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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   35697 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Some of you may have heard of an almost decade old video game called "Kingdom Come: Deliverence". It is a realistic RPG with no fantasy elements, developed by a Czech studio, and set in middle ages Czechia.

At its release its fidelity to history was widely praised by gamers. But gaming journalists attacked it for this very reason: fidelity to history meant that there was a paucity of Africans in the game. Despite gaming journalists forming united frons to smear the developers as racist, for not altering the racial demographics to please foreigners, the developers stood FIRMLY by their game.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, and a sequel to KC:D is announced. Warhorse Studios says nothing eyebrow raising. Then a shock: screenshots appearing to show an African boasting about his land plenty, equality and knowledge, purporting to be from KC:D2 surfaces. There is widespread disbelief, the developers deny its authenticity, deboonkers find queerities in rendering. Matter is considered to be dubious at best.

Then a shock: a full admission from the man who so unfairly smeared, and who didn't buckle, that the game is in fact alters history to suit the tastes of 2025 American audiences.

Still the wages are low in Czechia, and loyalty of the marginalized and silenced peoples is worthless compared to fame the media can bestow upon you, and fortune gained from hiding the massive backtracks in marketing, so the game is already profitable.

And now the prude-right now decided to chastise the game for having an optional sex scene between similarly-aged teenagers because they might be gay(ish)? After the first one was attacked by the left for bawdiness and delighting in masculinity.

The transparently pretextual nature of this stuff is hilarious.

  • -15

It establishes a best-bro relationship in the first game and gives you the option to put it in his butt in the second one. I feel like that's a pretty big change in the game's central themes.

I don’t know, actually. There’s been at least a hint of homoeroticism between Hans and Henry before. Nothing that couldn’t be passed off as “locker room banter”, but it wouldn’t be the first time that young men going to war together and getting up to mischief might do a bit of fooling around.

The fact that social embrace of homosexuality has tinged every intimate relationship between men with ‘a hint of homoeroticism’ is one of the biggest black marks against it in my view.

Not only is every close relationship tinged with ‘Sam and Frodo must be porking’ style analysis but (innocent) touch is very good for people - it releases oxytocin, it’s how we bond. One gender is now largely deprived of it.

I'd say the flip-side of that is that it's a mistake to read modern concepts of homosexual identity into historical reports same-sex activity. There are lots of contexts - from militaries to prisons to boarding schools - where a significant proportion of men will engage in some degree of same-sex sexual experimentation. This doesn't mean that those men are socially or intrinsically homosexual or even bisexual, any more than it means that the Ancient Greeks were homosexual in the modern connotation of the term.

Agreed. The activity -> lifestyle pipeline has acted in many areas both good and bad as society diverges.

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