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FMguru posted:I love this thinking, that someday someone is going to wander into The Android's Dungeon and see that shelfworn copy of Mongoose's THE QUINTESSENTIAL RANGER II crammed on the back shelf and be like "Holy poo poo! I've been looking for this one for ages! And it's still just list price! It's my lucky fuckin' day!".
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Dec 5, 2018 17:37
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Thomamelas posted:I was gonna suggest they move to PoD but then I realized that might be drat near impossible for them.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:41
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What do people think about this whole idea of purging all works from one’s life by an author due to them being a bad individual? I get the idea of not wanting to give them anymore money, though that seems like a kind of weird punitive capitalistic take on things. I also get the idea that allowing living people to continue to have influence in a community is bad when their influence is toxic. If their work is also toxic and problematic that’s another issue as well and I can see wanting to be rid of it. But we still draw from and use works by very personally and artistically problematic authors like HP Lovecraft. Is it a matter of waiting until the author is dead to enjoy their work? Or is there something deeper going on where people pick and choose things like watching Polanski films but refusing to watch Kevin Spacey stuff? Where is the line drawn? Note: this is not about censorship or free speech or any of that nonsense. This is asking about people’s thoughts on individual use of media by problematic authors.
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Dec 5, 2018 17:55
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fr0id posted:But we still draw from and use works by very personally and artistically problematic authors like HP Lovecraft. Who is "we"? Plenty of people refuse to read Lovecraft and don't want to engage with Cthulhu mythos stuff because Lovecraft was racist, just like there are plenty of people who don't care as long as they can shoot fishmen in the face. You cannot reduce something that is very personal (how comfortable someone is on an individual level with continuing to implicitly support an author by consuming their work) to some sort of objective standard of "what is it okay to do with books/movies/games by a known rapist/racist/transphobe/etc.?" Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 18:02
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For me, the thing about a novel is that it's a very personal work. Sure, you have editors, cover artists, managers, and so on, but it's fundamentally the work of the author in a way works in other mediums aren't. Like, a movie is highly dependent on its director, but also on its main actor(s), its other actors, its composer(s)... So when one person involved in the creation of a movie turns out to be a creep, I can stomach that. But when the main mind behind a novel—the guy who, in both a literal and figurative sense, put the words on the page—is outed as a monster, it's hard to think about anything else.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:07
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Lemon-Lime posted:Who is "we"? Plenty of people refuse to read Lovecraft and don't want to engage with Cthulhu mythos stuff because Lovecraft was racist, just like there are plenty of people who don't care as long as they can shoot fishmen in the face. Because in our modern world consumption of media has been brought as an identity to replace religion and ideology and therefore it shapes what you are and why you are going to pester and antagonize others over it.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:23
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Warthur posted:Why would this be the case? I realise there's issues with source files, etc., but surely the advantage of Palladium's production values remaining at firmly "OK for 1980s desktop publishing" levels over the years is that if you just knock out a PoD from a good-quality scan it won't actually look that much worse than the regular books? I assume it's that they don't have files for most of the books and would have to create them. They only started doing digital layout relatively recently. Can you do PoD from a PDF scan? I thought they were looking for design files?
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Dec 5, 2018 18:24
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Words on a page are thought control. Don't believe me? You just thought that sentence anyway. The thing about thought control is that it's not necessary for it to be like the movies, a one time hand wave these are not the droids we're looking for you can go about your business move along. It just needs to sneak thoughts, or a *way* of thinking, past your censor, and get you to start internalizing them. Read something enough times, you might start to be influenced by it, or if it's innocuous enough, you might never realize that when Ender's Game is talking about how all the Buggers must die, that the very same phrasing might be turned to mean gay people. Oops! Curate your mind.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:26
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MollyMetroid posted:Words on a page are thought control. Don't believe me? You just thought that sentence anyway. The thing about thought control is that it's not necessary for it to be like the movies, a one time hand wave these are not the droids we're looking for you can go about your business move along. It just needs to sneak thoughts, or a *way* of thinking, past your censor, and get you to start internalizing them. Read something enough times, you might start to be influenced by it, or if it's innocuous enough, you might never realize that when Ender's Game is talking about how all the Buggers must die, that the very same phrasing might be turned to mean gay people. Oops! So... gay people are actually a hive mind internet that allows for Descartian teleportation?
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Dec 5, 2018 18:28
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fr0id posted:What do people think about this whole idea of purging all works from one's life by an author due to them being a bad individual? I reject this framing. It's not consistent and doesn't need to be. We're allowed to like problematic stuff, if we recognize it's problematic, and as long as it's not setting up exclusionary situations, like misogyny racism etc in gaming materials. We're also allowed to decide to reject things if we can't separate the creator[s] from the material. There are people who would have wanted to kill me who I study closely (Ramon Llull), and people who want to kill me today who I stay way the gently caress away from (Orson Scott Card). I engage with and enjoy Lovecraft, largely because my experience of today's Lovecraftian scene includes things like this. I loved Cordwainer Smith until I read "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal", and now I can't even look at his stuff anymore; I used to be able to look past the pervasive gender essentialism, but now it's all turned into violent transphobia, and it doesn't matter that he's dead.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:29
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Kurieg posted:So... gay people are actually a hive mind internet that allows for Descartian teleportation? If you told me Orson Scott Card believed that I wouldn't bat an eye.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:32
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(Ender's Game is, funnily enough, extremely easy to read Ender as gay, but Card would and has outright rejected this reading with intense anger.)
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Dec 5, 2018 18:38
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MollyMetroid posted:Words on a page are thought control. Don't believe me? You just thought that sentence anyway. The thing about thought control is that it's not necessary for it to be like the movies, a one time hand wave these are not the droids we're looking for you can go about your business move along. It just needs to sneak thoughts, or a *way* of thinking, past your censor, and get you to start internalizing them. Read something enough times, you might start to be influenced by it, or if it's innocuous enough, you might never realize that when Ender's Game is talking about how all the Buggers must die, that the very same phrasing might be turned to mean gay people. Oops! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf_3ZTp4eG4&t=23s
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Dec 5, 2018 18:40
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Doesn't Ender spend portions of the later books homolusting after his brother? Not even getting into the weird poo poo that happens at the end of Xenocide.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:40
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Serf posted:our local game store has shelf full of 3e stuff at full price, but marked all the 4e books down to $10 when 5e was announced. i snapped up the ones i didn't own already and my other players have been picking off what's left ever since I was buying used 4E books from my FLGS on and off for a few months, but apparently someone noticed because they upped the price from like $10 each to almost their original market price and I stopped, because at that point I'd rather have a PDF.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:41
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fr0id posted:Note: this is not about censorship or free speech or any of that nonsense. This is asking about people’s thoughts on individual use of media by problematic authors. I draw the line at material support. There are plenty of absolutely horrible people whose art I still find interesting or get something valuable out of, but if I'm going to watch a Roman Polanski movie or whatever, I'm getting it from the library.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:43
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Kurieg posted:Doesn't Ender spend portions of the later books homolusting after his brother? Not even getting into the weird poo poo that happens at the end of Xenocide. Couldn't say, I never read past Ender's Game, and I only read that because it was for a class. (Also assigned was an essay on homosexual imagery in Ender's Game and a reading of Ender as gay which actively engaged and refuted a lot of the homophobic stuff from Card.)
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Dec 5, 2018 18:44
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Mors Rattus posted:(Ender's Game is, funnily enough, extremely easy to read Ender as gay, but Card would and has outright rejected this reading with intense anger.) The anger is intense because it hits too close to home, given that Card is likely either a bisexual or gay closeted pedophile. See: Songmaster.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:53
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Kestral posted:The anger is intense because it hits too close to home, given that Card is likely either a bisexual or gay closeted pedophile. See: Songmaster. Can we not accuse homophobes of being closeted?
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Dec 5, 2018 18:56
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Active support is a pretty useful starting point because it's actionable and fairly clear cut. If someone who is doing harmful things is going to directly benefit from how you're consuming or engaging with their works, don't do it. What constitutes direct benefit can get complicated but it's more contained. The other benefits are that if you're new to something you can generally deploy this strategy safely for yourself and others. But it is only a starting point.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:56
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Thomamelas posted:I assume it's that they don't have files for most of the books and would have to create them. They only started doing digital layout relatively recently. Can you do PoD from a PDF scan? I thought they were looking for design files? I assume from stuff like the Metamorphosis Alpha reprint that printing from scans is possible because they sure as poo poo didn't have files for that one, and I know that MA was available print-on-demand for a while. You probably won't get a pristine, gorgeous book with modern day top-tier production values out of it, but anyone expecting that from a book with "Palladium Books" proudly displayed on its cover was always going to be disappointed regardless of the printing method.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:57
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I refuse to believe the guy who wrote long descriptions of nubile boys bathing together is a paedophile
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Dec 5, 2018 18:58
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I had a collection of Busou Renkin manga volumes, by the guy who wrote Rurouni Kenshin. Then I found out he was an out and proud pedophile, and I didn’t want his books in my house any more
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Dec 5, 2018 19:38
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fr0id posted:What do people think about this whole idea of purging all works from one’s life by an author due to them being a bad individual? I get the idea of not wanting to give them anymore money, though that seems like a kind of weird punitive capitalistic take on things. I also get the idea that allowing living people to continue to have influence in a community is bad when their influence is toxic. If their work is also toxic and problematic that’s another issue as well and I can see wanting to be rid of it. But we still draw from and use works by very personally and artistically problematic authors like HP Lovecraft. Is it a matter of waiting until the author is dead to enjoy their work? Or is there something deeper going on where people pick and choose things like watching Polanski films but refusing to watch Kevin Spacey stuff? Where is the line drawn? Just go back and look at it and see how you feel now after you've grown and learned and experienced more, that's the best you can do. Sometimes you find you won't support the creator's works anymore because you can't stomach it, sometimes you just refuse to go back at all because the new lense is just that troubling, sometimes you have to accept your fave is problematic but some part of the work still means something to you. These are all valid reactions. And then you go from there, into your own personal debate over whether or not to vote with your wallet or do a piracy or however you'll approach whether or not to keep consuming the work. Everything is case by case. The most important thing you can do is take inspiration from a place that was once unequivocally your jam, figure out what you liked, and then broaden your horizons by dipping into other creators that do something similar but different enough. Alternately, use it as inspiration for your own work. Steal what works for you and then make it better. And if you keep enjoying it and keep consuming it, make sure that's your choice. Ignorance is never an excuse. Someday someone feeling punchy will call you on it and at the very least you want to be able to defend yourself with why you're still consuming it instead of getting in a highly regrettable slapfight argument. Just make sure you question works and creators when new info comes to light for you. So yeah, we still use Lovecraft to some extent but that's because something in his writing speaks to people. But if you look at what rolls down the line, what's better: the stuff that just tries to be More Lovecraft or the stuff that takes some aspect and uses it as a jumping off point? Delta Green, for example. Their take on the Tcho-Tcho is regrettable and pointless. It just keeps perpetuating the Lovecraft ideal of "sometines xenophobia is the answer" without questioning it or doing anything different besides "they now have antidefamation lawyers". Contrast their take on the King In Yellow and exploring surreal horror around the framework of "what if Hastur is just the universal constant of entropy given an anthropomorphic form". Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 19:48
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I honestly don't let myself worry about it too much because I have things that affect me more directly to worry about in my life. Generally the most I do when hearing that a creator of some work or content I enjoy has done something questionable is to go "... well poo poo." and most likely just not spend my money on their works anymore. People -saying- stuff tends to get less of a reaction out of me, mainly because I feel like it's possible to come back from having bad and problematic opinions and that someone isn't forever tainted simply by words.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:16
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fr0id posted:Where is the line drawn? It's a personal choice that's gonna vary by person. I don't fault anyone for doing it, I don't fault anyone for not doing it, I can understand both reactions and have done them both myself for different authors. You can't really draw a line for someone else.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:19
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i feel like the best answer is "you do you" like i know who i'm willing to give money to, there's no reason to turn it into a fight
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Dec 5, 2018 20:31
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Serf posted:i feel like the best answer is "you do you" Pretty much. I draw the line at "Alive and has committed serious crimes they have not atoned for in any way."
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Dec 5, 2018 20:48
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Warthur posted:
The work necessary to produce a PoD book from a scan that wouldn't be totally embarrassing is significant enough that I can't imagine it would be a huge time- and money-saver compared to just getting the thing retyped (or OCR scanned and fixed up). A benefit of Palladium's approach to book design is that recreating an old book without source files would actually be pretty easy, if a bit tedious. It's unclear exactly what source files they have for each given old, old book, but they probably at least have Word files for most or all of them. Probably more than that. In any case, they've gone to whatever level of trouble they need to in order to release a lot of OEF-tier PDFs of old products, which means they could totally go PoD with those files as well. (If you're going off of catalog information, keep in mind they have a number of products up on DTRPG listed as "scanned image" that are actually OEFs. In my experience this isn't too unusual because companies forget to update this info field on their refreshed products all the goddamn time.)
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Dec 5, 2018 20:53
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Serf posted:i feel like the best answer is "you do you" I think you’re right. I’m just curious what the “you” is for a folks on here. Because I think it does differ among people and a recurring theme on this subforum is mentioning people who “you shouldn’t give money to,” ie buy or use their products. It seems like a personal preference but it’s also an objective criterion for a lot of people as well. That and is there some kind of line drawn for how old a work is/whether it’s creator is dead. I also like the point about who the main creative force is. I mentioned movies as an example, but those have way more creative minds involved than just the director or stars.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:03
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There's a difference between "you shouldn't give money to Paradox because of the views of the people they associate with and protect" and "you should burn all your White Wolf games because of what Paradox is doing right now."
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Dec 5, 2018 21:06
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Alhireth-Hotep posted:I loved Cordwainer Smith until I read "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal", and now I can't even look at his stuff anymore; I used to be able to look past the pervasive gender essentialism, but now it's all turned into violent transphobia, and it doesn't matter that he's dead. Ugh, I'd managed to forget about this. Personally, if someone I object to is a headliner on a project, my interest vanishes. I haven't read Lovecraft himself in ages, but I've really enjoyed some stuff by women that interrogates his bullshit. I refused to back Armikrog when they announced Doug TenNappel would be brought on, and remember some goons being really upset when other people announced they were backing out in the KS thread. Of course when it's something that I'm already involved with, the calculu becomes more awkward.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:09
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fr0id posted:I think you’re right. I’m just curious what the “you” is for a folks on here. Because I think it does differ among people and a recurring theme on this subforum is mentioning people who “you shouldn’t give money to,” ie buy or use their products. It seems like a personal preference but it’s also an objective criterion for a lot of people as well. That and is there some kind of line drawn for how old a work is/whether it’s creator is dead. There's a lot of complexity on how to engage with problematic material, as to whether reclamation is possible or wise or necessary. It's a lot less complicated when the problem is the active behavior of the creator in question, regardless of what their work is like. When someone is using their resources and position to harass or abuse people, or promote definitely harmful ideas in the public space (e.g. Holocaust denial), it stops being so much about their work, and becomes about minimizing their ability to cause harm. In other words: Don't give money to people who are going to turn around and use it to intentionally hurt others.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:14
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fr0id posted:I think you’re right. I’m just curious what the “you” is for a folks on here. Because I think it does differ among people and a recurring theme on this subforum is mentioning people who “you shouldn’t give money to,” ie buy or use their products. It seems like a personal preference but it’s also an objective criterion for a lot of people as well. That and is there some kind of line drawn for how old a work is/whether it’s creator is dead. i reckon there's no harm in telling people what's up and trying to get them to stop supporting someone lovely
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Dec 5, 2018 21:28
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In actual RPG industry news, the Ennies have started rolling out some new rules. Podcasts are up first. Podcasters who submit must compile a 15 minute montage of best clips from their show: http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/rules-change-update-podcasts/ As a podcaster, welp. I understand their dilemma, but that is going to be a bitch to put together.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:43
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clockworkjoe posted:In actual RPG industry news, the Ennies have started rolling out some new rules. Podcasts are up first. Podcasters who submit must compile a 15 minute montage of best clips from their show: http://www.ennie-awards.com/blog/rules-change-update-podcasts/ Uh, I can understand wanting to maybe highlight one or two specific episodes so that a judge doesn't have to listen to hundreds of hours of content in order to be "fair", but a 15 minute demo reel, and then listen to whatever you want or even nothing else, seems ludicrously tiny as a "foundation." I look forward to judges being allowed to vote on books after reading the back cover and the introduction and, you know, anything else in the book if they find the time nbd.
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Dec 5, 2018 21:48
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That Old Tree posted:I look forward to judges being allowed to vote on books after reading the back cover and the introduction and, you know, anything else in the book if they find the time nbd. Isn't that more reading than the previous system, though?
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Dec 5, 2018 21:55
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homullus posted:Isn't that more reading than the previous system, though? I guess I am making some assumptions!
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Dec 5, 2018 21:57
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Lemon-Lime posted:There's a difference between "you shouldn't give money to Paradox because of the views of the people they associate with and protect" and "you should burn all your White Wolf games because of what Paradox is doing right now." Wait. Is Paradox doing something now? I thought they melted WW down and absorbed them to try and fix their gently caress-ups.
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Dec 5, 2018 22:45
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Arthil posted:Wait. They're still in the process of doing that AFAIK.
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Dec 6, 2018 00:00
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