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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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Hogwarts Legacy continues to generate controversy. Turns out there's a... transwitch in the game, and a mod that gave that person a more femme voice has already been purged from Nexus Mods. Is not passing a virtue or a source of trans pride now? Just a few years ago, I've been reading Tumblr discussions that went "if there was a magic pill that turned you into an afab woman, would you take it?" - "yes duh".

Without context on why NexusMods did this, it's not obvious to me whether the motive for dumping it was what you said vs. "transwomen shouldn't sound like women because they're men" - in particular, while the transfeminist lobby is powerful, Rowling has a lot of money and a colourable case against unauthorised mods of her IP.

"transwomen shouldn't sound like women because they're men" - in particular, while the transfeminist lobby is powerful, Rowling has a lot of money and a colourable case against unauthorised mods of her IP.

This seems like a kind of (apologies for referencing yet another mainstream $$ multi-billion franchise) "You took everything from me." "I don't even know who you are" kind of situation, that makes this highly asymmetrical. For Rowling specifically and the ownership/management of the video game generally, any relation the video game has to trans issues is basically a non-issue. They're not concerned with making some political statement or keeping the game in-line with some set of political beliefs; they're concerned with making money. To some extent, this plays out in the political messaging within the game, but there's no indication that this is a particularly important concern for them. So the idea that Rowling or anyone in the management of the game would put pressure on NexusMods - even indirectly - to take down this mod for going against their intent of depicting a biological male as having a low voice seems implausible. It's just beneath their notice. I haven't checked NexusMods to verify this, but I also imagine that there's no shortage of mods that they host that would be far more offensive to authorial intent than this one, and if not, there almost certainly will be in the near future. At least, if it's at all like any other high profile AAA game that is feasible to mod.

By contrast, for the people agitating against the game for being part of a franchise owned by JK Rowling, the way a trans person is represented in the game is of vital importance. In their own words, things like this play out in literal death of trans people, and they seem honest about this belief. Pressuring hosting sites like NexusMods to take down content like this is also entirely in-line with the behavior of people who tend to agitate for this kind of stuff too.

One can never be sure about the reasons for any of this, but I think there's substantially good reason to believe that this was in response to (possibly indirect) pressure coming from the people who are against JK Rowling's position in transwomen, rather than from JK Rowling or someone else in the management of the game. Even before we take into account other past behavior by NexusMods such as that already-referenced incident with the mod that adjusted an in-game setting that's normally not accessible in regular gameplay to replace the rainbow flags in the Spiderman game.

Yeah, but it's also a dumb thing for transfeminists to do given the objections already provided. I suppose one can posit that it only takes a few crazies to complain for NM to get spooked.

As I noted in my reply to @orthoxerox the context re: NexusMods' history has mostly convinced me.

That's an interesting take, but given that NexusMods have already stated they wouldn't host the mod that replaced pride flags in a Spiderman game and would delete other such mods in the future, and that Legacy is (despite the IP owner's views) a transphilic game with separate toggles for body, voice and self-identification, I am inclined to think it's not the right one.

That is some important context, yes.

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