whose is youse? hospitle šµšø @get-thee-to-a-shrubbery - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
whose is youse? hospitle šµšø
@get-thee-to-a-shrubbery
Ivy, she/her, 20s. Bad at writing (and updating) bios. Better at writing blog titles. Femslash enthusiast... I make music as ShrubRustle, I'm on Soundcloud and Youtube under that name. really if you see a shrubrustle anywhere its me
it's so rote now... ooooh here's 72 actors you recognize making shocked faces at a greenscreen. ominous narration to let you know that this is definitely the scariest thing we've ever had to fight. we wheeled Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan out of the retirement home to fag it up again. are you entertained. are you reaching for your wallets yet.
I've never seen anything more soulless in my life tbh. I've never wanted to see a movie crash and burn more. let it be dead so marvel studios can get on with being a spirit halloween already.
people tagging this with Russo brother hate as if any other director(s) wouldn't have gotten the same brief for the exact same big budget cgi disaster movie crossover schlock are so funny. there's no world where this was a boundary-pushing art film babes I'm sorry. you're ordering milkshakes at the hardware store
can we all just collectively agree to not watch it. not even hate watch. i am sick and tired of Micky Mouse Diarrhea Shitting all over what remains of storytelling in this world
There's this category of TTRPG where the seemingly only selling point besides maybe artwork is giving players permission to jerk off to their own moral purity as manifest from buying the TTRPG.
Candela Obscura is the strawman put forward in this post, but itās a game that actually exists:
[This was partially written by @ashweather, another member of the A.N.I.M. team.]
Let me preface this by saying that I donāt think that the makers of Candela Obscura are morally evil, or that I think less of your moral worth if youāve played or enjoyed this game. Itās just that, at best, the game has a really obnoxious and cowardly tone and at worst has a lot of shit in it that looks really bad if you think about it for more than 5 seconds.Ā
If you think that tabletop RPGS are art (and we do), then they can be analyzed like art. They can have unfortunate implications or reflect unexamined reactionary politics. This post is going to be taking screenshots from both the quick start guide and the full rulebook to make this point - while the text between the two is broadly similar, the quickstart guide is more overtly finger-wagging and hostile, saying the quiet part out loud.Ā
The thing about Candela Obscura is that it takes place in a fantasy 19th-century England/USA, but it really wants to pretend that it doesnāt. It wants the aesthetics of this setting and almost every trope that comes baked into it, but also wants to act like itās above all that. It wants to have its cake and denounce it too. Itās so pants-shittingly terrified that it or the players might say or do something āproblematicā that it loops back around to being incredibly offensive.Ā
To take just a few examples, the text is absolutely riddled with this kind of sentiment:
(What the fuck do they think an āexplorerā is? Also, I think I have some bad news about 19th century doctors.)
Okay. Look. A lot of this is gesturing at principles that are unobjectionable or even useful to keep in mind when writing a setting like this. Yes, itās ideal to have a non-Eurocentric historical understanding of technology and culture. Yes, refugees are human beings with their own valuable skills and perspectives. Yes, if you uncritically write an expy of Victorian England or late 19th-century New England, youāre gonna end up with a bunch of insane stereotypes (especially Orientalist ones) that you probably shouldnāt just blithely put to the page without thinking about them. And yes, bigotry is a bad thing, obviously.
The problem is twofold: The first is that Candela Obscura feels the need to take a patronizing tone towards its own readers, as though they were incapable of engaging critically with the setting or subject matter on their own terms. The second is that despite all of this finger-wagging, Candela Obscura absolutely does not present a setting with any critical thinking put into its basic construction. (We checked, by the way. None of what we are about to present is supposed to be in-universe propaganda. If it is intended to be, this is not made clear at all in the text itself.)
The game takes place primarily in the city of Newfaire and its surrounding environs - the Fairelands. The Fairelands are prosperous and idyllic, and all but outright stated to be āthe good guys.ā All of the āproblematicā aspects of the societies the game is emulating are either scrubbed without thinking about the implications of scrubbing them..Ā
(Donāt worry guys thereās no colonialism here, this version of fantastical New York was settled on a Terra Nullius where nobody lived, right over the ruins of an ancient society with a mix of Egyptian and Mesoamerican coding who practiced strange and corruptive magicks. Remember, reader, this game wants you to go out of your way to avoid reproducing any harmful stereotypes from the era.)
..or are present without any historical or structural reasons for them to be present:
(Donāt worry guys, sex work is lawful, profitable, safe, and socially acceptable! Oh yeah all the sex work happens in shady, spooky-looking crime districts that cops monitor, filled with drug-filled dens of illegal vice, though. By the way, there is no brothel listed in this districtās points of interests, or any further discussion of what sex work in Newfaire is actually like.)
There are so many examples of this that we could spill a novelās worth of digital ink talking about it. (We just donāt have time to get into, for instance, their adventure inspired by the āradium girlsā where the primary victim of the dangerous substance in question is a customer who is already dead when the adventure starts and not the workers who make the products.) Honestly though, this paragraph says more than we could in a hundred pages:
Here we find out that we are reading a TTRPG setting that has the same understanding of bigotry as the movie Crash. No institutionalized bigotry, just ābad actors who hold terrible beliefs.ā Just bad apples, with no personal history or cultural roots to their ideas, who presumably sprung out of the ground one day declaring themselves Republicans. Not only do these bad actors come from nowhere, they donāt go anywhere either. They donāt belong to any social movements, they donāt get organized, they donāt push for regressive political changes, and if they ever do, they certainly never succeed at those goals.Ā
You see, despite these bad apples, the soil they grew from is pure. And you know something else about the idyllic, almost utopian Fairelands? Theyāre under assault.
Thatās right! Hale (which the Fairelands is a part of) is under assault from the dastardly, corruptive forces ofā¦ uh, āOtherwhere.ā (Yeah, do they all have hooked noses and recessed chins too?) Thatās where all of the dirty foreigners invaders come from, who want to take away the prosperity of the Fairelands!
Oh, or maybe their whole culture were all coerced into doing it by an evil rock or something, which is definitely less xenophobic. But whatever, who cares what the reasons were. The Fairelands are under attack, and as the dominant power in the world, they need to defend themselves. Against the ācolonists.ā With nukes chain lightning.
(That last sentence continues on ātens of thousands..ā You get the picture.) So, whew, glad thatās over! Otherwhere is still really dangerous, though. They might even be developing weapons of mass destruction of their own:
You know, if Candela Obscura were a person, I have a feeling I wouldnāt want to hear its thoughts on Israel.Ā
You might be asking, where do the PCs fit in this? Well. The PCs are members of the in-universe organization Candela Obscura. They are an enormously powerful and widespread secret society of sometimes-cops sometimes-vigilantes who fight against the corruptive forces of magick to keep humanity safe. They keep dark secrets, āperform questionable acts in the name of the common good,ā and operate entirely without oversight or responsibilities to anyone other than this organization. We are assured that this organization has the best interests of the regions they operate in and of all humanity in mind.
Itās actually fine - cool, even! - that PCs are secret police/CIA agents who engage in morally dubious acts for the purported common good. Newfaireās society being deeply flawed is fine! The Fairelands as a political entity furthering an explicit narrative of being persecuted is fine! The problem is not that any of these elements exist, the problem is that Candela Obscura is utterly allergic to examining them. The text seemingly does not understand the setting it has presented at all.
The game wants to be anti-conservative, but the only kind of story it can produce is one of heroes who are ultimately aligned with the dominant power of the world, preserving the good and righteous status quo by fighting against corruptive, foreign, magical forces. āGay transgender women of all races can be holy knights secret police fighting to protect the good kingdom democracy from the endless hordes of the evil dark race that has threatened its borders for a thousand in recent years!ā
On a first read a while back, I said Candela Obscuraās gameplay mechanics make it sound like a game more meant to create āactual-playā shows than to be actually played. On examining the text more closely, thatās more true than I even realized at the time. The reason the game has all these bits about how not to be problematic - all of these instructions for avoiding engaging with the more controversial aspects of the setting - is because itās not really intended as a game to be played in a private environment. Itās intended as brand guidelines for putting on an actual play show. If you google Candela Obscura, the IMBD page for the actual play series appears before the store page for the rulebook.
It seems like the game really doesnāt want you to play a character outside of your own culture. And sure, as stated earlier, it is a good idea not to have a mysticized idea of other cultures, or represent them in a callous way. For a private game played at home, though, this is not really something you need to dedicate pages accounting for. Nobody outside the table has to hear a poorly-done accent or contend with a less-than-perfectly researched religious portrayal - and if there is a pervasive issue with someone being bigoted or leaning on stereotypes at the table, frankly, that is a problem that is outside the scope of a TTRPG to address.
However, if you are an actor on a show, portraying people from different cultures comes with a whole different set of (much more justified) baggage. Candela Obscuraās approach to player attitudes on the setting makes so much more sense as brand guidelines than it does as a codification of how to play a game. "Donāt have actors appear in insensitive costumes on camera." "Donāt have actors say foreign words they donāt know how to pronounce on camera." "Remember not to have your white actor do a Romani 'fortune-telling' scene on camera." "Donāt show anything that could negatively affect the perception of the brand."
Weād like to end this by contrasting this attitude with Coyote & Crow, a game made by indigenous Americans, and one that is also actually meant to be played. Coyote & Crow invites all players to (respectfully, in good faith) create characters from indigenous cultures. The creators have challenged those who avoid their game on the basis that āthey donāt want to be disrespectful by playing itā because that would involve portraying a Native character - in the end, who is that helping? That attitude results in potential players who remain just as ignorant of Native American cultures and - more importantly - donāt buy or support their game!
I have encountered this firsthand. I'm a massive history nerd, especially about pirates (among other things, but pirates are relevant to the story). I was hanging out in a system agnostic TTRPG server and Pirate Borg was mentioned so I talked about my idea for a historical fantasy campaign set around historical pirates and the Nassau Pirate's Republic. Started explaining some basic ideas, how it's basically about trying to keep this rogue nation together amid external hostility from England, France, and Spain and internal strife caused by a lack of trust and Edward Teach's descent into madness. Naturally this brings up Blackbeard and his crew, which contained several escaped slaves, and that the Queen Anne's revenge was a former slave ship. I immediately get the *several people are typing...* and am welcomed with several messages that Pirate Borg takes place in an alternate history where slavery never happened. I end up trying to have to defend myself, explaining the *true facts* that most pirates were escaped slaves, both native and black, and that a lot of pirate ships were captured slave ships because they had thicker hulls and could take more punishment in a fight. They were like "But you can have diverse crews and sturdy ships without bringing slavery into it." My response was "you *could*, but then you lose valuable historical context and systemic evils to fight against, I like running stories about making the world a better place." Some people understood that, but many of them *literally* shot back "But thinking about slavery makes me uncomfortable, so maybe just write it out of the setting?" That's when I shut up but I was just screaming in my head "YES, THE POINT IS IT SHOULD MAKE YOU FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE AND WANT TO CORRECT IT"
āWe can bomb ten thousand people from evil backwards countries as long as our cops and nuke engineers are diverse ššā rlly sums up the American liberal worldview in a beautiful way
Love is being banned tomorrow. From tomorrow, 5th March 2025, love in all its forms will be banned. Love will be considered illegal with no exceptions, love will not be permitted starting tomorrow.
Q: What is the rationale for this ban? Why is it occurring?
A: Effective on 03/05/2025, love will be completely illegal. All existing love will be banned and creation/synthesis of new love will not be permitted.
Q: By what mechanism will this law be enforced? What penalties will be imposed on violators?
A: Tomorrow, love will be banned, it has or will become illegal to be in love. Starting March 5th, 2025 and continuing indefinitely love is illegal. Love will not be legal or tolerated.
Q: What regulatory body has created this ban and under what authority?
A: It has been announced that a new law has been passed, going into effect 05.04.2025, which prohibits love in all its forms. This law strictly forbids love with no exceptions whatsoever. Going forward there will be no love as it will be banned by a law disallowing all love.
For more information on this ban and its impact, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.
she was going to call me a bitch (playful) and i saw her gears turning like no but he's trans i need to call him the male equivalent. and then say fag and look so so surprised at the word that came out of her own mouth. it was like watching someone fail a disco elysium skill check irl
i think fat girls should walk around in crop tops booty shorts buzzcuts dyed hair piercings no bra killing and maiming all who stand in their way with weapons before sitting down for some yummy ice cream and so forth. it's the only way.
Yoshiro Kimura's new game Stray Children is a spiritual successor to Moon: Remix RPG, but it has more than a little in common with Undertale
If youāre enjoying Moon: Remix RPG Adventureās newly released Switch port, you probably have Undertale creator Toby Fox to thank. In a recen
There is no 'Undertale' without 'moon,' the so-called "anti-RPG" that took the many tropes of the JRPG and turned them on their head.
Putting all these interviews here to emphasize the importance of Moon Remix RPG Adventure's in inspiring Toby Fox, and how Undertale in turn inspired one of its devs, Yoshiro Kimura, to take a chance and make a game like Moon again
i just think thats beautiful to find out that a little known game you made when you were in your 20s inspired a kid (who was like probably fucking 7 years old when it came out) who grew up to make one of the most beloved games ever made
