Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[therahedwig]

I mod the /r/dwarffortress subreddit, for my sins, apparently

D:

*offers hugs*

...

*also offers hugs to other moderators*

[Nachodsk]

I'd give this guys $60 instead of $20, they truly deserved the money and also.. the game is way more competent than a 'AAA' and they're charging way more for what it really is!

I'm really impatient for the game release!

[PatrikLundell]

I'd give this guys $60 instead of $20, they truly deserved the money and also.. the game is way more competent than a 'AAA' and they're charging way more for what it really is!

I'm really impatient for the game release!

Then I'd recommend downloading of the current version and a donation to Toady. If you're aiming for the commercial version, then deduct $20 from the donation and spend that later on the commercial version.

[Funk]

So?
i'm buying it any way.

[Admiral Obvious]

"I've never played, but from the three PCGamer articles I skimmed over the past decade. . .."

This is the tweet they are mad over.
[tweet imgur link]

And no one is posting it alongside their complaints they ckeep saying *redacted* because once anyone reads that they will see how silly the outrage is.

Alas I'm well aware that's what they're upset about now (I mod the /r/dwarffortress subreddit, for my sins, apparently, and I wouldn't even be mad if this comment got removed if I showed you some of my modmail screenshots over that tweet,) but this thread of course predates that tweet and the Steam forum was already nonsense.

It's a shame that apparently you can't turn off a Steam forum, even for a non-existing game.

Oh, you can. Just make a bot that deletes everything once it comes up.

You'll get railed against HARD for "censorship", but you can do it from one account.

[Cathar]

OMFG LOL. That's what they are mad about ? Hypothetical future transgender dwarves :')
Mass produced drama, complete with "if I can't rail any topic to my rage against homosexuality, then I'm being silenced by big brother"

Yeah it's steam forums alright.

[Starver]

They (<=generic) of course confound the problem by recklessly conflating transexual with intersex¹, transexual with transvestite², any or all of the former with transistor radios³, otherwise benign psychological states with 'mental illness'⁴.

It's easy enough to do, and unconsciously, but especially easy to do with deliberate malice, so picking apart the trolls from the merely steadfastly opinionated (and even sometimes from the well-meaning allies with incomplete understanding) is tricky to establish across the broad shared margins between outward indicators. (No irony intended, there...)


And that's pretty much all I want to say directly regarding that subject. It's not even my battle to fight from personal experience, so I've probably over/under/badly-stated something crucial anyway.


Still, I think the Steamers are over the hump. I'm now content to stay nonparticipant there, only occasionally cringing when some element of gameplay is misunderstood or misrepresented yet in all good faith.


¹ Transition(ed/ing), to better fit body to mind, vs born biologically ambiguously,
² The latter describing dwarves already, insofar as our viewpoint on 'gender-appropriate' clothing that they don't pay any attention to.
³ Throwing variations of the term "Trannie" around (see also ²) seems deliberately provocative.
⁴ It's not really an illness, by any normal measure of the term, and simply living that life affects no-one else any more than any other individual's benign traits and/or physicality in this hugely varied world of ours. The actions and attitudes of others can create from it a mental injury in the manner of PTSD, but in your typical uncomplicated case of a victimised and victimising party it is the victimiser who should be asked to mitigate their innate or acquired nature, theirs being the disruption to society.

[Manveru Taurënér]

It's sad how few seem to even realize being born intersex is a thing and that it's not all that uncommon, and that even if one were to for example look fully male on the outside they could still have say a uterus messing things up hormonally and any other endless number of variations.

In the case of DF I'd assume it'd focus less on the physical specifics and just be a case of soul/body mismatch, whenever the soul system is updated to support any number of different options. Being born with the soul of a dragon instead of a human one is apparently perfectly fine as far as a fantasy setting goes (Skyrim), but a character with a wrongly gendered soul is just too immersion breaking for some people apparently

[wierd]

*is suddenly reminded of a fort he ran several years ago with temperature turned off.  A male dwarf was wearing a dress, which had caught fire. Since temperature was turned off, he kept right on doing various things while wearing that hot getup. I made several quips about his flaming-ness, and the like, but only in good humor and fun. I still to this day do not know how his dress caught on fire. there were no sources of ignition!*

[Jesterdwarf]

Well, it's kind of that if you're born with the soul of a dragon, you get superpowers, and if you're born with 'wrong gendered' soul you want to kill yourself. One is somewhat less cool than the other. Also if you can get soul with wrong gender, it means that you probably can get a schizophrenic soul, mentally deficient soul, Alzheimer-afflicted soul...
I don't think mixing mental health and souls is a good idea.

[MCreeper]

Well, it's kind of that if you're born with the soul of a dragon, you get superpowers, and if you're born with 'wrong gendered' soul you want to kill yourself. One is somewhat less cool than the other. Also if you can get soul with wrong gender, it means that you probably can get a schizophrenic soul, mentally deficient soul, Alzheimer-afflicted soul...
I don't think mixing mental health and souls is a good idea.

Why there are no trolls on Bay12? They see gay spiritualist galore, facepalm hard and decide not to battle them on their own site.

[Cruxador]

They (<=generic) of course confound the problem by recklessly conflating transexual with intersex¹

The initial tweet, which is deleted now I believe, listed both intersex and trans*, if I recall correctly. There are different issues with each of those which could be potential sources of consternation that are related to implementation independently of real world opinions. But it's getting mixed up with people's personal biases too.

Well, it's kind of that if you're born with the soul of a dragon, you get superpowers, and if you're born with 'wrong gendered' soul you want to kill yourself. One is somewhat less cool than the other. Also if you can get soul with wrong gender, it means that you probably can get a schizophrenic soul, mentally deficient soul, Alzheimer-afflicted soul...
I don't think mixing mental health and souls is a good idea.

I mean, dwarves going crazy has been a staple of the game from pretty early. But I agree that dysphoria is significantly less likely to be a fun gameplay mechanic.

[wierd]

But Magic Arc is coming up!  With real magic in the world, and gods doing real intercessions, people wishing their gender blues away is a real thing.

Right now, transgenderizing can be done with a custom syndrome that cuts the appropriate caste and appends the proper one.  (Or rather, two syndromes are slapped on at the same time, but only one has a valid target type, and so only one sticks.  One for Male->Female trans, and one for Female->Male trans.  The first requires male caste to stick, the latter requires female caste to stick. It then redacts the appropriate caste tokens, and appends the new ones.)

Dealing with dysphoria via magic could be useful, and imposing dysphoria (by forcibly changing a dwarf against its 'soul caste') would be a natural thing to have avoid because of its bad consequences. (but may be something you need to do occasionally because you need a certain gender of something).

This could be a rather useful and interesting mechanic to add, despite the whiners on Reddit and Steam.

[clinodev]

This could be a rather useful and interesting mechanic to add, despite the whiners on Reddit and Steam.

I don't spend a lot of time defending reddit, but while the small handful of bad on this topic in /r/dwarffortress has been bad, the little bit of it that was public was promptly heavily downvoted, and much mockery ensued. What I complained about above was mostly modmail & PMs. Really /r/dwarffortress is still "small hobby reddit," otherwise known as "good reddit," even at ~80k subscribers. The 4channers keep saying reddit's been "ruined by sjw's," so maybe they've given up on it. We can only hope.

I'm actually pretty impressed, tbh, I expected worse, but no one even started an independent "discussion post" on the topic. I was of course accused of censoring discussion posts anyway. eyeroll

[Manveru Taurënér]

Well, it's kind of that if you're born with the soul of a dragon, you get superpowers, and if you're born with 'wrong gendered' soul you want to kill yourself. One is somewhat less cool than the other. Also if you can get soul with wrong gender, it means that you probably can get a schizophrenic soul, mentally deficient soul, Alzheimer-afflicted soul...
I don't think mixing mental health and souls is a good idea.

Sounds like that's more an issue with assuming mental issues are an innate part of it (rather than just a very likely outcome in the real world). Regardless what one thinks, for a game there's nothing wrong with just distilling it down to the very core of it (being the mismatched mind/body part) and representing it in a suitable fantasy way for added character flavor etc.