I'm pretty sure this is what Repo means by 'musical hacking'. I guess he hums while he does it, or something.
I think Bacon picked the wrong thread for this battle, because Repoman (who I like), deserved some ribbing for his initial post, and a page full of animated gifs is a respectable sendoff. I'd consider myself fortunate if people here gave enough of a shit to do that for me (please just one). But l agree with Bacon and Athryn that things have been really weird here recently. I honestly have no idea where any of this came from, and I'm not going to exacerbate it by pointing fingers, but the general level of discourse has room for improvement. I don't mind people being harsh; that's all in good fun. Like a couple of kids roughhousing. Adree and Bill are two of my favorite posters. But it bothers me when people throw the cognitive kill switch in a discussion and make it about identity rather than ideas. It bothers me when people intentionally misrepresent the opinions of others in order to score likes on a straw man. It bothers me when seven people dogpile on someone out of nowhere for expressing a dissenting opinion. And it bothers me when everyone jumps on BaconTastesGood after he points out that people have been doing an awful lot of this shit lately. I think this is fundamentally about how we deal with dissent. The anime-faces don't offer any dissent. We don't interact much, and they're all so innocently cheerful with their feels and pretending to be maids that going off on them would be like punching a kitten. They also never come to our forums. I'm not sure why. I don't think we should model our behavior on Brett. I honestly hope he's just fucking around with us for his own amusement, because every alternative explanation makes me really sad.
What Elyscape said. Ozzo, you seriously wrote Broken Forum slashfic? I mean, I know that's essentially what the maid game is, but... seriously? I... why?
It was in the Ruins of Light's Glory thread and it was out of line, and about ten people, myself included, told him so in variously appropriately inappropriate ways.
Well now you have to link it. Who did it star? Were you in it? If so, were you wearing your trenchcoat?
I don't have to link it and you're not the boss of me now and you're not so big. Besides, it would be a lot of effort for something that was clearly a completely failed attempt of Ozzo's to be funny which instead came off as creepier than anything I've ever posted, including the trenchcoat pictures.
Adree approached the locked door of Repoman's masturbatorium, his hand hovering hesitantly before the greasy wood, momentarily unsure of his purpose. He closed his eyes, taking a slow, shuddering breath, nervously chewing the corner of his lower lip, before he felt something give way inside of himself, like a dam bursting, and his restraint dissolved. He knocked, once, then again. As the door slowly opened, he was hit full in the face by a blast of musky air. Screwing up his courage, Adree raised his eyes to meet Repoman's, swallowed once, and said "Repo... I... I want to help you hack."
I haven't read it and I have no particular desire to read it and I know that people have to be willing to own what they post, but it strikes me that what's going down is a bit unfair to Ozzo.
I recall once on the Battlefront forums some contributors there worked a series of posts into "grogporn", which was basically WW2 slash fic. It was awesome. It was terrible. It was like 50 Shades with precise and accurate militaria details. "Topless, Hans polished the steel Krupp L45/75 barrel of his PzIV-F while Jurgen cleaned the zimmermilt body coating of snow" ...etc etc. Hmm, I think I shared too much.
To be fair, the shit slung that day was well-deserved, not helped by my failure to take responsibility when the first heads were raised. But I don't see what that has to do with this thread. At this point, I'm not even sure what the purpose of this thread is anymore, other than shipping Adree with a mysteriously absent RepoMan.
The Ruins of Light's Glory Slash Fiction thread, which I started as a response to all the gigglefuckery in the main forum game thread. I wasn't particularly upset by Ozzo's bit, as I'd clearly set a precedent with the first post.
I never saw that thread, as I haven't been in the LP forum in ages. I now see some of you... differently... not sure how I feel about that... Can I unsee it?
As an aside, I cannot claim credit for the prose in that first post (I have no idea what sort of horrible google query I must've done to find that).
I can see why this thread set people off and I guess I want to start out by saying that I don't feel that its the same as the situation with Gus as the power dynamics are different. There are similarities of course, namely in the predictable steady escalation of aggression in posting style which, for some posters, goes hand in hand with the one-upmanship in wit (or perceived wit) required to score a flame hi-score on the hidden thread scoreboard. That is ground that I think has already been covered elsewhere, if you are sensitive to reading expressions of latent rage then I think with some experience it is generally possible to predict it's arrival from context and a quick glance at the poster name before working yourself up into a deep sadness by reading the post. Why are the power dynamics different in this case? Repoman set himself up as a genuinely legitimate target for satire by opening a new thread, that not only put onto an unwarranted, attention drawing pedestal some small minutiae of his life (the relevant facts as they were at the start of the thread, a vague intent to post slightly less to Broken Forum, would be best expressed with humility and in passing - in a thread reserved for such small happenings) but also had undertones that touched on areas that are probably sensitive for many people who post on the forum. By which I mean that his remarks had a hinted at, but left unsaid, background that seemed to say that not only was he going to post less, he was going to do so because he had better things to be doing like talking to real people. And then to compound the underlying, and almost certainly unintended insult, he followed up with a message that he was playing less games, perhaps because he was growing up and getting into more mature activities. It probably doesn't need to be said why many posters might find those undercurrents unwelcome but I think it is always worth bearing in mind when you are posting that for some people the internet has entirely replaced real life communities, and for others it is the virtual communities where they can associate by interests and express themselves honestly that are more central in their lives than perhaps they have yet admitted in a culture that still, though increasingly half-heartedly, dictates that such things are abnormal. Plus many of us are already old, and almost to a man we still think games are worthy of our time on this earth, such as it is. Hint to grizzled grognard that maybe those game things are just for kids and isn't he a little to old for them, you know at his age; and you enter the long war, decades in the fighting and longer in the telling. I'm certainly not convinced that it was at all the intent behind the original post, many people are occasionally bad at expressing themselves on the internet, but the unwelcome undertones are there and I suspect that there are some people to whom those ways of thinking, even if they are only hinted at, feel like a direct attack. It is one thing to express yourself carelessly in a post in the middle of a thread, but quite another to draw attention to yourself through a new thread and then appear potentially insulting to the delicate regions of a significant portion of the community. Satire is there as a tool to deflate the appearance of self importance and pomposity and in this case I feel it was perfectly warranted. Words did then get taken to a moderately more personal place than was likely sincerely and deeply felt, which probably wasn't necessary considering that many of us also have the, on balance, counter-indicative context of lengthy posting histories, but it is after all the season for unnecessary rows.
No, I just thought it was ludicrous, overly self-important, and worthy of mockery. Worthy of mockery, but not deep psychological analysis. Honestly, if any more hands are wrung here, they may require medical attention.
So if I get this right, Repoman posts a "look at me" thread announcing he won't be as active, people give him a bit of a ribbing about it (which he should have seen coming since he's been part of the community long enough) and we get 5 pages of arguing over said ribbing? Were we due our monthly community drama or something? What an odd thread.
I got shitty presents this year, but this thread makes up for it. Thanks all! Bahirimon is clearly getting coal next year. You bad boy, you.
Reading this thread has made me decide to have pancakes for breakfast. Nice fluffy ones, with real maple syrup and not that Aunt Jemima shit.
Oh my god, those are amazing. If I can quickly knock out a "I <3 Calistas" avatar, I will be doing so.
But yeah, that thread did make me rather uncomfortable at the time, so I mostly just ignored it and concentrated on the game, which was quite fun (especially since I was right the whole time and none of you idiots listened to me). As for this thread, the stuff in the first couple of pages seems pretty par for the course 'round these parts. I've enjoyed reading through it, though. Drama Llama Holding Pen, indeed.
Holy crap. I made it through a couple pages of this, but not sure I can do anymore of this predictable escalation of silliness regarding a harmless post. Although I do love how colorfully you all can defend/attack each other with ever increasing levels of insanity. On a similar note, I was going to make a thread saying I was going to try to look at less lesbian porn*, but I broke the pledge before I finished posting the thread. *Before I got to this final page, this was going to be "stop masturbating, but didn't make it to the end of this post", but then I noted we already have a 'jerk off' reference and I didn't want this post to appear derivative.
