The Steam Awards 2023 results are out and they’re a meme – Hogwarts Legacy winning the Best Game on Steam Deck Award (videogames.si.com)

submitted 10 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to c/steamdeck@lemmy.ml

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[-] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

sometimes things are bad and are bad at their core (both because they financially support someone who is doing so much to make the world more transphobic than it already is and also all the antisemitism, racism, classism, misogyny, transphobia, and just plain old bad writing decisions at the core of the story) and we just need to let go and stop participating in the fandom because it inevitably leads to people saying shit like “oh i can just buy this harry potter game even though i know jkr sucks and this gives money to her that she will use to fund bigotry, it belongs to the the fans now!” when it doesn’t, as long as jkr is alive it’s her space and spending time in it will eventually lead to money making its way over to her!!!

I'm sorry, but this is such an insane view (with so many inaccuracies in it I'm not going to bother debunking them all) that it's pointless to argue here. Maybe spend your energy on something else, you're giving her more mindspace than she is doing actual harm to the community. And she's probably making very very little off of HL as a whole. Warner Brothers owns the majority of the copyrights around the HL universe, unless it's theater or books, JK Rowling's website even says so.

and the game itself is bad because it’s about the goblins, who have long been noted to be fairly antisemitic caricatures in harry potter, being swarthy hooked nosed creatures who run the banks, have a long history of pogroms being run on them, have different moral values around ownership (very similar to accusations of judeo bolshevism) and have a literal star of david as their symbol in the films. and in this game they kidnap children for ritual purposes which is just straight up blood libel

This has been debunked time and time again. If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the actual CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTISEMITISM. She's so against antisemitism that the fucking Campaign Against Antisemitism says "So it is with JK Rowling, who has proven herself over recent years to be a tireless defender of the Jewish community in its fight against antisemitism, for which we are immensely grateful".

It's you that are seeing antisemetism. It's not there. It's a folk tale that has evolved over actual centuries into tales that go beyond the original tropes. Maybe instead of getting into arguments around this stuff you should look into the history of it and realize that, just because something looks bad, doesn't mean it is.

if you still aren’t sure what’s antisemitic here and you somehow aren’t a bad faith poster, look up judeo bolshevism, look up blood libel, look up images of antisemitic caricatures and compare them to descriptions of goblins in harry potter. there are so many antisemitic tropes in there it’s impossible to imagine no one was aware

maybe you should actually research the history of things rather than just looking at pictures and comparing. It's quite racist (and antisemetic) to think that just because things look similar that they were intended to be the same thing. They're not.

[-] Cromalin@hexbear.net 44 points 10 months ago

i don't know why i'm responding to this, but whatever. doing this all in one post, but i'm responding to both of yours, which is why this is so long. it's also long because i'm actually responding to the things you say, which isn't something you seem to know how to do

first things first, that substack you linked. many things wrong there. immediately, you're invoking 'i know a jewish person who says it's fine.' ok, on my end i know jewish people who think it is extremely not fine. in fact they were the ones who explained to me why the goblins in harry potter are problematic. second, having read the article it just blatantly lies in its base premise.

Goblins, the fantasy creature that has existed in various incarnations for centuries, may have initially been based on antisemitic stereotypes - short, big noses, greedy money-hoarders. Therefore, fantasy that depicts goblins (even if in a complex or sympathetic way that subverts some of the tropes) is automatically inherently antisemitic because goblins are representing Jews, and doing it in the most harmful stereotypical way possible. (note that I have yet to personally see this standard applied to a fantasy series other than HP)

this just isn't a claim anyone is making. the claims about harry potter are much more specific about that. there are antisemitic tropes in the water surrounding goblins, but jkr ramped that up dramatically. this author just breezes past the fact that the goblins are bankers which is a whole lot more specific than a generic greed! people don't say that shit about tolkien (as much, because people do rightly point out problematic elements in tolkien's goblins quite a bit if you don't ignore that to try and lie about how people are being mean to a bigoted billionaire) because tolkien goblins don't run the banks!!! this shit is so blatant it's unsurprising anyone trying to carry water for rowling has to just ignore it

she also claims that there's no actual child kidnapping in the game, and that if there was it would be fine because other fantasy stories contain bits where people kidnap children to use their blood. i'm pretty sure the first point is untrue, because i can find many references to the goblins wanting to use the main character (who is 15 years old, so firmly a child)'s blood for a ritual, but i haven't played the game and am not going to so i suppose it's possible everyone referencing this just made it up in some kind of mass hysteria for some reason. but crucially that second bit is such bullshit it doesn't matter. the problem is taking all these things together! when you have someone stealing a child's blood for a magic ritual that is not problematic or blood libel on its own, but it becomes so once you have it done by members of the greedy hook nosed race that run the banks and don't think it's possible to own property and prefer to eat raw bloody meat and stab the heroes in the back and have stars of david on the floors of their banks. that shit is antisemitic, a lot more so than the culture broadly already is.

similarly it isn't a pogrom when violence against goblins happens in other fantasy media because those goblins don't run the banks and aren't nearly as coded!!!!! what are you even fucking talking about!!!! anyways as you can see i read her whole piece and it was all wrong and poorly argued. next!

sorry this is so long it had to be split up anyways, despite my efforts. you're just too wrong to fit into the character limit!

[-] snowe@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

i don’t know why i’m responding to this, but whatever. doing this all in one post, but i’m responding to both of yours, which is why this is so long. it’s also long because i’m actually responding to the things you say, which isn’t something you seem to know how to do

I've LITERALLY BEEN TRYING THIS WHOLE TIME TO RESPOND TO THE THINGS YOU PEOPLE ARE SAYING. Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!?! I literally asked over and over again for one of you to actually explain the problems and yet you wouldn't. So I just went ahead and explained why it wasn't a problem. Fucking DARVO here. Acting like you're the ones in the right here.

first things first, that substack you linked. many things wrong there. immediately, you’re invoking ‘i know a jewish person who says it’s fine.’ ok, on my end i know jewish people who think it is extremely not fine. in fact they were the ones who explained to me why the goblins in harry potter are problematic. second, having read the article it just blatantly lies in its base premise.

I am no invoking any "i know a jewish person". I linked one article of thousands pointing out that this isn't a problem. I have no clue who the author of that article is and 'knowing' a jewish person doesn't matter in the slightest, that's just anecdotes, not evidence.

this just isn’t a claim anyone is making.

YOU literally said, and I quote:

sadly it still shovels money into her pockets and is about the cabal of hooked nose bankers stealing children to perform rituals

this author just breezes past the fact that the goblins are bankers which is a whole lot more specific than a generic greed! people don’t say that shit about tolkien (as much, because people do rightly point out problematic elements in tolkien’s goblins quite a bit if you don’t ignore that to try and lie about how people are being mean to a bigoted billionaire) because tolkien goblins don’t run the banks!!! this shit is so blatant it’s unsurprising anyone trying to carry water for rowling has to just ignore it

what in the fucking world are you talking about. At this point it's just tiring. You have no actual case so you pretend like being a banker is somehow worse than being a greedy hoarder of gold. Are you serious? In any case, you're completely ignoring other cases where goblins are depicted as bankers, like World of Warcraft, or Discworld, or one of thousands of other examples that you can find.

she also claims that there’s no actual child kidnapping in the game, and that if there was it would be fine because other fantasy stories contain bits where people kidnap children to use their blood. i’m pretty sure the first point is untrue, because i can find many references to the goblins wanting to use the main character (who is 15 years old, so firmly a child)'s blood for a ritual, but i haven’t played the game and am not going to so i suppose it’s possible everyone referencing this just made it up in some kind of mass hysteria for some reason. but crucially that second bit is such bullshit it doesn’t matter. the problem is taking all these things together! when you have someone stealing a child’s blood for a magic ritual that is not problematic or blood libel on its own, but it becomes so once you have it done by members of the greedy hook nosed race that run the banks and don’t think it’s possible to own property and prefer to eat raw bloody meat and stab the heroes in the back and have stars of david on the floors of their banks. that shit is antisemitic, a lot more so than the culture broadly already is.

Yeah it's extremely clear that the people making these points haven't played the game. Literally none of that happens. There's no kidnap of children, there's no blood for a magic ritual, there's no greedy hook nosed race. Literally none of that. You have goblins, they are only portrayed as bankers in the very first fucking scene and after that you interact with goblins who are artists, goblins who work at the bar, goblins who are farmers. It's so fucking clear you haven't actually played and that you're getting upset about things that never happened. There's two main goblins in the story. One is deadly evil, and is trying to take over the world with magic he found after being oppressed by humans. Then his fucking brother is helping you fight to stop him. This is literally just like the original story with Voldemort. He even fucking kills his brother just like voldemort kills his family. There's no plot to kidnap a child, no plot to get any blood (where in the world did this even come from, it's not even implied anywhere, it's just made up wholecloth). The bad goblin doesn't even care about you, the main character, at all until you start to interfere with his plans.

similarly it isn’t a pogrom when violence against goblins happens in other fantasy media because those goblins don’t run the banks and aren’t nearly as coded!!! what are you even fucking talking about!!! anyways as you can see i read her whole piece and it was all wrong and poorly argued. next!

"it was all wrong" lol, sure bud, sure thing. There are plenty of examples of goblin bankers in other media, and yet you didn't even play the game so you have no idea that the goblins you're talking about in this game, aren't even fucking bankers. They're not even looking for money! Your argument is so poor that it literally doesn't even hold up to the slightest scrutiny. It only holds up to the scarecrow you erected to pit your arguments against. Why not focus on the actual problems with JK which is her support of anti-trans legislation. Oh, but you can't really do that here either because the developers of HL actually spent significant time making sure that trans people were fucking represented in the game. smdh.