THIS IS SO HILARIOUSLY PRECIOUS THAT I CANNOT HELP BUT SHARE IT. Like a video of a kitten angrily batting at an enormous piece of exercise equipment, but with 300% more fedora.
(By the way? Andrew’s fault. Because he finds hilarious and terrible things and tells me. Left to my own devices, I’d just kind of… pick up heavy things and put them back down until I got tired, then have a glass of milk fortified with whey protein. I know how to party.)
Because you see, John C Wright has suffered a bout of severe why is the world no longer catering to my demographic in every way apoplexy. And written a brief post about it. Titled (I shit you not) “Dungeons and Perverts.” (Link has been do-not-linkified.)
The whole thing stands on its own as a matter for total hilarity. Because at this point, he’s become a complete, unselfconscious parody of conservatism, and it’s comedy gold. But I do have a few points to call out.
And what could possibly be more authentically faux medieval than that?
It has long been known, of course, that homosexual, trans, and genderqueer people were not even invented until the late 20th century, for the express purpose of dragging the world into the bowels of Hell by their stubborn insistence on existing and performing controversial and harmful activities like breathing oxygen. In public.
No doubt you are wondering ‘Didn’t John C. Wright, famed international author and curmudgeon, just use that picture yesterday to underscore some point about Leftist crazies forcing Catholics to pay for abortifacient contraceptives and calling their unwillingness to do so a war on women?’
I can’t honestly decide if his blatant third-person ego stroking or his total (and proud) ignorance of how biology actually works is more hilarisad. Maybe both?
Yes, well the picture is appropriate today as well, now that gamer crazies are trying to manipulate kiddie ideas about decency and perversion in sex in a game otherwise concerned with spelunking robbers who slay monsters.
…has this guy actually ever even played D&D? And what did that sentence ever do to him to deserve being tortured?
But in all seriousness, I am incredibly concerned to learn that neckbearded liberal cryptofascist feminazi gamers are busting down the doors of innocent families, confiscating their dice, and then holding the children—won’t someone think of the children?!?!—at Lord of the Rings museum quality replica sword-point and forcing them to create queer characte—
Oh wait. That’s not what’s happening?
There’s just a note in the character creation chapter that states genderqueer characters are possible and encourages players to—NO ANYTHING BUT THAT—use their imaginations to the fullest extent?
There is a saying of my people I feel is appropriate to share here. It goes something like this:
Crai moar.
(Related: a criticism of the D&D section in question. Not conservawank self-parody.)
The acknowledgement of things that make some people uncomfortable is de facto oppression. Didn’t the Vast Shadowy Leftist Conspiracy That Totally Exists send you the explanatory pamphlet?
Really, the spelunking robbers that I play only want to encourage the children to be happy and emotionally healthy. Any perversion that ensues is totally a creation of their own imagination.
Just depends on where you’re spelunking…
…has this guy actually ever even played D&D? And what did that sentence ever do to him to deserve being tortured?
Yes. I know Wright has done a lot of roleplaying (and still does). But this post of his, I do not grok it. I do not indeed.
Wow. Well, maybe everyone is only allowed to RP the exact way he does it. o.O
As a happily cis-gendered male, I’ve got to ask – what the heck?!? Has this guy ever even played D&D? Have the editors of the manual? I played it way back during the days when you had to write down your character on a hand-written, home-made list (i.e., just after the Diluvian and before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth) and even back then we’d have males playing female characters, females playing male characters and everyone playing characters that were male/female or female/male transgender (gotta love those magic spells!).
Being someone different is part of the fun of D&D and other role playing games (which is why so many men play female characters in WoW, I suspect). Of course, there is the possibility that playing a transgendered character might actually give you a bit more sympathy for a real, live person who faces that challenge in real life – which is probably why Wright is so afraid of it. His worldview seems to be based on the assumption that only certain, Church-sanctioned roles are (or should be) allowed and he can’t handle the fact that the world is a whale of a lot more interesting than that.
+1
Wow. Yeah, a trans character would be completely unnatural, unlike my half-elf death priest that talks to corpses. D&D is such a wholesome game otherwise. Although, maybe it does have an effect…my daughter told me her princess dolls had been captured by mind flayers and were going to attack each other. Knowing that a character could be homosexual might make her head explode. Think of the children, indeed.
Mina is amazing.