#sso critical

[mistwhisperexpress]

hey sso could you please call the snow goblins literally ANYTHING else. snow imps is right there. a green little thief called a goblin is not cute, it’s antisemitism and we really don’t need more of that right now

[ro-sso]

thinking about all the forms of magic MC has used, just suddenly as if they are fully trained. also the lack of magical tools used feels weird? Like we got a rune ward for rune carving, and a shadow seeker vacuum, a fragment of aideens light and a bottle of aideens tears but these all do... nothing? We dont use the rune wand to help channel energy, or rune-work outside of that one questline.

idk if it's just me but with some of the more recent late-game quests it feels as though MC has suddenly become adept in magic after training in the Sun circle (& doing minor work in the lightning and moon circle). It feels quite... offputting but that could just be me being weird

[ruth-westside]

Everybody else: Steampunk Jesus.

Me: Czech Matthew Mercer in his dungeon master costume.

[mortiflyer]

me when i thought i liked star stable more when it was older and of shittier quality because that's when everyone said it was better and then i took time away from the fandom space and realized i was a) in like third grade when the game was "old" b) genuinely love the new updates, quests, and horses

[worldlydesiretemple]

a little upset with the chiyo change tbh. i didn't realize or know chiyo was going to undergo a COMPLETE remodel/rework but seeing erissa is just ... man. i understand where people were coming from with their criticisms on chiyo's design but it feels even more backhanded that they just straight up made her (afaik) white.

erissa doesn't have much ... personality? to her design? it's an alright design by her lonesome, but it doesn't signify chaos to any degree. this is just a tiktok influencer to me. and she doesn't seem like an actual child anymore. chiyo was fun in the regards that she's clearly meant to be a rambunctious tweenager and could be seen as such, but now this is just. Ambiguous Older Teen/Young Adult to me.

i don't agree with their solution to chiyo criticism being "oh let's just not make her japanese!" because her being japanese wasn't . the problem? so.

i showed my friends the new design and we all came to the collective agreement she doesn't look like a dark rider or chaotic at all this is a quirky tiktok fashion influencer

[spoonbirds]

Tried drawing horses for the first time today

The second drawing is supposed to be Alvirah's normal coat from Sso

[shiroselia]

While I was definitely more critical about horse progression initially because it looked a Lot worse than it turned out to be I am still incredibly critical towards the features excessive reliance of taking already existing freely available features and now putting them behind a grind (there's no reason the faster gallop should be locked other than SSE needing Something There, no matter how easy it is to get, and it's also a bit of a Theme that I'm very very worried about but that's for a whole other rant)

And more than anything this shows itself in the Level 7 rewards. It is nothing but plain stupid to lock the gaits + moves behind a grind wall. I've already said that it's shitty to have something which the player already pays extra for at the beginning be locked behind extra time but that's not even the only problem with it.

Like. SSE. What the fuck were you thinking locking Gaited Horses behind a Training Feature. Like. The one thing which Still gets misinformed as being something riders Force On Horses? Something that real life people actually have to defend because gaited horses Are natural and Aren't trained Nevertheless abused to be gaited. And I'm mostly saying this because a lot of SSO players. do not know a lot about horses. And it's a very common misconception even in horse circles that gaits are Always forced upon horses and that simply isn't the case.

It's especially really fucking yikes with the Tennessee walker, which I'm pretty sure is 90% responsible for the misconception anyways, because while the Tennessee *is* naturally gaited when you say "tennessee walker" most people automatically think of Big Link which is basically the poster child of horse abuse and has been ever since it became a thing people knew about. So why in the absolute god damn hell is any, but Especially the tennessee walkers (who generally are a lovely representation of the breed because it actually features its natural gait) gaited horse in a subtle but already terrible way playing into this misconception.

Like it's just The most baffling choice ever and all of it is so clearly traceable to SSE wanting to make the feature big and significant but not having enough ideas to fill every other level with New Stuff so they resorted to locking old features anew which. Y'know. Turned out to be fucking stupid on so many levels.

[mistwhisperexpress]

I'm not Jewish myself but I do belong to a couple of minority demographics that receive denigration for one reason or another, along with people trying to speak for me.

My only real advice is that there comes a point where it's no longer "defending the oppressed" and more infantilization. There is such a thing as being too sensitive. This is a kid's game, not propaganda meant to encourage hatred. Same as any other demographic, Jewish people can speak on their own behalf. They don't need others' help, they only need a listening ear. To do anything else is risking spoiling the fun for everyone including those you're trying to speak for.

Also "goblin" as far as I've seen is as much an umbrella term as anything else. Jewish people don't hold a cultural copyright on financial greed and hooked noses. (may I direct you to dragons and stereotypical witches respectively) I could probably name a dozen other fairy tale and mythological creatures that have such traits.

Suggesting that SSO's new little green goblin (Grinch? Norman Osborn?) is a caricature of Jewish people makes as much sense as saying the orcs in Tolkien's legendarium represent black people or that the white walkers from ASOIAF represent white people, aka little to no sense once you look past the surface. The comparison of Jewish people and goblins alone could be deemed borderline antisemitic in itself. It's misguided, but forgivable.

Worry more about enjoying the game and less about whether SSO is offending a group who are more than capable of defending themselves in a kid's game. ❤️

Okay I don’t blame you for assuming I’m not Jewish because apparently I haven’t mentioned that here yet even though I (mis)remembered I had, but this still feels really weird to send? Telling someone who’s not part of a minority to not speak for them is absolutely okay, the job of people outside a minority is to raise up their voices, not add their own, so I have no issue with that aspect and I am genuinely sorry that’s been done to you, but why are you, someone who by your own words isn’t Jewish, speaking on if goblins antisemitic or not at all? You are speaking for/over us there, and you would be even if I wasn’t Jewish.

I am Jewish, and obviously while we aren’t a monolith, no group of people is, I personally find this depiction of goblins (green and greedy/thief) antisemitic, and with much of the world going mask off with their antisemitism right now I’m not as open to giving benefits of the doubt as I used to be. I do believe this was a mistake on SSO’s part and not intentional as I said in a reblog, but that doesn’t make it any less harmful or antisemitic.

I have done quite a bit of research into the history of goblins and when they began to be used as an antisemitic caricature (as early as the 1800s thanks to the Goblin Market poem, which is just classic blood libel) because I make dice as a job and I want to enjoy D&D without antisemitism and the whole dice goblin thing, and there is a very large connection. This isn't unfounded.

You’re right in that goblins are a bit of an umbrella term, they are, which is why it’s important to let the antisemitic version of them die. You can have goblins that are just mischievous, not green, big nosed, greedy, sneaky, and untrustworthy. It’s really easy to not have antisemitic goblins, but unfortunately the antisemitic version is a mainstream staple and that doesn’t just go away overnight.

If you apply harmful stereotypes to anything, even if it was completely harmless before, you’re going to get a harmful caricature. That’s what happened to goblins, and that’s what SSO did with the Snow Goblins. They took the popular depiction which is the antisemitic version, and applied it to the game without a thought because it’s been normalized to the point most people don’t even consider it may have less than great origins. Like Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel. They’re so normal the vast majority of people don’t even realize they were created for antisemitic reasons. Antisemitism is sneakily within a lot of things. You don’t start recognizing it until you become familiar with the tropes and stereotypes.

I’m also going to bet if they’re European in origin, the “dozen other fairy tale and mythological creatures that have such traits” you could name also had that done to them if they weren’t antisemitic to begin with. And since you mentioned them, it’s also what was done to the stereotypical version of witches, which is antisemitic and has a very long history of such going back to accused women who were burned being forced to wear Jewish clothing of the time as further humiliation. It’s also where the classic pointy hat comes from, since a pointy cone hat was what we were forced to wear to signify we were Jewish. Witches actually share a lot with goblins in antisemitic traits and SSO also needs to address Pi hitting all but the green skin.

You clearly know a little about the issue, as you brought up The Nose when I didn't, but you also don't know nearly enough to speak about this at all as evidenced by you not knowing the antisemitic history regarding witches, so please don't. And I never said they were a Jewish caricature, I said they were antisemitic, there's a difference. A Jewish caricature is the happy merchant meme.

What we're also not going to do is the whole 'you're the antisemitic one for seeing Jewish people in goblins' thing. That has and always will be an utterly bullshit dismissive argument. The whole point of this kind of caricature is to normalize the stereotypes so when they're actually applied to people you don't blink an eye, like how very few goyim blinked an eye at Mother Gothel in Tangled. I'm currently sick so I really don't have all the smart brain power to go into that right now and I hope someone else can. It's not antisemitic to notice when antisemitic caricatures have been applied to something. That's a very good thing to notice actually, and I want more goyim to start noticing that.

So it does actually make more sense than someone saying those things (which I don't think I've ever seen someone argue??), which I'll get into under the cut to clear up any confusion about how SSO's Snow Goblins tie into the antisemitic depictions, since a couple people were confused in my initial post.

And I am worrying more about enjoying the game; that's the whole reason I brought this up, because I'd like to enjoy a game that's been with me for more than half my life and means a lot to me, and this is preventing me from fully doing that.

Again, I am genuinely sorry people have spoken over and for you. That is wrong and not at all okay. And I'm sorry if I misread the tone of your ask.

Okay !! Education with Mandy time. This has been a long post but I hope you'll all stick with me for just a little longer.

And real quick before we get into the specifics, I want to mention that Christmas time is one of the times where you want to be especially careful about things like this, given the history present with characters like Scrooge.

So for those who don't know what the Snow Goblin is, this is the creature in question:

The typical antisemitic goblin is green, greedy, big nosed, and some flavor or sneaky and untrustworthy.

The Snow Goblin quite obviously hits on the green. If this creature looked like a normal capran and was named something like Snow Imp or Mischievous Capran, there would be no issue. Because bastardy little guys stealing things on it's own isn't an antisemitic stereotype. It's when there's multiple things that are the problem, like green skin, or in this case fur, and calling them something with a very large history of antisemitism when combined with those very traits.

The whole schtick of this little guy is they steal your snowflakes if you don't catch them in time, so it also hits on the greedy and untrustworthy tropes. If the Snow Goblin looked like a normal capran but was still called a goblin, there would still be an issue because the antisemitic goblin isn't just green, it's also bastard of greedy kinds, like a thief not out of necessity but of pleasure. "Thief" isn't directly an antisemitic stereotype, but it's very much there as an undercurrent. The "Jewish people are unfairly taking my money!" implication from The Middle Ages when the stereotype began, when money lender was pretty much the only job we were allowed to have.

If the Snow Goblin was called something else but was still green, I wouldn't say its directly antisemitic, but I would side eye it and not feel comfortable. It's kinda like the Grinch, ignoring the fact Dr. Seuss may or may not have been Jewish depending on who you ask because there's conflicting information. It's not directly anything bad, but I'm going to be a little wary of the intention and engage with it extra carefully.

Its about the combination.

I can't tell you exactly when the mainstream antisemitic goblin came together, because I don't know and it's really hard to find information on that, but it's there, and you can't deny that. I don't necessarily blame SSO for contributing to it's perpetuation, because you don't think to look deeper into something when you have no reason to think it's harmful, but I do hope they change it. And hire some Jewish sensitivity readers because this wouldn't have happened with more Jewish people around to catch it, and with witches being a focus of the story now I am admittedly a little nervous about how that'll be handled.

Also, this is all unintentionally made worse by use of the capran model, because it also gets to hit on the whole fun we're in league with the devil thing and the Jewish people have horns thing. I don't know when exactly those started either (drawings of us with "devil features" have been around a long time), but I know the we have horns one was popularized when Michelangelo decided to give his sculpture of Moses horns, because that's what we look like apparently. There are still people who genuinely believe we have horns. I feel robbed. Horns a super cool, I want horns. Where are my horns?

And before someone says it, yes this is a lot of words for something low stakes in a kids game. There are a lot of more important things right now. But that's exactly why it's mattering to me right now. I don't want to be silent about antisemitism while it's on the rise, but I don't know enough about the current aspects of that to speak on it. I do however know a lot about how it applies to fantasy, and I have had about three work in progress essays about the goblin issue to prepare for this.

And also before someone says it, Snow Gremlin isn't exactly an acceptable new name either. It's basically Snow Goblin 2.0. Gremlins aren't goblins (though they have become a bit synonymous and interchangeable), but they were popularized by the massive and proud antisemite Roald Dahl, and I have a hard time believing he didn't put any of those beliefs into them.

[burtlancster]

so if i can’t find the killing frost anywhere what are the chances of me finding this one issue of colliers magazine

[newmusick]

interested.....Don't answer \

No matter how...Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.

Ive said this before

Ive said this before but swear the biggest skill to learn as an adult is how to resist high-pressure sales tactics. You do NOT have to answer questions with anything other than "Sorry I'm not interested." No matter how nice they are or no matter how many follow up questions they ask or even how agitated they get when you stand your ground. Just keep saying I'm not interested. Don't answer their questions. Don't give them an opening to try to push back on your reasons. Be a fucking brick wall of I'm not interested.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Fat dog

[mysterious circle of robed figures] JK Rowling: hello children Allison Bailey: dark lord, dark lord, help me! Bailey: the vet told me my dog is TOO FAT Rowling: my god Rowling: i can't believe they would attack your gender critical beliefs like that Bailey: that's exactly what I said!

Rowling: exactly what happened Rowling: what me through the whole thing Bailey: ok so i went to the vet Rowling: right, right Bailey: looking for a vigorous debate about the importance of biological reality in assessing entry to womens spaces Rowling: uh huh, right Rowling: asss you do

Bailey: but it seems the trans activists had beat me there bc the vet didn't want to talk about that Bailey: almost like they were afraid of appearing politically incorrect and inciting the wrath of the trans activist mob Bailey: instead they just wanted to talk about my dog's health Rowling: weird Bailey: yeah like the vet was OBSESSED with talking about my dog Bailey: they just wanted to examine my dog Rowling: right right probably to make sssure the dog had the proper genitalsss right? Bailey: no they didn't mention that Rowling: what Bailey: i know right??!!?

Bailey: look, if my dog IS fat Bailey: its only because the trans activists have been throwing wispas over the fence as part of a plot to make my dog fat Rowling: i thought chocolate killed dogsss Bailey: i can't be expected to remember every little thing about what dogs can and can't eat

Bailey: i mean you tell me Bailey: does this dog look fat to you? Rowling: Rowling: hm Rowling: uh Rowling: sso Rowling: Rowling: how much sspaghetti are you feeding thiss dog Bailey: ok sure maybe i have been known to leave my briefcase open from time to time

Bailey: ok look sometimes i'm running late for court Bailey: and sometimes i trip as i'm running out the door Bailey: and ok maybe sometimes i drop my briefcase Bailey: and i guess occasionally spaghetti spills all over the floor and my dog eats it Bailey: but only a racist would point that out

Rowling: iss that really what happened? Bailey: i mean its basically what happened Rowling: Bailey: Rowling: Bailey:

[earlier] vet: so we got your dog's bloodwork back Bailey: did you know lesbians are going extinct? the average diameter of the british lesbian vagina has reduced 3 mm over the past decade Bailey: if these trends continue vet: vet: uh yeah so we got your dog's blood work back

vet: so we got your dog's blood work back vet: so uh vet: on average vet: how much spaghetti would you say your dog eats in a week? Bailey: oh jeez that's hard to say vet: right right vet: but just say on average vet: just a ballpark estimate

[distant--shadow]

Okay, I have three (3) thoughts about the state of cr's talkback shows atm and I've decided to write them in your ask box. Feel free to ignore:

I think the quality of the questions in the fireside chat was strongly linked to 4sd and, mainly, the tower of inquiry. As much as I like the idea of having a section where evergreen questions can be asked, they really lean towards the “what if the world was made of pudding?” genre of questions and I think that - combined with the attention that gets drawn to the questions by the Jenga game and the milque-toast-ness of the other questions on 4sd - has encouraged the fandom to discuss and focus on those questions more than we used to.

I also really miss the fact that talk machina had a presenter (who, for the sake of clarity, was fired for obvious reasons and I’m not, in any way, advocating for him to come back). The fact that both the presenter of 4sd and order of questions in the tower of inquiry and deep dive sections are random, means that whether the cast elaborate on their answers is up to chance. I feel like, with the cast being more detached from the fanbase than they used to (for good reason) there really should be someone on screen who knows what questions were answered in the past and can guide the conversation so that they don’t spend 10 minutes discussing “think about this AU” questions and then only give in-depth character analysis a single sentence before being distracted by a joke or running out of time. To be clear, this isn’t a criticism of the cast at all, you can’t both give really good, in-depth answers to questions while also coming up with your own follow-up questions and staying engaged in and shaping the discussion as a whole. I’d say Dani is the obvious pick for a presenter but I think her interests are more in the shippy/fanon side (which is fine, I’m not trying to police how anyone interacts with the show) so I’d prefer her questions to be interjections rather than the whole thing.

This campaign has had a significant percentage of it’s talkback shows taken up by overlap with other stuff (party splits, vox machina and the mighty nein getting their own eps, overlap with calamity and downfall etc.) and, in an ideal world, I’d want them to do separate that stuff out and do extra shows about that, rather than letting it eat into valuable question answering time for bells hells.

All this to say: if cr wants to make a talkback show specifically tailored to me, I'm down with them flying me out to America so I can host my new talkback show called “AU? No thank you!” where we exclusively talk about bells hells and all hypotheticals are banned. Nobody but me would enjoy it but I'm the main character of my story so...

appreciate you engaging and putting your thoughts out there via my inbox!

I agree with most of this, I can respect what they were trying with 4sd but yeah it did not deliver the meat that talks did, and I would love to have a simple discussion show like that back (at one point I would have suggested dani as host too, but if anything these fireside and 4sd eps have proven that she is way too fanon-brained/shipping inclined and I personally, can't stand when she interjects without being asked for an answer (though correcting lore is a different case and pretty much always appreciated))

I can deal with a little amount of what if the world was pudding type questions, but ultimately yeah, it does come across as "so what if we got a different story than the one you chose to give us?" there are cases when yeah maybe it wasn't as conscious as a decision or another factor where yeah, I would like to know the alternative, but i agree with ya there.

I will also say that yes, I do think the shape of the questions selected is in part to match the more laid back and goofy vibes of 4sd, the evergreen questions and such really are not a good choice and absolutely there wa sso much going on during this campaign that reaaaallly broke up the momentum (momentum which still managed to feel oppressive), but i would say I do also think an amount of it is just how modern fandom is, to sound like an old guy yelling at a cloud. so many things come into play here, parasocial stuff, attention spans, isolation and selfishness, populatiry contests within fandoms and how that births popular works/notions from fanon being perceived as canon law, etc etc.

as I keep saying, I want people to make, I want people to have fun, but it's a yeowch from me when that feeds back into the source material, or at least spin offs of it. I do think it is a case of both parties being somewhat guilty, ask baby questions get baby answers, if people engage with fanservice and it gets views then they're gonna cater to that because they need eyes on them to exist as a company. I'm really not the person to be doing the write ups about this, but i do think it's important to share my opinions on my most beloved piece of media, in some ways especially because I create so much "content" for it.

I've pretty much always felt like an outsider within fandom space, and whether that's because of what I want out of it, what I want to see for my favourite characters, or my behaviour, or my work - I don't know, but i do know that for years of watching this show I kept well away from the fandom space or even sharing my drawings caus I didn't want it to hinder my experience and enjoyment of watching, and when the stuff I've been trying to avoid is seeping it's way into the actual shows then yeah, it is something I wanna speak out on.

[starstableopinions]

I don't know where the idea came from that the game has to be balanced for non-starriders. SSO is not a game that is feasible for FTP players in the long term, and that's on purpose. Non-starrider is a demo, nothing more.

SSE does not have to cater to them at all, in fact, SSE is likely already losing money on the fact that they have the lifetime option at all. They're not going to incentivize FTP - and they shouldn't. And I say this as someone who was a codes-only FTP player for half a decade before I bought lifetime.

People call SSE money-hungry all the time, when to me it's clear they're trying to make enough money to keep their game running. Lifetime is a bad deal on their end in the long term, and yet they have kept the option all these years, which I honestly highly respect.

Are there things to criticize SSE about? Yeah, absolutely. But the way they're trying to make money to keep their game running isn't it, it's honestly way less pushed than other games I play, and the game is not PTW when it would be easy to fall into that pitfall if they really were as money-hungry as people claim.

Again, there are valid things to criticize. But I feel like the whole "SSE is money-hungry" (and just a lot of the negative perceptions of SSE as a company in general) thing only serves to muddle the waters in the criticism. It's harder to take the actual valid points seriously when they're written in the same list as "SSE is evil for needing to make money" and "FTP needs to be catered to more".

.

[mistwhisperexpress]

why is it the customer support for kids games is always the absolute worst. the server host employee who helped me with a support ticket i opened for my website seemed near in tears apologizing for an outage they had no control over. they've always gone above and beyond and i love my host so much. sse used to be like that. what happened?

[sso-leo]

two paths :

actual criticism of sso for how dog shit, predatory and opposed to having a good gameplay loop their whole monetization system actually is

or

endlessly complain how the new horse doesn't move/look "realistic/good" enough (it literally looks fine)