I don't think PA's Gabe is a Transphobic Bigot.

Shawn

Shawn

I liked the Sixth Slave comic.
Obviously there are going to be people who are offended. And if Gabe had singled out a real person and said he was going to rape her, I would be offended too. But he didn't. He has an imaginary character being raped to sleep by dickwolves. I get that this is like the whole Spoony thing again, but even Lupa was more concerned about the Spoony joke because he told an actual person that he would rape her. If you are actually the sixth slave in a video game... well... I'm sure the similarity was a coincidence.[DOUBLEPOST=1378314595,1378314343][/DOUBLEPOST]I just think that if people find the concept of "murder" funny, so long as it's not the actual murder of a real person, then it's not a far cry from rape. I get that there are survivors of rape. I get that. I get that it's a hard concept for them to joke about. But to tell other people that we can't make jokes, to an audience that likes those jokes, is a bit dick-ish. If you don't like the comic, don't read. If you don't like the Con, don't go. It's that simple.

Edit: I just asked my wife her thoughts. I showed her the original comic, and the follow up comic. She laughed very hard both times. Her response when she did stop laughing "Well I'm a rape victim, and I find that funny. I think it's the lack of sincerity behind it that makes a joke like that funny. If you knew they were being serious, you wouldn't want to laugh."
 
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strawman

strawman

Espy said:
Link isn't working?
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Still working for me, but in case you don't have access for whatever reason, here's the post:

ShawnElliott @ShawnElliott

5th September 2013 from TwitLonger

@aeolist @JMan240 @jaredr @mudron @patrickklepek

To clarify, rape is a terrible crime and no civilized society should think it trivial let alone condone it under any circumstance. In addition, PTSD is real and no one should wave away it and its terrible impacts as though they're simply moral indignation. I don't believe in belittling survivors. But nor do I believe that there are topics a truly talented comedian can't touch purely on principle.

On one tour, Chappelle told a joke that involved a "terrorist" holding a train hostage with his penis. I laughed hard at it then, and I find the thought of it funny now. Somewhere, every day, some sick fuck exposes himself or sexually assaults people on public transportation. That isn't funny at all. And I understand that there's likely no levity in the joke for anyone who's been victimized by such behavior. I also completely understand if they ask for advance warning when material that touches on the subject is included in any media they might consume. But for those who aren't affected, I see no danger that Chappelle's set will coarsen them to the seriousness of sexual harassment. Nor do I believe that violent videogames cheapen our appreciation of life or nudge us closer toward looking at murder as anything other than a deeply depraved capital offensive.

Any talented comedian who tries to tell jokes that involve homicide, rape, racism, sexism, homophobia, drug abuse, and the like understands the challenge they've accepted in attempting to find humor in the vicinity of the truly terrible. Few are up to the task. Those who are up to the task aren't the idiots on Xbox Live who laugh, "You got raped." It's a shame that the aftermath of the Dickwolves fiasco went were it did. PA's mistakes in the matter have been thoroughly documented, but I believe that it was also a mistake (although of much lesser magnitude) to insist that on principle some topics are always untouchable. When a media critic argues that any violent act in any videogame is always inappropriate, s/he enlists uncritical children for opposition on the other side who in turn argue that no violent act in any videogame ever merits scrutiny. I suspect we enlist that same opposition with blanket bans on categories of comedy, and predictably that childish opposition then frames the argument as censorious political correctness and the problem of humorless people. So we wind up with two sides shouting so loud that they can't be heard, and at times resorting to obscenities, name-calling, and/or threats. As collateral damage, more important public discourse is reduced to a dumb binary. Then additional young and/or naive observers see these arbitrary battle lines and uncritically take sides against the "censors."
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ScytheRexx

ScytheRexx

Mike just always forgets basic rules of the internet 12-15 and possibly 20.

Instead of letting something go he just adds fuel to the fire. I think it's a pride issue due to how big Penny-Arcade has gotten.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

ScytheRexx said:
Mike just always forgets basic rules of the internet 12-15 and possibly 20.

Instead of letting something go he just adds fuel to the fire. I think it's a pride issue due to how big Penny-Arcade has gotten.
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I think that's part of it, but (at least going by some of the stuff Mike has posted in the past) I don't think Mike is used to seeing himself as having (for lack of a better term) privileged advantages over anyone. He (and Jerry) has talked about high school bullying before during the Casey Heynes thing, and the difficulty of seeing nerd culture hit mainstream acceptance without a concurrent understanding of what it was like to be a nerd when he was a kid. I'm guessing that being addressed as if he were the victimizer instead of the victim struck a nerve.
 
strawman

strawman

Part of the problem is that he is still a victim of bullying, and still desperate to appease people who are taking advantage of him.
 
Frank

Frank

Nothing wrong with most of his post EXCEPT for the whole "What I meant when I said I regretted not selling the mean spirited merchandise was I actually regretted everything around the not selling the mean spirited merchandise."

That was fucking weird.
 
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Bowielee

Bowielee

Mike should just leave all the PR stuff to Khoo. As was pointed out earlier, the South Park guys get away with this stuff all the time because they largely ignore these kinds of backlashes and don't take them seriously.
 
SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Bowielee said:
Mike should just leave all the PR stuff to Khoo. As was pointed out earlier, the South Park guys get away with this stuff all the time because they largely ignore these kinds of backlashes and don't take them seriously.
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When Mike brought up the dickwolves when Khoo asked him that question, Khoo was smiling on the outside but internally he was probably all

 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

From his post:

the comic itself obviously points out the absurd morality of the average MMO where you are actually forced to help some people and ignore others in the same situation.
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This is all I thought of the comic until the backlash. In no way does it endorse enslaving anyone or raping them or ignoring rape victims; it's pointing out what goes on when you're given a quest and how it's ridiculous, amped up by the slaves begging for help, which they do in some MMOs and don't in others. I can't remember the gnomes talking in WoW, but then, I played Horde.

I agree with the shutting up thing. Anyone involved in PA in the slightest needs to drop it and let people think what they think and feel what they feel, and accept that people are entitled to their own opinions and reactions. As the artists, they need to move on.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

For the record, the thing that pisses me off the most about this is that the next episode of Table Top was supposed to be them playing at PAX, but thanks to this whole new mess, it looks like Wil Wheaton is going the safe route and not releasing the episode.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Bowielee said:
For the record, the thing that pisses me off the most about this is that the next episode of Table Top was supposed to be them playing at PAX, but thanks to this whole new mess, it looks like Wil Wheaton is going the safe route and not releasing the episode.
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Disagree is for Wil Wheaton, not you.
 
Bowielee

Bowielee

Looks like Wil Wheaton was just waiting for the smoke to clear.



Yay, new Table Top makes me happy.

Also, check out Day [9]'s Magic the Gathering series.

 
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