexuality to manipulate men -- we got a peek under the mask.

    I *never* used Safana in BG1 -- so irritating. But in SoD she's a fun NPC . . .
    ThacoBell
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    @Kamigoroshi That's my point. No one even knows what was changed by looking at the character. People are upset because someone said she was changed. That would be me sitting down to eat a plate of pancakes and saying they were delicious, only to have it pointed out that they were gluten free, and suddenly being outraged at it. I couldn't tell the difference and quite enjoyed it, but suddenly its objectionable because somebody said it was different.

    @DrakeICN "P.S. I do not understand how every other poster missed this, but in the original BG, Safana is not a nymphomaniac, she is a tease. She wants you to think you can have her, but she is just playing you. Basically, she puts you in the friend zone."

    I don't understand how you see this. What in game gave this impression?
    jjstraka34KamigoroshiBallpointMan
  • KamigoroshiKamigoroshi Member Posts: 5,870
    @ThacoBell Yes and no. Players were first alienated because SoD Safana did not match their own intrepretation of BG1 Safana. Which is understandable, given that different writers were involved in their creations and the vanilla material was rather limited in depth of the NPC's.

    From what I saw over the decades, some players thought of pre-SoD Safana as a Femme Fatale. Others thought of her as a flirt who liked nightly companionship a tad too much. And then a couple others viewed her as pretty much the female Eldoth. But I'd wager that more Safana Variants exist in people's head than that.

    Being then told that Beamdog changed said character "for reasons" did not make them feel any better about it. Which, I do agree, is a pointless thing to feel.
    ThacoBell
  • jjstraka34jjstraka34 Member Posts: 9,850
    ThacoBell said:

    @Kamigoroshi That's my point. No one even knows what was changed by looking at the character. People are upset because someone said she was changed. That would be me sitting down to eat a plate of pancakes and saying they were delicious, only to have it pointed out that they were gluten free, and suddenly being outraged at it. I couldn't tell the difference and quite enjoyed it, but suddenly its objectionable because somebody said it was different.

    @DrakeICN "P.S. I do not understand how every other poster missed this, but in the original BG, Safana is not a nymphomaniac, she is a tease. She wants you to think you can have her, but she is just playing you. Basically, she puts you in the friend zone."

    I don't understand how you see this. What in game gave this impression?

    Your pancake analogy reminds me of this:

    https://funnyjunk.com/Snl+chris+farley+columbian+decaffeinated+coffee+crystals/movies/6357624/
    ThacoBellBallpointMan
  • ThacoBellThacoBell Member Posts: 12,235
    That was great, I miss Chris Farley.
    Balrog99BallpointMan
  • Ludwig_IILudwig_II Member Posts: 369
    edited October 2018

    The way I see it, is that it wasn't so much her writings that caused problems for Beamdog back then. But the way how she worded the publicity of SoD.

    Exactly this. There wasn't anything to be triggered by with the writing of Sod. It can be considered sub-par or whatever, but nothing there deserved a backlash in my opinion.

    The main reasons for the backlash were the interviews, which triggered a lot of people to feel the need to dig in and find something to be agitated. If there weren't those unfortunately worded interviews, probably nobody would pay attention to a character who is implied to be a transgender, personality of Safana or what Minsc says when clicked 50 times or whatever. I mean who cares, don't those people know that transgender characters exist? They do, and they live with it in real life. No reason not to accept it in SOD as well, if only they didn't perceive a hidden agenda based on those interviews.

    Considering them as the enemy is a wrong approach, because I believe most of those people were actually BG fans too, even if they wrote reviews without having played SOD. Right approach is understanding why they felt the need to even bother with doing that. Empathy is the key word here.

    This is the main problem with SJW mentality. Based on what I have seen, most of them so fanatically believe they are right that whomever doesn't agree with them can be labeled a bigot, racist, sexist, etc., and become their enemy. Another perspective can't even be considered, it's absurd. They don't understand that this attitude has a lot of similarities with alt-right or far right, which they hate so much. The real enemy here is self-righteousness.
    Post edited by Ludwig_II on
    KamigoroshiIsewein
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    edited October 2018
    Ludwig_II said:

    This is the main problem with alt-right mentality. Based on what I have seen, most of them so fanatically believe they are right that whomever doesn't agree with them can be labeled SJW, PC, NPC etc., and become their enemy. Another perspective can't even be considered, it's absurd. They don't understand that this attitude has a lot of similarities with the SJW, which they hate so much. The real enemy here is self-righteousness.

    Fixed!

    lol no I know you shat on both sides in your post, I just found it ridiculous that you believe we should try to empathize with the alt-right. I mean, if you in your heart believe these people have critical thinking skills, then go ahead and waste your time I suppose.

    Edit: This is from whence the alt-right spawns (skip two 2:10);


    And this is the most sane argument I have seen coming out of the alt-right:
  • ArdanisArdanis Member Posts: 1,736
    edited October 2018
    I swear upon holy scriptures, I didn't mean to track political discussions here! :|
    deltago said:


    But ya, places like Codex and 4Chan allowed this attitude to fester and grow, and show people “oh others think like me too, it must be right,” it allowed them to organize and it allowed people who may not agree with their stance be bullied out of the conversation and if a person didn’t want to be labeled as something negative (because majority of them are insecure) you’d reform to what’s being presented.

    That mentality has now seeped into other parts of the internet.

    Thing is, replace Codex and 4chan with something else, and you'll have 100% accurate description of the radical left.
    DrakeICN said:

    Fixed!

    Pretty much, and vice versa. The problem isn't about views, but being an entitled jerk about it.
    DrakeICN said:

    lol no I know you shat on both sides in your post, I just found it ridiculous that you believe we should try to empathize with the alt-right. I mean, if you in your heart believe these people have critical thinking skills, then go ahead and waste your time I suppose.

    Normally you'd be correct, but the conflict has been growing out of control, so unless you want to see it keep escalating then it's in your interest to not, as you've put it, "shit" on the side you disagree with.
    Or, on a related note, use the terms that may unnecessarily trigger them - if the left may find "black monkey" racist and "trap" transphobic (regardless of whether it was the intent), then so may the right find "male aggression" misandrist. Consideration only means something when it goes both ways.


    PS I also strongly suspect this war is a contributing factor why the social stuff is so often called shoehorned/hamfisted/quota-filled/etc. into the media. When you can tell the creator is making a political statement, even if they're not fully aware of it themselves - it's a subconscious defensive reaction. As opposed to it being something they genuinely liked and wanted to make for themselves, like all art should be.
    If you look at e.g. Japanese media, you may find plenty of yuri, yaoi and other things, yet at no point does it feel the authors were political about what they create. In fact, I've often heard opinions by non-liberal sources that the Western left would win far more sympathy from them if it tried to mimic what Japanese do. I guess it's because the latter don't feel the need to be defensive about their values.
    The only problem here is that both sides are equally responsible for continuation of this war that makes them so defensive it seeps into their subconscious, or at least not putting effort into stopping it.
    Post edited by Ardanis on
    KamigoroshiLadyRhiansemiticgoddessIsewein
  • SkatanSkatan Member, Moderator Posts: 5,352
    edited October 2018
    Wow, just a few days offline and this thread seemed to have exploded. Anyways, a late reply to the comment below.



    "Manhood 1.0 is absolute crap and only ends up with emotionally retarded males who cannot handle emotions or more complex relationships. I've been struggling with anger outbursts all my life becuase I was never taught to deal with it in a mature way. Happyness, hornyness and rage were pretty much the three only feelings a man should feel. All the intricate feelings ranging from sadness, to emptyness, to lonelyness etc are replaced by rage, anger and hate."

    You do know exactly the same can be said about women?

    Some women are more aggressive in social situations (ask any law enforcement when the pubs turn out), some women handle emotions incredibly badly, some women are not taught to handle emotions in a mature way, some women bitch, ostracize, bully and scheme far more than men and never let things drop. About the only difference is that some women are never happy because there's always something wrong with the world rather than with themselves.

    How about instead of pointing fingers and saying this sex or that sex has all the bad, people start to admit there are a lot of people who everybody would be better off crossing the road to avoid until they learn how to behave.

    You make two mistakes here:
    1: You try to compare individuals' behavior with systemic behavior.
    2: You immediately feel compelled to point your finger "But what about THOSE ppl who ALSO do wrong!!!11"

    The first one is a classic mistake many ppl do who haven't really read up on facts and is used all too often as counter-arguments. I spoke of manhood, how men systematically are brought up to embody a set of ideals that are supposedly "Manly". This doesn't mean some men are very different from those ideals, it's the difference between a society structures and individuals. I won't bother linking you to facts about this though since you discarded my last link as pointless and didn't bother looking at it seems, but there are tons of academics who can witness to this. You know, ppl who have actually studied this for years and are promenent in their field of work and don't base their arguments on what they've read in forums or on emotions.

    Secondly, I never said anything about women, my whole post was about men and social structures making men emotionally inadept to handle more complex feelings. So maybe ask yourself why you felt the need to jump up on your horse, pick up your lance and start attacking the windmills, ay?

    DrakeICNsemiticgoddesskillerrabbitThacoBell
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    @Skatan Let me help you out a bit. There is a scientific term for it and it is a field of study;
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_masculinity#Toxic_masculinity

    Personally, I think that we should be somewhat tolerant patient towards the behavior in young men. If you are young, male, the worlds sucks, you have problems fitting in, you are scared about your future and have testosterone raging through your system... and is tossed into an environment with other men most of which experience the same (such as high school) and who penalize each other for being "wimpy"... I mean yeah, if you drop a rock, it will not fall sideways, levitate or take off upwards, it will drop. Now, the male psychology is not bound by laws of physics the way gravity is, but the behavior is none the less to a certain extent expectable. Society should help the young men that display it and cannot grow out of it by themselves escape it (because the behavior have no place in society save for criminals, the military and maybe for athletes; you can't be an accountant and pick a fight with your coworkers over whose cubicle gets to sit next to the nubile debutante's cubicle who just start working on the same floor, and coping with it using passive aggressiveness is almost worse) but that it will be there... I mean, there is no cure for that! It's like complaining that it's raining.
    killerrabbitThacoBell
  • WarChiefZekeWarChiefZeke Member Posts: 2,651
    edited October 2018
    DrakeICN said:

    @Skatan Let me help you out a bit. There is a scientific term for it and it is a field of study;
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemonic_masculinity#Toxic_masculinity

    The references are gender studies journals. I would hesitate to call that science. It is more like political ideology. Most university course descriptions for it focus on intersectionality, which is anything but empirical.

    FinneousPJGrond0Isewein
  • FinneousPJFinneousPJ Member Posts: 6,455
    JoenSo said:

    So yesterday someone replied to a comment I had left on a youtube video a long time ago. The video was from a Swedish amateur production of Jesus Christ Superstar where the priest Annas (a male character) was played by a woman. And people in the comments complained about the historical inaccuracy of a woman in that role. So I had left a comment pointing out that Jesus Christ Superstar has never been about historical accuracy in any way (should be obvious from the title and the freaking fighter jets in the 1973 movie) and that the character Annas has been interpreted in tons of different ways without much complaint.

    And now someone replied that it apparently wasn't about historical accuracy after all - but a woman shouldn't play Annas because it's feminist propaganda, it's agenda pushing and so on.

    Now I wouldn't have a problem discussing feminism, racism, social justice and all that with people who have different views than I. I do try to be understanding of other people's perspective. But when people are at the point where they think some amateur theater group from a small town in Sweden is involved in some feminist conspiracy to emasculate the western world? When they think a woman shouldn't be allowed to sing a song that is usually sung by a man because it's propaganda and pushing a hidden agenda? Where do I even begin to discuss anything at all with someone like that?

    And since I'm a Swedish man myself, I'll often hear that I've just been brainwashed/emasculated by the horrors of Swedish feminism. Or that I don't actually have these opinions, but have some kind of ulterior motive. Hard to discuss with someone who immediately reduces you to "sheeple" or "you just want to get laid".

    That's silly. I also wanted to comment that I've seen a Swedish language production of the play at Åbo Svenska Teatern, it was fun. These people might be taking it a bit too seriously.
    JoenSo
  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    It's stupid, I agree, but some people (well, s lot of people) take religion way too seriously. Can't laugh at religion because people (certain people) will take offense. I mean, there are certain passages in Paul's letters and acts which imply female preachers, but for some people that is just a bridge too far these days.
  • JoenSoJoenSo Member Posts: 910
    LadyRhian said:

    It's stupid, I agree, but some people (well, s lot of people) take religion way too seriously. Can't laugh at religion because people (certain people) will take offense. I mean, there are certain passages in Paul's letters and acts which imply female preachers, but for some people that is just a bridge too far these days.

    Oh, the problem wasn't that it was a female priest. A woman playing a man's role was the problem. In a way, I regret that I ever even commented as if they cared about historical accuracy in any way.
  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    This is true. Religion is deadly serious to a lot of people.
    Dev6
  • DrakeICNDrakeICN Member Posts: 623
    LadyRhian said:

    This is true. Religion is deadly serious to a lot of people.

    I find your comment disrespectful! You are just like the gov't meddling with my religious freedom! Every time I kidnap and strap down my neighbor in preparation for showing my respects to Huitzilopochtli, the coppers show up and demand that I release him! When will this oppression ever end :#
    ThacoBellDev6FinneousPJ
  • LadyRhianLadyRhian Member Posts: 14,694
    Oh. The horror.
  • Dev6Dev6 Member Posts: 719
    DrakeICN said:

    LadyRhian said:

    This is true. Religion is deadly serious to a lot of people.

    I find your comment disrespectful! You are just like the gov't meddling with my religious freedom! Every time I kidnap and strap down my neighbor in preparation for showing my respects to Huitzilopochtli, the coppers show up and demand that I release him! When will this oppression ever end :#
    i just had to check if Huitzilopochtli was an actual aztec/mayan deity or if you had just slapped the keyboard and went with it.
    Kudos for using a real name!
    ThacoBell
  • killerrabbitkillerrabbit Member Posts: 402
    It's a horrible, sadistic note.

    Having said that my internal skeptic is kicking in making me suspicious of the note.

    Whoever wrote that note has the your / you're rule *exactly* wrong. They use 'your' when they should use 'you're' and vice versa. Given that rule is the one that really sets grammarian's teeth on edge, the note seems perfectly designed to upset people. Perhaps a bit too perfect?

    Not saying I can divine anything but it just seems a bit too easy of a target . . .
    Balrog99ThacoBell
  • Balrog99Balrog99 Member Posts: 7,366
    edited October 2018

    It's a horrible, sadistic note.

    Having said that my internal skeptic is kicking in making me suspicious of the note.

    Whoever wrote that note has the your / you're rule *exactly* wrong. They use 'your' when they should use 'you're' and vice versa. Given that rule is the one that really sets grammarian's teeth on edge, the note seems perfectly designed to upset people. Perhaps a bit too perfect?

    Not saying I can divine anything but it just seems a bit too easy of a target . . .

    Not to mention this is the kind of claim that is impossible to verify, thus my inner sceptic is going 4-alarm. My mom, dad and sister are all Evangelical Trump supporters and they would never treat somebody this way. My dad is such a good tipper that it pisses my mom off! I call bs on who really wrote this note (assuming it's even authentic). No real Christian would do this...

    Edit:
    Incidentally, my sister is a full-time psyche-ward nurse and my mom was a teacher for 30 years (now retired).
    killerrabbitThacoBell
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