A Silver Satyr

"This is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"I don't want to read this because it is disgusting to me" is totally valid.

"Censorship of some topics in fiction and art is good and I would be happy if it were to be enacted in a way I approved of"

and

"some things should be banned from ever being written or read about in fiction"

are both authoritarian viewpoints to hold and express, even if you don't have the power to enact them.

Something being nasty is not a good reason to ban fiction about it.

If we accept that "something being nasty is a good reason to bad fiction about it" then we give a foot in the door for all the people who truly, genuinely believe that queer people are nasty to ban all queer literature.

Either you’re for it or you aren’t.

The moment you agree that something should never, ever exist in fiction is the moment that anything can be banned.

Remember a while back how Tumblr banned a bunch of tags, including many popular innocuous ones that even people who are for censorship used and were upset about?

When censorship happens, stuff YOU like can and will be banned. That’s how it works.

Remember how a bunch of people had their accounts terminated here only last year for writing about their own sexual abuse?

When you ban “pedo” topics, say, any talk of child sexual abuse in any form, that means people can no longer write about their own experiences. It means people cannot educate others so they can learn how to protect themselves or get help from these situations.

Censorship is authoritarian. Full stop.

Even if “everyone” agrees something is “gross” and “shouldn’t exist,” that does not fucking matter.

Do you know who generally believes queer people are gross and shouldn’t exist??

The same people who are banning books left and right solely because they have queer characters or relationships.

The same people who attack and kill queer folk for simply exisiting.

This is not just some fandom matter or a case of being chronically online.

In 2007, Livejournal capitulated to the "pedophilia and sex crimes!" cries of (hate group) Warriors 4 Innocence, and you know what communities got shut down? Slashfic communities. Sexual assault survivor support communities. Authors who'd written non-smut m/m fic even got caught up in it. It was DEVASTATING to fandom spaces. I think pretty much everyone knew at least one person whose account was literally DELETED, or were a member of a community that was wiped off the map because they were considerate enough to include topics like "sexual assault" or "BDSM" in the profiles under the badly-named category of "interests" to indicate that posts on said blogs or communities may include discussion of things like that. Even if it was for a SUPPORT group. And it was because a group of religious bigots came to LJ and said essentially "EVERYONE thinks it's gross and that it's promoting CSA, we should ban it."

Like, strikethrough and boldthrough were a large part of what propelled AO3 out of a more unfocused conversation on one person's blog about hosting a site INTENDED for fandom content, into being an actual archive and nonprofit. And it's a large part of why you won't find AO3 banning topics that you find "gross".

Discourse should be had. Glorification should not. It's pretty fucking simple to wrap your head around. A good example of this is one of the horror stories I have of being the queue keeper of RMN (an indie-based game development website). My job was to ensure that games coming into the site stuck to the rules we had (no hate speech, no oversexualization, no pedo shit, etc - we had impressionable teens on the site, before age restrictions started happening all over).

One game that came through had some screenshots that seemed hinky. I talked to the guy to clarify what was in the game theme-wise and he told me he changed a few things based on our talk. We didn't play the games (because the gamepages didn't necessarily have games on them to start - it was something you could add after the page was accepted).

A while later we got reports about the game. I looked into it by playing. Dear god. It had kids raping kids, the MC was raping women (none of the women had names, just got called bitch and slut and such), glorifying rape (every woman 'enjoyed' it), killing gay people, some people being raped to death, etc.

It went out of its way to be incredibly offensive, to glory in rape and violence and belittlement towards women. It was horrific. I talked to the guy and he saw nothing wrong with it.

Easy deny. Not only did it break our rules on hate speech, sexual content and overtly sexual themes, but it was just a masterpiece in this exact lesson. There are many games that were allowed on the site that alluded to or talked about sex, sexual violence and the like - but they didn't glorify it or make the game about wracking up points in doing such. Even the least 'tame' didn't go beyond the line of 'reasonable talk about tough subjects'.

Although those myths may have been influenced later on by what we might today term either antisemitism or anti-Jewish hostility, as people saw a confluence between tales of dwarves and goblins and stereotypes of Jews as each evolved, I find it hard to fault Tolkien for using pieces of early European mythology while trying to create his own. When it counted, and despite many possible reasons not to (profit, fame, strong involvement in a pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, few if any personal friendships with Jews, certain common upperclass opinions), Tolkien unequivocably stood up for real Jews. In 1937, a letter arrived from a German publisher, asking Tolkien to confirm his Aryan ancestry in order to translate The Hobbit into German, which would significantly increase his book’s fame and sales. You can Google the letter; I’m on mobile. Either way, Tolkien politely told the German publisher to take his Nazi policies and fuck off, saying in no uncertain terms that he held great admiration for the Jewish people, and that he regretted that he could not truthfully tell the publisher that he was a Jew. (To clarify, Tolkien was in fact of German ancestry and was not Jewish).

Even if there were some unfortunate, seemingly “antisemitic” stereotypes of the Dwarf race within the narrative, if we take Tolkien’s inspiration for them to be partly Jewish, I would argue firstly that Tolkien himself was not consciously antisemitic and secondly that it is a matter of opinion whether the narrative actually supports such stereotypes. Bilbo is, after all, an unreliable narrator, and with the exception of Thorin’s gold-sickness (later linked to his lineage’s bearing of one of Sauron’s 7 rings given to the Dwarves), none of the Dwarves ever appear truly greedy or gold-obsessed when allowed to speak for themselves in dialogue or song. They may appreciate valuable objects of varying metals and gems, but I would argue that their love for these objects is most often explicitly linked for a love of craft and craftsmanship, not minerals and jewels themselves. Other stereotypical elements, such as beards and short, misshapen stature, can be linked to the early Scandinavian myths Tolkien used.

I should add, far too late in this long post, that I could find no actual evidence myself that the Tolkien goblins were based on stereotypes of Jews. As I said, if anything, there is some evidence of Jewish inspiration for Dwarves, and regardless of how we may feel about it today, Tolkien indicated in about three different letters and a radio interview (iirc) that he essentially meant Dwarves as a ‘compliment’ and held Jews in high esteem, as an ‘ancient warrior race’. That claim may feel a little iffy in terms of modern social justice lingo, but I would remind you that at the time that he wrote The Hobbit and LotR (dovetailing historically with the rise of Nazis to power, the Holocaust, and the post-war crisis of Jewish survivors/refugees), the main European stereotypes of Jews were that Jews were weak, often cosmopolitan and disconnected from the land, and behind most of the ills of the modern world. The materialism aspect is tricky, and may result from unconscious anti-Jewish bias, faithfulness to the original Norse myths, or a little of both. But it is clear, at least, that within our world, Tolkien’s view of Jews directly opposed the main antisemitic claims of his day, and he went directly against his own interests to tell a 1937 German publisher in quite strident terms that he opposed Nazi policy and admired the Jews, when he could have easily made himself a small fortune by simply admitting what was already true (his “Aryan” ancestry).

The fact that the asker claims that goblins are “formed from Jewish caricatures,” unless they can produce actual evidence of this, seems to me unlikely. Dwarves might have been a better argument, but the record on that is mixed at best and far from a purely ill-intended “caricature”. Either way, the argument over “reclaiming goblins,” especially over Tolkien’s goblins, seems to me altogether ludicrous, to be frank. If they are in fact discussing Tolkien, his record on antisemitism in real life is pretty good. In terms of his fantasy races, the Dwarves are the ones most likely inspired in part by Jews, and generally with positive authorial intent, although the net effect is, of course, a matter of personal opinion. The goblins, as far as I can tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with the debate. Tolkien’s use of race and colonial theory is largely a different topic, and one in which I feel the “goblins” are more heavily implicated.

There are tons of genuinely racist takes on goblins in the fantasy world. (Tolkien and D&D did us no favors.) Plenty of them are antisemitic, although mostly in terms of how they’re physically presented – George MacDonald’s 1872 novel The Princess and the Goblin, for example, often has illustrations that fit the bill, but their characterization is not, and again is conflated with gnomes or dwarves from northern European folklore. However, the idea that “goblins” as a concept are historically always an antisemitic caricature is just not true, and isn’t even true in most modern fantasy media, with the notable exception of Harry Potter. 

(Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, the conception of goblins that “goblincore” is trying to popularize sounds more like Stitch, Entrapta, or the Doctor – chaotic, a little manic, and easily distracted by the next shiny object, but definitely not the antisemitic caricature of a miserly, manipulative financier. The wiki page for “goblincore” sounds like a pitch for button collecting more than anything else!)

Witches & goblins are figures that appear in a variety of folklore, often as antagonists or nuisances, sometimes as neutral, sometimes as helpful, always an Other. Witches may be loners, or part of a coven, or making deals with more dangerous figures. Goblins may be all small, or vary in size, may be in nonhierarchical rollicking groups or have a set hierarchy.

Sometimes, yes, the physical description lines up with the storyteller’s contemporary antisemitic caricatures, and sometimes the mannerisms do too. But not always, not even the majority of the time, not consistently enough to say they’re inherently linked.

Witches and goblins appear in Jewish folklore as an Other too; Hershel & the Hanukkah Goblins is a modern children’s book based on an older folk figure, in which a bunch of goblins keeps stopping a Jewish village from celebrating Hanukkah, and Hershel has to trick the goblins into knocking that shit off & leaving the village alone. Does the goblins’ role as antisemitic antagonists mean modern goblincore is anti-goy? No.

The goblins in JKRowling’s Harry Potter series are antisemitic caricatures.

The goblins in Ben Hatke’s Mighty Jack & Zita the Spacegirl series, and his children’s picture book Nobody Likes a Goblin (spoilers: except their friends!) are not.

Neither folklore nor modern fantasy, it turns out, are homogeneous. Those two authors have done massively different versions of goblins, and Hatke’s is way more in line with the goblincore “rollicking group of small creatures the equally enjoy shiny jewelry and moss-covered granite” aesthetic.

It has come to our attention that there is a post claiming we’ve used a certain set of RPG Maker tilesets without crediting the original artist.

Although it is true the specific tileset we’ve used hasn’t been included in the credits list, this is simply because at the time of development, while we were working on Fleta’s area, we happened to come across these specific resources in a “free to use” forum post.

Of course, not knowing whether they were truly free to use or not is regrettably due to our own inexperience as game developers at the time.

However, contrary to what has been claimed in the post, the original artist who designed these tilesets is Wecoc, and not Hideon.

The tileset posted on this post by the user Hideon, which was used as reference, has been cropped from the original.

The original tileset was an entry, by the user Wecoc, for a tileset contest in a forum called “Mundo Maker” which took place in 2012.

This contest, along with the original artwork, can be found here.

In the meantime, we have reached out to Wecoc on the forum with the following message:

High resolution screenshot here.

To which they replied:

High resolution screenshot here.

Which translates into: “Hello. You can use them with no problem, they’re free to use even though it’s good you have contacted me. Cheers.”

With this, we reassure you that we have never intentionally used other artists’ work without giving them proper credit and are happy to let everyone know this was nothing but a big misunderstanding from the start.

If, by any chance, you ever come across a resource that has not been properly listed, please do contact us directly through our e-mail ([email protected]) or through the Tumblr ask system.

Unfortunately, Wecoc is lying, and the game is accidentally using stolen sprites.

The contest was announced on October 25th, 2012, and the winners submitted their sprites via private messaging November 3rd.  It’s strange that Hideon would post his trees on September 22nd, 2012, before they would be posted in time for the contest.

That’s not all though: Hideon posted this sprite of a demon he made on March 21st, 2012 along with a nice little reference picture.  He kept updating the thread with more screenshots of his work in progress until he posted his last update on May 4th, 2012.

Wecoc also posted the exact same demon sprite on April 5th, 2012, a month after Hideon originally posted it.  He then updated it with the last picture to be posted in Hideon’s thread, the complete piece, on the exact same day Hideon did on May 4th.  The other sprites in the thread seem to be his original work.  

Wecoc has put out several other tilesets, and none of the other tilesets they posted contain those trees.  This one in 2014 edits XP trees instead of uses those nice trees Wecoc claimed to have made, which is strange because if I made a damn good looking tree like that, I’d recolor it and put it in my sprite packs as well.  But he didn’t.

I’m sorry, but Wecoc lied to you.  I’m also sorry to say this since I was hoping it was a mistake, but according to an anonymous sender, you might be lying too.  

hi i saw your post and remebered that the pm team did a livestream of the map making of fletas area http://livestre.am/51FzB at around 9:30 min you can see them opening the file, and the name is “tileset_forest.png” which is the same name you would get by directly downlaoding the image on the forum post you linked to. you can also see that the tree wasnt the only resource used since they use the grass pixels too, to cover the whole map. actual trees being used: http://livestre.am/51FBm at 10:50 min

hope this is useful

(thank you, it is!)

The gif is archived here in case the video does not work for you.  The quality isn’t the best, unfortunately, but you can make it out.  If you download Wecoc’s post, it’s called forest_tileset_B (if . I reversed image search the image as well, and it turns out that unless you got these sprites off pinterest, you didn’t find it on a free to use compilation post because there is no free to use complication post.  Even if you did, that, erm, pretty much bites.

This is one of the reason why I posted this here on Pinkuboa instead of bringing it straight to you: someone brought evidence forward that contradicts your story that I wouldn’t have found on my own.  In fact, I was alerted by someone that the dates on the wecoc & hideon post didn’t add up.  If your team happened to be innocent, either nothing would pop up or evidence that you didn’t would of and good news, it would just be me who looked like a fool.  That, and if you did take it off a free compilation post, people like @ariastory-project who happen to be using the titlesets for their current game can now take them down now that they know about wecoc’s theft!

The previous case of asset theft the community had to tackle, Lilutale (who is now changing the sprites so please don’t bug her about it), didn’t admit to tracing Miwashiba’s sprites and didn’t answer questions about it when asked.  I was afraid you’d do the same.

Finally, I’d like to address a few tweets members of the team posted on to twitter, which I’m not usually active on but still check.

@beboldbebold I’m sorry you guys didn’t notice the contradicting dates on the post.  Easy to miss I suppose.  Thankfully a few people came up and pointed out the discrepancy to the two, so thank those nice anonymous users for us that lead me and someone else to do more detective work.

I understand not liking to have the burden of proof shifted on to you, but I couldn’t unearth more until your team did.

@kiramekirari I did not insult you a single time in that post, nor did I insult you in the small conversation I had with lazyplague on the blog, and was hoping that I was wrong.  Instead, you misinterpret this as me shooting a torpedo at you.  Your game has been published on the web for nearly a year now, Pocket Mirror is now a publicly known game.  If I was wrong, you had nothing to lose, and I would of conceded like I have before.

Instead of confronting me about this with respect, you decided to go onto another social platform, insult me in public to all of your followers, and then deleted it like the two faced coward you are.  Whether or not you stole it (and from the video I’m pretty sure you did), I respected you every step of the way sent you a post, and you don’t even have the guts to respond to me in public.  

It was as simple as sending them a PM on the pixelation account and asking about it - and got confirmation back that yes, the PM team did receive permission and that yes, they are also known as Wecoc (and prefer to be identified that way).

Ask them yourselves if you do not believe. Or read this PM I got back after asking:

Someone gave my mom an old photo album. I really wish they hadn’t…

by reddit user sleepyhollow_101

Every once in a while, something very interesting will come into my mom’s library.

We live in a small town, so people often go to the library for answers, knowing that my mother has an extensive background in researching things like history and genealogy. Those are the people we get most often, actually: people with questions about their own family history. Oftentimes they’ll come in with partial records and ask my mother to fill in the gaps. She’s always more than happy to do it. Not only is she good at it, but it also serves as an acceptable reprieve from the relative boredom of small-town life.

A friend of a friend won a free consultation with Clinton Kelly of What Not To Wear, and she was very excited, because she has a plus-size body, and wanted some tips on how to make the most of her wardrobe in a fashion culture which deliberately puts her body at a disadvantage.

Her first question for him was this: how do celebrities make a plain white t-shirt and a pair of weekend jeans look chic?  She always assumed it was because so many celebrities have, by nature or by design, very slender frames, and because they can afford very expensive clothing.  But when she watched What Not To Wear, she noticed that women of all sizes ended up in cute clothes that really fit their bodies and looked great.  She had tried to apply some guidelines from the show into her own wardrobe, but with only mixed success.  So - what gives?

His answer was that everything you will ever see on a celebrity’s body, including their outfits when they’re out and about and they just get caught by a paparazzo, has been tailored, and the same goes for everything on What Not To Wear.  Jeans, blazers, dresses - everything right down to plain t-shirts and camisoles.  He pointed out that historically, up until the last few generations, the vast majority of people either made their own clothing or had their clothing made by tailors and seamstresses.  You had your clothing made to accommodate the measurements of your individual body, and then you moved the fuck on.  Nothing on the show or in People magazine is off the rack and unaltered.  He said that what they do is ignore the actual size numbers on the tags, find something that fits an individual’s widest place, and then have it completely altered to fit.  That’s how celebrities have jeans that magically fit them all over, and the rest of us chumps can’t ever find a pair that doesn’t gape here or ride up or slouch down or have about four yards of extra fabric here and there.

I knew that having dresses and blazers altered was probably something they were doing, but to me, having alterations done generally means having my jeans hemmed and then simply living with the fact that I will always be adjusting my clothing while I’m wearing it because I have curves from here to ya-ya, some things don’t fit right, and the world is just unfair that way.  I didn’t think that having everything tailored was something that people did. 

It’s so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t know this.  But no one ever told me.  I was told about bikini season and dieting and targeting your “problem areas” and avoiding horizontal stripes.  No one told me that Jennifer Aniston is out there wearing a bigger size of Ralph Lauren t-shirt and having it altered to fit her.

I sat there after I was told this story, and I really thought about how hard I have worked not to care about the number or the letter on the tag of my clothes, how hard I have tried to just love my body the way it is, and where I’ve succeeded and failed.  I thought about all the times I’ve stood in a fitting room and stared up at the lights and bit my lip so hard it bled, just to keep myself from crying about how nothing fits the way it’s supposed to.  No one told me that it wasn’t supposed to.  I guess I just didn’t know.  I was too busy thinking that I was the one that didn’t fit.

I thought about that, and about all the other girls and women out there whose proportions are “wrong,” who can’t find a good pair of work trousers, who can’t fill a sweater, who feel excluded and freakish and sad and frustrated because they have to go up a size, when really the size doesn’t mean anything and it never, ever did, and this is just another bullshit thing thrown in your path to make you feel shitty about yourself.

I thought about all of that, and then I thought that in elementary school, there should be a class for girls where they sit you down and tell you this stuff before you waste years of your life feeling like someone put you together wrong.

Welp, releasing this (incomplete) template

feel free to use it, to complete & etc