Creative works you enjoyed until politics happened - "How politics made me hate Welcome to Nightvale and other things"

[Newman's Lovechild]

I never got into Warhammer 40K, but last I heard they were pretty against anything woke, at least the fanbase was.

The only reason 40K fans resisted the woke propaganda for so long is because they were too busy being the biggest captive cult of rabid consoomers on the planet.

Not to powerlevel, but I started some social media accounts a couple of years ago, and reconnected with some guys I used to talk with on old 40K fan forums. They were all still heavily invested in the hobby and all turned out to be undeniably woke.

I'm not worried about 40k as of yet because there's a good chance that GW understands that it's the same Grognards that have been buying their product for the last 3 decades

The last time GW gave a shit about anyone over 16 buying their product might have been back when they were just a backstreet seller of licensed D&D minis. Might have been. For the last few decades GW has only been about shaking up their games for each new generation of little Timmys whose mom will buy them an armys worth of plastic crack, which will have glue and thick paint glopped all over it, and end up on ebay a few months later.
Most older fans will - honestly, unironically - cheer the fact they have to buy loads of new models to fit the newest iteration of the rules. Others will moan and complain that GW is betraying 'the same Grognards that have been buying their product for the last 3 decades', but will not stop playing, will not switch games, will not stop buying.
GW doesn't even care enough to consider them as their built-in customer base, in the way it's said that Disney Lucasfilm viewed Star Wars consoomers.

Throw off their old customers to chase the woke dollar? GW would do that in a heartbeat. GW would pivot so fast, it'd give Hollywood, the games industry, the comics industry whiplash just by being in the same zipcode.

Most of 'the same Grognards that have been buying their product for the last 3 decades' would then probably turn woke because GW told them to. They'd turn woke in anticipation of GW making it another special rule for Space Marines.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The only reason 40K fans resisted the woke propaganda for so long is because they were too busy being the biggest captive cult of rabid consoomers on the planet.

Not to powerlevel, but I started some social media accounts a couple of years ago, and reconnected with some guys I used to talk with on old 40K fan forums. They were all still heavily invested in the hobby and all turned out to be undeniably woke.



The last time GW gave a shit about anyone over 16 buying their product might have been back when they were just a backstreet seller of licensed D&D minis. Might have been. For the last few decades GW has only been about shaking up their games for each new generation of little Timmys whose mom will buy them an armys worth of plastic crack, which will have glue and thick paint glopped all over it, and end up on ebay a few months later.
Most older fans will - honestly, unironically - cheer the fact they have to buy loads of new models to fit the newest iteration of the rules. Others will moan and complain that GW is betraying 'the same Grognards that have been buying their product for the last 3 decades', but will not stop playing, will not switch games, will not stop buying.
GW doesn't even care enough to consider them as their built-in customer base, in the way it's said that Disney Lucasfilm viewed Star Wars consoomers.

Throw off their old customers to chase the woke dollar? GW would do that in a heartbeat. GW would pivot so fast, it'd give Hollywood, the games industry, the comics industry whiplash just by being in the same zipcode.

Most of 'the same Grognards that have been buying their product for the last 3 decades' would then probably turn woke because GW told them to. They'd turn woke in anticipation of GW making it another special rule for Space Marines.

See also: Wizards of the Coast and Magic the Gathering. There's a reason they call it cardboard crack.

You know how last year following the George Floyd protests they permabanned a number of cards for being offensive? Well guess what. None of those cards were in any vaguely recent sets and none of them saw tournament play other than in sealed deck at the time. Incidentally, I have one of them (Pradesh Gypsies). It was utterly virtue signalling.

WOTC going woke (which they totally had before all this) will not hurt their profits one iota because they've got so many people hooked. They could make the next set one where troon adventurers gratuitously murder people for wrong pronouns and have a card called "Restorative Justice" whose mana cost and effects vary according to the ethnicity of the player, and the consoomers would still come out and buy them.

 

[Twitter Hate Mob]

I also think Baldur's Gate as well could not be made today because you can have party henchmen that are pretty openly racist (Kivan, Korgan, Anomen, Viconia as well, though I think it's more for her that she just likes pushing people's buttons rather than actual bigotry; the woman has bespoke abuse for every possible other character in the game) and sexist (Eldoth, Edwin) and Edwin's adventures in accidental gender bending would upset alphabet people.

If you want to know what Baldur's Gate would look like were it made today, just look at what those pricks Beamdog did to it with their own special interquel.

Jaheira's nagging wife/henpecked husband routine? That's problematic, gone. Safana pretending to be helpless and seducing men into doing her work for her? She's now a strong independent woman who don't need no man. Skye, being a totally accurate representation of how a spoilt, coddled noble would actually fare as an adventurer? No, she's just tough and ready.

Oh, and then there's some random NPC who will tell you that they're a trany if you ask them why they're name is so strange, even though it's similar to everyone else's.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

If you want to know what Baldur's Gate would look like were it made today, just look at what those pricks Beamdog did to it with their own special interquel.

Jaheira's nagging wife/henpecked husband routine? That's problematic, gone. Safana pretending to be helpless and seducing men into doing her work for her? She's now a strong independent woman who don't need no man. Skye, being a totally accurate representation of how a spoilt, coddled noble would actually fare as an adventurer? No, she's just tough and ready.

Oh, and then there's some random NPC who will tell you that they're a trany if you ask them why they're name is so strange, even though it's similar to everyone else's.

I have played it, yes. I really wanted to like it because the series needed something that covers levels 8-10, SOA is balanced mainly for levels 10-14 so has to give you an artificial XP boost near the outset, and one of TOB's downfalls was that by the time you get to epic level it's pretty much impossible to come up with convincing villains or plots when your average epic level party in any edition of D&D can single handedly trash entire cities (and indeed Gygax admitted that after level 13, 14, or so you might want to think about retiring the party and having everyone start again because it stops being compelling) so the only really way to keep the PCs on their toes is to basically engineer boss rush type encounters. They had all the original voice actors. To be fair I liked that they made Khalid slightly less of a two dimensional wet blanket, but yeah, Safana got derailed, Dynaheir got derailed, Viconia didn't push peoples' buttons for their own sake any more (yes, she is the recipient of a fair amount of racial prejudice in the original games but she is more than happy to dish it out as well), and the new henchmen were all frankly boring.

I also did encounter Mizhena. Which isn't an unusual name at all, but the existence of a character whose only purpose to exist is "have I mentioned I am trans today" was a real low point. As was the ending which went on way too long and felt like the script needing the plot to happen.

Oh yes. Fucking Forgotten Realms slang. Ed Greenwood in the mid 2000s invented a load of slang terminology for FR and because his contract with Wizards is that even his shitposts are canon, this is canon and Beamdog only went and fucking used it. It really jars.

Actually, this is an aside for fantasy slang in general. If you're writing a fantasy or science fiction novel, inventing own slang has to be believable and sound good in universe. The next best thing is to plunder the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which Bioware originally did - "sneaksman," "diddeys," "socket money," "lant gulping dirt chute," "trollops and plug tails," "flail the bladder," etc. It sounds generally pretty good.

The worst thing you can do is slap a load of random words or syllables together and claim they mean something without any believable derivation. "Bitebolds," "feldurking," "stlarn," anyone? Nope, it sounds stupid and jarring. But Ed Greenwood said so and thus it's canon. And then Beamdog has to go and podge it in to the game. No wonder the dialogue sounds off.

(Incidentally, one of Ed Greenwood's FR slang terms, "roelems," meaning bewbs, he described as being from a popular ballad describing heaving bosoms as like a torrent of severed heads bouncing down a mountainside after a battle. Yes. He actually said this. Dare you enter his magical realm?)

 

[Sex Cannon Lupa]

Hopefully historical non-fiction counts, because it's been intolerable since 2016. ( I wonder what happened that year?)



I ordered this book from the library and was immediately slapped in the face by severe TDS when I read the book jacket and learned the fat fuck in the picture above wrote it to try and get over Trump's election. In the fucking prologue he says the GOP has always been a home to white supremacy, then in the epilogue he declares we are living in wicked times (it was published in 2020) and Trump is a bad man by the Founders' standards. In between is a bunch of racial faggotry, just nonstop slave talk, and quotes from Martin Luther King.

American history is officially woke.

 

[Hongourable Madisha]

Probably not now. His jokes were a whole other level of offensiveness and that's not allowed now, hence why he's a grovelling unfunny piece of shit now.

He's pathetic now. Posie Parker even pointed out that he used to make fun of every minority group, including disabled children, but posh white men in dresses are too vulnerable and must be protected uwu for him to dunk on them.

I also did encounter Mizhena. Which isn't an unusual name at all, but the existence of a character whose only purpose to exist is "have I mentioned I am trans today" was a real low point. As was the ending which went on way too long and felt like the script needing the plot to happen.

I never got why being trans would be a big deal, or even a concept at all, in Forgotten Realms. One of the first quests in the original Baldur's Gate has you retrieve some belts from an ogre with a fetish (wonder if that was a dig at troons), and it turns out in his belts collection he has a Cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that magically changes the wearer's sex. If someone wants to be the opposite sex, just cast a sex change curse on them, and they can cast or buy a Remove Curse if they change their minds. It's not like a big life journey of self-discovery or whatever Mizhena makes it out to be.

eta:

Hopefully historical non-fiction counts, because it's been intolerable since 2016. ( I wonder what happened that year?)

View attachment 2731732

I ordered this book from the library and was immediately slapped in the face by severe TDS when I read the book jacket and learned the fat fuck in the picture above wrote it to try and get over Trump's election. In the fucking prologue he says the GOP has always been a home to white supremacy, then in the epilogue he declares we are living in wicked times (it was published in 2020) and Trump is a bad man by the Founders' standards. In between is a bunch of racial faggotry, just nonstop slave talk, and quotes from Martin Luther King.

American historical non-fiction is officially woke.

In fairness, "beloved historical/mythological/religious figure would have agreed with me on everything" is a staple of shitty non(?)-fiction.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

He's pathetic now. Posie Parker even pointed out that he used to make fun of every minority group, including disabled children, but posh white men in dresses are too vulnerable and must be protected uwu for him to dunk on them.


I never got why being trans would be a big deal, or even a concept at all, in Forgotten Realms. One of the first quests in the original Baldur's Gate has you retrieve some belts from an ogre with a fetish (wonder if that was a dig at troons), and it turns out in his belts collection he has a Cursed Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity that magically changes the wearer's sex. If someone wants to be the opposite sex, just cast a sex change curse on them, and they can cast or buy a Remove Curse if they change their minds. It's not like a big life journey of self-discovery or whatever Mizhena makes it out to be.

Yep. And Edwin's quest involves him finding a "Nether Scroll" which he hides in his robe and sees fit to decode in his off time. He does so and announces he'll cast the spell from it, and all will know his true worth.

It permanently makes him into a woman. Edwin being a bit of a misogynist this is the source of much merriment at his expense. And in the epilogue, he gets to super epic level and decides to make good on his promise to kick Elminster's arse. He fails, and is permanently turned back into Edwina by way of punishment. It ends with "Edwina now manages a bar in Waterdeep. She is a bitter, bitter woman."

And it gets worse. In Dragon Age Origins one of the inns in Denerim has an ugly serving wench with a rather gravelly voice called Edwina.

E: That reminds me. I believe the gender bender belt was a canonical FR item. Like I said, dare you step into Ed Greenwood's magical realm?

 

[Heavy Duty Boots]

American historical non-fiction is officially woke.

Ironically, the only good American historians left, are the ones that don't focus on America, mostly the ones that talk about Latin America and the whole southern border of the US. You'd be surprised that even though they're talking about the most controversial border in the world, they are not cringe about it

 

[Observotron]

Reading through this thread just makes me appreciate New Vegas more

-Highly political game that keeps itself completely away from real politics
-Has three gay companions that are compelling outside of their sexuality, so no one cares
-Has characters that could easily be used for woke points like Raul (yay minorities) and Lily (mental illness representation is important you guize) but it handles them elegantly and without falling into Twiterr-esque wokeisms
-Actually lets you make meaningful choices and the game itself doesn't judge for it, only opposing factions do
-Old style expansions that are actually worth it (even HH, if only for Joshua Graham)

Time to take the dust off the old boy and give it a spin one more time

Sadly there are still people who say New Vegas is a right wing power fantasy.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Sadly there are still people who say New Vegas is a right wing power fantasy.

Anything that's not a left-wing power fantasy is a right-wing power fantasy for them.

 

[Gar For Archer]

To be fair, with the popularity of vidya like Dawn of War and Total Warhammer, do they even need to sell miniatures for over the board play any more? I heard that more people played Dawn of War than even were enthusiasts of shoving the little metal guys around, and Creative Assembly have expanded the world of Warhammer Fantasy in their games far more and quickly, what with the Vampire Coast as its own distinct faction (complete with a fucking undead opera singer who has sonic attacks because when the fat lady sings it's all over) and expanding Kislev and Cathay in Total Warhammer 3 to being actually their own sides with their own gear and themes rather than just reskins of the Empire with furry hats and jade ornaments respectively. I suspect GW knows that they make far more money selling their IP to corporate clients than they do selling minis to neckbeards.

Also, 3D printing. You can get affordable 3D printers that can do sufficient detail miniatures in both plastic and sintered metal nowadays and maker sites are full of model files with suspiciously similar generic names like "Elf Warrior Prince" for Tyrion, "Evil Sorceress" for Morathi, "Demon Lord" for Kharn the Betrayer, and "Wererat Ninja" for Snikch. Soon enough anyone willing to spend £1,500 on an official new army might find it cheaper to spend £2,000 on a quality 3D printer and a load of model files for your favourite side or even just for bitz so you can kitbash them yourselves.

Wizards of the Coast seem to be doing the same thing with Magic the Gathering. Now I admit it's been over 15 years since I gave up the cardboard crack. But even back then there was a bit of a move to push "MODO" as Magic Online was known as by the fanbase. After all, it's cheaper to sell the addicts digital cards than waste time and money printing a hundred million cards for each set for over the board play. And for tournament play it's easier to monitor cheating (you can't stick a Black Lotus up your sleeve online so you don't need arbiters walking the rows) and to keep everyone's Elo rating updated. And you can charge just as much for the bits and bytes that mean that a player actually has the cards in their deck, and keep a cut of the secondary market by controlling the only trading platform. And because you control the game, the players, and the play, you can then permaban people from playing for wrongthink or causing offence even from casual play, which you can't with OTB play.

For the record, my Elo at MTG was 1650. That would be a fairly good rating at chess, where woodpushers are usually sub 1000, people who vaguely know what they're doing get to 1200, the best casual club players are 1500-1700, enthusiasts and people who actually put in significant time and effort hover around 2000, and GMs are over 2600, but for MTG they started everyone at 1600 for some reason, so it just means I was better than average by a nose.

I still have all my cards as well, apart from the lightly scuffed Gaea's Cradle I disposed of on greedbay earlier in the year for three hundred quid. Might see if I can flog off the rest of my collection but I don't have the time or the inclination to go through it and separate out everything of value.

The miniatures are like physical floppy comics from Marvel and DC. They could care less about them and have nothing but open disdain for the only people who buy them, but actually axing them would be an actual admission that they’ve sold their souls and become IP licensing companies, and they can’t do something that would prove all their critics right.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

The miniatures are like physical floppy comics from Marvel and DC. They could care less about them and have nothing but open disdain for the only people who buy them, but actually axing them would be an actual admission that they’ve sold their souls and become IP licensing companies, and they can’t do something that would prove all their critics right.

Used to be that they worked with the fans. And they did. They not only liked the death metal band Bolt Thrower (named after a Warhammer Fantasy artillery unit) and their first album "In Battle There Is No Law" being based on said miniature shoving game, but then took it up and co-produced albums two and three "Realm of Chaos / Slaves to Darkness" and "Warmaster." All of which have GW artists doing the album art.

They also gave Sabbat, another heavy metal band, their first release in the form of a flexi disc of their song "Blood For The Blood God" tucked in the pages of White Dwarf magazine.

Anyhow. Back on topic. Harry Turtledove.

I used to like his alt history novels. Well, up to a point. Videssos was quite fun. Guns of the South was excellent and the concept (ultra-nationalist Afrikaners go back in time to give AK-47s to the Army of Northern Virginia) is very well executed, though would never be allowed today because it has nuanced portrayals of both Confederate and Unionist politicians of the time ("states rights" is a meme nowadays, yes, but Robert E. Lee actually held it as a principle to the point at which he refused command of the Union armies because it would mean war against his native Virginia) and the idea that the South was anything other than a horde of racist barbarians is verboten in current year. How Few Remain is excellent though the later TL191 series becomes increasingly farcical and repetitive. Ruled Britannia is very, very, very cool (Shakespeare as propagandist against Spanish occupation government). Worldwar is pleasingly insane and honestly deserves a TV series of its own, especially when the humans realise that ginger is like sex heroin to the Lizards.

But why did politics happen?

Well, Orange Man was elected, and this broke him. He now spends most of his time screeching on twatter about how orange man bad. And when he does write stuff? It's this sort of thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_the_Last_Trump_Shall_Sound

During his presidency, Donald Trump would be reelected in the 2020 presidential election, but would die during a second coronavirus outbreak in 2024. As a result of his death, Vice President Mike Pence would succeed him and would oversee the actions of the United States being transformed into a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist, authoritarian state and would eventually lead to the West coast states of California, Oregon and Washington seceding from the US and forming their own nation called Pacifica.

Pence would be elected to a full term in 2024 and reelected in 2028 with Lindsey Graham as his vice president. During his presidency. Roe v. Wade would be overturned in 2026 with abortions being criminalized and thousands of women dying as a result of illegal procedures, concentration camps were established near the US-Mexican border to imprison migrants, illegal immigrants and political opponents, non-Christians including Jews, Muslims and Sikhs fall victim to fatal religious and racist attacks, and LGBTQ+ peoples are persecuted and eventually classified as sex offenders.

The United States Congress becomes a Republican-dominated rubber stamp, state autonomy in Democratic states become undermined with state governments being removed and are replaced for non-compliance, Christian fundamentalism is endorsed by the federal government, and news broadcasters including CNN and MSNBC became right-wing subsidiaries of Fox known as Fox-CNN and Fox-MSNBC, respectively, while The New York Times gets shut down completely as part of restrictions on freedom of the press.

Pence would eventually work around the Twenty-second Amendment by running as Vice President on the bottom of the Republican ticket with Devin Nunes in 2032. The ticket would win and Nunes would resign from the presidency shortly after taking office, allowing Pence to retake the presidency and to appoint Rick Santorum as his new vice president.

How art thou autismal, let me count the ways.

 

[Newman's Lovechild]

And when he does write stuff? It's this sort of thing:

I've nothing to add, except

Ho-leee shit.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

American history is officially woke.

It seems suspicious and artificial just how triggered the woke get by Orange Man.

It's as if they have a Pavlovian reaction.

 

[Judge Dredd]

New one to add. ThorHighHeels.

He's a YouTuber that used to review weird games. His recent videos have had the occational comment about sexism, but nothing too offencive.

His latest video was about weird PS3 games, and I gave up 30 minutes in to a 2 hour video because it feels like about a third if not more is complaining about sexism, complaining about gamer bros. The thing that made me stop watching was a jab at gamergate era Review Tech USA. If the video wasn't a few days old, I'd have sworn it was released in late 2014-early 2015.

Black Mirror
- Some episodes are perfectly fine, some episodes have clear political messages

Was Black Mirror always woke? I ask because I liked the guy that made Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker) back when he did his Wipe series (Screen Wipe, Games Wipe, News Wipe). Then he started going woke and went full TDS for the final episode of Wipe.

Over that time he also developed a hate boner for tech, but insisted on being a junkie to it. I never bothered with Black Mirror because I assumed that every episode would be "phone bad" "social media bad" "masses bad".

I never got into Warhammer 40K, but last I heard they were pretty against anything woke, at least the fanbase was. Is there really nothing left but to make your own niche hobbies and gatekeep the ever loving fuck out of it?

I'm not concerned about GW because they have never listened to their fans, and their fans have always been complaining. Someone on the farms (I forgot who, but you know who you are) made a great point that GW goes where ever the market takes them. The game started off as comedy, and went grimdark when that was popular.

 

[I.B. Niggin]

New one to add. ThorHighHeels.

He's a YouTuber that used to review weird games. His recent videos have had the occational comment about sexism, but nothing too offencive.

His latest video was about weird PS3 games, and I gave up 30 minutes in to a 2 hour video because it feels like about a third if not more is complaining about sexism, complaining about gamer bros. The thing that made me stop watching was a jab at gamergate era Review Tech USA. If the video wasn't a few days old, I'd have sworn it was released in late 2014-early 2015.

You're so right about this. I used to be a big fan of ThorHighHeels. You'd always end up seeing stuff that never got referenced anywhere else and it was a breath of fresh air in the gaming youtube sphere but he's gone extremely leftist wokey talking points in the last year and it seems like it makes an appearance in almost every video nowadays and it's just really fucking strange and out of the blue.

Similar thing with Stop Skeletons From Fighting. I never saw anyone else talking about IllBleed and such and over the years, the quality has just gone to shit tbh. Just yesterday, Derek was bitching about the Rittenhouse verdict on his Twitter and im just like, holy shit video game man, how about talking about weird video games instead?

The Trump presidency really did ruin everything. Just not everything they thought he would.

 

[SandyCat]

Was Black Mirror always woke? I ask because I liked the guy that made Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker) back when he did his Wipe series (Screen Wipe, Games Wipe, News Wipe). Then he started going woke and went full TDS for the final episode of Wipe.

Over that time he also developed a hate boner for tech, but insisted on being a junkie to it. I never bothered with Black Mirror because I assumed that every episode would be "phone bad" "social media bad" "masses bad".

My memory might be fuzzy since I haven't watched it in years but from what I can recall it varies depending on the episode. Some episodes don't seem to have much if any political messaging behind them whereas others the entire plot leads directly to a blatant political message.

Some episodes are just outright weird. There's a episode where two straight guys are fucking each other in a street fighter style video game then they meet up in real life, realize they're both dudes and fuck each other anyway.

As for the tech hate boner you're absolutely spot on. He explores a lot of "tech bad" elements in Black Mirror in almost every episode.

 

[Gar For Archer]

My memory might be fuzzy since I haven't watched it in years but from what I can recall it varies depending on the episode. Some episodes don't seem to have much if any political messaging behind them whereas others the entire plot leads directly to a blatant political message.

Some episodes are just outright weird. There's a episode where two straight guys are fucking each other in a street fighter style video game then they meet up in real life, realize they're both dudes and fuck each other anyway.

As for the tech hate boner you're absolutely spot on. He explores a lot of "tech bad" elements in Black Mirror in almost every episode.

"tech bad" is kinda the whole point of Black Mirror. I've heard the recent seasons/episodes were dogshit (not even for woke reasons, just in general) so I haven't bothered with it, but I don't recall the first season (maybe the second, forget if I watched it or not) having anything "woke". In fact I'd argue the whole "tech bad, social media bad, corporations bad" premise makes it anti-woke by default, since wokeness goes hand-in-hand with fetishization of corporations, technology and some bastardized ideal of scientific "progress".

 

[SandyCat]

"tech bad" is kinda the whole point of Black Mirror. I've heard the recent seasons/episodes were dogshit (not even for woke reasons, just in general) so I haven't bothered with it, but I don't recall the first season (maybe the second, forget if I watched it or not) having anything "woke".

I'm not against the tech bad route myself, I was just telling the other person if they're not into that sort of thing they won't enjoy black mirror

As for the woke angle it's been awhile since I've watched it so maybe I was overestimating how bad it was, but I do remember the final episode of the first season was pushing a clear message about black people being prosecuted unfairly.

The second season on the other hand I feel has gotten more political than the last. I've seen this pan out before with othershows when they start getting political. It snowballs until it becomes insufferable. Hopefully Black Mirror doesn't go the same route

 

[CWCissey]

As for the woke angle it's been awhile since I've watched it so maybe I was overestimating how bad it was, but I do remember the final episode of the first season was pushing a clear message about black people being prosecuted unfairly.

Eh? Series 1's final episode was about how sharing every single memory isn't a good idea.