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You are allowed to think that Adam Koebel probably shouldn't be recieving death threats while also thinking that Adam Koebel should probably not be allowed to operate in RPG circles anymore. Those two things are not conflicting opinions.
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Jun 10, 2020 14:50
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e: nm
Absurd Alhazred fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 14:52
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Something which clicked for me when reading that GDoc and Twitter thread: the point is made that a livestream has to think about the people watching, and even if the players at the table have an X-Card, the whole audience doesn't - all they can do is stop watching, and if they have to stop watching because the content is triggering them guess what, the harm's already done. Which is a strong argument to me that the X-Card can't be a be-all and end-all, and that in a livestreaming content you really can't throw in difficult themes which you have not very clearly flagged ahead of time. The X-Card is meant to give you the freedom to take the game in a dark direction whilst giving everyone else the freedom to veto that detour, and it works well for that, but in a streamed game it's not just about the needs of the immediate group at the table.
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Jun 10, 2020 15:00
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DoctorWhat posted:Real people can't be "coded" as queer. I don't know much of anything about Koebel's sexuality or gender but if you're talking about his hairstyle or nail polish, that's not "coding". Coding is a narrative technique where aesthetics like dress and voice and mannerisms are used to imply queerness in fictional characters. This is incorrect. Coding as a term is used for many related concepts about how people and ideas around culture are expressed; cultural coding in sociology DOES refer to how people project their own identities, while coding in media studies refers to how characters are signifying culture.
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Jun 10, 2020 15:06
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Absurd Alhazred posted:It's remarkable how good abusers are in weaponizing the toxicity of online discourse to turn themselves into victims. This is a thing that abusers are good at in general. Toxic online discourse does make it very easy, but they're really good at directing other people's perceptions in various contexts. There is a known abuser pattern of DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. Given the livestream nature of the incident, Koebel didn't have a ton of room to deny or attack. But even so, he put blame on the "lack of safety tools" and on the players for not communicating their distress - though they clearly did so. The latest apology is full of making himself the victim, too. Right down to borrowing the language (about not feeling safe in this community) that others have used when discussing GMs putting sexual assault into a game out of nowhere. To me, the original incident was so egregious that I wouldn't want to see Koebel running games any more or purchase his stuff. But the apology is also really troubling, because of how - even with time to reflect - he is drawing on extremely manipulative and abusive behaviors. It's a lot of red flags, especially when combined with how easily the assault type language came to Koebel in the original incident. Additionally, to echo Warthur, I think up front content warnings are especially important up front for streams and actual plays. The players and GM may have had a session zero and discussion establishing what they're okay with, but that doesn't mean the audience knows what they're in for. Sionak fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 15:32
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Warthur posted:Something which clicked for me when reading that GDoc and Twitter thread: the point is made that a livestream has to think about the people watching, and even if the players at the table have an X-Card, the whole audience doesn't - all they can do is stop watching, and if they have to stop watching because the content is triggering them guess what, the harm's already done. Vana's point on that back to Adam really struck me, too. I think it's a bad sign that even to the extent that he's apologized he hasn't addressed that aspect, since now we know that it was the first thing that Vana said to him about the issue - even more than touching on her personal reaction.
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Jun 10, 2020 15:40
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There's something almost textbook about that Sage LaTorra tweetstream: "Now I'm not trying to minimize the harm that he did, or sound like I'm making excuses for him, or saying that the backlash he's endured is worse than his original offense, BUT [proceeds to minimize the harm done, make excuses, and say the backlash is worse than the original offense]" What a Good Ally. gently caress off all the way forever, Sage.
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Jun 10, 2020 15:59
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FMguru posted:There's something almost textbook about that Sage LaTorra tweetstream: It honestly didn't surprise me and it's about what I expected out of him. Dude is the definition of milquetoast and him trying to speak out of both sides of his mouth is peak Sage bullshit.
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Jun 10, 2020 16:07
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Froghammer posted:You are allowed to think that Adam Koebel probably shouldn't be recieving death threats while also thinking that Adam Koebel should probably not be allowed to operate in RPG circles anymore. Those two things are not conflicting opinions. you can think whatever the gently caress you want but if you choose to use your twitter to say 'look I'm not saying Adam didn't do bad BUT' it's gonna result in people asking 'why the gently caress are we even talking about this though'
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Jun 10, 2020 16:24
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My overaching question is who the hell is Adam Koebel?
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Jun 10, 2020 16:58
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:My overaching question is who the hell is Adam Koebel? A miserable pile of secrets
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Jun 10, 2020 16:58
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:My overaching question is who the hell is Adam Koebel? The biggest thing Adam Koebel and Sage LaTorra are known for is being the designers of Dungeon World, the D&D hack for Apocalypse World. Adam has GM'ed a bunch of actual play streams of Dungeon World and other games for Roll Play, too.
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Jun 10, 2020 17:19
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And like, giant actual play streams. More than one of them was officially sponsored by Roll20.
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Jun 10, 2020 20:56
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Handful of racist and questionable Magic cards banned and removed from the database. Seems like a good and necessary first step. We'll see, of course, whether this is a step on the road to doing better, or the bare minimum to try to get people to stop talking about them. Given the Mearls thing I'm not super optimistic, but Magic being a bigger brand, maybe threats to it will be more powerful.
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Jun 10, 2020 22:30
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Without them directly addressing any of the endemic racism people have pointed out in the last week or so, this reads as a low-effort, cynical ploy to placate people so they'll stop getting shouted at.
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Jun 10, 2020 22:38
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Lemon-Lime posted:Without them directly addressing any of the endemic racism people have pointed out in the last week or so, this reads as a low-effort, cynical ploy to placate people so they'll stop getting shouted at. Agreed. They call it the first step, but a lot of the same folks who called them out to begin with seem rightly skeptical, so hopefully they don't get away with it if so.
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Jun 10, 2020 22:53
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Is stone-throwing devils some racist term I'm not aware of. I get all the others. Though I feel jihad in the context of an arabian nights set wouldn't be an issue if not for racist Crusader King player types.
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Jun 10, 2020 22:57
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Terrible Opinions posted:Is stone-throwing devils some racist term I'm not aware of. I get all the others. Though I feel jihad in the context of an arabian nights set wouldn't be an issue if not for racist Crusader King player types. It's an obscure islamophobic slur.
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Jun 10, 2020 22:59
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Ah well learn something new and unfortunate every day.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:01
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Lumbermouth posted:And like, giant actual play streams. More than one of them was officially sponsored by Roll20. I wouldn't say Giant, but yeah. I loving loved Jace Beleren Must Die. Speaking of the cast had their session zero of the new Theros campaign with TK GMing last night. Not having that dude didn't really change much turns out. Still a very fun cast and stream
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Jun 10, 2020 23:04
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Ultiville posted:Handful of racist and questionable Magic cards banned and removed from the database. Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:08
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spectralent posted:Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist. The original art was literally crusaders.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:09
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spectralent posted:Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist. It makes a bit of sense in so far as crusade is referring to an actual historical event where mass murder was committed on the basis of religion and/or race. Like yes it's expanded beyond that in language, but it does have a directly ascribable meaning.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:10
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Kurieg posted:The original art was literally crusaders. Oh. I found Elspeth 
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Jun 10, 2020 23:12
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spectralent posted:Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist. It feels in part like they just decided to ban all the old cards that they thought someone might call them out for, on the grounds that doing it all at once looks less bad. Which is probably correct if you're acting in bad faith or good faith, but still makes me suspicious. Alternately, they decided Jihad/Crusade were both going to go despite both being theoretically about bigger things, just because nowhere near everyone is going to know that. (Of course, Magic is still full of various Crusaders and stuff like that, but presumably the made-up words make it better?)
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Jun 10, 2020 23:14
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Ultiville posted:It feels in part like they just decided to ban all the old cards that they thought someone might call them out for, on the grounds that doing it all at once looks less bad. Which is probably correct if you're acting in bad faith or good faith, but still makes me suspicious. Yeah, it's just panic and image management. To repeat myself from another thread and elaborate, here's a recent card that I'd bet anything will be remaining in Magic:  ...despite the fact that the medieval crusades are long over while the white supremacist hit squad commonly known as "the police" terrorizes America to this day. The flavor text of that card even winks and nudges at you at how cruel and malignant we all know the police really are! And arrests are much closer than crusades to the mass uprisings and political awakenings going across the country. So why is Wizards getting rid of old cards no one plays with or even can play with, but not, say, the entire Azorius guild from the hugely popular Ravnica block? Real mystery. Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 23:22 on Jun 10, 2020 |
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Jun 10, 2020 23:19
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Ferrinus posted:Yeah, it's just panic and image management. To repeat myself from another thread and elaborate, here's a recent card that I'd bet anything will be remaining in Magic: Did... did you read the flavor text on that card? Like, by no means am I saying that Wizards is going to end up doing the right thing, but the Azorius Senate is not presented as being the good guys of Ravnica.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:45
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spectralent posted:Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist. It has a picture of Christian crusaders and the text says "all white creatures get +1/+1. The effect is fine on its own. The name is arguably ok. The image's iconography doesn't make sense for a fantasy setting. The combination of the three is very definitely bad.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:45
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admanb posted:Did... did you read the flavor text on that card? Did... did you read my post, in which I mention the flavor text on that card? "Crusade" doesn't have flavor text. If it had flavor text that said "I love killing Muslims!" -Crusader saying translating to 'I love killing Muslims' do you think it'd go unbanned? Separately, do you think that the police being obviously corrupt and chummy with a totally slanted "justice" system is a bug and not a feature? That white supremacists are shocked and scandalized, rather than quietly appreciative, when stories come out about body cameras mysteriously turning off or people getting vindicated by new evidence after they were already executed? European crusaders and modern-day (or modern-day-ish) cops are obviously both stupendously evil. Why does one remain in the game and not the other?
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Jun 10, 2020 23:51
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Saying they should ban everything that's a reference to modern politics is also both impossible and has unfortunate shades of "politics out of gaming," though. It is important that Arrest doesn't portray what's going on as a good thing. There's a conversation to be had about triggers and how overt this kind of commentary should be, and it's an interesting and important one I'm not qualified to talk about definitively. It's possible a whole bunch more Magic cards are on the wrong side of it; that's certainly a possible outcome. But trying to make cards that never refer in any way to real world history or current affairs can't be the line, because that's impossible - all art is political. The problem with at least most of the cards they got rid of today is that they were either too directly related to modern issues (actual Klan meeting on a card), had straight-up slurs or similar, or appeared completely uncritical of the problematic things they depicted.
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Jun 10, 2020 23:59
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Mine was a bad point poorly made. I had a follow-up but Ultiville already wrote it as well as I could've.
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Jun 11, 2020 00:05
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spectralent posted:Man, do the white supremacists just have the word Crusade now? That card looked fairly inoffensive, and I feel like it's not the kind of word I just automatically assume anyone using it is a white supremacist. I am gonna note that treating the Crusades as not a horrific series of wars driven by religious hatred that led to massacres of Jews and Muslims is, y’know, a denial of historic fact. The Crusades belong to white supremacy in the sense that those guys have identified them as a good thing.
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Jun 11, 2020 00:05
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Ultiville posted:Saying they should ban everything that's a reference to modern politics is also both impossible and has unfortunate shades of "politics out of gaming," though. I'm with you to a point here - if I was an MtG art director I would not allow an artist to paint a lynching and if I was on the creative team I wouldn't let people put racial slurs into flavor text. I'd see this as part of a curation job - it's a game for a certain audience meant to evoke certain feelings, and depictions of those things are inappropriate, just like depictions of, I don't know, sex acts would be. However, I think the last criterion you name there - "uncritical of problematic things depicted" - is a mug's game. For instance, here's another printing of Arrest:  Get a load of that flavor text. Just chew on that in the current historical context for a second. Yikes! But then, here's another:  Pretty tame! If I was the art/creative director, I would probably avoid reprinting the second one in the current moment but let the first and third go through. However, we're talking about cards getting both banned from all organized play and removed from Gatherer. If that's what we do with problematic references to politics and history, there's absolutely no way Arrest gets to live on in any form. And, like, Crusade doesn't actually have flavor text at all. Would it have made it through if it had flavor text about how cruel crusaders were? I'm betting no.
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Jun 11, 2020 00:11
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Jimbozig posted:It has a picture of Christian crusaders and the text says "all white creatures get +1/+1. This isn't quite true. Armoured dudes with cross tabards was a very popular fantasy image for awhile (there was a big push towards historical imagery/references in the 90s in fantasy), and was through the first printing of Crusade in 1994 or whatever. Sure, the art form's moved on, but the art is not anything anyone would have bat an eye at in and of itself in that card's original audience.
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Jun 11, 2020 00:17
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I think it's maybe tossing out that Crusades card is being cautious, but it's also the case that positive or even neutral-seeming references to the crusades are common coin in white supremacist circles, explicitly - the Christchurch shooter, iirc, put Crusader references and slogans on his gun. Meanwhile, 'the police are corrupt' may be something white supremacists will ultimately appreciate, but it's not something they openly project as part of their effort to create a Clash of Civilizations framework under which white 'Christendom' is imagined as under threat from without. Like, antiracist medieval studies scholars are pretty concerned with how the 'Crusader' imagery and concept has become an ideological referent of note in white supremacist violence. So, I can understand if people were expressing 'it's kinda hosed up to have a card that just presents Crusades as a unifying white cause against an external enemy.'
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Jun 11, 2020 00:50
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"Deus vult" has been a major white supremacist rallying cry for years. The Norway shooter also leaned heavily into crusades imagery and ideology when he wrote his manifesto. The crusades are like catnip for the Islamophobes of Europe and the US.
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Jun 11, 2020 01:29
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I am the #1 fan of the Mark Poole bucket helm but I'm very okay to see that particular combo of cards go. I wonder if they'd ever do functional reprints of these to get them "back in circulation"?
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Jun 11, 2020 01:36
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BaronVanAwesome posted:I am the #1 fan of the Mark Poole bucket helm but I'm very okay to see that particular combo of cards go. Probably no reason to, they're such old cards that they either work in strange ways compared to modern ones (Crusade helps your opponent's white creatures, not just yours), are just unplayably bad, or are generic enough that really similar effects are already available and, more importantly, likely to continue to be made. Some of them are also on the reserved list, which means they wouldn't print cards too functionally similar regardless.
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Jun 11, 2020 01:45
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Joe Slowboat posted:I think it's maybe tossing out that Crusades card is being cautious, but it's also the case that positive or even neutral-seeming references to the crusades are common coin in white supremacist circles, explicitly - the Christchurch shooter, iirc, put Crusader references and slogans on his gun. Meanwhile, 'the police are corrupt' may be something white supremacists will ultimately appreciate, but it's not something they openly project as part of their effort to create a Clash of Civilizations framework under which white 'Christendom' is imagined as under threat from without. If this is an operative difference, and I don't actually think that it is, then it's definitely one that points in the favor of keeping Crusade and banning the entirety of the Azorius guild. Like, okay, modern day white supremacists like the crusaders of old. But white supremacists actually, factually are the cops! The actual aesthetic trends and signifiers used by reactionaries are very protean. If you went back five or ten years, could you have predicted that the "OK" hand sign would be a way for racists to wink at each other? How about a sad green frog? "Clown world"? Now we have to get rid of Simic and Rakdos! On the other hand, you've got the actual material machinery of white supremacy: cops, soldiers, landlords, businessmen. Why do these get to stick around while it's an endless parade of temporary, fashionable shibboleths that we have to set our sights on? It's punching at shadows; you'll never succeed in actually purifying the card list by pruning away all the bad stuff. I say ignore Gatherer entirely (well, okay, actually removing Invoke Prejudice and the cards with slurs in their names is a good idea) and instead institute strict hiring quotas while banning cops from tournaments.
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Jun 11, 2020 01:50
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Glorious anthem is more or less a strict upgrade to crusade, the only one of those cards that is still in regular use. Stone-throwing devils has a very niche use in one alternative wincon that i have never seen outside of EDH, and that's it.
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Jun 11, 2020 01:50
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