Hogwarts Legacy - Whimsical Wizardry

Gordon_4

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So meanwhile, here I am checking my followed channels on Youtube, and lo and behold...


Minimization/rationalization of what happened here because "it's okay when we do it" in 3...2...1...
I'd find it in me to give more of a shit if this hadn't been the default for internet discourse for the past fifteen fucking years. And when people complained or tried to curate behaviour, were told to grow a thicker skin if they wanted to hang out on the internet.

You'll get no argument from me that they're shit weasels who deserve a kick in crotch, with hobnail boots indeed, but the internet is a shit strewn field of our own making.
 

CriticalGaming

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I'd find it in me to give more of a shit if this hadn't been the default for internet discourse for the past fifteen fucking years. And when people complained or tried to curate behaviour, were told to grow a thicker skin if they wanted to hang out on the internet.
I agree. Asmongold posted a video about this very thing as he got harassed on his stream when he played Hogwarts too.


The difference here is that these people went after Girlfriend Review's accounts, they shut down their ability to do their job. There is a difference between shit-talking online, and actively attacking people with definitive shutdowns like doxxing, account lockouts, etc.

This isn't a tit-for-tat situation, and if you defense is going to be turn about being fair play, then you can no longer complain about any harassment you get moving forward.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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Tell me you didn't watch the video and haven't been paying attention, without saying you didn't watch the video and haven't been paying attention. Shelby and Matt were harassed the entire duration of the stream and on every social media outlet, their accounts were put on a de facto hit list, and their community subreddit was brigaded and false-claimed to the point it was locked, and her account was deleted. Which is actual, legally-actionable, defamation.

Or does it suddenly just not count now, unless there were death threats? Which, by the way, had you actually watched GR's video -- they did receive death threats which were screenshot and put in the content of the video.

Such odd timing for that standard for "harassment" to suddenly and without warning, change.

"Worst examples" is a weird way of saying "baseline behavior", as just about every major streamer who played the game on Twitch are reporting the exact same behavior, from the exact same people and groups, for having done nothing more than stream it.
Great. Glad y'all are finally on board. Maybe if we keep this attitude, we might be able to actually do something about online harassment


BeeTeeDubs, I was mostly just pointing out the funny image posted by a silvervale fan about the "harassment" they got, which is pretty fucking tame. I didn't post shit for or against Girlfriend Reviews. You gonna condemn the people trying to get Froot fired and smearing them as a peadophile or is that just something other people have to fucking do? You want to start talking about Baseline Harrassment? Talk to literally any mildly visable trans person about Baseline Harassment. You wan't to All Harassment Matters this shit, how about you fucking start for once?

It's always everybody fucking else that has to take the high road, isn't it? I can't even make a funny about some pissbaby whining without having to answer for every bad piece of shit even conceivably "on my side", fucking hell
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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We can't even talk about a fucking mid ass wizard videogame without having several rounds of the "but are trans people even really real or are they just broken people?" discussion, but for what it's worth I'm sorry your favorite blorbos had some mean words thrown at them. At least we aren't discussing whether or not we're all child predators wanting to mutilate kids, and I hope Girlfriend Reviews gets their reddit back
 

Kwak

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This isn't a tit-for-tat situation, and if you defense is going to be turn about being fair play, then you can no longer complain about any harassment you get moving forward.
Say's who, the complaint police? How are you going to stop them?
People will do whatever they want.
 
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BrawlMan

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We can't even talk about a fucking mid ass wizard videogame without having several rounds of the "but are trans people even really real or are they just broken people?" discussion, but for what it's worth I'm sorry your favorite blorbos had some mean words thrown at them. At least we aren't discussing whether or not we're all child predators wanting to mutilate kids, and I hope Girlfriend Reviews gets their reddit back
I posted that combo video to break the tension, but I already knew that wasn't going to happen. BeeG still did a great job. I do wish the best for the streamers who don't act like jackasses, and wish any asshole with nothing better to do with their lives can fuck off and be angry somewhere else, or ignore the game entirely.
 
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Bedinsis

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So meanwhile, here I am checking my followed channels on Youtube, and lo and behold...


Minimization/rationalization of what happened here because "it's okay when we do it" in 3...2...1...
Once I internalized the mantra "There are stupid people that agree with me" I've become a more complete person in online discussions.

Anyway, the people that harassed GR are scumbags. Those being respectful are not.
 
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Baffle

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I'd find it in me to give more of a shit if this hadn't been the default for internet discourse for the past fifteen fucking years. And when people complained or tried to curate behaviour, were told to grow a thicker skin if they wanted to hang out on the internet.

You'll get no argument from me that they're shit weasels who deserve a kick in crotch, with hobnail boots indeed, but the internet is a shit strewn field of our own making.
There is absolutely no denying that I'm a happier person since I started spending less time online. Mostly it was binning off Twitter, Facebook et al. I think, but just generally I enjoy less exposure to how awful some people are.
 
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Satinavian

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There is absolutely no denying that I'm a happier person since I started spending less time online. Mostly it was binning off Twitter, Facebook et al. I think, but just generally I enjoy less exposure to how awful some people are.
Oh yes. I have avoided social media for decades and everytime something like this happens, i am reminded again why that is. (OK, actually limiting privat info online was my main reason but not getting into online shitstorms and not being harrassed is nice too)
 
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Baffle

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Oh yes. I have avoided social media for decades and everytime something like this happens, i am reminded again why that is. (OK, actually limiting privat info online was my main reason but not getting into online shitstorms and not being harrassed is nice too)
I think it can create great spaces for people who need them, especially people for whom the offline world is often less friendly, as long as they can curate those spaces well. I hear complaints about echo chambers and silos, but why would I want to hang around online with people I didn't like? I don't invite dickheads to hang out in my shed with me, and I'd aim for the same in my online spaces (if I had them).
 
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Silvanus

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This just in: the presence of harassers and other assorted shitweasels in any given group, or of any given opinion, does not in any way damage the credibility of that group or that opinion.

Because if it did, the credibility of every group/ opinion would be destroyed forever.

The sole exception is when the 'group' is an organisation with membership criteria, and such people don't get kicked out. But last I checked, "people who criticise transphobia" isn't an organisation, so these harassing fucknuts don't reflect on the stance of being against transphobia, or on anyone else criticising Hogwarts Legacy/ Rowling. Because fucking obviously.

((Side note, I actually watched a lot of the GF Reviews stream of Hogwarts Legacy live. I'm a big fan of theirs. Donating proceeds to the Trevor Project seems a fairly good way to navigate the morals of it)).
 
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Eacaraxe

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This just in: the presence of harassers and other assorted shitweasels in any given group, or of any given opinion, does not in any way damage the credibility of that group or that opinion.

Because if it did, the credibility of every group/ opinion would be destroyed forever.

The sole exception is when the 'group' is an organisation with membership criteria, and such people don't get kicked out. But last I checked, "people who criticise transphobia" isn't an organisation, so these harassing fucknuts don't reflect on the stance of being against transphobia, or on anyone else criticising Hogwarts Legacy/ Rowling. Because fucking obviously.

((Side note, I actually watched a lot of the GF Reviews stream of Hogwarts Legacy live. I'm a big fan of theirs. Donating proceeds to the Trevor Project seems a fairly good way to navigate the morals of it)).
Well I for one will be bookmarking this post. Can't help but feel like this might be relevant some day soon.
 
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Satinavian

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This just in: the presence of harassers and other assorted shitweasels in any given group, or of any given opinion, does not in any way damage the credibility of that group or that opinion.
Well, that is how it should be handled.

Unfortunately humans are pretty bad at this.
 

hanselthecaretaker

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So meanwhile, here I am checking my followed channels on Youtube, and lo and behold...


Minimization/rationalization of what happened here because "it's okay when we do it" in 3...2...1...
As if it’s even possible to rationalize the irrational.



What comes around goes around. Maybe in a few years time the tables will turn. Or not.
 

Absent

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Just this, too, in short(-ish), because it could rapidly become disproportionally time consuming :

If Lord of the Rings is a fairy tale, then practically every work of fantasy is a fairy tale.
Yes, this is more or less my point.

And you miss it if you shift to a technical usage of "fairy tale". This would be like discussing animal rights with a biologist who goes "but scientifically humans are animals". Or discussing racism with an anthropologist who'd go "but this isn't racism because it's not about a race" - which anthropologists usually don't answer (outside a zealously pedantic first year) because they know in which context which broad/narrow/popular/technical usage of the word is the most relevant to communication.

The point here isn't academic textual classification, discussing whether the Hobbit belongs to some oral tradition, or whatever. The relevant thing is that such fantasy tales are processed by the public like they process fairy tales : it's a series of magical premises that aren't debated, a "this creature was evil" is self-sufficient, just like any fairy tale defines a "good king" archetype, a noble "prince charming", an "evil witch". These do not operate on rational real world logic, this logic is suspended like in front of a myth, which importance resides in structures, articulating abstractions (good, evil, stepmotherness, etc). There is a pointless geekery in seeking mechanisms or content beyond the puppets that have been set up by an author : smurfs have no sexuality and no reproduction, they simply "are", and biological coherence is irrelevant to their imaginary universe. What hasn't been thought up by an author in their universe isn't to be "discovered", it's simply a hollow place that stays hollow because what matters to the story is on the envelope's level.

Of course, any cultural production comes from the author's culture and individual beliefs, so there is always a worldview to find and deduce from a text. But again, this worldview is expressed in dreamlike logic, in little touches that don't have to make an exhaustive and coherent system (few fictions would function if they had to be exhaustively logical), and even less be an actual reflexion of the real world : in many fictions, even pseudo-realistic ones, human races exist and determine mentalities, or homosexuality is a sign of weakness and perversion, or women are less capable than men, etc... These premises make stories (and character ehaviours) that fall apart if analysed in terms of real world analogies, or even in terms of inner logic (because these concepts -like the concepts of ghosts, vampires, zombies, etc- simply don't work if you overanalyse them). The fictional universe is structured differently than the real world, and doesn't require full logical consistency, it exists "as described", plot holes and contradictions included.

There's a geeky habit of trying to bring fiction to reality-level of cohesion (one hilarious archetypal example was aliens nerds debating for years to rationalize biologically the difference of design between the first two movies - while the real answer is how cool it looked to different directors). It can be a fun creative mind game, but it makes no sense to treat it as a revelation of an original work's hidden reality instead of a fan-created addendum. Just like inventing stories where dracula is some ("humanized", "realisticalized") tormented lovestruck soul, adding pyschological complexity to orcs is an example of this : it expands an universe into another, fan-created around the first. Even if it's to include "more logical", "less fairy-tale-ish" things to it. Less, I say it, "childish" things.

Because yes, Tolkien had fun expanding and expanding on his stories, and took its own methodology very seriously, but it's still toying with lego (even if of the technic variety). His beliefs and worldviews seep in, but these are not, again, objective duplicates of the world (he can have a overly simple vision of it on some aspects, complex on others, and he may be selective about which complexity is relevant), the root of his work is some lovely little tale for kids, and -as far as I know- it's also documented that his world is shaped by his childhood impressions of nature, of african and english environments, which give the his descriptions their haunting, poetic impact, this universal resonance. It's a very emotional component of his writing, no matter his later rigorous cosmogony/history constructions. And it also works because of some key lack of explanations or details descriptions. Precisely, orcs are vague (imagine how many details a Stephen King would have described), they are catch-all boogeymen, like ogres in fairy tales, about which all you need to know (be told and take as granted) is that they are terrible. They are the bad.

Now you're free to make of them what you want in your own headcanon or in your own fanfictions, or independent works. Just like vampires can be romantic conflicted souls or one-dimension predatory revenants. In fact their vagueness (and relative abstraction) is also what allows projections, and efficiently universalizes them. But inserting components of your own (in their "hollowness") and declaring this to be some underyling objective truth is wrong. And useless. Complexifying them is interesting, but this complexification doesn't have to be presented as something inherent to that work. It's an extension in its own. Like, say, Tournier's own personal take on Defoe's Robinson.

But not every fictional character (or creature) has a revealing psych-analysable childhood. Most of them are just structural functions. Single ideas on legs. Heck, sometimes even stories that mean to say truths work better with abstractions and reductionisms. After all, myths and fairy takes do convey messages about the human condition that are often valid. And they convey them through minimalist, technically false, impossible, reductive components. Like a proverb would. "Fleshing out" a tale isn't necessarily a path to increased accuracy. It depends on what its grammar demands.

(Also, I and most of my friends have read Tolkien during childhood. I don't think it's a work that belongs to an age bracket, but it does have something childish to them and I really mean it in the most wholesome, noble sense of the term. I think it describes a world with a sense of marvel that gets lost with age. And capturing it, indirectly capturing/transposing childhood awe and anxieties, makes a large part of its power.)
 

Terminal Blue

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I believe I first heard of em in a travel show with Bourdain, nothing to do with prostitution, and the way the story went, it wasn't like these folks were taking hormones and undergoing surgeries but rather some kids were raised to be girls when they were boys, by their families and society.
Many kathoey have surgery and take hormones and many trans people do not.

Thailand is a Buddhist-majority country, and as such doesn't certain Christian taboos about sex and gender, but there is a lot of discrimination and legally it lags behind most western countries in terms of things like gender recognition. It's possible parents may be happier to let their male children cross-dress or adopt feminine identities because kathoey can make a lot of money, but don't assume this translates into genuine tolerance.

It's worth noting that hijras in India, despite being part of a tradition that goes back thousands of years, also face a lot of discrimination. The idea that something either is or isn't societally accepted is very rarely useful, as societies can be very broad. Trans people have been in the public eye for as long as kathoey have.

And on the matter of genital shape, the reason why the male member has those wing-like shapes at the base of the glands is so that it can scrape out the seed of other males during the act, so it's not quite that hard to get apes to mate as you're making it sound like lol.
I'm not sure who told you that, but I seriously question the mechanics.

Most apes have an estrus cycle, and will only mate in the few hours or days every few weeks when females become fertile and undergo physical changes that make them attractive to males.

One of the possible (albeit not very likely) explanations for why humans don't have an estrus cycle is that at some point hominids became sufficiently intelligent that if our fertility cycle was obvious to us we would just never have children. We don't work like other animals, intelligence gets in the way of a lot of the signals and mechanisms other animals rely on, so instead we have to rely on social learning.

Oh sure, it isn't indeterminate, but you also don't get to make it up.
Of course you do. All human culture was made up by someone.

This is why the drag queens dress like insulting caricatures of celebrity women, and not like I dunno, a frumpy librarian or something more usual-looking.
Drag queens dress however they want. Sometimes they dress like clowns, sometimes they dress like beauty queens and hold pageants, sometimes they dress like monsters, sometimes they dress like sexy leather fetish pikachu, sometimes they dress like frumpy librarians, sometimes they dress like men (because men can also be queens).

Drag is an artform that originated in queer culture at a time when that culture wasn't part of the mainstream at all. The type of drag cishet people like and which has become most accessible tends to be focused on comedy and impersonation, so I'm not surprised that's what you think drag is but you're kind of wrong. Most drag is meant to appeal to the sensibilities of queer people, which are generally a little different. For one, dressing up as a woman isn't inherently funny, "insulting" or humiliating to most queer men.

I don't really think your genitals contain the essence, I think your essence generates the genitals, because every fetus is a girl at its base before becoming male or female as it gestates (it's why men have nipples, those develop earlier in the process so we both get em), so due to that it is normal to not be 100% one way or the other, but that doesn't mean you're a girl or nonbinary. It's part of being male.
This is a common myth. Human fetuses start out in a sexless state and all gonads begin as ovitestes with a mixture of "male" and "female" tissue.

If no person is entirely male or female (which.. er.. I'll let that one stand I guess) wouldn't it follow that you are all non-binary, since the binary doesn't actually exist. Everyone is somewhere between those two points of male or female.

You've based your entire life, your entire identity, on being something that even you admit you aren't. You just spent a paragraph worrying about whether your hair is aesthetically appropriate to an "essence" that you don't even have, because noone is actually male or female to begin with. You are a blob of undifferentiated flesh shaped by varying levels of androgenic and estrogenic hormones. None of it means anything. None of it justifies your obsession with it.
 
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Terminal Blue

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((Side note, I actually watched a lot of the GF Reviews stream of Hogwarts Legacy live. I'm a big fan of theirs. Donating proceeds to the Trevor Project seems a fairly good way to navigate the morals of it)).
While I'm never going to shit on someone for doing what is an objectively good thing, I don't think it works that way. You don't get to buy indulgences and get automatic forgiveness.

To a certain type of person, myself included, this kind of behaviour actually comes off as very cynical. If you know something is going to hurt people and you do it anyway, you've made your choice. You've decided what's important to you and what isn't. Making a donation afterwards is just an apology without any contrition.
 

Satinavian

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To a certain type of person, myself included, this kind of behaviour actually comes off as very cynical. If you know something is going to hurt people and you do it anyway, you've made your choice. You've decided what's important to you and what isn't. Making a donation afterwards is just an apology without any contrition.
The hurt caused by buying and/or reviewing a video game is utterly negligible. That other things are more important to many many people doesn't really come as a surprise. You are right that a donation as apology does not look like sincere regret and more like an attempt at appeasement. And that is probably because there is nothing to regret.
Not that appeasing hate mobs ever works.
 
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Baffle

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The hurt caused by buying and/or reviewing a video game is utterly negligible.
I'm not sure it's so easy to say that. If someone tells you they are your friend, but then does something they know will make you unhappy, even if they think it shouldn't really affect your happiness, they have still made a choice. And the way that choice falls, rather than what it was about, can be what hurts.

Not suggesting we can let fear of hurting others control us like that, and it definitely can be abused to control people, but generally I don't think we can easily say what should and shouldn't hurt people. See 'it was just a joke'.
 
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