reddragdiva:

nostalgebraist:

philippesaner:

Hey, @nostalgebraist. Can you give me the backstory on that Undertale Prime post?

I just read stormingtheivory’s latest article, and they held it up as an example of horrible badness. But I’m not sure exactly what the problem with it is supposed to be.

Also, are you and the other people in that conversation hardcore gamers? The article is largely an attack on them, but you guys are included in there and I never really thought of you as a gamer at all.

Yeah, I’m not really a gamer at all.  I don’t play video games at all and very rarely play computer games, and when I do it’s usually relatively easy ones (e.g. Portal, Analogue: A Hate Story, Undertale).

Cut for recounting stuff that may already be familiar to others (also, this got kinda long, sorry)

Keep reading

um … this doesn’t really help jack’s case. people objected to the theory because it was laughably terrible discourse, and his followups made it clear their objections were on point.

you answer that this is a misguided reading, because actually it was from a conversation between you. but … neither of you has played the game. so his reading of the game, and his theorising on it, and his later explanations of his position, would appear to be entirely from … what he’d picked up about it reading tumblr. which he considered sufficient to declare in apparent confidence that the game did not make moral sense.

this is not a context that makes his writing on the topic look any better, and makes the responses more on point, not less.

(i have no objection to not bothering with source material and picking up my entire knowledge of a work from tumblr memes, e.g. my complete knowledge of steven universe. but if i then proceeded to pontificate on it in the manner of undertale prime, i should reasonably have expected whatever befalls me.)

“neither of you has played the game”

???

I played the game, I just didn’t finish it.  (Although I did read about parts I hadn’t seen on the Wiki, and watch some of them on Youtube.)

And RJS also played it.  He wrote “I haven’t finished it” (implying “I’ve started it”) on 9/26/15 and then wrote “(pictured above: my first Undertale playthrough)
” below a gifset on 10/28/15.  For comparison, the Undertale Prime post was made on 12/19/15.

(via reddragdiva)

philippesaner:

Hey, @nostalgebraist. Can you give me the backstory on that Undertale Prime post?

I just read stormingtheivory’s latest article, and they held it up as an example of horrible badness. But I’m not sure exactly what the problem with it is supposed to be.

Also, are you and the other people in that conversation hardcore gamers? The article is largely an attack on them, but you guys are included in there and I never really thought of you as a gamer at all.

Yeah, I’m not really a gamer at all.  I don’t play video games at all and very rarely play computer games, and when I do it’s usually relatively easy ones (e.g. Portal, Analogue: A Hate Story, Undertale).

Cut for recounting stuff that may already be familiar to others (also, this got kinda long, sorry)

Keep reading

I would never have guessed that the word “obeisances,” of all things, would end up on my Xkit blacklist, but here we are

mercurialmalcontent:

nostalgebraist:

mercurialmalcontent:

nostalgebraist:

I guess I (being straight?) I actually just don’t understand how these judgments are made, although I guess I thought I did

E.g. The Game We Do Not Speak Of In This Household has about 5-10 minutes of lesbian romance, incidental to the main plot, basically as bonus content (which you literally cannot see on your first entire playthrough of the game), and the impression you get on tumblr is that it is ABOUT LESBIANS WHOA

No, it’s not ‘incidental to the main plot’ - it’s integral to one of the two major endings. There’s also more than 5-10 minutes of it if a player bothers paying attention and making a lot of phone calls to one of the characters. 

And, y’know, us queers are kind of starving for representation, here, especially for lesbian relationships that have nothing to do with men or what guys find appealing. A relationship between a feisty butch woman and a chubby nerd lady is practically unheard of. Actually getting that as not only canonical (in a game with a lot of women, even!), but explicitly stated, and having it be really cute and charming is pretty much a reason to break out the champagne. We already take the tiniest scraps and run with them (which should not be a surprise at this point) - of course we’re going to party when we get an actual slice of representation pie.

I know you don’t like the game - fair enough, and it’s been interesting reading your reasons as to why - but this is edging into ‘people are having fun the wrong way’ territory, and it’s kinda insulting.

I don’t want to say that people are having fun in the wrong way, just that I don’t understand the responses.  I try to be courteous when asking about things I don’t understand or expressing lack of understanding, but I wasn’t in a great mental place when I wrote this post and I failed to keep it up.

What I mean by “incidental to the main plot” is that if you had to give a quick skeletal outline of the story, it wouldn’t sound like a story “about a lesbian relationship.”

The comparison I had in mind was Madoka, which is much less appealing on the level of “cute and charming” and “has nothing to do with what guys find appealing,” but if you had to give an elevator pitch for the plot, the central female pair would be at the heart of it.  I’m trying to understand what appeals and what doesn’t, here.

What appeals and what doesn’t - well, I like Madoka quite a lot so long as I apply a large dose of Death of the Author, but the relatableness of pretty adolescent girls in pretty dresses crying a lot over cosmic horror only goes so far for me. It’s also unrelenting despair to the level I feel quite confident in calling it tragedy porn, with every relationship in it revolving around tragedy. It’s so grandiose it ended up feeling a bit empty.

Undertale, otoh, isn’t ‘about’ a lesbian relationship, but it doesn’t need to be to be more appealing in the relationship department. (Although, since the relationship is integral to the storyline in a game that’s largely about relationships, it kind of is about their relationship…) They’re adults, their relationship is based on genuine appreciation for each other and doesn’t revolve around tragedy, despite tragedy being in the womens’ pasts, their relationship  difficulties are approached with good-natured humor, and it’s two women who aren’t stereotypically attractive. Alphys is downright frumpy, and it’s not played as a joke - Undyne thinks she’s cute, period. It’s personal and satisfying.

(via mercurialmalcontent)

Also, I made a rule in private that I wouldn’t make any more Undertale-related posts.  I guess someone I argued myself into thinking that post from last night didn’t count, which in retrospect makes no sense.

So I should probably say publicly that I have a rule against making any more Undertale-related posts, and you should hold me to that.

It’s really, really good that I can talk to Esther in private about things that mess with my brain.  She’s always able to make me feel a lot better.  I shouldn’t have to do it in public as well.

transmemesatan:

nostalgebraist:

I guess I (being straight?) I actually just don’t understand how these judgments are made, although I guess I thought I did

E.g. The Game We Do Not Speak Of In This Household has about 5-10 minutes of lesbian romance, incidental to the main plot, basically as bonus content (which you literally cannot see on your first entire playthrough of the game), and the impression you get on tumblr is that it is ABOUT LESBIANS WHOA

well, there’s two factors

1. even tho you can’t get the Romance Proper  on the first go, there’s still like… a lot of hints via phone conversations and the like, many of which become way more obvious on a third or fourth playthrough (which it’s likely if not guaranteed the player will go for). it also helps that, even independent of the romance, both characters involved are complex and fully-realized, something a lot of games falter on w/ the men, to say nothing of how they handle women.
   
2. we are starving.

Thanks, this is helpfu.

A worse hypothetical version of me would use this post to argue with “complex and fully-realized” but that’s more personal taste and not being used to how video games (in this genre / on this scale) tend to do things

(via maxknightley)

mercurialmalcontent:

nostalgebraist:

I guess I (being straight?) I actually just don’t understand how these judgments are made, although I guess I thought I did

E.g. The Game We Do Not Speak Of In This Household has about 5-10 minutes of lesbian romance, incidental to the main plot, basically as bonus content (which you literally cannot see on your first entire playthrough of the game), and the impression you get on tumblr is that it is ABOUT LESBIANS WHOA

No, it’s not ‘incidental to the main plot’ - it’s integral to one of the two major endings. There’s also more than 5-10 minutes of it if a player bothers paying attention and making a lot of phone calls to one of the characters. 

And, y’know, us queers are kind of starving for representation, here, especially for lesbian relationships that have nothing to do with men or what guys find appealing. A relationship between a feisty butch woman and a chubby nerd lady is practically unheard of. Actually getting that as not only canonical (in a game with a lot of women, even!), but explicitly stated, and having it be really cute and charming is pretty much a reason to break out the champagne. We already take the tiniest scraps and run with them (which should not be a surprise at this point) - of course we’re going to party when we get an actual slice of representation pie.

I know you don’t like the game - fair enough, and it’s been interesting reading your reasons as to why - but this is edging into ‘people are having fun the wrong way’ territory, and it’s kinda insulting.

I don’t want to say that people are having fun in the wrong way, just that I don’t understand the responses.  I try to be courteous when asking about things I don’t understand or expressing lack of understanding, but I wasn’t in a great mental place when I wrote this post and I failed to keep it up.

What I mean by “incidental to the main plot” is that if you had to give a quick skeletal outline of the story, it wouldn’t sound like a story “about a lesbian relationship.”

The comparison I had in mind was Madoka, which is much less appealing on the level of “cute and charming” and “has nothing to do with what guys find appealing,” but if you had to give an elevator pitch for the plot, the central female pair would be at the heart of it.  I’m trying to understand what appeals and what doesn’t, here.

(via mercurialmalcontent)

I guess I (being straight?) I actually just don’t understand how these judgments are made, although I guess I thought I did

E.g. The Game We Do Not Speak Of In This Household has about 5-10 minutes of lesbian romance, incidental to the main plot, basically as bonus content (which you literally cannot see on your first entire playthrough of the game), and the impression you get on tumblr is that it is ABOUT LESBIANS WHOA

Man I was having a real nice evening and then I clicked through to someone’s blog and ended up seeing another Undertale Prime post and now I’m experiencing a tasteful and varied artisanal selection of simultaneous negative emotions

Look, brain – I know you like to have a few instant bad mood buttons at any given time, but did you have to choose one this goofy

section42l:

nostalgebraist:

nostalgebraist:

Re: the long conversation about Undertale between @cyborgbutterflies and @freezeflare, which I would reblog except it’s long and we can’t snip posts anymore.

cyborgbutterflies expressed a lot of the things that bother me emotionally about the game.  But I think there’s another aspect to it as well, which may well not apply to anyone but me.  But it does apply to me, and it was almost eerie how on-the-nose the game was about it.

I was talking to someone yesterday about the fact that in the past I seem to have spent a remarkable amount of time interacting with people who (on some level) dislike or don’t respect me, and doing so of my own free will.  Of course in my moments of lower self-esteem I figure that this is just because I am an person who virtually anyone would dislike or disrepect, but I don’t really believe that’s true.

I went on to say that I think the actual reason is that when a person is hostile toward me (and I’m including casual disrespect and other kinds of “low-grade hostility” here), my natural response is not to back away, but to lean in.  Specifically, I think: “I have a hard time simply living with the fact that this person dislikes/disrespects me.  (Low self-esteem or vulnerability, again.)  But think about the possibilities here.  Maybe they are right, and I really am doing something wrong, in which case I should ask them to tell me more about it, and try to change.  Or maybe it’s all a big misunderstanding, and we can fix it and have a good and equal relationship.  Or maybe it’s not quite either of those, but they have some sort of ‘backstory’ that’s making them act like this, and dammit, I’m curious about that backstory.“

So I start interacting with them more rather than less, and trying a variety of “dialogue choices” to prod at the issue: what exactly is the shape of my error?  Are you actually trying to help me, and I just don’t realize it?  Do I resemble people who have hurt you in the past?  Should I accept that the way you are behaving is just a common human thing and grow a thicker skin toward it?  Etc.  (Obviously I don’t ask these questions in these literal forms, but I investigate them in more natural and tactful ways.)

Then, in the conversation about this, I said: “You know, it’s like Undertale.  Actually, wait … it’s exactly like Undertale.”

I’m treating the other person’s hostility as a puzzle, and hoping that I can find the correct things to say to “resolve” the hostility.  This “resolution” (as in Undertale) doesn’t tend to involve the other person realizing they were doing a bad thing by harming me – it usually reveals it as “actually” justified or blameless or otherwise somehow “okay.”  If I can’t do this, I feel like I’ve failed.  If I respond to hostility with hostility, I feel like I’ve really failed, on an ethical level.  The ultimate goal is an imagined idyllic harmony with the person despite the initial hostility (cf. the “friendships” in Undertale).

One thing to note about this is that it simply doesn’t work very well.  When people dislike or disrespect you, there’s often a reason for it, often an interesting reason or even a “good” one, but you still won’t generally be able to work your way towards a satisfying friendship or relationship.  Surprise surprise: when someone finds you distasteful, they’re probably going to continue finding you distasteful, even if you’re “talked over it” ad nauseam.  A deeply moving lecture on the cultural history of a cuisine you simply don’t like will not make you any more relish a bite of it.

A better way to have satisfying interactions is instead to find people with whom you don’t start out on the wrong foot.  These people exist.  People with low opinions of themselves may believe that this is false, that they will start out on the wrong foot with everyone and that “rescuing” these relationships is the best they can hope for.  I believe this is almost always false.

In Undertale, it is more or less true.  The vast majority of the interactions in the game involve “rescuing relationships from hostility.”  The majority of the major characters attack you at some point, although you can become friends with them later.  The idea that this sort of interaction is the norm is captured metaphorically through the fact that the game’s characters are called “monsters,” i.e. the sort of beings who attack you randomly in other games.  The game clarifies that in the real world there are “a lot of Floweys,” i.e. people who are somehow so bad that you can’t even “rescue” your relationships with them.  But relationships that don’t have to be rescued are both rare and not a part of the game’s moral or emotional focus.

In Undertale, you can Flee (metaphorically, backing away from a hostile interaction), but although morally permitted, this is boring: you’re missing a lot of gameplay, as well as a lot of money.  You can also attack and then Spare; I’m not sure how to parse this metaphorically, but whatever it is, it’s not something I’d like to constitute a majority of my human interactions.  What you cannot do, not in any nontrivial way, is engage in “dialogue choices” with someone who is not attacking you.  Want to find friends who don’t start off trying to hurt you?  Ha, good luck.  Don’t you remember that everyone’s natural reaction to you is to try to hurt you?

This is a depiction of the world I used to think I lived it.  It was not a good world, and it was also not the real world.

If the “Undertale Prime” post confuses you, note that it was written in response to the above.

(It was helpful.)

I think this speaks about a fundamental cynicism about humanity you picked up because you think the people you talked to at LW are typical of humanity when they’re not.

Missing the point that UT isn’t meant to be based on reality and it is just meant to remind people to try to get out there (which of course isn’t going to be the same way it happens in the game because it’s a game) kinda saddens me for that reason.

Like, I had to shake off a lot of negative thoughts after what you describe happened more-or-less exactly to me with a person I thought was my friend. The kind of manipulation she did isn’t really typical of how most people think, however. I find that you can get along with most people if you try, which I think is all that UT is trying to say.

I hope that you can follow me there.

I don’t really understand what you’re getting at here, sorry.

The mindset I described was produced by a number of circumstances in various parts of my life, stretching back to childhood, not by “the people you talked to at LW” (? I actually don’t know what you mean by this).

My point is less about what fraction of people I can or can’t get along with, and more about the idea that I shouldn’t obsess about getting along with every single person I encounter.  It’s better to accept I won’t get along with everyone and keep looking for the people I click with.

(via section42l)