This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Who has been following the drama around Disco Elysium? Disco Elysium, of course, is the 2019 CRPG that has received numerous accolades for being the savior of Western computer role-playing gaming, the best game in a long time etc. I've played it through, and it deserves the accolades; many here have played it as well, and it is not surprising that a forum like this would have many aficionados for a game that basically consists of reading vast oodles of texts about one drunken failure cop's personal psychodramas and politics and a well-realized fictional somethingpunk setting, and so on.
The game was been made by ZA/UM, an Estonian developer / art collective, around a world created by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, and is quite obviously Estonian-influenced if one knows anything about Estonia (starting with the fact that Revachol, the city where the game happens, is very visually remiscient of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, once known as Reval).
What's the drama? According to Wikipedia:
How Kurvitz and Rostov explain it:
I've also seen suggestions that Kurvitz et al believe that Tütreke, Kender etc. are planning to compromise their vision specifically for upcoming Amazon Disco Elysium series, presumably so that the political (anti-capitalist - Kurvitz is a self-described communist, very much a rarity in Estonia) aspect of their work would be compromised.
What ZA/UM says:
More context from an Estonian Redditor
Perhaps it's not necessary to specifically mention all the ironic aspects involved in this, and if we indeed see Disco Elysium as an art project, it feels like a fitting capstone to the project, in a way.
I didn't know about any of this, and it saddens me. By the in-game political alignment system, I'm a filthy Moralist which makes me the current bad guy (seeing as how they're the ones running/ruining Revachol right now) and while they do criticise Communism, you can tell which system is closest to their hearts. But the game is great, and who does not love Kim Kitsuragi?
I guess this shows that the love of money is the root of all evil. A whiff of success, and they started eating each other's faces for the spoils.
But God Almighty, not an Amazon streaming video/TV adaptation of the game. Seeing the shitty mess they made of Rings of Power, I can't even begin to imagine what they'd do with Disco Elysium. Sure, the union would definitely be the Bad Guys there (we all know what Amazon thinks of unions) but how do you flatten down Lieutenant Double-Yefreitor Harrier Du Bois Detective Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau Tequila Sunset into one 2D character to be played by (possibly, God help us) Ryan Reynolds?
Yeah, one of the things many know about the game is that you can select from one of four political alignments and the game will chew you out for it, but one of the most fascinating things was how they make Moralism bad. There's the metacommentary on how Moralism is exactly what you get if you play a typical "RPG centrist", one who always selects the moderate option from the good and evil one, or a mix of choices... but also that Moralism is the ideology that is specifically screwing up Revanchol at the moment, something you can see in various ways all around you while playing the game. At least the fascists and communists (and some ultraliberals, if Joyce is to be believed) are working to make Moralintern go away and stop oppressing and exploiting Revanchol, but being a Moralist ingame is basically just being like "Yep, I'm a willing tool of a system that keeps everyone here poor, takes away the city's sovereignty, sends cruel mercenaries on the streets etc etc... and I'm fine with it! Go team"
The Sunday Friend is absolutely some Brussels bureaucrat who is something to do with the European Commission, maybe one of the civil servants directly under a Director-General of something or other.
It's also fascinating how they make Joyce likeable, and I don't know if that's a level of meta-irony or if they mean it relatively straight. She's not just an errand-runner, she's one of the higher-ups in Wild Palms, but it looks like she can't get the mercs to stand down because whatever faction of the board hired them on has run around her on that. So she's out to make money out of Revachol like the rest of them, but there is a level of overt violence she won't or can't support. At least, if she's not in control holding the leash.
I did laugh about "oh yeah, Fascism is because that pretty girl wouldn't sleep with you". I mean, come on guys, this is your level of mockery? All the things you could say about ultra-nationalism and the rest of it, and you have to go for "pfft, buncha incels"?
It's a pretty suitable one for Harry, isn't it? After all, he has been going through some lady troubles, to put it mildly...
Harry has his problems, including an inability to let go or move on from his failed romance, but he can Jamrock Shuffle like nobody's business!
I would have thought they wouldn't go for "Fascists are just failures at getting girls" as being much too trivial. I mean, nobody in Revachol is getting any kind of happy ending; the working-class woman ends up with a dead husband, look at the entire tangle of desire and sex around Klaasje; all the broken marriages and relationships and not even started in the first place - Garte is the only one with any kind of a chance at a start, and that depends how you handle the phone call with Sylvie.
I guess the idea is mockery by not taking it seriously and reducing it to a clownish reason for anyone finding the philosophy attractive, but it's not like any of the other political quadrants are all happy happy joy joy at interpersonal relationships either.
I kept thinking about this yesterday, and one way of thinking about political alignments is that they also sort of align with, and are commentary, on traditional RPG alignments. You've got the "good" alignment, the "bad" alignment and two different interpretations of the "neutral" alignment. However, all also get commented on and subverted as concepts.
The "good" alignment is communist. Is communism good? YMMV, but that's what we know the developers think, from their interviews, and communist alignment is also what you get if you take all the romantic revolutionary options about defending the poor and so. And yet, the game will chew you out for all the crimes of the fictional communists and the unworkability of it all in practice, and most communists you encounter are compete messes, murderous wrecks and idiots, culminating with The Deserter, who is not really at all different from the fascists he claims to loathe.
The "bad" alignment is fascist. And fascism, as seen through the game, is indeed, bad, and the game makes no bones about it! However, it's not the "cool" sort of bad where you do epic shit, like become a conquering Dark Lord (KOTOR) or punch out annoying reporters (Mass Effect) or whatever. Rather, it's just being a dick towards other people, generally in a very banal way, including towards Kim. It's not fun, and deliberately so. Very few people end up stomaching a genuine fascist run in DE.
Moralism is the "neutral" alignment, interpreted as what you get when, in a normal RPG, you deliberately mix and match choices to keep the karma meter running too far to either side. That's often a smart way to play a RPG and keep your conversation options open, but DE reminds you that if you just avoid taking a side and play it safe, that's a choice in itself, and the choice in this particular game is just keeping up an oppressive and brutal system and being a part of it's machine.
Ultraliberalism is also a "neutral" alignment, but another way. I've seen jokes about how RPG alignment is like having game's choices be "There's a kitten in a tree, what do you do? a. Climb a tree to rescue the kitten b. Shoot the kitten c. "I can rescue this kitten... for a price!", and ultraliberalism is, of course, the c. option, playing a RPG in a way where you just maximize your resources and, typically, get better gear to make the boss fight a simple matter. And yet... here, there's no real reason to do that; money is necessary at places, sure, but you can run a perfectly fine character without buying anything, and collecting oodles of cash eventually just becomes a question of hoarding money without really having much use for it. Why? Because you're a greedy hustler, obviously! Or rather, you aren't, but you're pretending to be one in a game, for... why, exactly? And game ultraliberalism is just an ideological cover for that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link