Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

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"I'm sick of being called a man baby for playing video games. I wish games were seen as a legitimate art form".

Somewhere, a severed monkeys paw slowly curls a finger...
 
Ineedahero said:
Maybe it's just me (I am super gay for lovecraft and that's definitely part of it) but I found the story of bloodborne to be a lot more straightforward than dark souls 1 and 3 (haven't played 2 or sekiro yet), although it is definitely still more on the lore side than... I was going to say the deeply personal story of silent hill 2, but that's the thing, bloodborne is a personal story, both for the pc and for you, it's just not assembled unless you assemble it yourself (although the npcs and cutscenes seem less cryptic to me than they were in the souls games.)

You are dumped into this alien and utterly inscrutable world but as you play you start piecing together what happened - the blood heals, but it also transforms, leading to the hunt - and you are a hunter seeking a cure.

And the more you play, the more you understand - both as a player and due to the insight mechanic, as a pc - and once you know enough - through your meeting with rom, who hinders understanding, or by gaining enough insight, you realise just how little you really knew, and how utterly fucked you are - and it just keeps getting worse from there. Silent Hill 2 is the only other game that made me feel so hopeless, which is why it prompted my recommendation. God I hope it comes to pc.
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Sekiro fyi has a somewhat straight forward story, but a lot of aspects of its setting are mysterious and unexplained and there's lots of lore you have to be paying close attention to to pick up on.
 
Duncan Hills Coffee said:
There's also the fact that Angela is heavily implied to be a victim of sexual abuse to the point she gets extremely afraid of James for no real reason at times and contemplates suicide at various points in the game. It's a brutally realistic look at sexual assault survivors and you can be damn sure that shit wouldn't fly today.
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I liked how in her perception of Silent Hill, everything was always on fire. Insert Gaiman quote about Hell being something a person carries with them.
 
It's probably worth noting that most attempts to make 'art' with games have been not only heavily reliant on how art works in other mediums but also a larger abstract ideal of what they percieve art to be rather than a realistic assesment of what qualifies as art.
Something like Legacy of Kain, Silent hill or anything from the high period of lucasarts is more succesful as a work of art as anything like this dragon cancer, gone home or pretty much anything by anna anthropy.

EDIT:pulling on this thought further their's also the issue that most of the people interested this sort of thing don't really relate to the everyday of experiance of laypeople, so their art conveys ideas and concepts which don't mean shit to the average joe and is often very very boring.

All this is incidently why I cannot give a single toss if anyone fails to see games as art, as it's so painfully obvious that any established critic who says otherwise should reconsider their career.
 
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Emperor Julian said:
It's probably worth noting that most attempts to make 'art' with games have been not only heavily reliant on how art works in other mediums but also a larger abstract ideal of what they percieve art to be rather than a realistic assesment of what qualifies as art.
Something like Legacy of Kain, Silent hill or anything from the high period of lucasarts is more succesful as a work of art as anything like this dragon cancer, gone home or pretty much anything by anna anthropy.
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Tony Stark has a good way to sum up the latest game fluff piece on Vice, RPS and whatever article that feels like a self jerking attempt at relevance 8iyseu.jpg
 
Dom Cruise said:
Yes, before woke SJWs there was the "games as art" era.

But the irony is I was a lot more sympathetic to that movement, I've always preferred games like Silent Hill 2 over something like Call of Duty, but I've also always loved sexy game girls, once they targeted those for destruction, as well as evolved to believe that "art" means shrill, pretentious political propaganda, I was done.

And Silent Hill 2, which I would consider to be gaming's crowning artistic achievement, is pretty unwoke, the story in Silent Hill 2 all revolves around a man, while there are female characters who are very well done and interesting, they are still secondary to his story, one of them even winds up in "damsel in distress" distress situations that you have to protect her from, doesn't get any more unwoke than that.

Keep in mind Silent Hill 2 has a huge female fan following, but there's a difference between a female gamer and a "woke" female gamer.

It's sad though because I really do think there wasn't anything really wrong with wanting to push games forward as an artistic medium, but that culture got so totally fucked in the ass by Social Justice and now views games as a means for presenting political messages first and foremost and a work of art a distant second, so they've ironically only held games back as an artistic medium while also taking some of the fun out of games purely meant for entertainment, they've been nothing but a negative influence on video games.
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Duncan Hills Coffee said:
There's also the fact that Angela is heavily implied to be a victim of sexual abuse to the point she gets extremely afraid of James for no real reason at times and contemplates suicide at various points in the game. It's a brutally realistic look at sexual assault survivors and you can be damn sure that shit wouldn't fly today.
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*Sigh* God, Silent Hill 2... Need to replay that glorious classic.

And trust me, they wouldn't be nearly as pissed off about Angela as they would be about Maria/Mary.

James killed Mary because she was suffering from a terminal illness and was declining in a really slow, really awful way. Your choices in the game influence the nuances of his motives, but at its most benign James killed her not just because she was suffering, but because he was suffering too. It's an uncomfortable subject, but the sad reality about terminal illness is that people who are dying often aren't saints who peacefully accept death: They're in pain, they're scared, and they often lash out at the people around them as a result.

I've seen some really fucking galaxy-brained takes about James from the Silent Hill fandom (namely that he's evil and selfish for what he did) but honestly, I think the game-makers did a great job showing the complicated emotions that go into it. James was watching his wife die- he was grieving her every day even as he was caring for her, watching her slip away and taking a lot of abuse as she declined mentally and emotionally as well. There's an implication that he was fairly isolated during this time too, suggesting that he didn't have family or community support.

There is a lot of raw, emotional honesty in this. Especially when you know someone who's suffered from terminal illness, and you've experienced or watched a loved one experience those emotions? That shit's real. it's uncomfortable, it's heart-breaking, it's controversial, but it's real.

But to the fucking feminist tastes of today, it would just be a misogynistic story about a bad evil man murdering a woman's life because male entitlement.

Add to that the fact that Maria is implied to be a manifestation of James's repressed sexual desires (which had gone unfulfilled as Mary was dying) and it would just be a clusterfuck.
 
QuokkaCaptain said:
*Sigh* God, Silent Hill 2... Need to replay that glorious classic.

And trust me, they wouldn't be nearly as pissed off about Angela as they would be about Maria/Mary.

James killed Mary because she was suffering from a terminal illness and was declining in a really slow, really awful way. Your choices in the game influence the nuances of his motives, but at its most benign James killed her not just because she was suffering, but because he was suffering too. It's an uncomfortable subject, but the sad reality about terminal illness is that people who are dying often aren't saints who peacefully accept death: They're in pain, they're scared, and they often lash out at the people around them as a result.

I've seen some really fucking galaxy-brained takes about James from the Silent Hill fandom (namely that he's evil and selfish for what he did) but honestly, I think the game-makers did a great job showing the complicated emotions that go into it. James was watching his wife die- he was grieving her every day even as he was caring for her, watching her slip away and taking a lot of abuse as she declined mentally and emotionally as well. There's an implication that he was fairly isolated during this time too, suggesting that he didn't have family or community support.

There is a lot of raw, emotional honesty in this. Especially when you know someone who's suffered from terminal illness, and you've experienced or watched a loved one experience those emotions? That shit's real. it's uncomfortable, it's heart-breaking, it's controversial, but it's real.

But to the fucking feminist tastes of today, it would just be a misogynistic story about a bad evil man murdering a woman's life because male entitlement.

Add to that the fact that Maria is implied to be a manifestation of James's repressed sexual desires (which had gone unfulfilled as Mary was dying) and it would just be a clusterfuck.
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Yes, it's far more moral ambiguity and shades of grey than the childlike minds of SJWs could handle.

But that's what makes the game a work of art, art asks difficult questions and doesn't give you easy answers, propaganda simply tells you what to think and boils down difficult questions to easy answers.

SJWs don't want art, they view games as nothing more than a venue to spread their propaganda messages.
 
I randomly remembered one of the earliest SJW outrages, the one over Dead Island Riptide's headless bikini clad "zombie bait" torso.

http://gameological.com/2013/01/it-belongs-in-a-museum/index.html
https://kotaku.com/dead-island-special-edition-includes-the-headless-bikin-477914929

Now the statue is pretty tacky and not really defensible, but the pearl clutching over it and using it as "proof" that gaming culture is misogynistic is embarrassing.

And as we learned with these people it was give an inch and they'll take a mile, the outrages may have started off over more reasonable things, before it led to being offended over the sight of the female body at all, which is why we now get characters like Last of Us 2's Abby.
 
Dom Cruise said:
I randomly remembered one of the earliest SJW outrages, the one over Dead Island Riptide's headless bikini clad "zombie bait" torso.

http://gameological.com/2013/01/it-belongs-in-a-museum/index.html
https://kotaku.com/dead-island-special-edition-includes-the-headless-bikin-477914929

Now the statue is pretty tacky and not really defensible, but the pearl clutching over it and using it as "proof" that gaming culture is misogynistic is embarrassing.

And as we learned with these people it was give an inch and they'll take a mile, the outrages may have started off over more reasonable things, before it led to being offended over the sight of the female body at all, which is why we now get characters like Last of Us 2's Abby.
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That reminds me of the original dead island sjw bullshit - the original dead island had the word bitch in it! If I remember correctly, it wasn't even in the game, it was the original name for one of the black chick's skills that had been replaced before it went gold. Nevertheless this required widespread condemnation and, since sjws can't do anything without irony, this condemnation totally overshadowed the fact the game had the world's first abbo woman pc.
 
It's even funnier because the coder that had put it into the game was disciplined and his changes reverted when it came to light. So much of the outrage left that part out, claiming it was proof the industry hated women.
 
Dom Cruise said:
I randomly remembered one of the earliest SJW outrages, the one over Dead Island Riptide's headless bikini clad "zombie bait" torso.

http://gameological.com/2013/01/it-belongs-in-a-museum/index.html
https://kotaku.com/dead-island-special-edition-includes-the-headless-bikin-477914929

Now the statue is pretty tacky and not really defensible, but the pearl clutching over it and using it as "proof" that gaming culture is misogynistic is embarrassing.

And as we learned with these people it was give an inch and they'll take a mile, the outrages may have started off over more reasonable things, before it led to being offended over the sight of the female body at all, which is why we now get characters like Last of Us 2's Abby.
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Aside from that Dead Island statue which is tacky but not any different from mutilated bodies in the game itself, I can remember a similar incident albeit with weeb version Liara, a video game character from Mass Effect. The statue was being made by some company called Kotobukiya which has done similar things before. Needless to say, the statue or at least some version they were making of it didn't sit well with people. I could get one saying it doesn't look like Liara but then again, this is also pretty much a statue being made by a company throwing a sort of anime look onto to a character that may or may not of had their face modelled on a real person and really, outside of complaints over the statue, would any of them complaining about their alien waifu being made into some plastic statue buy it in the first place?

Fextralife View topic - Anime Liara T'soni statue? Good lord.

fextralife.com fextralife.com

*Fun fact on the last: I remember seeing the spergings of that site before, iirc @Yaoi Huntress Earth was the first to mention this site to us or at least the one whose mentioning of it generated a bit more talk of it.
 
c-no said:
Aside from that Dead Island statue which is tacky but not any different from mutilated bodies in the game itself, I can remember a similar incident albeit with weeb version Liara, a video game character from Mass Effect. The statue was being made by some company called Kotobukiya which has done similar things before. Needless to say, the statue or at least some version they were making of it didn't sit well with people. I could get one saying it doesn't look like Liara but then again, this is also pretty much a statue being made by a company throwing a sort of anime look onto to a character that may or may not of had their face modelled on a real person and really, outside of complaints over the statue, would any of them complaining about their alien waifu being made into some plastic statue buy it in the first place?

Fextralife View topic - Anime Liara T'soni statue? Good lord.

fextralife.com fextralife.com

*Fun fact on the last: I remember seeing the spergings of that site before, iirc @Yaoi Huntress Earth was the first to mention this site to us or at least the one whose mentioning of it generated a bit more talk of it.
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Yikes, that dates back all the way to 2011, pre-Tropes vs Women Kickstarter even.

I'm a bit shocked by that, but I do remember stuff from that year like slutwalks and there's also this comic from that year https://i.imgur.com/Eicdc.jpg

What was it about the 2010s that made people almost immediately turn into a bunch of joyless, pearl clutching losers? What a nightmare of a decade that was.
 
Dom Cruise said:
What was it about the 2010s that made people almost immediately turn into a bunch of joyless, pearl clutching losers? What a nightmare of a decade that was.
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The internet became widespread and Nerd stuff got appropriated by pop culture and turned into a "LYFESTYLE! BRAND!" so a bunch of Trendy Hangers on jumped onto the bandwagon because somebody said that Star Wars and Comic Books were -cool- now.
 
Dom Cruise said:
Yikes, that dates back all the way to 2011, pre-Tropes vs Women Kickstarter even.

I'm a bit shocked by that, but I do remember stuff from that year like slutwalks and there's also this comic from that year https://i.imgur.com/Eicdc.jpg

What was it about the 2010s that made people almost immediately turn into a bunch of joyless, pearl clutching losers? What a nightmare of a decade that was.
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c-no said:
Aside from that Dead Island statue which is tacky but not any different from mutilated bodies in the game itself, I can remember a similar incident albeit with weeb version Liara, a video game character from Mass Effect. The statue was being made by some company called Kotobukiya which has done similar things before. Needless to say, the statue or at least some version they were making of it didn't sit well with people. I could get one saying it doesn't look like Liara but then again, this is also pretty much a statue being made by a company throwing a sort of anime look onto to a character that may or may not of had their face modelled on a real person and really, outside of complaints over the statue, would any of them complaining about their alien waifu being made into some plastic statue buy it in the first place?

Fextralife View topic - Anime Liara T'soni statue? Good lord.

fextralife.com fextralife.com

*Fun fact on the last: I remember seeing the spergings of that site before, iirc @Yaoi Huntress Earth was the first to mention this site to us or at least the one whose mentioning of it generated a bit more talk of it.
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I remember her, she seems to be getting better in some ways, but it others she's not. She now claims she's both trans and non-binary.
 
I just thought it was the captain planet generation finally fighting social crime like overlord Ted Turner asked of them. Or that they were rebelling against their more conservative parents and unfortunately all they knew about social issue fighting was pearl clutching. Whatever the proper chemical reaction was, it happened and we are still working though it like alcoholic widthrawl.

Fanbrats also found out that if they harrassed a creator good enough with a moral excuse, they could get them to do anything (Glee had a case of this iirc). Most of the entertainment industry is SJ liberal leaning, so they cave to "COVER HER UP BECAUSE ITS SEXIST" vs "COVER HER UP BECAUSE ITS SINFUL" (and the former is a rebellion against status quo). So slacktivism also helps internet shut ins feel control over others.
 
Honka Honka Burning Love said:
The internet became widespread and Nerd stuff got appropriated by pop culture and turned into a "LYFESTYLE! BRAND!" so a bunch of Trendy Hangers on jumped onto the bandwagon because somebody said that Star Wars and Comic Books were -cool- now.
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But what made these people get offended over something like cleavage? Are they fucking 1600s Puritans?
 
What's eerie to me is how the zeitgeist changes like that, as soon as the clock changed from the 2000s to the 2010s people arbitrarily came up with bullshit to care about that they never cared about before.

Just why? What changed from 2009 to 2011 to make something like Superheroine cleavage, something no one in the history of the universe gave a shit about before, suddenly be a big fucking problem that must change?

It's bizarre, the human calendar is just a created invention, it's not something natural, so why does the human mind seemed programmed to change so much decade to decade?
 
Dom Cruise said:
What's eerie to me is how the zeitgeist changes like that, as soon as the clock changed from the 2000s to the 2010s people arbitrarily came up with bullshit to care about that they never cared about before.

Just why? What changed from 2009 to 2011 to make something like Superheroine cleavage, something no one in the history of the universe gave a shit about before, suddenly be a big fucking problem that must change?

It's bizarre, the human calendar is just a created invention, it's not something natural, so why does the human mind seemed programmed to change so much decade to decade?
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We told that generation to "be the change" and that "they're special and unique" along with "no matter your failures, you still succeeded in trying".
 
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