Trashbin 2
 This article covers a topic that, by its very nature, is a magnet for flamewars. Try not to get too assmad at what you're about to read. |
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 Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it. |
"The only way to win is to not read the crazy, and just fap and/or shlick to the pictures."
- /d/
"I swear to Christ if these faggots raid this hobby, I will fur
Contents
Meaning
Skub's final form.
SJW stands for "Social Justice Warrior", a particular kind of individual known for attempts to police the internet and the culture of society as a whole by proxy. The term originated in the late '90s to mid-2000's, where they were originally more neutral and merely annoying advocates of social change. Expect the term to start showing up anytime some combination of the following occurs:
- A) a popular figures does or says something considered offensive, whether legitimately so or otherwise;
- B) some asshole's trying to shut up people they're being rude to;
- C) someone is harmlessly being a bit less politically correct than people want them to; and
- D) someone is being far less politically correct than the situation warrants.
On that note, feel free to play a drinking game where you take a shot each time Godwin's Law is invoked, and be sure to bid your liver farewell before hand.
Basically, you can expect the thread and any other nearby discussion to be derailed in short order. This can and does often lead to rifts in communities, creators (most often independent ones) facing harassment and death threats, and any legitimate criticisms are sure to get lost in the mix of mob mentality - like most of the internet. There are plenty of examples, but the average fa/tg/uy is unlikely to care about most of them outside of the few relevant ones discussed further below.
...So why is this a big deal again?
The major crux of the problem is that SJWs tend to emulate previous moral panics in popular culture, such as the hysteria surrounding hip-hop, rock music and (most relevantly) Dungeons & Dragons ever since their creation - the mostly-Christian right wing of those times believed them to be a gateway to devil worship, and thus eternal damnation. This resulted in changes to many aspects of the game real-life occultism and black magic practices, which mostly consisted of renaming a bunch of shit (e.g. demons and devils were now Tanar'ri and Baatezu). In addition, a few murders and suicides by well-known players nearly damned the game by association. For SJWs, just replace the religious issues with social ones, pick a random spot deep in the hard left using dart board, and you can figure out the rest.
Relevance to /tg/
While SJWs mostly focus on comics, movies and video games, they've found relatively little traction on tabletop games - it's widely considered more obscure in comparison to other forms of media, thus not warranting scrutiny OR continued interest to the SJW's inner hipster. Any debates and criticisms surrounding the medium are either nearly as old as the genre itself, or else commonplace enough (e.g. impractical costume design) that it's not even exclusive to the genre anymore. -4 STR is something of an exception in this regard, given that it originated with tabletop itself, and there has also been at least one tale of an encounter with someone who would very much fit the SJW bill.
This hasn't stopped them from trying, however, to the point where numerous people in high-level positions in the development of not only Dungeons & Dragons, but Pathfinder are part of the same ideological mindset, and believing that the problems with D&D, is, of course, the fanbase itself. More astute fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls might have already noticed the logical fallacy with this, which is that traditional gaming is fundamentally an insular hobby populated predominantly by its fans, and that trying to force the hobby to fit a completely different audience who has no real interest in it won't successfully appeal to anyone, but this does not stop people from pushing this angle, as they generally see this behavior as part of an outright culture war. Oldfags can only chuckle to themselves; the neckbeards of old saw people try to demonize their hobbies for Gary Gygax's entire lifetime, and know that ultimately, this crap is destined to fail just as hard as previous attempts to kill their favorite hobbies off.
Beyond that, and aside from the aforementioned moral panic surrounding D&D that peaked in the '80s and sporadic attempts at pandering by game developers trying to milk what they believe is a new demographic, any /tg/-related controversies that have occurred since then are hardly a blip on the radar.
SJWs and WH40k
Sometimes though, you may hear complaints about wargaming, and how it has too much imperialism, war crimes, genocide, religious extremism, xenophobia, abduction, child soldiers, injury and death of minors, suicide, rape, drug abuse, sexual exploitation, supernatural horror, etc. etc. While not mentioned by name, you can imagine they had one particular franchise in mind. Naturally, you can also imagine the lengths they went to in order to completely ignore the entire air of black vs. black morality within the setting itself (with shades of super-dark grey if you're feeling generous).
With that said, the three most common complaints about Warhammer 40,000 are the absence of Female Space Marines, the Sisters of Battle having boob plates and, tied for third, the lack of women and non-white humans in the Imperium going by models and art. The problem with this view is:
- Warhammer 40,000 originated as an ironic parody of hard-right authoritarianism, born out of the explosion of progressive UK Sci-fi and fantasy that erupted during Thatcherite Britain. Along with comics like 2000AD, Warhammer 40K took the themes of authoritarian rule to a fantastic extreme, providing both an escape and a reflection/satire on the grim reality of conservative rule in the UK - a context that has been lost over time with the growing popularity of the game, as well as the growth of the company itself. Of course, SJWs are cancerously devoid of nuance, as is the case with most internet discussion.
- Anyone who actually read the fluff (i.e. nobody who actually complains about this shit) knows that the Imperium as a body doesn't care about sex or race, because the encroaching forces of grimdark make any form of discrimination impractical. The discrimination that does happen in the Imperium has some credible backing, in that the Imperium is an empire of zealots and mutation is a common symptom of exposure to Chaos or other very bad things, so they figure it's best to not take chances. Female Space Marines also have a well-defined fluff reason for not existing.
- GW hardly listens to their own customers anyway, so complaining won't change shit no matter how obvious the problem is. Plus, it's highly doubtful GW would purposely draw only white male characters out of spite; as we all know, fantasy genres in literature (or in any media, really) are a bastion for uncreative hacks.
- Until recently, GW was also terrible at sculpting female characters in most cases; the Sisters of Battle were a rare exception for years, and that's likely because they're just power-armored humans with boobplate.
- Besides, every Warhammer Fantasy and 40k player also knows that GW is simply bad at making writing decisions.
It should be noted that GW has been somewhat 'addressing' things, in Age of Sigmar anyway; several human models have non-white skin tones, the first unhelmed Sigmarine is black, there's a model for a Sigmarine woman, and the most promoted faction other than Sigmarines and Khorne is the mostly female Sylvaneth. Meanwhile, GW has promised on social media to "improve female representation" in 40k, specifically referring to reducing "boob-plate" in the miniature line and artwork. This could mean practically anything, from more female Guard heads to transgender Battle "Sisters" and canon Female Space Marines; with all the swings and roundabouts GW's been going through, it's impossible to tell, but whatever happens next you can be sure the skub will be fierce.
What do???
Long story short?
Fuck 'em.
It's your hobby, and at day's end, any changes you make to doing what you love and loving what you do should be ultimately your decision. Don't care so much about what other people think, let alone some fanbrats and/or political winglets who probably don't even give a shit about it to begin with. Anyone who DOES care enough about diverse (and HOPEFULLY well-written) characters and settings will eventually take matters into their own hands and brew some up themselves, as they should. Half the fun of Warhammer is making your armies your own anyway, like most tabletop games, so why wait for GW to change?
The wrong response (and this is almost always true, by the way), is to insult the fans for liking something they don't like. But hey, whatchagonnado? Complaining about people liking something you don't like is almost as popular here as complaining about people not liking something you love. And as long as someone makes their dudes "wrong," someone will always be yelling.
Yet again, like most of the internet.
So weigh your options and pick your battles wisely, because God knows these chucklefucks won't.
See Also
- /pol/ for a very similar cancer on the 'right' side of the body, and a common perception SJW's have of everyone who's not on their side.
Gallery
All anyone needs to know.
In which The Mary Sue misses most of the setting's point and lore.
Even some fa/tg/uys fall victim to this; flavors include "DM with girlfriend", online forum and MMORPG, name your poison.
