Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Bluefog » Tue May 19, 2015 7:47 pm

Vami wrote:OASIS does not worship this false god "allah."

OASIS belongs to the First Universal Church of Explosions, which is even more useful for parodying (Middle Eastern) Muslim for their stereotypical seas suicide bombers.

I may go back and change it, I didn't know, sorry.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by aoffan23 » Tue May 19, 2015 9:08 pm

Bluefog wrote:I'm drawing attention to the fact it's so ridiculous.
AKA satire. The offensiveness doesn't change when the subject does, it's just a matter of who you're offending. In this case you're offending people who agree with the religious zeal of ISIS. So yes you're trying to offend those people.

Also if someone thinks your portrayal of a group of Muslim extremists is supposed to be a portrayal of all Muslim people, then they're probably racist and that's their problem. Being apologetic about it just makes it look like that was your intention.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by cleanupcrew » Tue May 19, 2015 9:40 pm

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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Bluefog » Tue May 19, 2015 9:45 pm

aoffan23 wrote:
Bluefog wrote:I'm drawing attention to the fact it's so ridiculous.
AKA satire. The offensiveness doesn't change when the subject does, it's just a matter of who you're offending. In this case you're offending people who agree with the religious zeal of ISIS. So yes you're trying to offend those people.

Also if someone thinks your portrayal of a group of Muslim extremists is supposed to be a portrayal of all Muslim people, then they're probably racist and that's their problem. Being apologetic about it just makes it look like that was your intention.
I see what you're saying. Didn't think of it like that.

I will edit the original post and change stuff appropriately.

EDIT: Done and done.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Zupponn » Wed May 20, 2015 1:43 am

Colette wrote:Yes, OASIS belongs to the First Universal Church of Explosions and worships the prophet BoB.

Can we just rename the First Universal Church of Explosions to the First Universal Church of Kaboom? The second one has a better acronym.
Ha. And their holy book is the Qu'boom.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by stubby » Wed May 20, 2015 9:53 am

Bluefog wrote:I disagree. I think it helps if I tell people I don't actually think that way and that my intention is not to offend and that the actual intent is a satirical examination for humorous purposes. Maybe you're not like minded and don't find it funny, and I'm almost sorry for that, but... I tried, and there's no pleasing everyone so I'll get over it.
Hold on! It almost sounds like you think I was saying that being offensive is a bad thing. Being offensive is fine. This is a game about murdering people and treating it as comedy; just signing up for these forums at all is already super offensive. Making fun of someone's religious figures is trivial by comparison.

All I'm saying is that if you're going to be offensive, don't be half-hearted about it. Be offensive in a way you can be proud of, and then be proud of it.

Bluefog wrote:It is intended for satire, which, last time I checked was supposed to be somewhat funny.
Nah. Satire is supposed to be offensive. Often it's made funny to lessen the blow, but not always.

If it's not offensive, then it's not satire, it's just parody.

aoffan23 wrote:In this case you're offending people who agree with the religious zeal of ISIS. So yes you're trying to offend those people.
Yeah, but there are precision strikes and then there's carpet bombing. It's easy to target one guy and hit everyone else in the area as collateral damage if you're either clumsy or just don't give a crap.

If I make fun of Obama with a bunch of black stereotypes, and then I say that it's okay because "I just hate Obama, not all black people," then all I've done is made myself sound stupid in addition to still being totally racist.

aoffan23 wrote:Also if someone thinks your portrayal of a group of Muslim extremists is supposed to be a portrayal of all Muslim people, then they're probably racist and that's their problem. Being apologetic about it just makes it look like that was your intention.
I disagree. I put a lot of thought into being offensive and a lot of care into making sure I'm offensive in exactly and only the ways I want to be, and I've developed a couple of rules of thumb.
  • 6. If you punch somebody in the face, you're not the one who gets to decide whether or not it hurts. Even if you were "just kidding," even if you were just pretending to throw a punch and only connected accidentally, even if you "weren't hitting that hard," their nose is still broken whether you meant it or not.

    7. If people think my erotic portrait of your mom is actually a painting of some vomit, it doesn't mean they're prejudiced against your mom, it means I'm bad at portraits. Failure to communicate is on me, not them.

    8. If, on the other hand, your mom spent her entire life being compared to vomit, and can't go a single day without everyone she meets telling her she's vomit, and I try to paint a painting of her and it accidentally ends up looking like vomit... then that painting is going to hurt her just like a punch in the nose, even if I didn't "mean" it that way.

    9. If I know my painting looks like vomit and I know about this history of abuse and I show the painting anyway, then I can't pretend I didn't know it was going to hurt. Apologizing doesn't make it look like it was my intention, but it does make it clear that I knew that would be the result, and just didn't care.
Colette wrote:Can we just rename the First Universal Church of Explosions to the First Universal Church of Kaboom? The second one has a better acronym.
I prefer to think of them as related sects, with FUCK as the violent extremist offshoot of FUnKY.

Zupponn wrote:Ha. And their holy book is the Qu'boom.
Flawless. I want to build a whole tradition around this now.

Five times a day, FUCKists must fire their weapons without warning in the direction of the Qiblam, which is oriented facing directly away from the holy Ka'aboom at the center of FUnKYspace. Only the faithful are permitted to see the Ka'aboom, and an explosion-shaped temple has been built around it to hide it from outsiders. It's rumored to be a planet-sized offshoot of the great Kanon Ball explosion that destroyed the universe at the end of BR 1,977, broken through into the current BrikVerse and frozen in stasis where it broke the local flow of time itself.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Bluefog » Wed May 20, 2015 10:37 am

stubby wrote:
Bluefog wrote:I disagree. I think it helps if I tell people I don't actually think that way and that my intention is not to offend and that the actual intent is a satirical examination for humorous purposes. Maybe you're not like minded and don't find it funny, and I'm almost sorry for that, but... I tried, and there's no pleasing everyone so I'll get over it.
Hold on! It almost sounds like you think I was saying that being offensive is a bad thing. Being offensive is fine. This is a game about murdering people and treating it as comedy; just signing up for these forums at all is already super offensive. Making fun of someone's religious figures is trivial by comparison.

All I'm saying is that if you're going to be offensive, don't be half-hearted about it. Be offensive in a way you can be proud of, and then be proud of it.
Alright, I'll be way more offensive and never explain myself... and when I get banned I'll be all "Damn that stubby!!"
stubby wrote:
Bluefog wrote:It is intended for satire, which, last time I checked was supposed to be somewhat funny.
Nah. Satire is supposed to be offensive. Often it's made funny to lessen the blow, but not always.

If it's not offensive, then it's not satire, it's just parody.
sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r/
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
I'm not saying it's not offensive, I'm saying it's offensive for a reason, not just for the sake of being offensive. I suppose I don't particularly care if I offend people but don't want to be viewed as racist or prejudice in some way and if the opposite was achieved, it wasn't my intention.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by stubby » Wed May 20, 2015 11:06 am

the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule
"Or."
to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices
No "or."

Consider, for instance, Mark Twain - my favorite satirist, whose fiction is viciously, bitingly satirical and almost never funny.

Bluefog wrote:Alright, I'll be way more offensive and never explain myself... and when I get banned I'll be all "Damn that stubby!!"
You've got to think of bans less like punishments and more like high-fives for a job well done.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by aoffan23 » Wed May 20, 2015 12:10 pm

stubby wrote:6. If you punch somebody in the face, you're not the one who gets to decide whether or not it hurts. Even if you were "just kidding," even if you were just pretending to throw a punch and only connected accidentally, even if you "weren't hitting that hard," their nose is still broken whether you meant it or not.

7. If people think my erotic portrait of your mom is actually a painting of some vomit, it doesn't mean they're prejudiced against your mom, it means I'm bad at portraits. Failure to communicate is on me, not them.

8. If, on the other hand, your mom spent her entire life being compared to vomit, and can't go a single day without everyone she meets telling her she's vomit, and I try to paint a painting of her and it accidentally ends up looking like vomit... then that painting is going to hurt her just like a punch in the nose, even if I didn't "mean" it that way.

9. If I know my painting looks like vomit and I know about this history of abuse and I show the painting anyway, then I can't pretend I didn't know it was going to hurt. Apologizing doesn't make it look like it was my intention, but it does make it clear that I knew that would be the result, and just didn't care.
I'll admit that what I said was a bit of a generalization, and I agree with you on most of your thumb rules. But I disagree about the lack of understanding being the satirist's/artist's fault. It definitely can be true, but I don't think it's fair to generalize it like that.

Rolling with the mom portrait example:

If your mom is generally seen as being an attractive lady, but some people have always thought she looks like vomit, then it's easy for them to interpret the portrait very differently than the general public. These people don't look like your mom, nor do they look like vomit, but they still see your photorealistic portrait of your mom as vomit.

If even after you've done everything in your power to make it look like your mom and they still think it looks like vomit, then maybe the issue is they don't know what actual vomit looks like. At that point it shouldn't be up to you to put a disclaimer on the portrait saying that it's not a picture of vomit, and doing so would likely make the general public question why you would even mention vomit. Does he think his mom looks like vomit? Is he trying to say she looks like vomit?

EDIT: Hell, even if the general public thinks your mom looks like vomit but hasn't seen actual vomit before, then I don't think the miscommunication is on you.

That being said, thinking about it now this isn't exactly one of those cases. I'm now wondering why the satire even needed to be done. Religious extremism is ridiculous? Unheard of!
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Bluefog » Wed May 20, 2015 3:37 pm

stubby wrote:
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule
"Or."
to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices
No "or."

Consider, for instance, Mark Twain - my favorite satirist, whose fiction is viciously, bitingly satirical and almost never funny.

Bluefog wrote:Alright, I'll be way more offensive and never explain myself... and when I get banned I'll be all "Damn that stubby!!"
You've got to think of bans less like punishments and more like high-fives for a job well done.

Awww man, in two years here I haven't done a good job yet!
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by stubby » Wed May 20, 2015 4:43 pm

aoffan23 wrote:That being said, thinking about it now this isn't exactly one of those cases.
I don't know. Replace "mom" with "Muslim" and "vomit" with "terrorist" and I think it's pretty much on the mark.

There was a period of three or four years where something like 90% of my local friends and coworkers were Muslim, and watching the shit they went through day in and day out, both before and especially after 9/11, left no question in my mind that there are a whole lot of people in the U.S. who think any person who so much as mentions Allah is automatically a radical terrorist waiting for the moment to start planting explosives. And they weren't always expressing this belief in some small, petty way; my friends and their kids were threatened and attacked in broad daylight; their houses and cars were vandalized, stolen, or wrecked.

Regardless of how it was intended, putting up vignettes of a bunch of terrorists doing a bunch of cartoon stereotype Muslim things has the direct effect of reminding them that they're never safe, they're viewed as monsters, that they're only good for being reviled and destroyed. It's that punch in the face that I was talking about. Hopefully unintentional, but that doesn't make it less painful to the people getting punched.

Now when I say that it's "on me," I don't mean that I can necessarily prevent people who think all Muslims are terrorists from thinking that way, or that I should always avoid being offensive at all costs. But it's on me to be aware that those people exist, and to understand that anything I create of say on the subject is going to be interpreted in this wider cultural context, and to be mindful of what effect that context is going to have when I put stuff out in the world. I.e., to know that when I put out a perfectly photorealistic portrait of your mom, the meaning that is communicated is more than just a perfectly photorealistic portrait of your mom.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by aoffan23 » Wed May 20, 2015 7:17 pm

I meant that it's not the kind of case I was describing, as in it would be more warranted to be offended by this than I initially thought.

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I mean Allah, I'm good with words.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by Bluefog » Wed May 20, 2015 9:56 pm

Man, this has turned into a whole big thing now. There might always be racism. It sucks, but that's life. I've been discriminated against for being caucasian believe it or not, so it can happen to anyone.

Anyway, if a Muslim person saw this post and was offended by the way I portray a very small number of religious wingnuts, I wouldn't really worry about it. I could just as easily do one for Catholics, Scientologists, or anyone really. I know that I have zero problem with anyone of any background, sexual orientation or race and that's all that matters. I'm just poking fun, or at least attempting to.
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Re: Army of JAM: No Time For Vengeance.

Post by stubby » Thu May 21, 2015 11:27 am

Bluefog wrote:Man, this has turned into a whole big thing now.
:rule7:

Sorry, offensiveness is one of my favorite subjects. Being offensive is a big part of what BrikWars is about, so whenever I get the chance to monologue on the subject I run with it.
Bluefog wrote:There might always be racism. It sucks, but that's life. I've been discriminated against for being caucasian believe it or not, so it can happen to anyone.
Sure, but experiencing discrimination as a caucasian is like the difference between "I broke my leg once" and "I was born without legs." One is a weird temporary exception in a life of otherwise smooth sailing; if there's anything you can't do with a busted leg, you just shrug and wait until it heals and everything returns to "normal." The other is already "normal;" every day is a no-legs day, and every day until the day you die will be a no-legs day, and if there's anything you can't do with a busted leg, that's it. You will spend your entire life without ever getting to have legs.
Bluefog wrote:Anyway, if a Muslim person saw this post and was offended by the way I portray a very small number of religious wingnuts, I wouldn't really worry about it. I could just as easily do one for Catholics, Scientologists, or anyone really.
I hate when people say "they got offended," like if you punch somebody and pass it off as "they got hurt." They didn't "get hurt," you punched them.

You can make a joke about lynching white people, but it has a totally different meaning than if you make a joke about lynching black people. Making a joke about trianglists being crazy terrorist lunatics has a totally different meaning than making the same joke about Muslims being crazy terrorist lunatics, because trianglists don't have to spend every day looking over their shoulders and living under threat from people thinking they're crazy terrorist lunatics. Poking bare skin isn't the same as poking an open wound.

EDIT: Ha ha, I forgot that I word-buttplugged "Christians" to "dumbfucks," that's awesome
Bluefog wrote:I know that I have zero problem with anyone of any background, sexual orientation or race and that's all that matters. I'm just poking fun, or at least attempting to.
I don't think anyone here thinks you're a bigot or anything. All my speechifying doesn't really have all that much to do with you personally, I just get excited about having offensive stuff here because it gives me (and sometimes other folks) the chance to explore what makes it offensive and whether it's hitting the intended targets from the intended directions.

I'm just trying to explain that something can be hurtful without the person having intended any harm, and that, in a practical sense, the potential effects tend to be more important than the intentions, and it's good to step back and really pick the techniques apart sometimes so that when you do hurt somebody it's because you really meant to.

Because if there's one thing I believe in, it's being offensive skillfully.
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