starelfsc2

I think the reason I didn't see booth as conservative-coded, is because he seemed to be portrayed (or maybe just regarded by bones) as foolish and outdated (and usually also wrong) for basically every reason you said, but he was a good guy who always showed up and did the right thing. Though I definitely remember some times where he was doing some "hard working man protects the woman" stuff and that was seen as "good" which I thought was very out of place, especially bones reacting to it positively.. Maybe the times he looked foolish were meant to be serious and they just couldn't make it not sound ridiculous lol

Hearing this makes me really want to re-watch it as I wasn't thinking about any of this... hmm....

https://bones.fandom.com/wiki/The_Proof_in_the_Pudding here's the episode, Angela is pregnant (thinks she is pregnant) with Wendell, but is dating (?) hodgins, who tells her to keep it. I guess maybe this is still a bit conservative coded? Hard to say maybe it's pretty neutral

I don't think this is unreasonable but how far would you take It? If a game was actively promoting hate, and is an mmo where the majority can sway your thoughts, and this game is constantly teaching you to be more hateful but the players keep voting to keep it that way... I don't know at some point it seems like it becomes too much of a negative.

Yeah I think the gray area is what made me want to make this post, but it being a gray area might be the most satisfying answer I get.

I looked through about 50 comments and didn't see any comments positive towards the event, could you show me what you mean? Or did you mean a comment that was supportive of lgbtq? The closest I found is "I'm all for gay pride but it has no place in runescape" which is perhaps not hateful but misinformed. I think it's a bit unfair to say this video was only searched by those looking to express dissent as this creator gets about 10-40k views on their videos just in general (during those years). If anything this video underperformed which would mean people are not seeking it out.

I would probably agree there was a decent amount of counter protest, but most people who disliked the update just begrudgingly ignored it, where if someone feels like their friends way of life is being protested against, they're more likely to turn up.

The pride event was on I think 1 or 2 "worlds," where each world has a limit of 2k people and there are about 150 worlds. It was also scheduled to start at a certain time, and this looks like the beginning with the most people. The protests against the event were on uncoordinated worlds with no set times, people were live streaming it and the size of the protest crowd remained essentially the entire day (with I don't know how many/few on other worlds). This is just to say I feel like exact numbers aren't comparable, I was just showing there are a large amount of players that are angry enough to actually protest it for hours. I could maybe find one of the streams if you'd like (for the pride event and for the protests)

Speaking of the comments on the video, someone posted this (I'm not sure how reliable you'll find it, but this is what I recall being the case too)

This was a poll done on a live stream, so obviously not a full player base sample. I suppose for me I see the player base as not wanting change and being stuck in the past, quite literally people will say this skill in runescape is terrible but I had to do it so changing it now is unfair. This to me is basically right in line with slightly right leaning, as they are using the values of 20 years ago when they started playing to make decisions today. Not truly hateful but just stuck in how things were before all these "politics" got pushed into their game.

I think you actually did kind of answer my "gray area" question with all that. You're going against the wishes of the many for the good of society as a whole, which is unfair but what's the alternative? lgbtq+ people aren't allowed to exist? humans are resistant to change so sometimes you have to force it on them for anything to improve.

I think I would argue that most of them aren't hateful, I think especially in this case most of them are just in the mindset of "this is weird and irregular and I don't want to deal with it" and another portion says "this does matter but I don't want to see it in anything because it makes me feel uncomfortable." Neither really hateful, but if you have 0 exposure to something it's going to seem weird and scary. They don't want to see it because it's unfamiliar and it's unfamiliar because they don't want to see it. Definitely a large portion has some hatred mixed in, though that too might just be because they don't have a single friend who is even partially involved with minorities.

What you said about needing to be in a good place to stop being hateful is true in I think even more ways, such as just the way you communicate in daily life. I used to think similarly to "I don't care but don't shove it in my face" so I get where these people are coming from, even if it is misguided.

The demographic of osrs I would wager is 50% people who are just addicted, most polls I've seen run by creators have people saying they are somewhat unhappy and are just addicted to the game (it's pretty similar to cookie clicker, just with a game built around cookie clicker mechanics). That's why I don't think these people are hateful, they're just me back when I was a lot younger but never had the experiences I did that changed my mind. Maybe I've just been lucky enough to not meet many truly hateful people.

Finally read this reply, the game was "sold" to the players with every little change being polled, and somewhat recently this has been loosened a bit without too much complaint as most people feel the devs have a good handle on what the players want.

This is sort of an issue of "they know what (most of) the players want, but they're doing what they think is better anyway." I think they would be upset regardless of if it was polled or not though, because they don't think it belongs in an "old school" game, but I was more wondering if it was the majority, is it okay for them to pay to make an uninclusive game for themselves.

I just got around to reading this, I'm not even sure what my real question is and I agree they should leave if it bothers them so much.

My best analogy would be imagine you're playing your favorite game of all time, and the devs add a feature that bothers a majority of the player base including you, but 5% of the player base feels like they are finally spoken to. The majority of players are upset and want it changed back. You don't want to leave because it's still your favorite game, but it does feel unfair when the people already playing the game who are paying to keep the game as they like it, have the game changed out from under them adding parts they really dislike.

I'm not trying to say this is a reasonable complaint, or that it should "ruin the game" for them.but hypothetically if it did ruin the game for them, is it unfair to make things better for some when the majority is paying to keep the game as it was before?

I know the playerbase is right leaning because most (all that I have seen) videos on diversity and inclusion posted on OSRS YouTube will be 70% dislikes (before dislike counters were removed) with 250k views. This has been a huge controversy in the game for years

https://youtu.be/EXE8p8jTKhM pride event first suggested by jagex (almost universally disliked update, I cannot find one positive comment towards it)

https://youtu.be/u40feYnbYKU video of huge gatherings of players to protest the event

https://youtube.com/shorts/1Ad8xwv7bnU protest with a very small amount of people counter protesting

None of these are studies or statistics, and maybe most people actually don't care and just log in and play the game, I am just stating that from all the players I have seen and all the comments left on every video about inclusion, this is either a large portion of players, or the majority is nearly completely silent (which I doubt because these protests are about 35% of the total population on that runescape world)

Hmm I may actually re-watch it and keep an eye out for these but you are more correct than I remember. I would say Bones does seem a little bit autistic, and some of the people in power are women, but it's in a little bit of a hamfisted way (look at these badass women!).

I think the episode where one woman got pregnant with someone else's kid she was thinking of not keeping it but got convinced to keep it by her husband (fiance?), the message still being "them keeping it obviously good."

Seems like the writing was mostly fine but sometimes very conservative-coded when the director wanted to insert some spiel about life values. I appreciate the examples, I think I immediately forgot about those episodes specifically because of the weird messaging.

Wait really Bones did this? I thought I remember an episode where Bones says "you just need to work hard, my life was hard too but I didn't end up like that" and learned by the end that wasn't a fair judgment. Maybe I'm misremembering?

You'd be surprised how often one fanfic in a sea of fanfics can leave a lasting impression on someone.

It sounds like he still cares about you and wants to stay in the relationship, but just doesn't feel like he did before towards you. He's probably hoping that interest comes back, which the "I'm not in the right headspace" is exactly what I would say if I lost interest but cared about them enough to hope it comes back.

So you can either wait and hope he becomes interested in you again, or find someone else who you know is interested. Taking a break from each other might also give you your answer, and let him see if his interest comes back (though it sounds like that might be hard for you)

Also, you trying harder and harder to talk to him and do things with him is likely pushing him away more. Forcing something to happen rarely turns out well.

I think the people downvoting took "quoting Harry Potter sounds like you hate me" as "quoting Harry Potter means you hate trans people" (stated as fact). The OP said this is how it feels to them, we shouldn't downvote people for sharing how they experienced something.

Also I think people are reading it as "the worst pickup line." rather than "the worst pickup line (for me as a NB person)"

On the flip side of this, it makes me sad that using fancy words usually just makes you seem pretentious in normal conversations, which has made a lot of cool/interesting words unusable for me. Even words that used to be pretty common, like insipid, will have most people look at you like 🤨

I don't see what other outcome being socially isolated can produce...? I suppose you could be isolated but not rejected by society, but the person who comes out of that isolation is not going to be a normal person (depending on the length of isolation), and likely won't be accepted by most normal people, which would make them an outcast no?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10409601/ this is a recent study showing social isolation by gender and age, and it turns out after age 55 women are more likely to he isolated, so what I'm saying only applies to young and middle aged men.