(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* Some people are upsetti spaghetti with ArenaNet for posting in support of Roe. "Games shouldn't be political". Because, GW2 isn't political. I am just here working on the Fascist Flattener achievement and farming a strike mission where we take out a leader from the Ministery of (racial) Purity. The core GW1 story is about finding out that your generic fantasy town is colonial and was made by eradicating the natives.

All games are political. For games like Minecraft it takes some analysis, others give daily rewards for ridding neighborhoods of fascists.

* KiScon, the Kirk/Spock con is going to be online in 2022 in November. I might do that. There is a high chance I'll run into one or two people I'd rather not run into, but it's virtual so not really a huge deal. Someone who I have blocked on every social media platform and who even made new accounts to contact me has been to KiScon before, which is why I've never followed what's going on with that con. She likes to intensely latch onto people and be very controlling and has... ahistorical ideas regarding race. She seems cool if you know her only casually, but like if she gets close she becomes scary, intense and shouty. So, if there is ever a time to give that con a go, it's this year! And now that they've got a discord maybe I can scope out whether she's likely to be at any physical cons, if they happen again, and could go. If I had a connection to even one person in that scene, going would be 1000x more feasible. So them being online could be really good for me.

And also if it turns out that despite all my blocking she knows my default Discord nick... that would be good to know. My default Discord nick is my GW2 main's name, and has 0 relation to any any other nick I use. I just use it in Discord because I use Discord for raiding and am often lazy about changing it to anything else.

... I should go register and then attempt to actually be productive this evening, something I've been critically failing to go for days.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

"Ugh, why are you trying to make your game ~political~?" is one of my favorite perennial whines from dumbasses. (Goes for other media, too, but games are often the most obviously oblivious places for someone to make the complaint.)

Very cool about the con - I hope you do get to go! I'd love to hear more about it if you do.

Though uncool about the person you will hopefully be able to continue avoiding. I've known a few of those types - casually cool, but the closer you get, the worse they are.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it's just all so particularly silly to complain about GW2 having politics.

I'm possibly overly worried about running into certain people again, but also flying solo to a con can be awkward at the best if times. It's going to be virtual in November, so hopefully that's awesome. And if not, I can just close my laptop.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? So many games aren't *shy* about their themes, yet oblivious "fans" act shocked when a game dev supports politics that are... exactly in line with what the game itself has already presented. Wild.

Eh, I can understand not wanting to encounter certain people that you really do not want to deal with. I can talk a big game about not letting shitty people keep you away from what you enjoy, but I've panicked myself over the vaguest potential of running into someone I don't want to see at a show/club/Pride/etc., so I get it.
I haven't been to a con in a long while, but yeah, going it alone is rough. The thought of doing that is one of the factors that has kept me from returning to any type of con-going for the last near-decade.

Virtual sounds good! And yes, at least then if you're not having a good time, it's easy to get away.

[olivermoss]

With some games the themes and politics seem natural to the genre. It's possible the people making them aren't thinking consciously about politics. Certain things feel like 'default/neutral'. Dan Olsen has a video on colonialism in Minecraft, which is interesting.

Then there are games about going to the Middle East and killing people and the fans will scream from the rooftops that it's not political.

Yeah, I have a few people I desperately don't want to run into again, but it's night and day if I've got someone with me. Also, I don't know if like she has a lot of social connection there. I've just had bad experiences with other people having a lot of social power.

[mistressofmuses]

That's true enough - there are some themes that have kind of become part and parcel to given genres. The analysis can be there, and I think a lot of worthwhile studios recognize and lean into those themes when present... but other times it does seem clear that they're exploring them shallowly at best, or that they are more of a default for the genre rather than a deliberate exploration.

But ain't that the truth. Shoot-up-the-foreigners-but-it's-okay-we-said-they're-bad #5726 is utterly non-political, of course!

Running into someone you don't want to see is a million times easier when you have someone with you.
Genuinely, some of the worst people I've known in various geek and creative scenes do have WAY too much social influence. It's the BNF type thing... made worse when they buy into their own hype, and wind up surrounded by nothing but yes-men. (There are certainly well-known and popular writers/artists/fans/etc. who are great! I'm just thinking of a few in particular that were insufferable, lol.)