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[HmH]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Wait, DF got put on some no-no lists? I haven't been to the forums since early 2020, what did I miss?

It didn't. The reaction to the mermaid farms has been exaggerated through 10 years of Chinese Whispers. In a few years time, people will probably claim that it's why Toady wasn't eligible for his brother's medical insurance.

No, clearly [EXPUNGED] is to blame for the insurance mishap.
Toady simply does not delete huge active threads, no matter how vile they are. Not without an exceptionally good reason.

[Maloy]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Wait, DF got put on some no-no lists? I haven't been to the forums since early 2020, what did I miss?

It didn't. The reaction to the mermaid farms has been exaggerated through 10 years of Chinese Whispers. In a few years time, people will probably claim that it's why Toady wasn't eligible for his brother's medical insurance.

Really?

I heard that EA, Activision, and ubisoft were all going to write billion dollar checks to toady to fund dwarf fortress, no strings attached, but the whole thing got cancelled because of the mermaid fiasco

I can't believe that isn't actually true

[Dunamisdeos]

Frankly Toady got the good end of that deal if they cancelled XD

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Something tells me Toady probably would've refused anyway. Toady entering a partnership with an indie game developer for a Steam release is one thing, but multi-billion-dollar corporations that would probably want tons of input into how Toady proceeds with future development of DF? Yeah, hard pass!

[Laterigrade]

This is what got DF put on the no-no lists, don’t start this back up again.

Wait, DF got put on some no-no lists? I haven't been to the forums since early 2020, what did I miss?

It didn't. The reaction to the mermaid farms has been exaggerated through 10 years of Chinese Whispers. In a few years time, people will probably claim that it's why Toady wasn't eligible for his brother's medical insurance.

Yeah, no, I was joking. It definitely got put on some no-no lists in certain people’s minds, some of my friends who would definitely play it and love it otherwise, come on you stupid bastards you’ll like it just try it, included, but there were no real no-no lists.

[HmH]

Yeah, no, I was joking. It definitely got put on some no-no lists in certain people’s minds, some of my friends who would definitely play it and love it otherwise, come on you stupid bastards you’ll like it just try it, included, but there were no real no-no lists.

You mean there are people who would have loved to play a game with torture-happy goblins, cannibal elves, detailed dismemberment physics, ASCII graphics and a vertical learning curve...
but B12's penchant for unethical engineering was what turned them off?

I think that is exactly the kind of players Dwarf Fortress does not need.
People who let moral qualms stop them from having fun would be needlessly toxic around here.

Can you imagine the kind of stink they'd raise about the Dwarven Child Care?
And the old (ca.2013) attempts to fireproof dwarves through gradual desensitization to magma?

---

Granted, I'm an old player; I started playing DF in 2009 and kicked the habit in 2014, only playing sporadically since then.
So maybe I've missed some changes; maybe the Bay 12 community has grown softer and less psychopathic over the years.
But from what I've seen of the forums in early 2010s, the collective monstrousness of Dwarf Fortress players is what kept this forum so polite, chill and devoid of toxicity.

Any user's first contribution to this forum's R&D projects - or, failing that, the first fort that survives at least five years - functions as a rite of passage.
Success in those ventures requires you do things that, were you not a DF player, you would not have even contemplated.

A rite of passage, in turn, creates a tribal identity: a way to see Bay 12 as a unique collection of people, separate from those who merely pretend to be villains.
All of us have gazed into the abyss, and saw the abyss wink back.

[Salmeuk]

I've seen things, specifically expunged, that really contradict this statement:

A rite of passage, in turn, creates a tribal identity: a way to see Bay 12 as a unique collection of people, separate from those who merely pretend to be villains.

or rather, there is a reason certain organic functions are not present in the game, and in truth any game that attempts realistic simulation of those functions is likely to attract the worst kind of person (see F.A.T.A.L the 'roleplaying' system). DF has always had a sort of ironic approach to the gore-y reality of the flesh bots we call dwarves, and that removed perspective allows for great hilarity, but that unsaid line has been crossed before, and is sort of the 'dark timeline'. To all those who cultivate the positivity of Bay12, thanks for not being psychopathic in a bad way...

[HmH]

I see what you are saying. I agree: even villains have standards.
[EXPUNGED] is one example of such standards being violated. The Serial Killer Roguelike is another.

In both cases, the evil that crosses the line isn't grand enough to inspire awe: it is is disgusting and petty.
It sinks from the lofty heights of dramatic villainy, the sort that makes characters into what Alan Rickman had called "interesting people", to the cowardly banality of real-world evil.

I'm pretty sure that, having already tasted the grandiose evil of a mermaid slaughterhouse in a controlled environment where the only abuses are the ones that were intended, few people from B12 will find porch-pirating, bullying or government corruption to be the interesting kind of evil.

Of course, there are always outliers. They don't stay on the forums for long.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Oh god, don't get me started on F.A.T.A.L.

But anyway I agree on the point of difference between abstracted and grandiose "fantasy evil" and the sort of petty sociopathy that usually defines evil in our mundane world. A good example from fantasy literature would be why the average person finds Joffrey Baratheon so much more viscerally despicable and frightening as a character than Sauron, despite the fact that the latter has so much more power to make his world at large a worse place to live and has attempted wholesale genocide on several occasions.

[Nyeogmi]

this is just me but i think that violence in video games is usually about generating feelings of agency and power. people in the modern world don't have that but want that. that's why they kill a million people in gtav or rip the eyelids off a goblin

on the other hand, it's really, really hard for me to understand the tendencies that make someone simulate institutional violence. genocide aside, i don't understand the kind of person who looks at a cop or a prison guard and thinks "yeah, i want to be that guy!"

i feel like the pages of nervous laughter in this thread come from everybody feeling like something funny was supposed to happen once they made mermaid auschwitz, but then they finished it and nothing did.

[Moeteru]

this is just me but i think that violence in video games is usually about generating feelings of agency and power. people in the modern world don't have that but want that. that's why they kill a million people in gtav or rip the eyelids off a goblin

on the other hand, it's really, really hard for me to understand the tendencies that make someone simulate institutional violence. genocide aside, i don't understand the kind of person who looks at a cop or a prison guard and thinks "yeah, i want to be that guy!"

i feel like the pages of nervous laughter in this thread come from everybody feeling like something funny was supposed to happen once they made mermaid auschwitz, but then they finished it and nothing did.

Funnily enough I feel exactly the same as you do about real-world institutions and abuses of power. I'm definitely quite far to the anarchist end of the spectrum and I even go out of my way to avoid hurting things like wasps and slugs.
However, I also love this thread and the whole concept of mermaid farming in DF. Yes, it would be staggeringly unethical to do in real life, but DF isn't real life. I firmly believe that games can function as a healthy outlet for some of humanity's more primitive urges. There are countless things which would be unethical in real life but are very fun (or at least interesting) in fiction.

Personally what I like about the whole mermaid farming concept is the single-minded focus on efficiency contrasted with the absurd horror of it. It's a bit like the engineering equivalent of gallows humour or "A Modest Proposal". It wouldn't be half as entertaining if it was just a fish farm, not least because unethical fish farms already exist in abundance in the real world. Mermaids are almost stereotypically good and deserving of protection in fiction, a bit like puppies or orphans, so it makes for a very surprising (and therefore amusing) contrast. There are multiple books of bunny suicides which play on the same kind of dark humour.

Anyway, I think it would be a good idea for us to not let the thread get too far off topic.

[klefenz]

there is a reason certain organic functions are not present in the game, and in truth any game that attempts realistic simulation of those functions is likely to attract the worst kind of person

Oxygen not Included has bodily functions and the associated fluids.

[Mobbstar]

there is a reason certain organic functions are not present in the game, and in truth any game that attempts realistic simulation of those functions is likely to attract the worst kind of person

Oxygen not Included has bodily functions and the associated fluids.

ONI only has poop and a catch-all "contaminated water" as byproducts of using the outhouse. Reproduction is purely by cloning, and sweat and spit and tears are all modeled less realistically than DF does.

I believe the only reason Oxygen Not Included doesn't have its own Mermaid Bones is because there are no notably intelligent things other than the Dupes which are far more useful alive and able. And I don't recall if there's any kind of butchery either. The worst I've witnessed is locking animals in tiny "processing" rooms and machine-feeding them.

[Laterigrade]

there is a reason certain organic functions are not present in the game, and in truth any game that attempts realistic simulation of those functions is likely to attract the worst kind of person

Oxygen not Included has bodily functions and the associated fluids.

but there’s no combat, so there’s much less opportunity for any of that to be “!!glorious!!”
(y’know, ‘feelings of agency and power’, like someone else said in this thread)

[Magmacube_tr]

Guys, quick! This is the opportunity of lifetime! Lets leave our messages here so our names will be on this legendary thread. Post before posting here is considered Necro-ing once again!