Quote from: Eirikrautha on April 23, 2024, 03:53:14 PMEhhh, no, that recognition predates Studio C by a long time. Joseph Campbell was talking about monomyth in the seventies. It is, in fact, one reason why modern games and media mostly suck. Because politics comes and goes, but the human condition never changes. And the "progressives" want to assert that there is no human condition, nor is there anything within us other than the product of culture and politics. And that is why they fail...
QuoteThe world of man — state, society — as Marx had it is the social structure that he creates for himself and that he, indeed, imprisons himself within. Man creates society and embodies that creation in the State, and the society, shaped by the State, in turn creates Man. Marx called the creation of society "praxis" and the creation of Man by society "the inversion of praxis." Praxis is theory-informed activism, so activism or "the work" done in light of Marxist Theory. It is the transforming activity done by Man on the world of man. The inversion of praxis is social conditioning. The society that Man has created for himself socially conditions him almost completely deterministically. Man is limited and thus psychically incarcerated by the limitations of his social conditioning through the inversion of praxis.
Quote from: jeff37923 on April 23, 2024, 02:28:24 PMQuote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 23, 2024, 12:18:39 AMQuote from: jeff37923 on April 22, 2024, 11:46:37 PMQuote from: Neoplatonist1 on April 22, 2024, 03:17:00 PMIt occurred to me that the main thing holding back the Wokification of all media products is what we might call anthropological realism...
Before I touch this subject, I'd like you to define "anthropological realism" because I have not been able to find a definition online.
As ForgottenF put it above, (1) writing fantasy as if it were history, to which I'd add (2) employing races, sexes, cultures, and religions logically as derived from the inspiring mythos or cultures from which the given fantasy comes.
It doesn't make sense to have Africans in Rohan, for example. In fact it defeats the whole purpose. LotR is a European fantasy, the Rohan are an Anglo-Saxon horse culture; the other races of man are geographically and culturally peripheral.
OK, but doesn't that go back to before Tolkien? In Beowulf there was Grendel, and even Grendel had a mother. In it's most basic form, that is "anthropological realism" in that it is a copy of western family structure.
Quote from: Fheredin on April 22, 2024, 04:55:07 PMQuoteThis is not to object to media products being transformed into propaganda. I'd agree that they're already always propaganda. Refusing to indoctrinate someone is indoctrinating them into neutrality, just as refusing to teach children religion is teaching them nullifidianism. The Wokists have that right: most everything reinforces one political narrative or other.
I would beg to differ on this one, and I think it's better to approach this from a Christian Apologetics angle than from politics or the history of gaming. I will try to circle back after I make my point.
There's one key difference between Atheism and Theism. If you push the Atheistic universe to it's conclusion, you must assume that logic, mathematics, and ethics are self-assembling. If you push the Theistic universe to its logical conclusion, these could be self-assembling, but it is more consistent with the universe for them to be directly provided by God.
The problem is that since the 1930s and Godel's theorems of incompleteness, we have known that mathematics especially doesn't fit into neat self-assembling boxes. Without this, ethics and epistemology follow suit. This is why pseudoscientific ethics typically resort to non-answers like survival and reproduction and secular ethics fall apart under scrutiny. In this sense I think that it's more accurate to say that as our culture abandoned Christian ethical ideals, it lost the moral fiber to resist Marxism. Marxism also failed--it became Wokeness by switched away from economic arguments to racial and gender arguments--but because the Christian moral authority was exiled from public life and there were were no other moral authorities to call it out, Marxism evolved into Wokism.
And here we come to the rub; Christianity is getting targeted by the Woke because it retains the moral authority to call Wokism out. No one else really does.
So, no, I don't agree with the sentiment that teaching children nothing is actually teaching them nullifidianism. You either teach children functional worldviews or you don't. And if you didn't, chances are they will become Woke, not because they actually believe any of the ideas, but because the only thing which is real to them is the opinions of their peers.
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 23, 2024, 04:37:01 PMQuote from: Eirikrautha on April 23, 2024, 03:53:14 PMCampbell invented the monomyth structure by examining various myths and stitching together originally unrelated scenes into a vaguely coherent storytelling template, but it's not actually an accurate reflection of universal human psychology or storytelling (read the ATU fairy tale index for comparison). That's not to say that humans don't have universal psychological biases, we obviously do.Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on April 23, 2024, 03:11:48 PMActually, I think Tolkien's influence has trapped the fantasy genre in an uncreative rut where 99% of it is just Tolkien fanfiction with the serial numbers filled off. Dwarves, orcs, and elves inspired by Tolkien are everywhere in fantasy. Dark lords and heroic quests to save the world are a dime a dozen. A pseudo-medieval aesthetic inspired by Tolkien is the default.
As an old Studio C skit hilariously illustrated, the Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter are the same story repackaged, despite having completely different aesthetics.
Ehhh, no, that recognition predates Studio C by a long time. Joseph Campbell was talking about monomyth in the seventies. It is, in fact, one reason why modern games and media mostly suck. Because politics comes and goes, but the human condition never changes. And the "progressives" want to assert that there is no human condition, nor is there anything within us other than the product of culture and politics. And that is why they fail...
My criticism is unrelated to wokeness and is a pure criticism of writers becoming increasingly uncreative and just aping Tolkien. That's been a problem even before wokeness.
Quote from: 1stLevelWizard on April 23, 2024, 10:02:49 PMLike you said, once you're past the point of the polearm, the weapon is useless. Kinda makes me laugh whenever you see guards in medieval fantasy armed with spears where there are only one or two other guards to support them.
Quote from: jeff37923 on April 22, 2024, 01:59:41 AMWhen I was playing RPGA games of AD&D2e, that spell was the bane of my existence.
Quote from: Domina on April 23, 2024, 06:02:44 PMIs there some reason this had to be a video rather than a few paragraphs of text?