Thumbs up. Way up.

You know, that’s the kind of stance I keep running to every now and then, and usually from people whose opinions I can only call as leftist. It’s an attempt to vest culpability in just one individual to whitewash the problems inherent in an ideology. It’s a way too naïve an analysis which fails to take into account a plethora of social factors in the background. In so doing, it also leaves you unable to recognise them when there is a possibility that they repeat themselves. Its unclear to me how peace and understanding can follow from people whose only course of action is bullying others with their moral absolutism.

You cannot explain away the dicatorships of the world just by stating that ”Pol Pot / Stalin / Hitler was a bad guy”. If that’s the only reason, why, then, did cults of personality and strict opinion control spring up in so many socialist experiments ? No matter what they did, they were still just men. It would not have been possible for them to do anything without the backing of their respective societies, and it would not have been possible for them to attain or retain power unless favourable social conditions were met. These are what one must recognise.

An attitude such as yours is what civil wars are made of. You believe that you have access to some idea of absolute justice, and anyone disagreeing is obviously wrong and does not warrant a hearing. You think that it’s not problematic at all that ”wrong” opinions can be blocked from public discussion, which leaves open the question that where, exactly, is discussion supposed to take place. The application of ”social justice” is only ever simple when you apply it in the level of glittering generalities like ”fairness”, when in actuality people who appeal to social justice are usually telling a majority group what to think and demanding some economic or social benefit that they are unable to provide themselves from said group, without being willing to give anything in return. It's by far not obvious in any rigorous moral analysis to what extent such demands are ”fair”, and ultimately a matter of opinion. Of course, any group is likely to ask for as much as it thinks it can get!

All that, combined to a belittling and hostile attitude such as yours, results in that the other party has no practical motivation or even possibility to cooperate. By refusing to even engage in discussion, you make it impossible to find some sort of middle ground or a compromise. As giving in to your demands will only hurt the other party and leave them open for more demands, by giving in they gain nothing. Thus, you end up leaving them no other possibility than secession and open conflict, which will probably not end well for anyone if the party in question is large enough, and feels threatend enough. Not likely if we are just limited to gaming, but unfortunately the current issue permeates the most of contemporary western societies.

"I consciously add as much diversity as I can to my writing and I don't care if people think that's "forced" or fake."


I find this qute quite sad and think it is where the problem lies. She bascially doesn't care if people find her writting good or not, only if it promotes her own agenda.
Sure there is often no problem in putting your ideology in your work (sure, it's wrong if it is forbidden ideology, unless you are on GOG) but shouldn't the quality of the work come first? If author doesn't care if recipients of their work find good, real or believable they are not doing good job in my opinion.
She tells she doesn't want to write from position she calls "straight default" and finds it boring but writting as boringly and badly from different position doesn't make the writting any better.

Any author writting entertaining book, movie, game, etc. should strive for understanding from their recipients first, if they don't care if people like it they will inevitably fail. Sure there are a lot of books, movies and even some games that has ideology first but it is almost always their first goal. They are not meant to be entertaining as it is (doesn't mean some of them aren't but it is only secondary effect and likely thakns to skill of good author) and they are aimed at people who expect them to be that way.
If you create your own game and make it clear it is going to be agenda over quality then you have some chance for success (even though I think you will still fail because more people than not would still want to enjoy story or gameplay and if it isn't up to par, commercial success si unlikely) but if you make expansion to game that always was all about entertainment then you can't be surprised people don't appreciate it.

There is a lot of badly written games, books or movies and thanks to that they are usually lambasted for it (unless it's blockbuster/AAA game, then people are sadly often willing to excuse awful writing). Usually rightfully so and they have to suck it up. But as soon as the writing contains touchy theme as here, authors like to scream foul, disregard people opinion as haters and blame possible failure at backwards society who they are rightfully fighting all by themselves. But it doesn't change the fact that the piece of work is bad, if it really is. It can attract attention bu tit doesn't make the writting any better.

If she wants to only promote her thoughts without bigger regards to quality she should rather write blog or some articles instead of games.



Also, what's so strange on name Mizhena that PC has to ask about it and get their life story right away? PC can travel with people named Minsc, Dynaheir, Xzar, Tiax, Shar-Teel, etc., they fight Sarevok, meet Koveras (;-)) plus many others and they never bat an eye and suddenly they are curious about Mizhena? o_O


This style of writing always confused me so much. I am not native english speaker (as people can surely tell) and when I encountered this it made me so confused and I wondered what I missed, why pronoun switched suddenly and if it has any strange meaning I don't get. Are they talking about some particular persons and I am not getting it? Yeah, I don't appreciate this kind of writing. "They" would be perfectly fine and conveyed the message perfectly. Instead I got confused by randomly switching between "she" and "he".

Then you've missed a lot. My own encounters with "Social Justice" have borne witness to an endless barrage of death threats, rape threats, bomb threats, sexism, racism, and various other nastiness that you wouldn't believe - And a lot of that came from the "celebrity" members of that club, not just from the anonymous trolls that followed in their wake.

Let me be clear, when I talk about "shaming", I'm talking about the organized harassment of people who have been targeted by the "Social Justice" crowd, which in addition to direct attacks usually results in letter-writing campaigns to peoples' workplaces to try and get them fired, various attempts at communication with the victims' families, and a lot of other slanders and nastiness. Usually as a result of something as innocuous as "wearing the wrong shirt" or having a slightly risque joke taken deliberately out of context. If you want to justify that sort of thing, you go ahead.

And the "Block" thing? I agree, people can block other people for any reason they like, and if they're actually being harassed, then that is the first thing they should do. The problem with the "Social Justice" crowd is that the "Block Button" is usually their first response to anything that challenges their viewpoints. Present a citation of fact to back up an argument? Block! Politely disagree? Block! Ask a difficult question? Block!

If you're not willing to converse with other people in good faith in order to resolve your differences, yet still want to carry on with firing off hatred at certain groups of people, (which is exactly the sort of thing that this unreasonable blocking behavior is used for) then you really shouldn't be criticizing others for anything. At this point, you're not advocating for a better world, you're just using these issues as an excuse to carry on with your antisocial and counter-productive behavior.

It isn't just you. Even a native english speaker can be thrown by a sudden change in pronoun usage, and I'll volunteer myself as an example of that.

Edit: As an example of a native english speaker who has been thrown by a sudden change in usage. Not one that has implemented a sudden change in usage.

Thrown off*? :D

Nope, he was literally thrown by it. :-p

Ended up in the Pacific, which is bizarre since I live near the east coast. The flight would have been fun, if it weren't for the vole.

The vole au vent? In-flight-meals aren't what they used to be...

I agree it's not extreme, I think most of the problem is Beamdog's treatment of their prospective customers. Openly claiming they don't care whether players like their game or not ("If people don't like this, then too bad") and later calling them "not true fans" when shit hits the fan - THIS is what grinds my gears the most.

I would buy the game in spite of this not so huge political agenda implemented, perhaps decreasing its score when writing a review by one star or so - but I absolutely can NOT tolerate treating people Beamdog exists for like garbage.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The company exists for consumers, not the other way around. Once you start spitting on them, you're on your way out of business.

I have really mixed feelings about SoD. I love Baldur's Gate series and I would like to see new sucscessfull expansion. On the other hand I think Social Justice Wariors in developers team must be punished for their trespasses and the only effective punishmen is low rating.
It is cruel, but righteous retribution

When I hear "murder of crows" I don't grab a gun and run out to murder some crows. When I hear "mischief of rats" I don't start running wild with a ... well, mischief of rats. Similarly, when I see a "he" used as a neutral noun, I don't start disrespecting women.

People have this funny notion that curing symptoms, like widespread of usage of "he" as a neutral noun, will somehow help alleviate the perceived problem, like mistreating of women - when in reality whenever I see you or anyone else using 'she' in a block of text I become confused for a few seconds, which then greatly diminishes the message you were trying to convey in the first place, be it about game mechanics or equality. God forbid people start randomly swapping the nouns around, I'll probably just stop reading the text then. And what is the best this effort is bound to accomplish? People will start using "she" or "it" instead while still mistreating women. What it actually accomplishes? Lack of clarity in messages which need to be clear to remain powerful. One needs to think about the bigger picture and all that. (funnily enough, most of the time, with some writing finesse, you can avoid using any non-descript nouns whatsoever.)

Thanks.

That’s a thing where people are the source of the ailment they are claiming to cure. Language is not a flawlessly logical construction, and words are just strings of sounds that people attach cognitive meanings to. This process is, by its nature, somewhat fuzzy, and dictionary definitions in no way reproduce the meanings of the words by 100 percent accuracy.

Now, if we take the English pronoun ”he”, and first decide that it refers primarily to a man, someone may be angry when it is used to point to a being of nondescript gender. But that is as much a problem with our original definition than an issue of usage. The actual usage of the word reflects to its definition, so way may as well shift our interpretation and definition of the word to mean equally a being of unspecified gender. It is by artificially sticking to the definition ”male” of the word, which does not reflect its actual usage, that we create the ”injustice”.

Gender is an extremely salient thing in human society and cognitive processes, which is why it is hardly surprising that our language should reflect this. Among other things, even the fact that transgender people are willing to go through great pains and difficulty to change their apparent sex is a testament to this. I think that it would require Orwellian levels of mind control to make us choose to ignore this fact. Appropriately enough, Nineteen Eighty-Four included a portrayal of a language that was artificially controlled to make ”unconventional” thinking impossible. But barring a dystopian, totalitarian state that would be willing to go to such levels of control (and I certainly hope no-one is supporting such a thing), an actual language is a living thing. Even if you try to sanitize it ideologically, the meanings of the words will evolve and the structure of the language change in order to express whatever people feel needs expressing.