[Nerfnow!!] Classic Fantasy vs Modern Fantasy
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Aka, Dungeons and Dragons and all things now woke.
Even a lot of anime is depicting demons and just another fantasy race whom are being persecuted by humans, mainly because of jealousy that they live longer and are innately better with magic. You know, just making them eleves.
Praise "Sōsō no 'Demons need to be fucking exterminated!' Frieren".
Hail Frieren the Slayer
In anime it would depend on what kind of demons they're referring to. In Shinto Yokai can be good, bad or indifferent and that word gets translated to demon in English pretty much all the time. So if they're basing the demon race on that concept then there can be nuance.
It gets really muddled when they also use the Catholic version of demons for the aesthetic like in Blue Exorcist, but use Shinto logic for their behavior.
If the setting is unmistakably Japanese then yeah, but if there's a bunch of Tolkeinian fantasy races running around and the dragons are western in style, I'm going to assume they intended on a western version of demon. Like in 'jobless reincarnation' (don't feel like looking up what the japanese title is), everything about the world is western, and the one Japanese girl who got portaled in sticks out like a sore thumb, but there's a whole continent of 'demons' that are indistinguishable anime characters... or furries.
That's what I said in the last half, a lot of the time they use classic demon aesthetic, but use the Shinto logic for their behavior, regardless of setting.
Those shows are set outside of Japan, but, in most of them, everyone acts like they're Japanese anyway.
They (like most artists) tend to copy aesthetic without deeper meaning, and it flies right past people that deify art.
Evangelion is often praised by midwits for it's religious imagery that the original creators admitted was only done "because it looks cool".
We even have a literal term for it, westaboo, to describe the constant fact of the Japs being obsessed with Western aesthetics and media without a hint of understanding of it. Kojima is famously one.
From dudes wearing cowboy hats for no fucking reason, to them constantly using Gnostic nonsense, its no deeper than a bunch of dweebs.
Kojima has a better understanding of western things than most of them. While MGS does have some Japanese sensibilities and moralisms, it very much addresses the US military industrial complex and intelligence agencies' criminal behaviors. It's not Deus Ex, but sometimes it's clever. Whereas whatshisname with evangelion is just a dweeb.
He does, but only because he obsessively consumes Western media by the dozen. Much like a weeb in America can consume enough anime to have pretty deep knowledge on topics related to Japan, if a little generalized.
Anno is a retard who stumbled into something better than he could comprehend, as shown by his attempts to recreate it falling so flat. He is Japan's version of Alan Moore in that way.
Which is the religion with the big titty demon girlfriend who loves you?
Probably some Shinto sect
even in western stuff, I'd say there's nuance. If there's a story, for instance, that uses the trope of the "misunderstood demons" to push DEI bullshit, yeah, i'd say steer clear. (99% percent of the time, that's what's going on today)
But if it's just somebody trying to tell an interesting story, then it might be okay.
Generally speaking, it depends on the thrust of the story in question; is this person trying to push an agenda, or are they trying to tell an interesting (if controversial) story?
If they're going to go the "Demons are actually kinda-sorta-okay-ish" route, there's also an anime meme of "miasma", that while demons COULD be reasonable, friendly, peaceful, whatever, their very existence is toxic to humans and human-friendly nature. Just breathing, as a demon in the human lands, will poison crops, give bunny rabbits cancer, and encourage the spread of the plague.
It allows for "noble demon" archetypes and friendly demons, while still maintaining a solid "us or them, literal existential threat" element to the demonic hordes, and a solid reason to not want them moving in next door.
The "good exception from a bad race" is probably one of the most overused tropes in any story. Drizzt is one of the most famous examples in D&D and not only spawned various other "actually I'm a good Drow" OCs, but then similar exceptions in other inherently and historically evil races.
Once or twice and written well it's fine, but neither of those conditions are met now.
Castlevania was so based on this.
"Your God's love is not unconditional. He doesn't love us, and he doesn't love you."
See, is that the truth, or is that a demon's lie? Clearly God is kinda pissed, cuz he let the demons loose. Maybe hard to tell.
Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are RACIST!
Wait, how?
Because miscegenation takes away the uniqueness, diversity, and strength of each of the superior races! It is a plot by oppressor race, white humans, to muddle our powerful bloodlines and weaken our community! Every half-orc and half-elf is a mud-blood, bastard, offspring of a race traitor!
Yes, I am an elementary school teacher that covers Critical Race Theory in my math class. How did you know?
(((White humans))), or goblins.
Probably because almost 100% of the time the "half" part comes about from the mother being raped by the labelled bit.
You aren't going to find many human guys that will fuck an orc woman, and probably more importantly, orc women won't want human men who are physically weaker than not only orc men but also probably orc women!
It's pretty much always rape and when you start noticing that it then brings up a likely inherent label of the races involved in siring the offspring.
Hence, racist. Because these idiots are too fucking retarded to realise what they are doing most of the time with their self insert OCs instead thinking "uwu, Imma half-dragon tiefling with horns and a tail, swish-swish!" that either required a demon to fuck a dragon, or a dragon to fuck a demon, and regardless probably needs the dragon in some kind of non dragon form if the resulting tieflings are somehow still humanoid in appearance.
https://archive.is/DAzRu
I've read this article about it and I still don't know
They say the problem is with the "Half-" label and with treating Half-Orcs as being a separate race from regular Orcs. Of course no normal person would see an issue with this, but in fantasy and sci-fi settings leftists always end up interpreting the non-human races as being non-White and human solidarity is likened to White Supremacy.
I still hate BG3 with a passion for ruining the Illitthid
What did they do to the illithids? Are they no longer creatures obsessed with enslaving the minds of huge colonies of thralls to do their bidding and to occasionally serve as snacks when their brains are litterally sucked out through their ears or eye sockets?
They added a good Illithid that only eats the brain of bad guys. They also brought the idea that the Illithid are slaves to the elder brain and ceremorphosis is more like a mutation of the host rather then an entire new being.
By giving any kind of explanation to the Illithid does them a disservice. They should be a question and horrifying to comprehend. What they did was made them no different mentally than sentient bees or ants.
Yeah, there's a reason why Illithids were classified as Aberration. They, there homeworld and their thinking is completely different to humanoid races.
Did they?
The subtext of Emperor's story is that he's full of shit. He was mind controlling people like crazy including his 'partner', and there's no reason to think he was only eating badguy brains aside from his word.
He starts his interactions with you by lying to you, then lies more to you, then during his reveal he says a bunch of lies (eg, Orpheus will definitely kill you), then refuses to work with Orpheus even though Orpheus will work with you as a mindflayer, etc.. At the end of the story if you trust him and hive him take over the brain it turns out he lied and he enslaves you. And if you don't trust him and ask him to take any personal risk of sacrifice, he immediately leaves and joins up with the hivemind.
The only thing we really know for sure about him is that he was an illithid who got separated from the hive mind in a fluke and then immediately started plotting to get as much power as possible. That's in line with aberrations.
It's open for interpretation how full of shit he was. He is evil human rather then an alien being.
As for the eating bad guy brains, I was talking about the other Illithid. I freaking hate that one. They just had to humanize the Illithid. They are now just poor victims of the elder brains rather then an evil alien race for whom we are food and less then bugs.
They gave them sex.
No, really.
Comment from 2 months ago when this was also brought up.
https://kotakuinaction2.win/p/1994kKUSqR/x/c/4ZDuNUeMwAE
They took what was an actual alien, horrifying, and inherently parasitic species and turned them into yet another misunderstood race with different cultures.
...
THEY LITERALLY EAT YOUR BRAIN!
I hate it for a lot more than that. Absolute fucking skinsuit of product.
I hate it, because every single character in it looks like dogshit.
Pollyanna getting rid of the kikes so she can go back to being a priestess of peace, unfathomably based
I had hoped the artist would go all in on the parody and give her the literal mustache just for the sake of absurdity. Maybe it would have been too on the nose, or at least under it, although it could then be used to shitpost about drawing bearded/mustached women and being inclusive about all body types!
Yea give me some classic fantasy
More actual open world options that don't railroad players into suffering through self insert OCs would also be nice, too. While I never did figure out what the fuck that random guy in the cave was for in Morrowind the game was still shitty enough to fail you if you killed him and you had to reload. Seeing as how I had already completed the main story without ever even going near the cave it had me question why bother having such an npc be that vital to things if they clearly weren't vital in the slightest.
Part of the problem there then is having competent writers who can deal with players going that far off script as players often do.
You generally weren't locked out of main quest progression if you killed essential NPCs. There may have been an exception or two, but you could still pick up on the next step if you managed to find the thread.
Vivec made sense, you needed him to sort the God weapons and take out the big bad, but the guy I'm talking about was some, imo, random elf in a cave I had never met before in any playthrough. Killed him for whatever reason so "the threads of fate have been severed" screen came up prompting the reload. I still have no idea who the fuck that elf was or why he was important enough to warrant that when I could still go and complete the game and leave his hermit ass alone in the cave forever.
I never had a problem with subverted or mold-breaking interpretations or one-off unique characters of "evil" fantasy races and demons. I was fine with stories that involved mainstream religions being secretly evil.
Now we're not even allowed to portray these races as per classic lore. Now Christian-like fantasy religions are not allowed to be portrayed as good. Those people can get fucked.
As the comic and your comment brings up it's only ever certain groups that get used this way, same IRL with disparaging comments towards "the easy target", because places like Charlie Hebdo show what happen when a more general range of topics gets used.
This simple little comic enrages me so much, because it's true. In fact, it barely scratches the surface. They didn't even touch on treatment of the sexes; the erasure of femininity and the proliferation of insufferable girlbosses, and the erasure of masculinity and the proliferation of New Men.
I'm sick of it all. Thankfully, they can't get rid of the old stuff. Also, people are getting sick of their nonsense, and it seems like the profitability of this bullshit is starting to wane.
Nerfnow!! touches on a lot of woke and general gaming topics, having started sort of as a TF2 comic that spun off various other characters, the lead is literally a female engineer/engy named Angie;
https://www.nerfnow.com/comic/3312
All with what I think is a Brazilian twist and POV on things. Also occasional flood related site outages.
It's covered quite a few game issues over the last few years and the comments section of each comic, albeit limited in character space, do generally lean anti-woke and anti-anti-consumer which a lot of games now are.
I'd engage with the site in the comments if it didn't require Facebook or Google to log in with.
I'm sure they're working on that. Why do you think everything is a subscription based service now rather than a physical product you can purchase and genuinely own?
"Subverted Expectations" is just word-wrap for Anti-Moralism.
Maybe sometimes but it's wider used has generally been "fuck your legacy franchise, I'm doing my own shit no matter how retarded and completely unrelated it ends up". Aka, The Last Jedi.
Oh you mean Evil.
Sort of, but almost a bit worse. It's like a contrarian morality. Like a stereotypical super villain. But, only the most evil possible variant of a stereotypical Super Villain.
Something like:
"Woke Man! Why did you rob that bank?!!"
"Because, Good Guy, NOT robbing the bank is good to you, and I'm """evil""" At least to you. Bwhahahahah!"
"But... that doesn't make any sense. Why would you just do something because it's evil? You're not robbing it for money?"
"NO! I don't even want this money! I'm doing it to subvert your expectations!"
"That doesn't make any fucking sense! You're a villain, I expect you to do bad things!"
"That's where you're wrong, Good Guy... I'm actually the hero! And you're standing in my way."
"Woke Man... This still doesn't make any fucking sense. You're literally not the good person here. You're doing objectively evil things."
"YOU FOOL! I'm good because my goal is to bring about Utopia. You're bad because you're trying to stop me from brining about Utopia. Therefore, NOTHING I do against you can be bad because you're deontologically evil and I'm deontologically good! You could help an old lady across the street and I should shoot you and her for it! That would be a Categorical Imperative. On the other hand, I could rape your infant son to death and I'd still be in the right! I'm the real hero! It's the world that's evil! I'm I'm the cure."
"... That... That is the single most evil thing that I've ever heard. You may actually be possessed by a demon. I'm calling The Punisher, possibly Constantine."
"The Church was bad all along!" Is one of the most hilariously disingenuous and cliche plot points these days. Talk about contrived and overused.
"The Church" of course only meaning a very specific church, and not any of the others or similar places of worship.
I can only be so glad those freaks don't write the main plot of Legend of Heroes (Trails/Kiseki). The Church of Aidios would've been shat on over a decade ago.
I heard the Trails games were in fact one example of Church Bad. Is this not the case? It's the reason I went for Tales instead.
They've got their own divisions of secret agents and supersoldiers, some of them shady characters, but hell no, they're not evil.
Looks like Trails is back on the menu! Thanks!
Look, just understand that the worship of Christ is EVIL.
Why don't you just jump the fence and join the nice Church of Satan? Those guys are cool!
/s
They let me do anything I want! That's how I know it's true!
This is why, in my adopted dragon story I'm working on, 99% of dragons are dicks. They fly around taking whatever they want, because they're big, powerful, and naturally magical. They're the definition of power corrupting. Their culture revolves around accumulating wealth and lording it over everything else. They don't HAVE to be evil and had a more noble history, but why would they be anything else if left unchecked?
The only reason the hero dragon isn't a dick, is because he was raised by humans and is still just a lovable little guy. He has to struggle with the fact everyone else justifiably hates dragons, and he has to struggle with his own greedy, wrathful tendencies bubbling under his friendly nature.
Doesn't even have to be cultural. Think about the actual chemical properties of gold from the stance of the Periodic Table and what it then gets used for in industry.
So dragons don't sleep on gold because of its monetary worth, they sleep on it because it helps them cool down, just like many animals will do when digging a shallow pit then lying on the cooler soil.
So to further consider your good natured hero dragon not only might he have to struggle with his own greed and wrath, he physically needs something like gold in order to stay comfortable.
add in that it's a toxic heavy metal
hell, it's fantasy so put some magic in there that anything made of gold has some chance to absorb avarice and evil and can then radiate it and influence others.
Oh, absolutely. I have a concept going where metals, precious metals in particular, conduct and channel magic, and part of why dragons nest in them is to help recharge their "batteries," so to speak. So there's a biological reason to have a nice hoard. Of course there's "having a nice gold nest" and then there's "I turned my cave into Uncle Scrooge's money bin just because I can."
Oh, so he's on our side this week?
This isn't Sinfest.