I've been silent (aside Twitter) on this whole thing because it genuinely conflicted me. After cooler heads prevailed and I got my head out of my ass, I'm going to weigh in.
Pardon the essay but there's no way I was going to fucking condense this into a brief statement.
On one hand, now knowing Torm and his team were not intentionally trying to stir the pot... and given it's hard to focus when every single person on a forum is burning a candle under your ass, I feel confident that Torm was not trying to be obnoxious and edgy, or as he's been accused of, transphobic or glorifying WWII. I genuinely feel he and his team were just trying to make a game and to really show the kind of bastards Nazis were/are.
I can jive with that. I'm glad he and his team are considering how to change things without being too changing of their artistic vision.
I won't touch the Realm667 issue itself... except I think having one centralized location for assets, examples and documentation is a bad idea.
However, I'm going to be frank on the other hand - I saw so many people dogpiling on, many who weren't trans, about the transphobia issue. I know some were - but so many people were hounding on the issue to the point even I was like "okay, we fucking get it, stop mentioning it". And no one was stopping it. The thread remained open for ages. It kept going. Why didn't the moderators step in and go "okay this is a fucking shitshow, close it down". They enabled this behavior. And I frankly am appalled at the amount of crusading that went on.
I genuinely feel the Doomworld community is one of the most hostile, drama-mongering places I've ever had the misfortune of being on. And yeah, I have friends who mainly go on Doomworld. It sucks... but I generally feel Doomworld is so hostile I don't ever want to post anything there again. Not because I'm purposefully being edgy or because I put transphobic shit... but because my projects contain a ton of gay shit and people might equate it to transphobia or homophobia or sexism if they stretch... it's something I've encountered on other sites, I don't want to deal with it here frankly.
I know Torm was being difficult at first but come the fuck on - you know damn well some people were just dogpiling on for the sake of drama, even if they had no personal stake in it. I can understand if you're the kind of person a Nazi would hate. I can understand being trans. I can understand if you have learned from your past mistakes. I cannot, for the life of me, support angry mobs like this. This is how riots start in real life. Leave it to cooler heads to prevail... which unfortunately no one was willing to do, at least on DoomWorld.
As much as I've butted heads with Rachael in the past, I feel her handling of this was as calm and middle-ground as you were going to get. I thought at first there was preferrential treatment... but after calming down, I realize now she was trying to be what Doomworld was not.
(For the record - yes, after some comments I made, I found the Issue tracker on BoA's github by Rachael. That's what changed my opinion on the matter)
This, combined with my personal feelings on the matter... I realize this is just one big shitshow. No matter how you cut it. No matter if you think Torm is worse than sliced Hitler... or if you think he did nothing wrong. Either way and anything in between, this was a clusterfuck and it brought out the worst in the community.
... and that really fucking bothers me. This community should know better about how to handle controversies, given the game that brings us together since day one has been constantly scruitinized and blamed for everything from mass shootings to converting people to Satanism to being "degenerate" as I've seen in several cases. In short... we should know better how to handle controversies so it doesn't get caught up in hyperbole and division.
And that... saddens me. No, that's too weak. It pisses me off beyond belief.
Redneckerz wrote:I think Marisa didn't want the change to be much of a deal because its a personal change and that has more impact to the person involved than those outside.
Trust me, I'm with Marisa Heit on this one
if that is the case. I'm tired of my gender identity being such a huge point of contention with anyone on any political side. I'm frankly exhausted from it. I can understand why Marisa just wanted to change her name and username to reflect her gender identity in such a matter of fact fashion.
Truthfully until I did some digging I thought her username change was just... well, a cosmetic thing. I was wrong in the end.
... and unfortunately this whole thing has done nothing but just point fingers at that whole thing. If I were her I'd be wholly uncomfortable with the attention being pointed.
That said, I can't speak for Marisa and I'm not going to... but personally this whole thing is exactly why I don't talk often about me being trans. I just don't want it to be a big deal is all.
And yes, I've had truly "transphobic" shit happen to me. However, more ofthen than not, I've had people get upset on my behalf for someone calling me "dude" or acting like going "hey guys" is sexist... and it's like... personally I don't give a fuck. Save your outrage and culture war for something more important on trans rights. Don't waste time on "microaggressions".
JohnnyTheWolf wrote:Can we stop deadnaming Marisa Heit on this thread, please?
I understand it is not being done out of malice, but it is still not a cool thing to do to a trans person.
I saw only one or two mentions of someone referring to Marisa as "Randi" and "Randi" is her username on this forum since it was cleared up. Aside that I haven't seen much deadnaming going on since it was stated and explained.