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Thanlis posted:He’s been chatting recently about how attractive anarcho-nihilism is to him, which makes sense. His games are more coherent if you read them as accelerationist. This ties in to what I mentioned earlier re: him having a fascination with making games about violent revolution, emphasis on "violent," regardless of anything else. Yeah yeah, Sigmata jerks itself off about not killing cops when they're off duty but there's no real message or critical examination there, it's shallow as a puddle. All of his games basically seem to start at a premise of "I want to make a game about fighting, lemme roll some dice here, [SPACE CAPITALISTS] with [CYBER MAGIC]" and then he just sort of works backwards from there to wrap a premise around it.
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Nov 23, 2019 06:09
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Kurieg posted:He's a centrist and a believer in horseshoe theory. He's a staunch believer the only way the Left can defeat the far right is by convincing the center Right to join them, Kurieg posted:Yeah, one of the factions that you have to befriend in the game is the Not-KKK apparently he also can't identify what the far right loving is
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Nov 23, 2019 07:07
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Rhandhali posted:
Late to this, but just look at the image he's chosen to use to illustrate how he's doing away with racial modifiers. The orc is the exotic/savage/other compared to the human/elven/halfling civilised peoples with their fancy waistcoats, hats and working tools, compared to which the orc has a giant scimitar. It's far from the most egregious example, but it is definitely perpetuating that ongoing stereotype and depiction, so probably not the right choice for the message he was trying to convey.
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Nov 23, 2019 16:07
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MollyMetroid posted:Tangental question: If you're one of the Exalt types that begin as a baseline human before Exaltation (i.e. not Dragon Blood) can you be an exalted human who is, e.g., a tiny panda-spotted desert nomad? If so why has no one ever told me this about the setting?? in 2nd edition a Djala was one of the example characters, an acrobat-thief turned slave liberator named Faka Kun
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Nov 23, 2019 17:13
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Xiahou Dun posted:I get I should do more, but no need to lump me in with that walking trashfire.
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Nov 23, 2019 17:26
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1994 Toyota Celica posted:in 2nd edition a Djala was one of the example characters, an acrobat-thief turned slave liberator named Faka Kun OK she's cool
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Nov 23, 2019 17:30
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PST posted:Late to this, but just look at the image he's chosen to use to illustrate how he's doing away with racial modifiers. That image is from Zweihander right? It looks like he's going for the Warhammer ogre look, which is... maybe not the best idea??? 
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Nov 23, 2019 17:42
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Pretty sure that is an Ogre, Orcs aren't playable in Zwei (at least core)
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Nov 23, 2019 19:28
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Halloween Jack posted:Woah woah woah calm down there buddy. I'm not out there going to actions multiple times a week either. I mean Walker writes like he's never even been to a meeting of a local leftist organization chapter. His concept of the left comes entirely from Twitter. It's unhealthy. I was funning while joshing myself for sitting on my butt too much. No worries.
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Nov 23, 2019 20:39
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Mors Rattus posted:Anyone that finds nihilism attractive either doesn't understand the distinction between it and existentialism or is scum. Hi. Hello. The Nihilism Defender has logged on. Almost nobody using the word "Nihilism" has any loving clue what the word means. I don't mean that they don't understand the subtle intricacies of Nihilist philosophy, I mean they know less than nothing. They have actively wrong knowledge and no correct knowledge. They have negative amount of understanding if such a thing is possible. Existentialism for example. Most people who know of it understand it to be the opposite of Nihilism. One is about how there is no meaning to life so we should end it all, and the other is about how life is precious because we can make our own meaning in life. Except that's wrong actually. Existentialism isn't the opposite of Nihilism, it's the most popular Nihilist philosophical movement in history. Its the most widespread form of Nihilism in the entire world. As I said, most people know less than nothing about Nihilism. They think the exact opposite of the truth. Nihilism in reality is a, uh, complicated philosophical position (it isn't a philosophy unless you're talking specifically about Nietzsche or his immediate followers) that I won't try to fully define here, but which mostly just means skepticism or rejection towards claims of metaphysical purpose or knowledge. Specific types of Nihilism don't actually have to present together in the same philosophical framework. You can deny the hesitance of certain types of knowledge while accepting objective morality. You can be skeptical of the idea that any objective human perception exists while also thinking that the universe has objective material reality. These frameworks might contradict each other and still be Nihilistic philosophies, because Nihilism is a category of philosophy, not a specific philosophy (except for loving Nietzsche). Basically this is a long way of saying that if the Stigmata guy thinks the KKK aren't fascists, than he probably thinks "anarcho-nihilism" is some sort of seafood. Although no reasonable human being could believe that the KKK aren't fascists if they understood either word, so I think we should stop unassuming the Stigmata guy actually cares about being right about anything he talks about and isn't just trying to find excuses to sell his kinda-leftist themed game to libertarians. The Nihilism Defender has logged off.
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Nov 23, 2019 21:44
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Halloween Jack posted:Woah woah woah calm down there buddy. I'm not out there going to actions multiple times a week either. I mean Walker writes like he's never even been to a meeting of a local leftist organization chapter. His concept of the left comes entirely from Twitter. It's unhealthy. Nah, you can still trip on good leftists on twitter. He's takes his ideas of leftists completely from what neoliberals say.
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Nov 23, 2019 21:58
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I still think my favourite WTF moment in reading Sigmata is the Old Men's road to Damascus moment. Like, I can maybe buy the idea that prepper militias would turn against a fascist government instead of immediately signing up if the exact circumstances were right. But the thing where, once they get utterly clowned by the government, they collectively realise that the POCs and illegal immigrants and actual oppressed people of America were the *real* freedom fighters in the USA this whole time? What? How?
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Nov 24, 2019 00:40
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Can we get a quotation of that bit? It sounds amazing(ly bad).
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Nov 24, 2019 00:53
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Joe Slowboat posted:Can we get a quotation of that bit? It sounds amazing(ly bad). Sigmata page 36 posted:A few of the old men evaded execution and went
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Nov 24, 2019 01:33
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There's also this below quote:Sigmata page 184 posted:The Old Men were presumed dead or dormant until their There's this ongoing appeal to "pragmatism" throughout the book, where in the ideal resistance nobody has any firm commitment to any sort of ideology beyond "fascists bad". Actually fighting for something beyond this is a threat to solidarity.
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Nov 24, 2019 01:47
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I assume the Old Men here describe literally five or six guys, possibly with a secret combiner super robot.
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Nov 24, 2019 02:07
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[quote="Saguaro PI" post="500260070 There's this ongoing appeal to "pragmatism" throughout the book, where in the ideal resistance nobody has any firm commitment to any sort of ideology beyond "fascists bad". Actually fighting for something beyond this is a threat to solidarity. [/quote] Ah I see. He really did get his political thought entirely from Twitter.
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Nov 24, 2019 02:19
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It's like Aaron Sorkin presents 1984, where Big Brother is taken down by hallway speeches and reasoning with people who can't be reasoned with in real life.
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Nov 24, 2019 02:27
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I’m one of the nihilists who deliberate,y blurs the line with existentialism. Definitely a scumbag, though - I went to law school.
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Nov 24, 2019 02:36
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Also the Christian Dominonist group is somehow exempt from the Rules for Ethical Warfare because you're not supposed to harass like, average people, and take land, but they're forcing conversions at the point of heavy machinegun iirc. I don't have the pdf anymore so I can't check.
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Nov 24, 2019 02:45
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Kai Tave posted:This ties in to what I mentioned earlier re: him having a fascination with making games about violent revolution, emphasis on "violent," regardless of anything else. Yeah yeah, Sigmata jerks itself off about not killing cops when they're off duty but there's no real message or critical examination there, it's shallow as a puddle. All of his games basically seem to start at a premise of "I want to make a game about fighting, lemme roll some dice here, [SPACE CAPITALISTS] with [CYBER MAGIC]" and then he just sort of works backwards from there to wrap a premise around it. Yeah, whether or not he realizes it, he's really glorifying the transgressive violence.
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Nov 24, 2019 04:40
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Thanlis posted:Yeah, whether or not he realizes it, he's really glorifying the transgressive violence. And like others have said, a game all about killing fascists with cool cyberpowers wouldn't even necessarily be a bad thing, but the sigmata guy clearly wants his games to be more than just power fantasies to blow off steam with but a showcase for what a big political brain genius he is with an Important Message, except his messages always fuckin suck. He wants to have his cake and eat it too but he can't get either the political messaging or the political violence right.
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Nov 24, 2019 06:30
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Loomer posted:I’m one of the nihilists who deliberate,y blurs the line with existentialism. Definitely a scumbag, though - I went to law school. Ain't no such line was what I was saying. Ya legal scumbag.
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Nov 24, 2019 06:36
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Argas posted:Nah, you can still trip on good leftists on twitter. He's takes his ideas of leftists completely from what neoliberals say. He gets his twitter opinions from a single twitter person, actually. He is, as they say, bappin'
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Nov 24, 2019 08:12
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I'm sure you've all seen LOTFP's incredibly dumb "Play The Aristocrats with us at Dragonmeet and we'll give you holla holla get British pounds" twitter post https://twitter.com/LotFP/status/1197744352493109248 However, having looked at it around four times now, I only just realized it's a trace of the cover to Blue Oyster Cult's classic 1981 album Fire Of Unknown Origin (rejected as a soundtrack to the original Heavy Metal film, except for the track Veteran of the Psychic Wars) and not literally just the actual cover.  ♫ A fire of unknown origin Informed my baby of my creepy behavior online A fire of unknown origin Tried to get it through to me that she wasn't my baby but was in fact a person I was stalking to build a multi-hundred-dollar empire using her likeness♫
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Nov 24, 2019 09:16
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Are the red things by her head in the trace supposed to be hair? Because they look like cloth. Also, who in the hell put that much effort into a trace of the album cover, it's instantly recognizable. Just use the original if you're going to do that, don't make it worse.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:14
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Joe Slowboat posted:Are the red things by her head in the trace supposed to be hair? Because they look like cloth. Also, who in the hell put that much effort into a trace of the album cover, it's instantly recognizable. Just use the original if you're going to do that, don't make it worse.
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Nov 24, 2019 10:26
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TK_Nyarlathotep posted:I'm sure you've all seen LOTFP's incredibly dumb "Play The Aristocrats with us at Dragonmeet and we'll give you holla holla get British pounds" twitter post  People are really jumping at this chance. Edit:  Eat poo poo, Raggi.
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Nov 24, 2019 17:13
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After reading about Raggi and the Red Haired Stalkee, the graphics in that thread become even goddamn creepier.
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Nov 24, 2019 17:50
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Parkreiner posted:Hey, remember Sigmata? Amusingly I'm still blocked for giving him poo poo about just this. Rogue 7 posted:What's the problem with this guy? Because the "Overdue Apology" blurb looks like the sort of language that folks want to see. What greater context am I missing? Many of us in the thread and a large chunk of his kickstarter backers told him how hosed up his premise was when it showed up in the previews months ago. His response was to do an interview about how his 'anarchist friends' didn't have a problem with it. He is too far up his own rear end to even really understand why it's bad, and the apology above demonstrates it. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Nov 24, 2019 |
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Nov 24, 2019 18:15
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NGDBSS posted:I was just listening to an epsiode of Behind the Bastards about George Lincoln Rockwell, the monstrous founder of American fascism. It's darkly fascinating how he was the source for so many different aspects of it, like Holocaust denial or "white power". Does Sigmata mention him at all? Or is that another oversight by the writer? Anyway, Sigmata's alternate history starts with McCarthy going uncensured in 1954, and he became president in 1960. Rockwell presumably still died in '57, and is never mentioned. This leads to another strange situation wherein Sigmata contradicts itself. The Regime is not National Socialist, and scoffs at comparisons to Nazi Germany. But it also deliberately imported European football hooliganism to American sports, and has unofficially deputized "Neo-Nazi hooligans" to do its dirty work. The book uses that specific phrase several times. The Resistance doesn't support any actual revolutionary activity, but it does support using black bloc tactics to beat up Neo-Nazis. Thanlis posted:He’s been chatting recently about how attractive anarcho-nihilism is to him, which makes sense. His games are more coherent if you read them as accelerationist. Thanlis posted:Yeah, whether or not he realizes it, he's really glorifying the transgressive violence.
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Nov 25, 2019 17:56
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Ironically the best comparison point seems, to me, to be the activism and bad opinions of one Jonathan Franzen. See, in Franzen's book Freedom, and also more generally in his environmental activism, he constantly insists that doing the right thing and fighting the good fight is utterly doomed and purely a principled expression of objection to a world that will not be won. Franzen imagines his tepid liberalism as a radical recognition of hopelessness and yet he continues to halfheartedly do liberal things; that makes him, in his own conception, as heroic as a reasonable person can be. SIGMATA guy seems to imagine 'anarcho-nihilism' similarly. He doesn't think that the world is saveable or a better world is possible, or at least, he's tempted by the proposition that it's not. This is also why his tactics are such a bizarre mix of 'PUNCH NAZIS' and 'but never do anything a little bit questionable, at all, in pursuit of beating Nazis' because he doesn't really think Nazis can be beaten at his core. So doing things like bombing infrastructure, or assassinating Nazi civilian personnel, can never be justified tactically because tactically there is no victory. His 'kill the 1% for trying to escape the death virus, there must be no survivors' premise just states it baldly. You can't steal Elon Musk's space rocket. You can't build a better world. All you can do is lash out, and that lashing out is about expressing your moral outrage at the world, so you can't lash out in a way that undermines your moral superiority. He wants pats on the back for trying at all because he thinks all trying is equally doomed.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:19
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I can't even read a synopsis of a Franzen novel without my eyes glazing over. I'm not in favour of Maoist purges, but I will make an exception for Important Novels about rich white people having affairs.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:37
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His nihilists vs nazis is likely only a thing because of that throwaway line in Big Lebowski.
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Nov 25, 2019 18:49
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Joe Slowboat posted:Ironically the best comparison point seems, to me, to be the activism and bad opinions of one Jonathan Franzen.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:25
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Nessus posted:Man, I know some people who think like that. It's hosed up but I appreciate you crystallizing it like that, at least. It blows my mind because it doesn't even seem like they get some kind of strength out of it or have their worries relieved. It's like a fetishization of the state of doomed resistance. My theory on the desirability of it: Either it has the comforting aura of despair (it's less painful not to try, etc) which demotivates people from making a change, or they're specifically like Franzen. Franzen is, well, a rich white man, despite his recognition that the environment is worth saving and not-rich-white-men deserve rights. He's never going to bear the brunt of the world going to hell, and indeed he might personally have more freedom under American fascism provided he doesn't want to use that freedom on behalf of the less fortunate. Franzen in particular has this (Freedom has a virile, extremely Republican young man as a foil to the protagonist, and it's clear Franzen thinks the unexamined life of a privileged rear end in a top hat is pleasant, if theoretically unworthy) and it turns one's politics as a nominal ally into a kind of performative martyrdom. You're not really trying to do poo poo, but you know that in theory you should be trying to do something, so saying it's all doomed lets you off the hook. That's not a charitable read on Franzen, but I think it's accurate. Hopefully it's rarer than the depression version.
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Nov 25, 2019 23:33
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They think the the world is locked in an inescapable death struggle, a tragic (but romantic and cool) fated doom; and they believe this solely because it requires them to do nothing and appeals to their aesthetic sensibilities. Wait. I’ve cracked the code as to why Sigmata is so nice to fascists.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:30
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I'm actually presenting at a conference on the way apocalyptic struggle myths can be subverted into an excuse to do nothing (rather than to do everything, of course), so it was very interesting seeing your take, Joe.
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Nov 26, 2019 08:15
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Does anyone know what's up with the current discussion about the author of Bliss stage and their apparently multiple games about child loving? At first I mixed it up with the current thing about authors saying that writing pedophilic stuff is ok as long as it's fan fiction, but this seems to be a specific RPG thing. Thankfully I almost exclusively see people calling out defenders of it on my timeline but if anyone knows why this is a thing right now, I've only ever known of Bliss Stage as the "pedophilic mech game" so the fact that it's author would have support from indie RPG developers seem odd to me.
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Nov 26, 2019 08:33
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Hel posted:Does anyone know what's up with the current discussion about the author of Bliss stage and their apparently multiple games about child loving? At first I mixed it up with the current thing about authors saying that writing pedophilic stuff is ok as long as it's fan fiction, but this seems to be a specific RPG thing. Thankfully I almost exclusively see people calling out defenders of it on my timeline but if anyone knows why this is a thing right now, I've only ever known of Bliss Stage as the "pedophilic mech game" so the fact that it's author would have support from indie RPG developers seem odd to me. So, it actually started with Hot Guys Making Out, which presents itself as a very pastel and pleasant and sexy game about gay romance. And then it turns out that the romance has, at its core, a major age gap and a massive power dynamic between the two characters, in a way that resembles the lived, traumatic experience of some designers who recently read the book. Then people were like “hey, maybe we should stop following PH Lee” (the designer of these games) and that apparently crossed some line with some establishment types in the indie scene.
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Nov 26, 2019 08:41
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