InThePineways

@The_Baffled_King Very comprehensive reply, especially considering that I haven't even seen the movie in question, lol. You've given me a good deal to think about. I may (or may not) have a rebuttal at some later point in time.

@The_Baffled_King I haven't seen Black Widow, so I can't say much about it. But in general, I see a deep irony when it comes to depicting superheroes. Batman is muscular, because it "looks" right. Black Widow is soft and feminine, because it "looks" right. Why? As far as I know, Black Widow follows the same trope or archetype as Batman, that of being a skilled fighter without superpowers. I assume they perform similar stunts when fighting. So why don't they have a similar physique? Now look at Carmen Brady, the female body builder. She's perfect for the role of a badass fighter. I mean, just look at her. She looks like she could kick my ass. Her physique is comparable to common depictions of Batman. So why don't they pick women like her for these movies? I think it comes down to the way we naturally perceive men and women. On a deep level, Carmen Brady "looks" wrong. She "looks" unfeminine. Of course, we can be 99% sure she takes steroids, which might contribute to the unnatural look. But there it is again - It's unnatural for a woman to be this muscular, and it's only made possible by testosterone supplements and/or steroids. So -- if we humans have a deeply ingrained perception of what it means to look like or to be a real woman, then why do we cast these dainty, pretty women in roles they wouldn't be capable of performing? I think the answer here is a little more complicated. There seems to be a notion that traditionally male social roles are more glorious than traditionally female social roles, and because we humans generally believe in treating each other fairly, we then have a tendency to assign women traditionally male roles to give them a share of the glory. We do this in real life now, too, not just in fiction, and I'm not certain this is a good thing for women (google "unhappiest people in america"; according to Psychology Today, it's middle aged female professionals w/o children, whereas men in the same position are much happier in general) . I think the answer to this conundrum comes down to placing more importance on traditionally female social roles. After all, what job is more important than mothers raising the next generation of human beings? Maybe our lack of esteem for such things is a contributing factor to current trends, like 50% of marriages ending in divorce in the USA, and a similar ratio of children growing up in broken homes. Long ramble. For what it's worth, i'm not particularly upset by any of this, i just think it's an interesting and possibly negative trend.

@The_Baffled_King Agreed, it's a matter of fighting outside your weight class. Ellen Ripley from Alien was well written.

What happened to make you reinstall the game? Grasping at straws here, but do you have the latest Baldur's Gate patch and the most current version of your mods? The only thing I can recommend at this point is reinstalling the game and mods one more time. There's no reason it shouldn't work... I don't think BG2 Fixpack conflicts with Yoshimo's Remorse. Want to try it and let me know what happens?

@Thacobell That scene is just a little bit over the top in stupidity. Talk about a franchise becoming a parody of itself. Also, I'm pretty sure you know what he means when he says the movie is politically correct. It pushes the strong woman theme, even though women have half the upper body strength as men on average. Baldur's Gate is guilty of this in a less obnoxious way. The day women play in the NFL is the day female action heroes become believable.

Should I laugh or cry?

It sounds like you're brushing up against the limits of video games as a medium for storytelling. How many 'jobs' can the developer assign to a player? Kill foozle, rescue NPC, fetch object, craft object. Platformers give players the job of reaching a destination. Racing games, reaching a destination faster than your opponents. Fighting games, kill foozle with extravagant controls. A good game assigns the player a variety of jobs; a great game does so in the context of a meaningful story. But at the core of any game, you'll find these same formats. If you're tired of it, then maybe you've outgrown video games in general. In movies and literature, there are also limits. It's been said there are two types of stories: adventure and romance. Horror is a scary adventure, tragedy is a sad romance, etc. Even life itself is a boring limited medium - complete work, get food, exchange information, procreate if you're lucky, fight if you're unlucky, reach destination, acquire object. It's a good thing we eventually die, because it gets tedious after a while. The art of storytelling is to make the player forget they're interacting with a limited medium, and to lose themselves in the urgency of the story. Maybe the key to a good life is being able to forget you're a limited material creature reiterating the same formats day in and day out.

I already had a strongly worded outburst, so I might as well conclude. (sorry CamDawg, bless your patience) This is the line of reasoning that compelled mothers in the 80s to call for DnD to be banned. Generally, putting a taboo on an idea just makes it more attractive. I do stand behind my words, despite my opinion that the West is losing ground in the world which I was blathering about in another thread. I know ideas were much more restricted in the past, which is one of the countless ways life in general was worse than it is now. I don't think it's something we should go back to. You're right, and it was a bit hypocritical considering what I was upset about. My apologies to the forum.

@CamDawg Okay, thanks. I'm just as emotion-driven and irrational as subtledoctor, hence why i felt compelled to talk race theory on a teen rated videogame modding website. This topic stirs resentment in me like you wouldn't believe.

Since I'm likely to be banned anyway, I might as well address another comment... I realize this isn't the place for this discussion, but at the same time, people like @subtledoctor need to be refuted. This topic is hotly debated. However, there have been developments more (recently!) than 1978, the year of the study by Richard Lewontin which claims race doesn't exist. Subtledoctor subscribes to an outdated and debunked racial theory. The 2003 paper by Anthony William Fairbank Edwards which debunks Lewontin and coins the term Lewontin's Fallacy: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12879450/ Here is the full paper on Sci-Hub: https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/bies.10315 The "explain like I'm five" version: In a genetic sequence, the location of a gene in respect to other genes affects genetic expression. In this way, genes are like letters in a sentence. Look at these two recipes: 1) Take 3 cups of milk, add 2 tablespoons of chocolate powder, and stir. 2) Take 3 cups of silk, add 2 tablespoons of chocolate powder, and stir. Recipe 1 gives you chocolate milk. Recipe 2 gives you chocolate silk. The recipes were almost the same, but had very different outcomes. Genes work in a similar way. Two people might have 99% the same genes, but depending on the specific sequence their genetic expression can be very different. If you google "lewontin's fallacy", the first things you'll see are articles and papers claiming Edwards was wrong. Every one of them fail to adequately refute Edwards. There are other facets to this debate, but from what I know on the subject, it appears that ethnicity is real and absolutely has scientific validity.

@subtledoctor So, let me get this straight... It wasn't a racist caricature, but it resembled something that might appear to be a racist caricature. My God, get a grip. This tendency for people to act offended on someone else's behalf is not virtue, it's bourgeoisie theater for the sake of showing in-group loyalty. Your mindless and overzealous adherence to the common narrative even at its most vulgar tells me that 200 years ago you would have been the biggest bible-thumping racist. Not to mention your own overtly racist comment about being "white as the driven snow", whereas if i said someone/something was "black as pitch", you would have had an aneurysm. Ask me how I know you're a boomer. Fiction should have no restrictions - aside from current events and nauseating politics, imagination needs freedom. Should De Sade's 1000 Days of Sodom be restricted because it depicts sexual violence? No. Because it's not real. Fiction allows people to explore ideas without enacting them, and to restrict it is to put chains on the human mind.

... for all of these talented modders and the site admins who host their work. So much effort has gone into all of this. My childhood favorite game has hundreds of hours of added content - for free. You're all wonderful.

@temnix I'll have to try your mods. They sound like just what I'm looking for. Dystopian sci-fi is pointless when real life outperforms it. The Western world is steadily losing ground, and bad decision follows bad decision at every turn. What causes the corruption of an organization? Or a civilization? Perhaps the corruption of the individuals who compose it? At the risk of sounding sensationalist, I feel we're at the beginning of a new dark age with a new religious tyranny of sorts. The quote by Ursula Le Guin seems prophetic. Civilizations have a limited life span, and even if they carry on in name (Greece, Egypt), it's obvious when the end has come. You and I were born too late to explore the world, too early to explore the stars, but just in time to watch the fall of Western civilization, the greatest so far in history.

Very interesting, insightful posts. I have nothing to add, except I think you're right, first, that as one ages he begins to see absurdity in things that previously had so much meaning, and second, that stories begin to lose meaning as the culture that created them drifts further away from the conditions in which those stories were created. If you think about how fast the modern world changes, it's inevitable that the stories we relate to will also change with each passing decade. Unfortunately, at the current juncture, there seem to be very few people who understand the world well enough to create culture that seems relevant. I might catch some flack for this, but I think the game Disco Elysium does a great job of broaching relevant themes in a way that's sensible and mature (for a videogame). It's also tons of fun. It gets a bad rap for being too different from standard RPGs, but if you haven't played it yet it's definitely worth a go.

I think about this a lot. There's a downward spiral that eventually happens in all genres of art. It's not just a matter of taste or preference, or any of the usual excuses people give. It's a decrease in artistry, resulting in cruder iterations of what came before. There are common factors every time this pattern occurs. Factors like losing the foundation the genre is based on; in the case of fantasy, an increasing separation from the classical hero myths of ancient and medieval Europe. Or a gradual retreat of talented people from the genre; Gary Gygax's resignation from TSR. And of course, the imposition of opportunistic leaches; Beamdog and their terrible cash-grabbing "enhanced" editions. Eventually, the genre's creative output becomes unrecognizably warped from the original, genre-defining work, and one wonders what he ever saw in it.