Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://new.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1ei46br/regarding_a_certain_main_character_in_dawntrail/

Hello Warriors of Light (and Darkness if you prefer),

Hopefully you all have enjoyed (or "enjoyed") Dawntrail, as well as the release of Arcadion Savage.

Unfortunately, with how the main story of this expansion garnering a mixed response amongst the community, and the main reason apparently has to do with the star of the expansion, Wuk Lamat, who has become a subject of intense (and insane) discourse amongst the players, ranging from love, like, dislike, to outright hate.

Now, we strive to maintain the community to allow a wide variety of opinions and thoughts as long as it's within what the rules allow, and it's certainly okay for players to hold personal comments and feelings for any character they encounter throughout the story. However, in the past few weeks what we have encountered are large amount of messages that are, to put it blunt and directly, weirdly insane and vitriolic. Such comments even spilled onto the person behind the voice (Sena Byrer) and her background also attracted a number of unfortunate attacks and criticisms that were unwarranted most of the time. This is getting to the point where we have to create this thread to issue an announcement.

So what will we do?
Up until this point we allow comments, no matter how inane it looks to many browsing the subreddit as long as it's within the realm of civility and we're not going to change this and moderate it as usual. However, the mod team are in agreement to start removing messages that are just plain offensive and toxic even if the character subject in question is fictional. We know clarifications are important to understand what we're aiming to do, so time to list out some examples on what is allowed, and what will be subjected to removal.

What is allowed:

"I like Wuk Lamat but in some areas she's being given too much focus!"

"I dislike Wuk Lamat because she's annoying and rubs me the wrong way!"

"I have issues with the voice direction for the character and it makes it seem like x or y to me"

"I felt that the character is poorly written and hopefully Square Enix will do something about that in later patches"

"Man, if they would just retire the character and not let her out for the rest of the story I'd be happy"

This should be common sense at this point. This means your personal opinions on the character itself are yours and this won't change. But do note that while these comments are of course not subjected to moderation, there will be people who will disagree with you and provide their reasoning so it's always good to let it be and let live, and communicate without resorting to immature attacks.

However, what we ARE going to remove are messages like this:

"I want the next patch to have some apocalyptic something to turn this Woke Stupid Shit Lamat into some monster so we can claw her heart out and step into pieces, good for me to do so because how dare this stupid piece of shit woman annoy me and sour my experience for Dawntrail"

"This is what we get for accommodating to DEI"
(※Stands for "Diversity, Equality and Inclusion" for those who don't know)

"Sena fucking sucks, don't voice a character if she wants to act a woman character but can't sound like one, get lost and don't get anymore roles in the future"

Please also note that this isn't limited to just Wuk Lamat and it'll apply to just about any character, even those that haven't appear yet in future patches or expansions.

We get that the character's writing can be a mixed bag and some may like it and some may not, and that's completely okay. But since this is starting to get out of control with how some here were being extremely weird and toxic, we believe some form of control is needed before it gets worse.

Lastly, this is request coming from me as well: If you are reading this, please be mindful and relay your message in a way that does not wedge towards the extreme end. Voicing likes or dislikes are fine because most of us don't see things eye to eye for most of the time, and we're not going to remove your right to voice out just because disagreements happen. But please, don't be weird about it. Especially no personal attacks on the voice actress, this has been extremely prevalent in past weeks and if you aren't aware already, we practice zero tolerance towards messages containing transphobic, racist, and sexist tones. Any messages containing such nature will cause the mod team to take action immediately, and we do not take this lightly.

We hope you are taking this to heart and start behaving. If you have read up to this point, thank you for your attention.

No one in that subreddit has said anything about the voice actress being trans but because majority loathe the character, even Japan that mod just had to make it political 

# EDIT

We see some messages mentioning they're being accused by people for being a bigot or transphobic or names just because they criticize the character.

Of course, just because you dislike Wuk Lamat does not make you transphobic. So as long as your personal opinion does not involve anything that contains transphobic, racist or sexist in tone, their accusations will **also be dealt the same way** and will be removed (if the accuser's record is terrible enough, they will be punished). If we shut down one extreme, it makes sense to also shut down the other as well. Please report those message to us if you encounter one, and we will look into it for sure.

Thank you.

[Cauliflower Of Love]

By leveraging advanced AI tools, Lumi enhances the creative process, allowing creators to focus on bringing their stories to life, while the platform handles all of the logistics.

What the fuck does this even mean?

Is it like a project management tool?

[HaughtyFrank]

>Square makes muscular female character 
>Hires trans voice actress

What did they mean by this

[porkbun]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/romhacking-net-is-shutting-down-transitioning-to-read-only-files-handed-over-to-internet-archive.942765/

Uh, b-dubs? Why are you allowing the promotion of pirating? 

Probably the reasoning is RomHacking didn't actually host any ROM files, they just had patches.

Not gonna bother to read the thread, but I'll be bold and say they're not gonna bring up that the site is being shut down because of infighting between different "communities" of severely autistic ClickyCals.

[EaldNarche]

RIP, I've used romhacking.net since I was like 10. Nothing is sacred to these people of gender... 

 Is there any chance some normal people will show up and salvage it? New ownership maybe?

[Uncle]

>Square makes muscular female character 
>Hires trans voice actress

What did they mean by this

>character who isn't human, is blatantly non-human just by looking at it

[Uncle]

RIP, I've used romhacking.net since I was like 10. Nothing is sacred to these people of gender... 

 Is there any chance some normal people will show up and salvage it? New ownership maybe?

no, because if you read the owner's last message, they say that a "normal" "friendly" community group DID step up to take ownership, and it turned out they were evil hateful people or something, so now you can't trust any altruistic soul who tries to come forward

I don't know the internal politics at romhacking, two possibilities:

- the owner is apolitical and just wants to hack old video games, and transos have long hated him for it and some of his bigoted transphobic comments in the past, and wanted to present their new ownership as a win over a hateful tyrant

- the owner is trans-positive and on the right side of history uwu, and the people stepping up were chuds who just wanted the site to be about rom hacking and not gender shit, and wanted to dunk on him

his message reads like the latter

[CHOW CHOW]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13701709/olympics-lin-yu-ting-sitora-turdibekova-gender-imane-khelife.html



https://www.instagram.com/boxing_ting/

I'm confuised, is this the same person? Because he's a guy on instagram

Yet the wikipedia has a different person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Yu-ting

However, the dailymail article with photos of the fight seems to be the person from the Instagram


EDIT: Ok so there's a pic in his instagram that says he competes in the female category so it's the right person. Wtf? Look at the pics, it's just a guy.

[Daffy Duck]

 when I saw nepnep profile pic I had to double take.

Top of the page jump scare.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one, the Queen Bee one got me real good

https://www.resetera.com/threads/romhacking-net-is-shutting-down-transitioning-to-read-only-files-handed-over-to-internet-archive.942765/
Uh, b-dubs? Why are you allowing the promotion of pirating? 

oh fug that's a damn shame. sure it was a trоon infested shithole but it was a great repository for hacks. Sad that everything will probably be scattered all over private shitty pisscords from now on.

Spoiler: schizophrenia (click to show)(click to hide)

And from the little i've read, it looks like yet another case of power hungry discord trаnnys infiltrating a community and rotting it from the inside, just like with a lot of open source projects

What’s the story morning glory?

[DavidCroquet]

RIP, I've used romhacking.net since I was like 10. Nothing is sacred to these people of gender... 

 Is there any chance some normal people will show up and salvage it? New ownership maybe?

no, because if you read the owner's last message, they say that a "normal" "friendly" community group DID step up to take ownership, and it turned out they were evil hateful people or something, so now you can't trust any altruistic soul who tries to come forward

I don't know the internal politics at romhacking, two possibilities:

- the owner is apolitical and just wants to hack old video games, and transos have long hated him for it and some of his bigoted transphobic comments in the past, and wanted to present their new ownership as a win over a hateful tyrant

- the owner is trans-positive and on the right side of history uwu, and the people stepping up were chuds who just wanted the site to be about rom hacking and not gender shit, and wanted to dunk on him

his message reads like the latter

I did some minor research and I didn't see much trans-politics in the drama at all. 

Just the usual niche internet fiefdom despot vs. users/demi-admins conflict that ends in a loss for everyone. 

Maybe everyone involved is trans, I have no idea! But IMO this tale is as old as a 300 baud modem. The genders may change, but the story is always the same.

Some vague clarifications here: https://cohost.org/gideonzhi/post/7131478-rip-rhdn

[killamajig]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13701709/olympics-lin-yu-ting-sitora-turdibekova-gender-imane-khelife.html



https://www.instagram.com/boxing_ting/

I'm confuised, is this the same person? Because he's a guy on instagram

Yet the wikipedia has a different person:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_Yu-ting

However, the dailymail article with photos of the fight seems to be the person from the Instagram


EDIT: Ok so there's a pic in his instagram that says he competes in the female category so it's the right person. Wtf? Look at the pics, it's just a guy.

Since I was the one spouting off the most about this, I've been trying to do some more research. Like someone said here, I think it's a case of them being intersexed. XY chromosome but with underdeveloped testicles that haven't dropped. 

As far as the Algerian boxer they've been showing pictures of them as a child and they look like a girl. But those pictures are before puberty. My issue is they're going through puberty with elevated levels of testosterone. Probably not as much as a regular male but still way over someone who is XX chromosome In my eyes that makes it unfair when somebody goes through puberty with elevated levels of testosterone. It's like competing with somebody who's been on performance enhancing drugs but then goes off them for a while so they test clean. You see that shit in the UFC all the time. Fighters retire so they're not in the testing pool anymore and then magically unretire after they've gotten clean and super jacked.

My issue is fairness. I would have issues too if somebody failed a gender test but then was declared female by a different organization based solely on what their passport says. And that's exactly what the Olympics IOC said. After the controversy they stated they only go by what's on your passport to determine gender.. They're still presumably testing for performance enhancing drugs and elevated levels of testosterone. These two fighters very well could be coming in under the regulated amount, but they probably are on estrogen to bring it down. 

This issue is only going to get worse and the fact that there's no clear definition of woman or what the criteria is and the fact that medical records are usually confidential. We just have to accept the word of whoever.

If this was about getting on a woman's E-Sport Team I wouldn't care but in combat sports it's about physically beating up your opponent.

[Snoopy]

As usual a man has to teach a woman how to do her job properly

[Cheststrongwell]

If they are really intersexed, I just feel bad for these two. I'm sure they had rough childhoods and all this political football nonsense probably doesn't help.

[killamajig]

Reee, see's Asians competing in sport shooting. "Now I love guns. It's just like my anime!!!" Their Olympic thread is full of Asian fetishizing. 

Now they're showing all the fan art of the Turkish shooter. The Turkish guy is just using a standard stance while the other Olympians use all the gadgets and the weird contortions. I hate to break it too Reee but that's a normal one-handed stance. He learned how to shoot in the military and that's what he's comfortable with. No need to learn some wacky shooting stance.

And just because it looks like your anime shit, it has no correlation. What a bunch of fucking weebs.

[killamajig]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126636192

plagiarize
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that she's intersex given what we know. Trying to have a sane conversation with transphobes about how it's completely possible to be an intersex cis woman is not something that's even worth bothering with though. Also having a conversation about how there's no good evidence that chromosomes play anything other than a negligible part in the face of hormones would be a waste of time too.

But regardless, she hasn't been through a male puberty, which was supposedly the big concern...

It's all bigotry hiding behind 'common sense' that is rarely anything approaching *sense*.

Bold claim from a IT guy.

Are there any good UK trans charities to donate to? Aside from Mermaids as I've already donated to them fairly recently.

Given it was payday yesterday I have money to spend.

People's gofundme pages.

Yes, give the money directly to drug addicts

[Cauliflower Of Love]

They should get Turdibekova and Carini in the ring together.

Sponsored by Kleenex.

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126636192

plagiarize
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that she's intersex given what we know. Trying to have a sane conversation with transphobes about how it's completely possible to be an intersex cis woman is not something that's even worth bothering with though. Also having a conversation about how there's no good evidence that chromosomes play anything other than a negligible part in the face of hormones would be a waste of time too.

But regardless, she hasn't been through a male puberty, which was supposedly the big concern...

It's all bigotry hiding behind 'common sense' that is rarely anything approaching *sense*.

Bold claim from a IT guy.

Honestly I'm surprised they're cool with him saying that she's intersex. Some people just yelled at Jesse Signal for doing that on Twitter.

Also don't chromosomes obviously dictate the hormones? Weird logic here.

[Uncle]

RIP, I've used romhacking.net since I was like 10. Nothing is sacred to these people of gender... 

 Is there any chance some normal people will show up and salvage it? New ownership maybe?

no, because if you read the owner's last message, they say that a "normal" "friendly" community group DID step up to take ownership, and it turned out they were evil hateful people or something, so now you can't trust any altruistic soul who tries to come forward

I don't know the internal politics at romhacking, two possibilities:

- the owner is apolitical and just wants to hack old video games, and transos have long hated him for it and some of his bigoted transphobic comments in the past, and wanted to present their new ownership as a win over a hateful tyrant

- the owner is trans-positive and on the right side of history uwu, and the people stepping up were chuds who just wanted the site to be about rom hacking and not gender shit, and wanted to dunk on him

his message reads like the latter

I did some minor research and I didn't see much trans-politics in the drama at all. 

Just the usual niche internet fiefdom despot vs. users/demi-admins conflict that ends in a loss for everyone. 

Maybe everyone involved is trans, I have no idea! But IMO this tale is as old as a 300 baud modem. The genders may change, but the story is always the same.

Some vague clarifications here: https://cohost.org/gideonzhi/post/7131478-rip-rhdn

ohhh thanks, that explains a lot, the solo auteur exercising complete control over "his baby" not wanting to give an inch

[Eric Cartman]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/romhacking-net-is-shutting-down-transitioning-to-read-only-files-handed-over-to-internet-archive.942765/

Uh, b-dubs? Why are you allowing the promotion of pirating? 

Dang! I was just using them yesterday. wtf. Sad day…

wow, stay safe

[Eric Cartman]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126636192

plagiarize
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that she's intersex given what we know. Trying to have a sane conversation with transphobes about how it's completely possible to be an intersex cis woman is not something that's even worth bothering with though. Also having a conversation about how there's no good evidence that chromosomes play anything other than a negligible part in the face of hormones would be a waste of time too.

But regardless, she hasn't been through a male puberty, which was supposedly the big concern...

It's all bigotry hiding behind 'common sense' that is rarely anything approaching *sense*.

Bold claim from a IT guy.

Honestly I'm surprised they're cool with him saying that she's intersex. Some people just yelled at Jesse Signal for doing that on Twitter.

Also don't chromosomes obviously dictate the hormones? Weird logic here.

When they say 'good' science, they mean 'science that ideologically aligns with their own world view', not 'good' as in 'rigorously peer reviewed using the scientific method'

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126636192

plagiarize
I think it's pretty fair to conclude that she's intersex given what we know. Trying to have a sane conversation with transphobes about how it's completely possible to be an intersex cis woman is not something that's even worth bothering with though. Also having a conversation about how there's no good evidence that chromosomes play anything other than a negligible part in the face of hormones would be a waste of time too.

But regardless, she hasn't been through a male puberty, which was supposedly the big concern...

It's all bigotry hiding behind 'common sense' that is rarely anything approaching *sense*.

Bold claim from a IT guy.

Honestly I'm surprised they're cool with him saying that she's intersex. Some people just yelled at Jesse Signal for doing that on Twitter.

Also don't chromosomes obviously dictate the hormones? Weird logic here.

He's been pushing this clearly false stuff about hormones for a while now, it was the first thing he started claiming right before he "discovered" he was a woman.

It's also literally false in another way, no if she is infact female she did not go through "male" puberty but a XY DSD with known elevated testosterone levels (until suppression to compete) would have a lifetime of increased testosterone in her development. Switching it off at 18 or whenever wouldn't change any of that. (I am saying this in response to what plagiarze claimed, not regarding capability to compete as a woman.)

Trans sources are literally bullshit peddlers about hormones. They claim men don't produce estrogen. They claim hormones only start at puberty when they start in the womb. They claim they're some kind of sex essences that unlock your gender brain. They ignore they're biological factors they're claiming determine everything while also claiming sex is not biological. They claim beyond false things like how they make you physically weaker instantly. (Except also there's no difference between men and women when it comes to any of this.) On and on. They don't care, they're narcissists and that's all that matters to them. They're terrible people and it's everyone else's fault if you don't find that praiseworthy.

Some vague clarifications here: https://cohost.org/gideonzhi/post/7131478-rip-rhdn

ohhh thanks, that explains a lot, the solo auteur exercising complete control over "his baby" not wanting to give an inch

I've seen some mentions that this is not necessarily an entirely trustworthy source, some kind of community grifter/PlanetSmasher but I have no idea the truth about it.

[Eric Cartman]

Damn. Weren't they doing a big Dragon Age coverage thingie?

Still, I'm surprised they lasted this long. Same goes for all other big gaming outlets. They just can't compete with YouTubers/Streamers.

I mean... sure, but that's their own fucking fault pushing their own agendas and acting like their target audience is actually their enemy to fight, or their subjects to chastise, not because youtubers magically gained superior writing abilities, access to insider knowledge or constant access to promotional freebies from publishers.

[Alpacx]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126636192


Bold claim from a IT guy.

Honestly I'm surprised they're cool with him saying that she's intersex. Some people just yelled at Jesse Signal for doing that on Twitter.

Also don't chromosomes obviously dictate the hormones? Weird logic here.

When they say 'good' science, they mean 'science that ideologically aligns with their own world view', not 'good' as in 'rigorously peer reviewed using the scientific method'

This.

Thought about the shifting goal posts today by the trans activists. Usually the trans argument with DSDs (using the outdated "intersex" label) is "trans women are valid because sex is a spectrum: look at the Intersex people who exist."

Now that an Intersex person is at the center of a controversy again the Trans Activists are going. "What a monster JK Rowling is, going after a Cis woman(the DSD boxer )who doesn't perform feminity the way society wants. TERF bigot."

"Intersex" is a part of a spectrum but now because they need it not to be to win this argument Intersex is now Cis

[HaughtyFrank]

The absolute half-assery of the BBC article insulting called "What do we know" and then constantly using the term "Identify as" when they mean "Is Literally".

https://www.resetera.com/threads/j-k-rowling-and-her-legacy-of-hate-the-uk-gender-critical-movement.643740/post-126641751

I like how they're mad at the use of "identify as" when they themselves declared "is" and "identify as" to be interchangeable

[Boredfrom]

I said this before, but Hololive feels at times like Giant Bomb but with normie (mostly) women with an anime avatars. The only game journo that I still regularly follow is Jeff Gerstmann, because even the most respected ones have an attitude of taking stuff for granted

Don’t get me wrong, YouTubers also have the risk of repeating the same mistakes because there is not expectations of professionalism to begin with. But what people want is personalities that seem genuine rather than some dudes lecturing us about politics of either side of the spectrum or clickbaiters raging about the last controversy.

[Daffy Duck]

LMFAO….this fucking killed me

[DavidCroquet]

I've seen some mentions that this is not necessarily an entirely trustworthy source, some kind of community grifter/PlanetSmasher but I have no idea the truth about it.

You're testing my memory, but as a once hardcore gamer weeb ( ), I'm familiar with Gideon Zhi and Aeon Genesis for being one of the big RPG fan localizers. 

He might be full of shit and/or a grifter, but as far as I'm aware they have been quietly poking away at rom translations for a decade+ at this point.

[Eric Cartman]

https://web.archive.org/web/20201201161742/http://romhackers.net/index.php/2020/01/27/harrassment-in-the-rom-hacking-community/

[killamajig]

After this uneccessary apology was released, Kurt of Hardcore Gaming 101 had this to say at ResetERA, a forum know for curating harrassment campaigns against game developers. Kind of like some horrible politically reverse 4chan.

People say video games are art just like film. If that's the case then we should treat them the same. I don't know if we want to go back and take out all the insensitive stuff in films, so I don't know why you do that to video games too.

I'm not against having the option though. Or even a disclaimer like they do with some controversial older films and cartoons.

[Nintex]

"This is what we get for accommodating to DEI"
(※Stands for "Diversity, Equality and Inclusion" for those who don't know)