Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Calling for me to be banned? LMAO. That's how you roll huh Comrade? Hit your man up and tell him you got offended. He will deff protect you.

Also, yeah, no rainbow on company logos on Twitter. Normal times where company focus on products not people's sexual preferences.

That's how I chose to make my point. Thanks. I despise these sorts of actions. Worse than a few bad words is censoring one side of a discussion. It's how this whole BS started.

You know what was uncalled for? Rooks response. He went all out on Nynja for no *** reason.

Finally, the pronoun is back to normal. ;0

lol, what a fun morning. Again, happy Pride Month to those that celebrate. I'm sure Ubisoft will have NO IMPACT on your marches. Literally, nothing.

I have always called you a "she" lol. I honestly didn't mind the pronoun thing. I don't mind calling people by their proffered pronoun.

people, especially today, are more interested in preserving differences than finding commonalities. makes it easier to know who "they" are and why "we're" better than them, right?

I don't think that post by Nynja was bad at all, but the whole conversation had exhausted itself long ago and was not really going anywhere productive.

Again was he banned or was the thread just closed? Because it was long overdue for a closure.

Hi! Let's address this now, I guess.


I closed one thread, that had mutated from its original purpose to a slipshod P+R methadone over a hundred pages, because Nynja was like "thank God we're not pandering to freaks anymore". I didn't ban anyone, I didn't edit the posts, I just said hey that's enough of that, you don't get to tell part of the community - OUR community! - that they're not "normal" or somehow lesser for wanting to see themselves represented in modern gamea. This was the most minimal pushback imaginable, and it's resulted in multiple posts and DMs, to which all I can say is that you people are the most butter-soft babies imaginable. Holy ***.

So, let's be real clear on what this means going forward; first of all, don't bring this ***to RT. I don't like topicbanning people from RT because it's basically the watercooler, but if you can't manage to be respectful to others or keep politics out of it, out you go.

Also, regarding this:

I might still unlock it; but it wasn't locked because of one comment, it was locked because the whole thing had been off the rails for pages and pages, and I was mostly letting it ride (because the thought police are lazy). But yes, the last word is the definition of this job when it comes to moderation; some things violate the rules and get to slide, some don't, and deciding which ones make the cut and which don't is part of the job. I err on the side of being lax the vast majority of time, and if you don't believe that, then you've never experienced actual content moderation. People can bleat to Scragg if they don't like it; either he ignores you or he demotes me, and none of this is my problem anymore, so I win either way.

Also, I have yet to see a usage of "woke" in the wild that doesn't boil down to "I don't think other people are people". *** that. Either everyone's a person, or no one is.

Nope! But sometimes people lay low after a topic closure, for understandable reasons. I get it.

If I banned a tenth of the people that people think I'm gonna, this place would have been tumbleweeds years ago. I don't give a ***if people yell at me; nothing any of you say is gonna hurt me. I do give a ***if people are disrespectful to parts of the community, and policing that is part of my job. N64-*** Hagrid hollering at me like a street corner drunk doesn't change that in any way.

Anyway, enough of this in RT.

Happy hetero men and women getting together to form families month. We won!! You can keep Rooks' FFXI pride month support.

Speaking of which, why no rainbow flags here? LMAO! Check this out Vini. Seems like you lost, fam. Let me quote Nynja The Absolute: "Back to Normalcy!"

Companies like Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Diageo, Mastercard, PepsiCo, Nissan, Citi, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, and Lowe’s have either reduced or completely dropped sponsorships for major Pride events in cities like San Francisco, New York City, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C. For example, San Francisco Pride faces a $200,000 budget gap, while NYC Pride has seen a $750,000 shortfall due to sponsor withdrawals.
Some companies, such as Comcast and Diageo, continue to support smaller Pride events (e.g., Silicon Valley Pride or Oakland Pride) but have withdrawn from flagship events like San Francisco Pride, often citing budget constraints or strategic shifts.
A Gravity Research survey indicates 39% of over 200 corporate executives plan to scale back public Pride Month engagements, with 57% of federal contractors reducing involvement due to fears of federal investigations under Trump’s anti-DEI policies.

Saw Vyre's new character post and thought we had a new mod.

This was great.

Well...I get that people often use "he" on the internet is because the "women don't exist on internet" meme ;p

Plus I am quite a bro-culture lover myself so sometimes I just act more manly on the internet than normal, which may cause people using "he" to address me lol.

I don't hate anyone enough to make a new mod

I never for a second thought that you were male. Always thought you were a girl. lol. You and Chanti talk like girls. Like, the way you phrase and react to things give it away.

...
I'm gonna have to push back again and say that you're using your position to push your political views and misrepresenting what Nynja actually said. If you want to say the topic is not appropriate, why is it appropriate for you to affirm that your view on it is 'the correct view' in the same post?

His comment was in regards to the behavior of companies, not individuals. If a 'return to normalcy' is a gaming company advertising to men and not displaying a pride banner, then his view of abnormal is a company using those techniques.

I can't speak for anyone else, but my issue with 'woke' culture is that corporate pandering rarely results in high-quality writing or character development. Making half of the cast LGBT and talking about in a game that isn't at all sexual isn't offensive because LGBT people exist, it's because the entire dialogue only exists to make sure we know they're included. It isn't relevant to the game and it breaks immersion.

If you want a good example of inclusive modern writing that doesn't sacrifice story, have a read through The Stormlight Archive, particularly the last couple books. That isn't what game companies have been putting out.

I'm not going to pretend everyone against it sees things the same way I do or that hate doesn't exist. But, I didn't see any hate in that thread.

Hey, but I love parse competition in FFXI! I thought that's manly enough for me to join the cool Bros!

I was replying to Rips
The thread got locked while I was writing something to him

so I said "ok cool" and went to play Visions of Mana

More like visions of men!
See, he’s enjoying pride month

Which one?

I read the first book and I loved it, then starting from second one it gets progressively worse. So I dropped it at 3rd or maybe 4th something.

Did the writing get better eventually?

I see what you did there. Not a day goes by that I didn't click on New Games Suck and not think "omg what have I done..."

Mana actually means sister in Portuguese, so it's even worse!

There are only 5 atm [unless you count the novellas]. Books 4-5 do a great job of portraying racial and social divides, mental health issues, and have representation of diverse sexualities that doesn't feel forced.

As far as the story itself, I guess it's a matter of opinion. I didn't feel like there was a dropoff and they are all very highly rated, but it's hard to account for taste.

Maybe not outright hate, but there was unmistakable provocation by people trying to get a rise out of those with opposing viewpoints. Over and over and over and over....

It's a complex issue that goes beyond video games and that people are obviously passionate about, which does tend toward heated discussions. And again I don't think you can pinpoint one particular post, but at some point people need to take a break, and it was clear it wasn't going to happen on its own.

in other news, there's a "State of Unreal in 2025" live on twitch for anyone interested

Come on, this isn't your first day on the internet.

I think it can be more of a pacing problem for me. Stormlight Archive has slower pace than some other Bradon's work. But the first book still has a beginning, twists in between a satisfying end. Then it got slower and slower after that.

Well it sounds like the pacing is likely all the same so if I want to pick it up again I'd need to get my patience buff up lol.

It's a fantasy novel, and it's not unusual to see fantasy setting story addressing racial issues tbh.

The games pretty mid so far.
I've already muttered "haha what the ***" like 4 or 5 times at the cutscenes, and I'm barely an hour into the game.


Also, customary with those closing words:

That's exactly what Drayco said about the CS, in the very first page!

I don't know what you mean by this, sorry. Are you saying people were just trolling? I'll freely admit to having trouble understanding tone and things like sarcasm online.

I found a neat feature in Expedition 33 I've never seen in a game before. I'm working on my 100% and I came across this boss that "bounces" every attack. The timing to parry is very tight, but dodging is pretty easy. The guy has an absolute ton of HP (or I'm underleveled since it did say Danger entering the zone). The fight was dragging on for about 10-15mins as I slowly was widdling his HP down. The boss bounces more and more every turn, so I was dodging about 15-16 attacks per turn.

Eventually the boss just died after dodging 20+ moves. I was pretty surprised, but it's cool that the devs were like "let's not make them do this for hours".