Memorials problem.

[Cantousent]

And now your being racist against pitchforks!!!! How dare you it will take me all night to get him to stop crying...

How does one comfort the 'little devil?' <.<

 

On a serious note, I don't think folks should impugn whole groups of people, and I don't want to comment on the limerick in question, but I don't like the idea of restraining artistic vision because of an overeager attempt to politically cleanse speech. On one hand, speaking as someone is neither employed by Obsidian nor speaks for them in any way, I can understand wanting to make the game as accessible to as many people as possible while offending the smallest number. On the other hand, I don't want their artistic inclinations subdued by a very vocal small minority. The limerick in question is, if backer created as attested, something that Obsidian probably vetted before it ended up in the game. If it were not, then shame on them. If it were, they probably saw it as something harmless and not meant to single out a specific group or hurt anyone in any way. The fact that someone could, conceivably, be hurt by it should not be the grounds to restrict speech. So, if Obsidian decides to withdraw the memorial, fair enough. They're a business. As someone whose livelihood and lifestyle don't depend on Obsidian's success, and who is indeed not employed by them, it's not my place to judge them for removing content. However, they have to decide whether the limerick truly crosses a line. If it does not, do they want to likewise offend people who will undoubtedly see them as caving to a special interest group that many people feel is not demanding equal respect and treatment but, in fact, special respect and treatment. :shrug: I'm a volunteer mod, so I'm not going to judge. ...But I do hope that we find a way to move a line a little bit farther towards freedom of speech and save those battles for hills that are more worthy than the limerick that has caused such mayhem here.

 

EDIT: grammatically 'cleansed' my post. Not politically.

[DrTuring]

 

And frankly it would turn off a huge portion of the player base by bringing real world issues into a game based in an imaginary world.

 

 

No created work is apolitical or without allegory. If the only issue is that people would be put off by the existence of politics, they shouldn't be engaging with art at all.

 

 

 

TotalBiscuit is generally ignoring an important question. There's nothing wrong with games including ugliness in ugly, harsh worlds. The question is what the effect is. What the purpose is. What is the effect? Pillars is a setting that could totally be used to discuss trans issues, particularly if we get into some of the neat stuff it does with souls. And it could even have people who are somehow transphobic. "That person has the soul of a woman in their body? What? Freak!" And that would be interesting. That would be great, actually. But the backer thing here is, while small, shallow. Given some of the other content of the game, I'm unsure if it "fits". At least in this form. 

 

Or and that is just a or we could all act like adults and see it as a dumb joke a bard or jester would sing and not as something political or even more than that. 

 

If presented in that context? Sure. I don't think it'd be as much an issue.

 

 

So, you think it'd be a good thing for a game developer to create scenerios within the game for the specific purpose of making some sort of political statement outside of the game?

I'm sorry, but that's just awful and sets a horrible precedent. 

 

It's something artists and creators already do and have done for quite a long time. Examine the use of magic in fiction and you'll often find the fear of magic or magic users has political or allegorical subtext. 

 

"No work is apolitical?"

 

Come on. That's insane! Not everything has to be about politics! It's only all politics to someone who has chosen to make politics their identity.

[Sakai]

 

No created work is apolitical or without allegory. If the only issue is that people would be put off by the existence of politics, they shouldn't be engaging with art at all.

Allegory and applicability are two very different things. One is deliberate, and in another any kind of parallels are only a side effect.

[Silverstar]

 

Pillars is a setting that could totally be used to discuss trans issues

It could, but it's not. 

Someone should just make Politics: The Game allready and shove all that stuff in there. Then RPGs could focus on what they're supposed to; murdering orc civilizations due to their different world view and ethics, while looting all their axes to sell them off for 1 gold each.

[Cultist]

Pigs are offensive to muslims - I demand pig familiar to be removed.

[Sakai]

Pigs are offensive to muslims - I demand pig familiar to be removed.

There's no need for mockery.

[cirdanx]

Well, as I mentioned earlier, TotalBiscuit is beign attacked on twitter for asking Obsidian to let that content stay in the game.

 

These comments were made by Alexander, fomer EiC of Gamasutra and Cross of the Feminist Frequency Show

 

Nothing new here. I have spoken out about her before, she is irrelevant. The only way she or her followers can stay in the spotlight is thru this kind of drama. On the other side we have TB, who for the most part makes very logical and subjective analysis and thats the reason why he can reach such a big audience.

 

Again i hope Obsidian doesn´t follow the route of self-censorship because some twitter psycho, who openly drives a "killallmen" campaign is butthurt, but also not because an irrelevant fraud like Alexander spits her venom around.

[AlyxDinas]

Allegory and applicability are two very different things. One is deliberate, and in another any kind of parallels are only a side effect.

 

 

 Allegory doesn't have to be deliberate because individual audience members interpret different signs in vastly different ways at times. Semotics is a process that tends to be experiential and centered on the person engaging with the text. 

 

"No work is apolitical?"

 

Come on. That's insane! Not everything has to be about politics! It's only all politics to someone who has chosen to make politics their identity.

 

 

 

Politics is merely the art and practice of interacting with other individuals. Art, as something that individuals make which then interacts with other people, is necessarily political because it involves people.

[Cultist]

 

Pigs are offensive to muslims - I demand pig familiar to be removed.

There's no need for mockery.

 

Check your privelege!

[AwesomeOcelot]

It's OK to be transphobic e.g. to feel shame for sleeping with a man when they thought he was a woman. It's wrong to expect shielding from this point of view, in life or fiction. I'm not transphobic, although I don't subscribe to all the views and language some trans people use. I can't see how that situation can possibly be rape, for instance. I don't want to live in a world where anything that might be possibly offensive or have impact on people is censored. Also I find many things offensive in media including games, but it's only particular groups of people that seem to want to censor things. That's surely going to bring people to your side, I'm sure that's going to win hearts and minds. Even when I support their point of view, I think "these people are giant arseholes".

 

Neil Gaiman recently wrote a book Trigger Warning, after people wanted to ban disturbing books from university, even classics. I'll be really disappointed in Obsidian if they remove this joke from PoE, think about what kind of message that sends out. Also the implications to a possible future kickstarter, these people are not your backers, they don't even speak for all trans people.

  Edited March 29, 2015 by AwesomeOcelot

[Sakai]

Allegory doesn't have to be deliberate because individual audience members interpret different signs in vastly different ways at times. Semotics is a process that tends to be experiential and centered on the person engaging with the text. 

Then it is applicability you are talking about, not allegory.

[casa]

Hard to put into words how disappointed/angry I am about this ridiculous outrage. I can't even get my mind around to see the "trans(?)" person in that joke as the victim, for me the joke is clearly on the "transphobic(?)" guy. Anyhow, even if this joke offends anyone it's really not in any way harmful, triggering, whatever... everyone makes jokes about everyone, someone's always the "victim", and I find so many offensive things in games that could theoretically offend me that I shouldn't even touch them anymore. 

Point is, this twitter campaign was clearly started by people with an agenda, and I'm just waiting for people to start petitions to have Monty Python removed from television for being too offensive to minorities. If this tombstone does it, I can only recommend the countless MP jokes on men in women's clothing to the easily offended. 

 

It's Obsidian's choice how they want to deal with this, luckily it's nothing affecting their own writing, but in this climate I don't want to be a writer or artist anymore. Whatever you do, the pitchfork crowd is just waiting for the smallest offense and reason to burn down your house. In the end we will get inclusive but totally lifeless storylines, too scared to touch on any edgy subject, in other words the next Bioware game - the company who's storytelling has fallen so far behind Obsidian's writing that I really can't play their games anymore. 

[Creslin321]

A lot of people have been making good arguments as to why the joke should stay, and I just wanted to compile some of the better ones, and some I've thought of myself, here:

 

1.  Content that is part of a fictional world is not necessarily representative of the author's actual viewpoints.  Just because a story contains "bad stuff" like racism or whatever, this does not mean that the author actually believes it.  And authors should be free to write about bad stuff if they want.

 

2.  The joke is more at the expense of the Ligthbringer(sic) than it is at the expense of the man he slept with.  The joke says nothing explicitly bad about the man he slept with, for all we know, Ligthbringer(sic) may have been really drunk and bedded a regular homosexual man that he thought was a woman.

 

3.  You have to make a few major leaps of logic to find offense in this joke.  The only arguments I've heard as to why it's offensive is that it perpetuates the stereotype that all trans people try to "trick" straight people into sleeping with them.  So first, I didn't even realize that was a stereotype, second, you have to make the following assumptions in order to come to this conclusion:

 

  A.  That the slept-with person in the joke is trans.

  B.  That he maliciously tricked Ligthbringer(sic) into sleeping with him.

  C.  That the representation of this one person should be extrapolated to all trans-people (which is, in itself, not a good way of thinking).

 

So there is a heck of a lot of reading between the lines you have to do to even take offense at this joke.

 

4.  The joke can be equally interpreted to be offensive towards men.  After all, Ligthbringer(sic) kills himself like a moron after he sleeps with a man.  Is this trying to say that all men are prideful morons, willing to take their own lives if something shames them?  Clearly, this is a ridiculous argument, but it's essentially the same argument that the folks who take issue with this joke are using.

 

5.  Content should not be censored just because someone finds it offensive.  Art really needs to be about free expression.  Once we start policing content based on whether it offends "X group" we are putting great limitations on what can be expressed.

Edited March 29, 2015 by Creslin321

[EDITEDIT]

It would be really disappointing if Obsidian would give in to people who start a witch-hunt and want to "kill all men".

Most jokes are offending someone or something. Races, gender, religions, nations, lumberjacks.

 

"It's now very common to hear people say, "I'm rather offended by that", as if that gives them certain rights. It's no more than a whine. It has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. "I'm offended by that." Well, so ****ing what?"

 

- Stephen Fry -

[GrinningReaper659]

The Twitter user referenced here that got offended by this is clearly insane: constant cries to "KillAllMen" while getting upset about a mediocre joke show what sort of person we're talking about here.

 

However, like Gromnir said a few pages back, if the joke were about a man who killed himself after accidentally sleeping with a black woman, because he is disgusted at the thought of sleeping with a black woman, this conversation wouldn't be happening. You'd all be talking about how offensive the joke is or how it "just isn't funny," but somehow it's a totally different conversation because you're all of the mind (currently) that it's okay to disregard the feelings of some groups but not others.

 

In other words, there are a bunch of inconsistent people here that clamor on about whatever it's cultually popular to clamor on about. That's on both sides of this issue. I don't think it should be taken out at the moment simply because it would be ridiculous to pander to every obviously insane complaint that enters your field of vision, but there's a bunch of people in this thread that would do well to examine their views on these things. Jumping on the SJW train or the anti-SJW train is equally stupid, why don't you try developing some well thought out views which are actually based on something other than reacting with whatever good-feeling impulse first crosses your mind?

[DrTuring]

Politics is merely the art and practice of interacting with other individuals. Art, as something that individuals make which then interacts with other people, is necessarily political because it involves people.

Noo? Politics is when people make POLICY. Poli-cy, Poli-tics. Why are you saying that all interaction is politics?

[Nonek]

We've had joke tombstones in graves for twenty five years, they're an in joke that everybody knows of, check out the graveyard in Ultima near Yew. Trans issues, go to a Wizard and ask him to make you whatever you want to become, Druids can shape change into another species, gender change should be a relatively minor spell in comparison. Insecurity and lack of a sense of humour though, they probably require a lot greater spell craft.

[AlyxDinas]

Then it is applicability you are talking about, not allegory.

 

 

Tautology. Allegory is an interpretation of symbols. Something can be intentionally allegorical or not. We're in the Tolkien realm now. Which is why I assume you're using the term applicability but at the end of the day he was merely swapping out one word for another. Presumably out of some type of iconoclasm. 

 

 

 

Noo? Politics is when people make POLICY. Poli-cy, Poli-tics. Why are you saying that all interaction is politics?

 

 

You're being reductive. Politics is the totality of interactions in a society, which includes art. This is why we see the term used loosely for various things that aren't about policy. "Forum politics" for instance, doesn't have to be about the rules that moderators are setting. It can be about power dynamics and interactions. 

[Darji]

 

Allegory and applicability are two very different things. One is deliberate, and in another any kind of parallels are only a side effect.

 

 

 Allegory doesn't have to be deliberate because individual audience members interpret different signs in vastly different ways at times. Semotics is a process that tends to be experiential and centered on the person engaging with the text. 

 

"No work is apolitical?"

 

Come on. That's insane! Not everything has to be about politics! It's only all politics to someone who has chosen to make politics their identity.

 

 

 

Politics is merely the art and practice of interacting with other individuals. Art, as something that individuals make which then interacts with other people, is necessarily political because it involves people.

 

Even is if this is true what I personally do not believe  there is a problem of over analyzing things. Lets take a dumb Movie like Rocky 4 for example. It is pure fun and dumb entertaining but if you over analyze it you can see it as a anti Russia cold war movie and slam it for that instead of enjoying dumb fun. 

[Tsumetai]

ITT: people complaining about censorship, despite not knowing what censorship is.

 

This isn't a free speech issue, people. Stop trying to make it into one.

[Cantousent]

The Twitter user referenced here that got offended by this is clearly insane: constant cries to "KillAllMen" while getting upset about a mediocre joke show what sort of person we're talking about here.

 

However, like Gromnir said a few pages back, if the joke were about a man who killed himself after accidentally sleeping with a black woman, because he is disgusted at the thought of sleeping with a black woman, this conversation wouldn't be happening. You'd all be talking about how offensive the joke is or how it "just isn't funny," but somehow it's a totally different conversation because you're all of the mind (currently) that it's okay to disregard the feelings of some groups but not others.

 

In other words, there are a bunch of inconsistent people here that clamor on about whatever it's cultually popular to clamor on about. That's on both sides of this issue. I don't think it should be taken out at the moment simply because it would be ridiculous to pander to every obviously insane complaint that enters your field of vision, but there's a bunch of people in this thread that would do well to examine their views on these things. Jumping on the SJW train or the anti-SJW train is equally stupid, why don't you try developing some well thought out views which are actually based on something other than reacting with whatever good-feeling impulse first crosses your mind?

This is fair enough, and perhaps salient to the issue, but I don't think the same limerick modified to include an Asian female killing herself because she was shamed by sleeping with a 'white' male should be restricted. It would be in poor taste, but worthy of this? How about a Catholic for sleeping with a Muslim? I haven't even seen the limerick, but I would have to say that your point, though well taken, doesn't really change my mind. I would like to think, as someone who doesn't grave offense at such things, that I would likewise not be offended at 'white men have small reproductive organs' jokes. Actually, since I have seen such jokes in cinema and in print and *not* been offended or angry, I guess I do more than think I wouldn't take grave offense. I'm certain I wouldn't.

[Chaz]

 

 So, if Obsidian decides to withdraw the memorial, fair enough. They're a business. As someone whose livelihood and lifestyle don't depend on Obsidian's success, and who is indeed not employed by them, it's not my place to judge them for removing content. However, they have to decide whether the limerick truly crosses a line. If it does not, do they want to likewise offend people who will undoubtedly see them as caving to a special interest group that many people feel is not demanding equal respect and treatment but, in fact, special respect and treatment. :shrug: I'm a volunteer mod, so I'm not going to judge. ...But I do hope that we find a way to move a line a little bit farther towards freedom of speech and save those battles for hills that are more worthy than the limerick that has caused such mayhem here.

 

 

I would certainly be a huge disappointment to see Obsidian pay more attention to randoms on twitter than the people who believed in them and backed them financially. People like Ian Miles Cheong who said that nobody should care about Games Journalists beign ethical should not get the ear of Obsidian so easily in my opinion.

[YourVoiceisAmbrosia]

A lot of people have been making good arguments as to why the joke should stay, and I just wanted to compile some of the better ones, and some I've thought of myself, here:

 

1.  Content that is part of a fictional world is not necessarily representative of the author's actual viewpoints.  Just because a story contains "bad stuff" like racism or whatever, this does not mean that the author actually believes it.  And authors should be free to write about bad stuff if they want.

 

2.  The joke is more at the expense of the Ligthbringer(sic) than it is at the expense of the man he slept with.  The joke says nothing explicitly bad about the man he slept with, for all we know, Ligthbringer(sic) may have been really drunk and bedded a regular homosexual man that he thought was a woman.

 

3.  You have to make a few major leaps of logic to find offense in this joke.  The only arguments I've heard as to why it's offensive is that it perpetuates the stereotype that all trans people try to "trick" straight people into sleeping with them.  So first, I didn't even realize that was a stereotype, second, you have to make the following assumptions in order to come to this conclusion:

 

  A.  That the slept-with person in the joke is trans.

  B.  That he maliciously tricked Ligthbringer(sic) into sleeping with him.

  C.  That the representation of this one person should be extrapolated to all trans-people (which is, in itself, not a good way of thinking).

 

So there is a heck of a lot of reading between the lines you have to do to even take offense at this joke.

 

4.  The joke can be equally interpreted to be offensive towards men.  After all, Ligthbringer(sic) kills himself like a moron after he sleeps with a man.  Is this trying to say that all men are prideful morons, willing to take their own lives if something shames them?  Clearly, this is a ridiculous argument, but it's essentially the same argument that the folks who take issue with this joke are using.

 

5.  Content should not be censored just because someone finds it offensive.  Art really needs to be about free expression.  Once we start policing content based on whether it offends "X group" we are putting great limitations on what can be expressed.

 

We also don't know if Lightbringer was actually a real person in Pillars of Eternity's universe, poems and jokes like this are often exaggerated or made up. It's possible that none of this actually happened within the context of the game world, which would mean that it's a fictional portrayal of a fictional character in a fictional universe.

[Darji]

ITT: people complaining about censorship, despite not knowing what censorship is.

 

This isn't a free speech issue, people. Stop trying to make it into one.

Yes it is. If you really believe that censorship  can only be enforced by the Government you really should wake up from your utopia world you live in. 

[NopeNaw]

As someone who haven't gotten the game yet, the significance of my opinion on the matter might fluctuate based on perspective. I'm definitely on the side of "keep it in" with an added "ignore the offendees" sprinkled in. Why the latter? As a comedian once said, paraphrase; "If I refrained from telling jokes that offended someone, I'd be out of a job." Simply put, they are not your audience, caving to them will only serve as ammunition for when they want to pressure and shame you into removing more the next time.

 

All I can say aside from that is that if Obsidian caves to stuff like this, they are not the kind of developer I want to support, and would equate to a lost sale from me (not because I think the game looks bad or isn't worth the money, but simply a consumer decision based on principle). Is that petty? Maybe. But is that not what we are constantly told to do? Vote with our wallets? People have been outspoken in this thread about not wanting Obsidian to cave. So if they do, obviously communication isn't a useful tool, which leaves the wallet.