RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)

[Stephen Tannhauser]

Carrie and Heathers are the quintessential ones that spring to mind for me - but there are a bunch of others. The Craft, John Tucker Must Die, Jawbreaker, etc.

Carrie, of course, I forgot Carrie. The Craft I might put on the edge, as the only actual death one of the once-bullied teen heroes personally causes is done via purely mundane means (she pushes the Jerk Jock she's whammied out a window).

The rest don't involve superpowers, though, and of them only Heathers (to the best of my research that I could find out) involves death by intentional violence; and all of them predate Columbine (1999). Still, Carrie is archetypal enough it almost accounts for keeping the trope alive all on its own.

More broadly, there are a lot of non-teen movies where the protagonist deals ultra-violent revenge that are more broad than just eye for an eye, like Death Wish or V for Vendetta. Often in revenge films, while there was a horrendous crime that is being avenged - there is a huge body count of people who have little connection to the initial crime, like in Commando, The Punisher, Kill Bill, etc.

Good point. One of the reasons I eventually soured on the Matrix films was the realization of how many innocent "coppertop" civilians or hapless security guards always died in any given Freemind vs. Agent action scene, all of whom are very clearly not expected to be remembered for more than a second or two.

(In the fan version of the third movie I'd have gotten to write in a genie-grants-my-wish universe, I set things up to make both "Zion" and the primary "Matrix" illusory environments, with a third layer beneath in which nobody ever died -- "death" in either environment was merely a temporary memory wipe and identity reboot.)

[GeekyBugle]

Carrie and Heathers are the quintessential ones that spring to mind for me - but there are a bunch of others. The Craft, John Tucker Must Die, Jawbreaker, etc.

Carrie, of course, I forgot Carrie. The Craft I might put on the edge, as the only actual death one of the once-bullied teen heroes personally causes is done via purely mundane means (she pushes the Jerk Jock she's whammied out a window).

The rest don't involve superpowers, though, and of them only Heathers (to the best of my research that I could find out) involves death by intentional violence; and all of them predate Columbine (1999). Still, Carrie is archetypal enough it almost accounts for keeping the trope alive all on its own.

More broadly, there are a lot of non-teen movies where the protagonist deals ultra-violent revenge that are more broad than just eye for an eye, like Death Wish or V for Vendetta. Often in revenge films, while there was a horrendous crime that is being avenged - there is a huge body count of people who have little connection to the initial crime, like in Commando, The Punisher, Kill Bill, etc.

Good point. One of the reasons I eventually soured on the Matrix films was the realization of how many innocent "coppertop" civilians or hapless security guards always died in any given Freemind vs. Agent action scene, all of whom are very clearly not expected to be remembered for more than a second or two.

(In the fan version of the third movie I'd have gotten to write in a genie-grants-my-wish universe, I set things up to make both "Zion" and the primary "Matrix" illusory environments, with a third layer beneath in which nobody ever died -- "death" in either environment was merely a temporary memory wipe and identity reboot.)

No, it's not a good point if you watched the movies:

Death Wish, the original, the protagonist sets up to avenge his family and not knowing who presents himself as a potential victim killing only those who would try to victimize him.

V for Vendetta has a revenge subplot, where V is killing those personally involved in his torture, and those he kills in a very specific way except for the chancellor who he has another of the culprits kill before killing him and his croonies who were trying to kill him. But the movie isn't a revenge film, it's an anti-totalitarian film.

Commando, who does Ahnold kill that's not directly involved in the kidnapping of his child?

The Punisher, who does Frank kill that's not a part of the gang that had his family killed?

Kill Bill, Too long since I watched it but I bet it's the same case.

As for JhKim's assertion of Conan and others not being good people... I guess he thinks you should never ever kill another human being... But he's for abortion.

[wmarshal]

Carrie and Heathers are the quintessential ones that spring to mind for me - but there are a bunch of others. The Craft, John Tucker Must Die, Jawbreaker, etc.

Carrie, of course, I forgot Carrie. The Craft I might put on the edge, as the only actual death one of the once-bullied teen heroes personally causes is done via purely mundane means (she pushes the Jerk Jock she's whammied out a window).

The rest don't involve superpowers, though, and of them only Heathers (to the best of my research that I could find out) involves death by intentional violence; and all of them predate Columbine (1999). Still, Carrie is archetypal enough it almost accounts for keeping the trope alive all on its own.

More broadly, there are a lot of non-teen movies where the protagonist deals ultra-violent revenge that are more broad than just eye for an eye, like Death Wish or V for Vendetta. Often in revenge films, while there was a horrendous crime that is being avenged - there is a huge body count of people who have little connection to the initial crime, like in Commando, The Punisher, Kill Bill, etc.

Good point. One of the reasons I eventually soured on the Matrix films was the realization of how many innocent "coppertop" civilians or hapless security guards always died in any given Freemind vs. Agent action scene, all of whom are very clearly not expected to be remembered for more than a second or two.

(In the fan version of the third movie I'd have gotten to write in a genie-grants-my-wish universe, I set things up to make both "Zion" and the primary "Matrix" illusory environments, with a third layer beneath in which nobody ever died -- "death" in either environment was merely a temporary memory wipe and identity reboot.)

No, it's not a good point if you watched the movies:

Death Wish, the original, the protagonist sets up to avenge his family and not knowing who presents himself as a potential victim killing only those who would try to victimize him.

V for Vendetta has a revenge subplot, where V is killing those personally involved in his torture, and those he kills in a very specific way except for the chancellor who he has another of the culprits kill before killing him and his croonies who were trying to kill him. But the movie isn't a revenge film, it's an anti-totalitarian film.

Commando, who does Ahnold kill that's not directly involved in the kidnapping of his child?

The Punisher, who does Frank kill that's not a part of the gang that had his family killed?

Kill Bill, Too long since I watched it but I bet it's the same case.

As for JhKim's assertion of Conan and others not being good people... I guess he thinks you should never ever kill another human being... But he's for abortion.

I agree with almost with all of your points, but for Conan. Conan is fairly amoral. He was a pirate at one point, and that surely involves killing innocents. I doubt he was able to get all of his victims to peaceably surrender due to his reputation a la the Dread Pirate Roberts method.

[Orphan81]

I've been watching the Dumpster fire of a thread about how Paradox Interactive/WW is supposedly racist and horrible for wanting the primary language of their Discord server to be English, and how making a separate channel for other language discussions is the 'height' of Segregation. Apparently Paradox needs to have Mods in every single spoken language, as that's the only fair and equitable thing to do.

I'm part of a Discord community that has a large Spanish speaking fanbase, despite being an English property. The runners of the community are Spanish language first... and yet because it's an English language property, they expect the language in all discussion channels to be English. They made a separate channel for Spanish language in their own server for this.

Nobody is complaining about this being 'racist' or 'segregating' or anything like that. But the big purple is ready to set fire to Paradox for not having a multilingual staff for every language spoken in their main discord server, and wanting it to be primarily English.

[BoxCrayonTales]

Paradox has been doing almost everything they can to alienate their legacy ttrpg fandom. The 5th edition lore changes are widely despised and have split the community. The video game adaptations have been pretty terrible and obvious low-budget shovelware that was so cheaply made that even their meager sales were enough to make a profit. It's hilarious to watch. Not just because Paradox has been making the same mistakes as every company that messed with a long-running IP in the last decade, but also because the IP is genuinely hilariously bad in lots of places (it's already been retconned and rebooted a bunch of times before Paradox tried their hand at it) and Paradox only bought it to cash in the cult success of Troika's work on Bloodlines... while not bothering to replicate the writing or art style at all.

And now the fandom hates them for something as irrelevant as language settings. It's a hilarious trainwreck that just keeps getting funnier every time I hear about it.

I keep hoping for competitors to swoop in and corner the market, but nothing like that ever happens. I like urban fantasy and I'm frustrated af that this dumpster fire fandom is the only urban fantasy gaming community that exists in either the ttrpg or video game industries. (I know about Shadowrun, but I'm not interested in urban fantasy post-apocalypse cyberpunk specifically. I'm into Potter-esque secret world settings but made for adult audiences.)

[Valatar]

Conan is not a good person.  He's not a psycho who'd just indiscriminately murder, but he's absolutely out for number one, and has no shame in it.  Guy absolutely screwed over people and left them to die in the stories.

[jhkim]

Conan is not a good person.  He's not a psycho who'd just indiscriminately murder, but he's absolutely out for number one, and has no shame in it.  Guy absolutely screwed over people and left them to die in the stories.

Yup. And I love those stories. Enjoying something in a story isn't the same thing as enjoying something in real life.

People's real-life beliefs influence their taste in stories, but they aren't identical.

[Kiero]

So tempted to log in to the Purple Shithole just to let them know Trump has been reinstated on Twatter. The lefty REEEEEing is going to be audible from space.

[Tait Ransom]

So tempted to log in to the Purple Shithole just to let them know Trump has been reinstated on Twatter. The lefty REEEEEing is going to be audible from space.

Music.  Sweet music.

[nielspeterdejong]

Funny how we're just a vocal minority and publishers/directors/studios/etc shouldn't pay attention to what we want but we're also powerful enough that a "small minority" of angry, manbaby, misogynerds can destroy Star Wars.

Misogynerds of the world unite!!!!

You summed it up nicely to be honest

[nielspeterdejong]

They've really been leaning into the "A Game" excuse to find reasons to censure and ban posters lately.

NOT WOKE ENOUGH!

They are literally "purifying" the site from those who speak against "their quest for purity".

Or lack sufficient purity, or run afoul of the mods, or are friends with someone problematic, or do something offsite that hurts their fee-fee's, or... and so on. But you knew that already.

I've been checking their Current Visitors page quite a bit. I've yet to see the registered users clock over 250, and I've seen it drop as low as 170. Guests, of course, vary wildly.

I wonder what the numbers are for Giants In The Playground (the Order of the Stick forum site). I may need to check that.

How is the Order of the Stick doing? Please don't tell me they've gone woke too...

[Kiero]

How is the Order of the Stick doing? Please don't tell me they've gone woke too...

That went woke ages ago.

[nielspeterdejong]

How is the Order of the Stick doing? Please don't tell me they've gone woke too...

That went woke ages ago.

The forum or the creators? And is that why they seem less active these days?

What active non-woke forums are left for roleplaying?

[wmarshal]

How is the Order of the Stick doing? Please don't tell me they've gone woke too...

That went woke ages ago.

The forum or the creators? And is that why they seem less active these days?

What active non-woke forums are left for roleplaying?

This one?

There is also the HarnForum, but as the name implies it is very, very much focused on Harn. I don't visit there much, but I haven't noticed it being Woke-ified.
https://www.lythia.com/forum/

[nielspeterdejong]

I didn't name Kennedy because it's too easy to dump all the blame on her. There are a host of people at Lucasfilm that went along with this. I'm sure there's at least one other person at Disney/Lucasfilm who backed her play. Probably many.
I despise how Kennedy has run the franchise into the ground, but I also despise the people who helped it happen.

For sure Bob Iger approved her management, at least initially. "The Force Awakens" was terribly derivative, but enjoyable as a "sugar rush".

The Force Awakens was terrible and things just got worse from there.

Getting through shields by traveling through hyperspace levels of retardation.

That honestly always bothered me. Why, in the original OG lore, weren't people able to just make a massive astroid and use a hyperdrive to proper it like a weapon? Not saying I liked The Last Jedi, as it was absolute garbage, but I'd like to believe that the Extended Universe did cover that at some point?