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Cessna posted:It trivializes war and makes it look like a sport, with a side helping of sexualized young girls for extra creepiness. I got the impression they're just playing airsoft with tanks as a school sport. Is there any actual war element to the show?
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May 3, 2019 19:23
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I only watched the first episode and I'm not going to defend it but it takes place in a world where nonlethal tank fighting is a high school competitive sport. Maybe that still trivializes war and doesn't say great things about the kind of people who are into it, but it's still better than framing an actual war story as a sport.
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May 3, 2019 19:35
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moths posted:I got the impression they're just playing airsoft with tanks as a school sport. Is there any actual war element to the show? That's the problem. They're playing war with weapons, but no one gets hurt or killed. I suppose you could say the same of, say, fencing or archery, but AFVs are a bit too close to home.
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May 3, 2019 19:40
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Everybody draws their lines differently, but that seems deliberately inoffensive to me. Like, less offensive than GI Joe or the A-Team in terms of portraying violence and its consequences. E: I'm absolutely not saying you're wrong for feeling any way about it - I don't think they intend to portray tank battles as war. (...which makes about as much sense as anything else in anime.) moths fucked around with this message at 19:53 on May 3, 2019 |
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May 3, 2019 19:48
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I think the biggest issue is making stuff related to World War II "fun" at a time when living memory of the war and Holocaust is fading, there are Nazis and Nazi defenders in the largest quantities since Nuremberg, and unfortunate numbers of people deny atrocities (or worse, think they were good) and identify with the side that had "cool" weapons and uniforms. (personally I think German uniforms make you look like edgy Santa Claus but I guess opinions vary) This already happens with wargames but I guess anime fuelled by Japan's busted-rear end perspective of World War II created inroads and that's why there's a big 4chan anime nazi infestation, accelerated by anonymity and a desire to out-edge the last guy who posted
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May 3, 2019 19:49
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moths posted:Everybody draws their lines differently, but that seems deliberately inoffensive to me. I'm not saying you're wrong to like it (if you do), I'm saying I don't like it. No harm, no foul, etc.
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May 3, 2019 19:58
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BattleMaster posted:This already happens with wargames but I guess anime fuelled by Japan's busted-rear end perspective of World War II created inroads and that's why there's a big 4chan anime nazi infestation, accelerated by anonymity and a desire to out-edge the last guy who posted This smells fallacious to me. There aren't anime Nazi fans on 4chan because Japan makes it, there are anime Nazi fans on 4chan because they're Nazis who watch anime. I've never been enough of an otaku to care about Japan's perspective on WW2 outside of wanting them to admit to Nanking and their atrocities under the ROC, PGROC, RNGROC, etc, but making cutesy anime out of whatever is their cultural schtick. Hetalia: Axis Powers is not fasc apologism. As someone who still browses /tg/ when really bored, at least some of the boards (/lit/, /tg/, /fa/) are reasonably free of fasc bs, and dogpile /pol/ posters who come in and rant about ((them)), degeneracy, whatever. 4chan is still a cesspool of 17-24 year olds who have no agency and blame other people for the fact that they're lazy, stupid gits who can't make anything of their lives. So there are a lot of Nazis. They're not Nazis because they saw anime. They're Nazis for the same reason as 19 year old MAGA+camo wearing know-nothings from rural Ohio are fasc (not trying to offend anyone, just generalizing people who attend "Unite the Right" and similar) 4chan is an epitomization of "Anti-semite and Jew". Don't let them off the hook by passing it off as anime's fault.
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May 3, 2019 20:20
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BattleMaster posted:(personally I think German uniforms make you look like edgy Santa Claus but I guess opinions vary)
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May 3, 2019 20:33
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You should probably look up Japan's growing nationalist and WW2-apologist movements.
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May 3, 2019 20:34
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golden bubble posted:GuP is a standard moe high school sports anime with an extremely thin layer of military paint on top. Pretty much all the characters and plot points come straight out of sports shows. It's literally this. Basically the creator made a sports anime except instead of something normal like Rugby or Ping-Pong, it's a made up sport called "Senshado" which is basically just light war games using only tanks. Every school is on giant city sized aircraft carriers and everyone is Japanese despite all but the protagonist school basing themselves and their tanks off of a participating WW2 country (the German based school uses an iron cross as its logo, the Soviet based school uses a hammer and sickle except made from a T-square and angled rulers, the American based school is basically a blue star with a lightning bolt). It's not meant to be taken seriously.
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May 3, 2019 20:36
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Double posting, but regarding playing Nazi German in TG stuff, I want to bring up the board game Quartermaster General which has players playing the major powers in WW2: Germany, Italy and Japan vs. UK, USSR and the USA. Unfortunately the game has balance issues, even after two expansions where unless the Axis can somehow cripple one of the Allied players within the first few turns or one of the Allied players is just not playing at the same level as the rest, the Allies eventually just pull ahead in the long game. It sorta ironically simulates WW2 in this way since the part of that long game pulling ahead is the US player getting its engine together and just making GBS threads forces onto the board while Italy runs out of steam and collapses in on itself.
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May 3, 2019 20:43
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I consider this great game design, in the same way as playing Paths of Glory mirrors the actual campaigns of WW1 most of the time
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May 3, 2019 21:34
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FMguru posted:Going through the image gallery for that Barabarosa game at BGG is just jaw-dropping: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72809/barbarossa/images (probably NSFW) Shame that the German army apparently didn't have enough fabric to make pants for their troops to wear. I'm pretty sure buying that game puts you on several government watchlist.
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May 3, 2019 21:45
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admanb posted:You should probably look up Japan's growing nationalist and WW2-apologist movements. "Growing"? The "Japan was unjustifiably nuked for literally no reason, where's Nanking haven't heard of it" thing's been there forever, Japan never got the same kind of treatment Germany did and the conservative stranglehold on the country put to rest any chance it might have undergone the second introspective wave of denazification later. The fact that there's young people getting into it (and media to cater to them) isn't surprising when there's been people with the same beliefs in government long enough for textbooks to include warcrimes denial.
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May 3, 2019 21:49
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spectralent posted:"Growing"? The "Japan was unjustifiably nuked for literally no reason, where's Nanking haven't heard of it" thing's been there forever, Japan never got the same kind of treatment Germany did and the conservative stranglehold on the country put to rest any chance it might have undergone the second introspective wave of denazification later. The fact that there's young people getting into it (and media to cater to them) isn't surprising when there's been people with the same beliefs in government long enough for textbooks to include warcrimes denial. Well... yeah it's been there the whole time, but also it's growing. Thus, "growing."
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May 3, 2019 22:13
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admanb posted:Well... yeah it's been there the whole time, but also it's growing. Thus, "growing." Sure. But growing is wording that implies Japan's undergoing a shift; it's not, really, Japan has had an ultranationalist problem for decades. It's the stagflation of nazis.
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May 3, 2019 22:22
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PoptartsNinja posted:Probably not directly, I've never met Pardoe in person and he comes across as something of a misguided history buff. That does mean he's possibly fascist adjacent, but I don't think it's born of malice or racism directly. Pardoe and Coleman just have a thing for the "plucky underdog" which is why both really favored the Capellan Confederation. BattleTech's setting has some inherently fascist elements but does a pretty good job (directly or indirectly) pointing out the flaws with feudalism and fascism. Victor Steiner-Davion's cronyism is ruinous for his nation, Kai Allard-Liao is the Great Man who Does Nothing, Daoshen Liao is a (highly capable and effective) madman whose belief in his own divinity just so happens to translate to the general betterment of his state (he believes he is the physical embodiment of the Capellan Confederation). The nobility who are the most openly "heroic" are always shown to be absolute monsters. I remember really loving Roar of Honor
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May 4, 2019 00:01
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FMguru posted:Going through the image gallery for that Barabarosa game at BGG is just jaw-dropping: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72809/barbarossa/images (probably NSFW) I don’t know what I expected, but I regret clicking that link
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May 4, 2019 01:34
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spectralent posted:Sure. But growing is wording that implies Japan's undergoing a shift; it's not, really, Japan has had an ultranationalist problem for decades. It's the stagflation of nazis. My grandfather was a POW captured at Singapore. He came home, settled down and made a family. I remember spending an afternoon in the Burma Star Social club with him. He was quite sober. His mates were not. They walked outside and saw a Kawazaki motorbike. They destroyed it by kicking and jumping. They were perfectly respectable elderly gents wearing suits and ties. This was in the 80s. The police turned up but nobody saw anything. There used to be an utter hatred of the Japanese in certain parts of the UK, more so than the Germans.
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May 4, 2019 01:58
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This is tangentially related to the discussion sparked regarding Lancer and the openness of its politics, but Mobile Frame Zero, the tactical minis mech game using Lego-built units by Vince Baker and Joshua Newman, has a section that basically boils down to "if you want to use any of our trademarks in your own fanworks or publications then you can't use it for anything that glorifies authoritarianism, fascism, and don't name your stuff after anything to do with Nazis."
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May 4, 2019 02:19
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wtf is this drink bleach fucker (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 4, 2019 02:35
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JohnLovely posted:wtf is this Extremely normal reaction to someone criticising 4chan. What?
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May 4, 2019 02:43
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I think it is fair to say that minimizing the actual reactionary/conservative political forces in Japan and Japanese culture is a serious mistake, and also, that 4chan is a cesspool. I don't think those things are at all contradictory. e: I guess 'revisionist' might be a more accurate way of describing the thing we're discussing? The impulse to write war crimes out of history and identify with the Axis, on the level of pop cultural nonsense. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 03:15 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 03:05
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PupsOfWar posted:whereas mongolians and other central-asian steppe peoples are still around And still awesome, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfi5JS6HTH0 That's a great documentary and you should find a way to watch it.
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May 4, 2019 04:12
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PoptartsNinja posted:
Got any context on that? The only political stuff I remember from him is writing in the character of his supervillain about which GOP presidential candidate would be most evil, and hating the poo poo out of Scientology. Edit: Quick look at Twitter has him bitching at Buttigeg about not being fast enough to push for universal healthcare, and responding positively to calls to impeach Trump, so I think you are off base on this one. Further digging, this is the same Mike Stackpole that quit the GAMA BoD as a member emeritus in January over the Board being dysfunctional and their handling of Stephan Brissaud (President of the Board and COO of Iello, who make King of Tokyo) assaulting a security guard at GenCon because she stopped him when he showed up late and refused to show his badge to get into the con floor. http://www.michaelastackpole.com/?p=3657 posted:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 06:55 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 06:33
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FMguru posted:Going through the image gallery for that Barabarosa game at BGG is just jaw-dropping: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/72809/barbarossa/images (probably NSFW) There was an alternate printing that dropped the anime girls and instead used real WW2 photos. I'm... honestly not sure if that was an improvement or not.
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May 4, 2019 08:22
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Xelkelvos posted:It's literally this. Basically the creator made a sports anime except instead of something normal like Rugby or Ping-Pong, it's a made up sport called "Senshado" which is basically just light war games using only tanks. Every school is on giant city sized aircraft carriers and everyone is Japanese despite all but the protagonist school basing themselves and their tanks off of a participating WW2 country (the German based school uses an iron cross as its logo, the Soviet based school uses a hammer and sickle except made from a T-square and angled rulers, the American based school is basically a blue star with a lightning bolt). I'm not into sports anime or This Thing plus High School Girls anime and I've only watched the following videos about GuP. Apparently there is a significant amount of historical detail written into the show but it's presented in such a way as to only be recognizable by someone who is already familiar with the background. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyVkSgH6nZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF1ASuON9sw The Potential History guy came up before when we were talking about the failure that is Nazi Germany's war machine. Someone said that he's regurgitated some bad talking points but on the whole doesn't seem to be a Bad Guy? Idk, I've not caught him saying dumb things on his videos... (desire to know more intensifies). I would probably watch GuP for funsies. I wouldn't know where to watch it though. DiHK fucked around with this message at 14:06 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 14:02
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Xelkelvos posted:It's literally this. Basically the creator made a sports anime except instead of something normal like Rugby or Ping-Pong, it's a made up sport called "Senshado" which is basically just light war games using only tanks. Every school is on giant city sized aircraft carriers and everyone is Japanese despite all but the protagonist school basing themselves and their tanks off of a participating WW2 country (the German based school uses an iron cross as its logo, the Soviet based school uses a hammer and sickle except made from a T-square and angled rulers, the American based school is basically a blue star with a lightning bolt). Yeah see, my problem is that if it's really just a "sport" anime and the tanks are merely tools then why do the crews act like stereotypes of the real nations soldiers they obviously represent? Like, check out the "Russian" schools wiki page. "The school environment is highly punitive, with persistent references to "purges", "gulags" and "Siberian mines" as forms of punishments for those who upset the commander. The liberal and subjective manner in which these punishments are distributed invokes many taboo actions or opinions, often regarding Katyusha's height. Katyusha's excessive disciplining is balanced by vice-commander Nonna, who considerately scales down the sentence to more traditional punishments, like forced labor or "extra homework in a classroom without windows"." That's just the first one I've checked admittedly, but if the rest are at all like this I would not at all be surprised.
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May 4, 2019 15:17
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Liquid Communism posted:Got any context on that? The only political stuff I remember from him is writing in the character of his supervillain about which GOP presidential candidate would be most evil, and hating the poo poo out of Scientology. I would be happy to be wrong! I'm basing it on a reading of MWDA: Ghost War wherein the main character gleefully beats and murders (and then infiltrates and continues to murder) a group of left-wing environmental activists in support of a fascist state. If that character wasn't representative of his opinions, or if his opinions have since changed or mellowed I would be thrilled because I still genuinely like and appreciate his work. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 15:24 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 15:22
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PinheadSlim posted:Yeah see, my problem is that if it's really just a "sport" anime and the tanks are merely tools then why do the crews act like stereotypes of the real nations soldiers they obviously represent? Yeah, I guess that was my point. The writers room clearly had some history buff going on. At face value, good job on them, but I don't know if it ends up glorifying things it shouldn't.
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May 4, 2019 15:27
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DiHK posted:Yeah, I guess that was my point. The writers room clearly had some history buff going on. At face value, good job on them, but I don't know if it ends up glorifying things it shouldn't. The funny thing is, in this universe WW2 never happened but everyone still has aircraft carriers and WW2 tanks. Just because something isn't made to be taken seriously doesn't mean it isn't disrespectful or cringey. My uncle was ripped apart by flak, kept his B24 level long enough for the survivng crew to bail out, then an Me410 strafed his burning plane shredding it to pieces. I don't understand how someone can see that and think "I should replace and sexualize the crews with teenage girls and remove all the serious context from this for a goofy sports show. This is a cool and good idea." Edit : You can try to say miniature war games or video games are also removing context from WW2, but you can be assured no one is jerking off to it. Punkinhead fucked around with this message at 15:39 on May 4, 2019 |
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May 4, 2019 15:35
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I really wish I still believed that!
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May 4, 2019 16:16
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PinheadSlim posted:I don't understand how someone can see that and think "I should replace and sexualize the crews with teenage girls and remove all the serious context from this for a goofy sports show. This is a cool and good idea." Well said, agreed.
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May 4, 2019 17:02
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PinheadSlim posted:Yeah see, my problem is that if it's really just a "sport" anime and the tanks are merely tools then why do the crews act like stereotypes of the real nations soldiers they obviously represent? I don't think the series has ever shown anything like Gulags and stuff for the school. Only mentioned possibly not meant to be taken seriously as they're still Japanese high schools at the end of the day. The windowless classroom thing is likely what tube "gulag" actually is, but the day to day school life at most of the schools is so barely touched on.
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May 4, 2019 17:28
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Something for the Positive side of the thread: I met the guys from Zombiesmith at some convention (Dragon*Con? Maybe one of the big ones that actually still deals with trad-gaming) and they seemed like a right proper nice fellows. They tried explaining to a much younger me about their WW1 tactics game (This Quar's War https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43555/quars-war) set on an alien planet with fictional races.While there are some actual historical parallels for sure, the whole idea of catering to a group that wants to play with WW1 tactics and technology but without glorifying or representing imperial or authoritarian fash was lost on me at the time. I can greatly appreciate the effort now. DiHK posted:I'm not into sports anime or This Thing plus High School Girls anime I read this as "The Thing plus High School Girls" and got excited.
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May 4, 2019 17:42
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PinheadSlim posted:
Optimism is healthy.
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May 4, 2019 17:54
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Brock Samsonite posted:Something for the Positive side of the thread: haha ant eaters, man im buying the $200 starter set some time
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May 4, 2019 18:32
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Cessna posted:That's the problem. They're playing war with weapons, but no one gets hurt or killed. 
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May 4, 2019 19:43
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To a degree, people making entertainment out of awful stuff shows people moving on from that stuff, or having a distance from it in the first place, and it can be problematic and hurtful when we don't all have that same distance, but it's also natural, human, and I don't think particularly sinister. People can make games out of war because they've never had to experience war, and that's a good thing.
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May 4, 2019 20:01
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WW2 is a seminal event. I'm GenX, and I don't have any relatives outside of grand-whatever who fought in WW2, but there are still living concentration camp guards, JIA troops, etc. "This generation hasn't lived through war" is a good thing, but isn't an excuse for making sexualized minimizations of one of the worst things that ever happened
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May 4, 2019 21:06
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