#the inclusion of pirates

[bioswear]

Actually okay - the more I play and discover in TOTK the more it feels like an amalgamation of all the little tone theming and aesthetics of previous Zelda’s have been woven into the BOTW formula

[one-piece-user-boxes]

[axolotlclown]

Only press the option if you've read ALL of the books/main comics. I just don't have enough options to include those who have only read portions of the series. This season adapted many stories across multiple books and comics. So even if you've read Comet in Moominland but not Moominland Midwinter, say that you haven't read the books for this poll.

This does not include the picture books, btw. As awesome as a Who Will Comfort Toffle? adaptation would have been, it never came to be. ✊😔

Also if you're someone that's read all of the main comics but not the books, please make yourself known! I've only ever heard of people reading the books then the comics.

[t-u-i-t-c]

Final Chapter: Tomorrow's Legends

[magz]

do what you want cause a pirate is free

you

are

a

pirate

*says to Magz that have made several posts n private DMs for teach other people how pirate safely n tech literacy; n already has FL Studio*

yeah, am know

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Sanjana Friedman: Solana, you actually had a really good tweet on this that kind of sums up how I feel where, I think you were quote-tweeting Mark, where he was talking about you know, this hypothetical situation where you have a company with 30 black women, and you decide you want diversity of perspective, so you decide to hire a white man. Is that, you know, should that be illegal?

Mike Solana: Right, he asks that, cause he asks that question to the rabbit, and he was asking it like, obviously it should be okay to hire the white man in this case because you want that diverse opinion.

Friedman: And you’re pointing out how like incredibly patronizing it is, and of course incorrect, of Mark Cuban to assume that like somehow 30 black women are all going to be this perspectival monolith, right? They’re all gonna have the same views on things and, you know, you can understand that like, white man is gonna have X opinion and black woman is gonna have Y opinion, and like you wanna have roughly equal representation of those two opinions.

I just think the only way out of this is litigation, I agree. Like, someone needs to basically take a company that’s proven to be engaging in racist hiring practices to court and basically get enshrined, yet again, that there are penalties for this, this kind of thing.

But on a basic sort of, what does this say about the people who are pushing these hiring practices? I think it’s just patronising and as we always say, it’s really racist. Like, why are they assuming that because of your racist sexuality you have a certain set of opinions it’s just definitionally racist.

Solana: Yeah, I wanna actually underscore that point that you just raised on the 30 black women thing. Because it is crazy that he said this casually out loud. He said, I mean Matt, pull up the tweet.

He is saying that if you have a room of 30 black women, you really only have one opinion there. And there is, there’s a benefit to your company in bringing in another “diverse" opinion. He’s trying to sort of turn this on the anti-DEI people, because his assumption is that the anti-DEI people are actually white supremacists, and they will see this and they will think, "oh wow, there’s a dangerous possibility there of 30 black women, like we better bring in a white opinion."

But of course, the anti-DEI people are like, that’s crazy that you think all black women think exactly the same, and that you said it out loud, and that you’re the one who is over here pretending that you’re anti-racist. It’s fucking bananas and I think it’s just, that stuff is definitely over culturally and now there’s really, really fascinating fight to save face.

Like, Mark is someone, Mark Cuban is someone who has, you know, put a lot into this conversation publicly and to just kind of give up and be like, okay you know the federal government is now telling me I am potentially at risk of litigation here, I better just back up and apologise for my racism and try and do better. Like, he’s really trying to just kind of just rewrite history here, and get to a point where, I don’t know, he hasn't just taken another massive L in what was really just like, I mean this was 24 hours straight, he wouldn’t let it go. But it’s been at this point I think months of this.

[badolmen]

Back in my day the gay pirate show had interracial lesbian sex episode fucking one. Have these guys even boned on screen with their dicks out? Are they tackling the nuances of slavery, colonialism, and a rapidly expanding empire with no room for people like them on an interpersonal and societal scale? Have they even tried to kill each other yet???

[sacarats]

I really want this to happen so I'm sharing their project

Rough waters

[roughwatersthegame]

Today is Trans visibility day, and the day we reached our Kickstarter goal.

We are here to celebrate and give -now more than ever- visibility to trans people with our game. Thanks to everyone supporting us 💙

********

Aujourd'hui on célèbre la visibilité des personnes trans, et cette nuit nous avons atteint notre objectif Kickstarter.

Notre motivation depuis le 1er jour est d'offrir plus de représentation aux personnes trans, merci à toutes les personnes qui nous soutiennent 💙

[merdemort]

this is how you know definitively that i am enamored with a fictional character

[cosplayspacepirate]

Dear whoever decided to sell their Astro albums with the photocards included to the half price books!??! BLESS YOUR HEART!!!

[lasnevadaslaborunion]

It frightens and discourages me how pervasive "tribal" stereotypes and imagery are in the fantasy and adventure genres.

It's all over the place in classic literature. Crack open a Jules Verne novel and you're likely to find caricatures of brown people and cultures, even when the characters are sympathetic to the plight of the colonized peoples - incidentally, this is the biggest reason I can't recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to everyone, despite Captain Nemo being one of my favorite fictional characters of all time.

You can't escape it in modern cinema, either. You'll see white heroes venturing bravely into jungles and tombs to steal from natives who don't know how to use their resources "properly." You'll see them strung up in traps, riddled with sleeping darts, forced to flee and fight their way out. Hell, Pirates of the Caribbean, a remarkably inclusive franchise in many other ways, had an extended sequence of the white heroes escaping from a cannibal civilization in the second film.

And when fantasy RPGs want a humanoid enemy, the "bloodthirsty natives" are the first stock trope they jump to. World of Warcraft is one of the most egregious examples, with the trolls - blatant racist caricatures with faux-voodoo beliefs, cannibalistic diets, Jamaican accents, and a history of being killed in droves by (white) elves and humans - being raided and slaughtered in nearly every expansion.

It doesn't matter how vibrant and distinctive the real-world indigenous, Polynesian, Caribbean, and African cultures are. It doesn't matter how much potential these real civilizations offer for complex and sympathetic characterization. Anything that doesn't make sense to the white western mind is shoved under the same "savage" umbrella. They're different. They're strange. They're scary. They have to be escaped, subjugated, eliminated, ogled at from the safety of a museum.

Modern writers, directors, and developers don't even seem to realize how horrifying it is to present the indigenous inhabitants of a place as "obstacles" for non-native protagonists to overcome. "It's not racist," they say, "because these people aren't really people, you see." And if you dare to point out anything that hurts or offends you as a descendant of the bastardized culture, you're accused of being the real racist: "These aren't humans! They're monsters! Are you saying that these real societies are just like those disgusting monsters?"

No, they're not monsters. But you chose to design them as monsters, just as invaders have done for hundreds of years. Why would you do that? Why can you recognize any other caricature as evil and cruel, but not this?

This is how deep colonialism runs.

[brekkie-e]

Veilgaurd exists in such a weird spot on the morality circuit to me. It's so clear that they've got overt inclusivity messaging all over the place. To the point of ludicrousy at times (looking at you Lords of Fortune i.e. Jake and the Neverland Pirates.) When they're trying to make a point about what is morally good and the correct point of view™️ they hit you over the head with it. Thinking about Taash's dialogues about the Lords not stealing anything "cultural, you know- important" and their codex entry about gender. It's not that any of these messages or sentiments are wrong. But the way they are handled in the story is so at odds with a piece of media rated for mature audiences.

And then. And then the game turns around and makes the Antaam the most egregiously racist depiction of the Qunari in the series to date. The fact they managed that is kind of amazing in and of itself because I think the goal was to minimize the Qunari dilemma. By saying "not all Qunari! Just the Antaam!" It's similar to what they're aiming for with the Venatori and Tevinter.

The problem is though, now they've backed in to a corner where the warring Qunari faction is under the umbrella of "ridiculous disney villian that we don't explore further than that." And in doing so paint almost every Qunari that follows the Qun as a mindless brute that wears next to nothing and spends most of the game growling. Which is just. Deeply unsettling to see in a game that is trying so hard to be woke you feel like youre watching them pat themselves on the back as you play.

Like how do you double down so so hard on the inclusivity in so many aspects, and then turn around and do that?

I mean how did Dragon Age 2, a game that came out in 2011, portray the Qunari characters as so much more nuanced and intelligent than the 2024 Inclusivity Champion? Not to mention Kirkwall as a whole actually explores Tevinter's slavery problem on a much deeper level than Minrathous does? The narration Varric gives about the Gallows and the slave trade in the span of 30 seconds discusses more about the Tevinter Empire's relationship with slavery than Veilgaurd does in the entire game. That's without even mentioning Fenris.

Now I'm not claiming any of the previous titles were without their own mis-steps here. Im just a little irritated by how much this game reeks of hypocrisy at points.

[thebibliosphere]

I both believe "poor people deserve art" and "artists deserve food", but it's hard to reconcile those beliefs. I blame capitalism. And I suppose it mostly matters who you're stealing from?

I don't mean to question you at all, I'm against people pirating your stories. I guess I was just wondering if you had more thoughts regarding the reconciliation the two beliefs I quoted above.

I think the reconciliation is working toward a future where things are better, and authors and artists don't have to beg people not to steal from them because they think every author is Stephen King, who wouldn't notice if you stole the pennies found under his couch when in reality most of us are hunting for spare change down the back of the couch because we are earning below minimum wage.

We need people to embrace the idea that art belongs to the working class, both in terms of consumption but also creation.

If you don't support the working-class creators, you'll only end up with rich fucks with no scope of the world beyond their own narrow view of privilege.

Indie creators are actually working very hard to change the way the industry works, and the publishing industry is shitting itself over it. They don't like the success some of us are having. It's why they keep upping prices while slashing corners on their own production (while never affecting the man at the top) to try and stay competitive within the rat race they've created.

They're not interested in the proliferation of art. They're not interested in making sure their authors can afford to live. They don't want more diversity. They don't want inclusion. They want profit at whatever the cost.

And while indie creators very much need to get paid because we live in a capitalistic society and everything is burning down around us, and a carton of eggs now costs more than what I earn per hour, our creativity is directly at odds with the type of profiteering big publishers want.

The money should go to the writers. Not the CEOs. The money should go to the workers in the print houses. Not the CEOs. No one needs the kind of wealth these people have. It's obscene. We need direct action against these conglomerates. We need unionization. We need a means to fight back so that we can make art and make it accessible.

So, how do we do that? I don't know. I'm just a very tired, disabled creator doing my best to keep my head above water. But I think getting people to realize that art and books are worth saving up for would be a good start.

That putting money in the pockets of creators is just as important as your own enjoyment of their art. Because if there aren't any artists, you've got nothing.

Getting them involved with their local libraries would also be a great start. Educating them on how the industry works is part of that. The number of people telling me they had no idea libraries paid authors is staggering. And that's intentional. It's a by-product of right-wing propaganda to make you think libraries are worthless and just sap taxpayers' money.

They're not.

If they were, the fash wouldn't be trying so hard to take them away.

Basically, we need working-class solidarity and for certain people on the left to rid themselves of the idea that just because something isn't borne of manual labor, it doesn't have worth. We need the artists and the dreamers as much as we need to bricklayers and the craftsmen. Otherwise, what's the fucking point of it all?

[marvelsmostwanted]

This is sad but unfortunately I think this is just going to be the norm for the next few years as streaming services die a slow death.

HBO Max should in theory be able to make money from a show that was at one point the top new series in the US. At the time, David Jenkins said "This is what happens when a major media company invests in inclusive mainstream stories" (agree!) but unfortunately that major media company, like all streaming services, has a terrible business model that can't support that investment.

This is an interesting article about how streaming services are losing money and scrambling to make it back by trying to convince people to buy cheaper, ad-supported options or bundling with other streaming services. Unfortunately for them, I think that's like... all of the options? At some point they're just going to continue to lose money. Making shows is expensive and very few consumers are willing to pay more when they could just cancel and use a cheaper service (or, you know. 🏴‍☠️)

This is also a good article that was written after Shadow and Bone was cancelled by Netflix about whether it could be saved:

"The problem is that while saving shows used to be plausible, at times, the cost of Shadow and Bone combined with the fact that streaming services are really, really starting to cut back on spending means that this would be an extremely tough sell. WB Discovery’s Max is being lambasted for killing finished projects for tax breaks to chip into its massive debt. Disney Plus has done the same thing and has said they will cut back on things like expensive Marvel shows. Amazon Prime is mired in expensive creator deals going nowhere and throwing insane amounts of money at projects they are realizing are not panning out. Paramount Plus losing $500 million a year. NBC’s Peacock is losing $650 million a quarter."

TLDR; Streaming services have reached such a dire point financially that they have to cancel some of their most popular content (Marvel shows on Disney+???? These have seemingly been very successful; it's wild to read that they're "cutting back") in the desperate hope that a new season of something that's cheaper to make will get more attention.

What I gathered from these articles is that steaming services are dying a slow death and sadly, a lot of good shows are going to go with them.