oh, yeah, I’ve heard this one! things from abdn in general are already covered. ty anyway!
https://www.graffiti.org/kingofkowloon/index.html
Not really a cool article but a cool person about whom many ok articles have been written
The scope is a bit confusing in this; my understanding is a dozen doing live roleplaying sessions and another hundred lightly interacting? And it sounds like there were very likely arguments about authorial control in a fan-domain; without owners of the magic circle these things are frustrating and contentious and enervating.
But the speculating and infighting dynamics are very familiar to me as a Vampire: The Masquerade veteran. Playing as amoral sociopaths obsessed with politicking creates games of backbiting and politicking. Plotlines dangled by gamemasters were ignored as we continued…arguing with each other, all twenty of us, for summers on end.
A supposedly fun thing I’ll never do again!
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The game masters should have pulled a Shin Godzilla and destroyed the bureaucracy
love this handsome man too much
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maybe eat before reading this, because I did not eat before reading this and my brain stopped me a couple times to ask if this was a real story I was reading or if my existence is a simulation, as evidenced by this text dynamically generating as I read it
article is about the small controversy around a mobile-game company that included a famous communist writer / activist from the 20s as a playable character (in pretty anime boy form, no less) and the denunciation of people online accusing certain newspapers of using his figure to “bring politics into the game”. what an aggressively stereotypical story lol
(on a different note i really recommend kobayashi’s short book ‘the crab-cannery ship’, it’s really good)
Everything I’ve heard from people living in Japan is that they hate talking about politics and discourse is nearly nonexistent there (compared to the rather poor state of US civic dialogue). An aggressive case of disempowered citizenry through static rule.
It seems that Newspaper Akahata tried to make contact with DMM [game’s publisher] in order to gain permission to publish an original illustration and seek comment regarding the influence of their adaptation of Takiji Kobayashi. But as a result of DMM’s rejection, the article took a slightly bizarre form: hiding the name of the game (though being journalism, I don’t see why simply using a proper name is a problem) and only using a secondary illustration.
god Japan’s copyright enforcement is stupid
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Shit, I did not know bout these. Would have loved that, when I lived in SF.
i’ve heard stuff like this too.
i’m neither a resident or a particularly close watcher but over the past year or so i have the impression there has been some interesting things stirring up; from the response against amending the constitution’s article #9, olympics protests, continued presence of zengakuren-like groups of college students in certain regions and the corruption charges against abe. not to mention the most recent things about lgbt discrimination and university faculty straight up denying entrance to women by manipulating scores or something??
nothing even close to being able to wrestle political power of course, but still
yeah
i read a couple of paragraphs of this and was like “nope there’s absolutely no way i can read this sorta thing right now”
;-(
It’s heavy yes. I started reading somethings on Buddhism midway, to find some consolation.
Ah, my absolute future