They are great! It’s the Universe that got small!
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I’ve never thought of that, but upon reflection, it’s obvious. I’ve had extensive dealings with both the healthcare marketplace and the IRS, and in both cases it’s very much a matter of who happens to answer the phone. Enforcement is random, so hang up and dial again. When Mike Pense gets his Trump powers, I expect your insight will prove true.
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Well I never. I’ve been meaning to write a little book about how to procure and run a small offset press. They were basically made obsolete by xerography and can be had for very cheap, and they can be very cheap to run. They are quite a bit more productive than this jello press. Mine little guy can do 10,000 impressions per hour!
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That neatly describes Soviet era censors under Stalin who were chosen much less for their expertise and knowledge and much more for their enthusiasm and loyalty.
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I thought pulping was the preferred way to dispose of an unwanted print run. Were they trying to make a point? Or is “pulping” actually just incineration more often than not?
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The kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1918458549/the-sassoon-files
The Sassoon Files will be a set of scenarios and campaign resources for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition and GUMSHOE role-playing games (RPGs) set in historical 1920s Shanghai; an international city of intrigue, espionage, style and violence.
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this RPG supplement is set in pre-communism China, which is (pun unintended) a huge red flag. A few years ago China outlawed an entire genre of TV fantasy --time-travel adventure – at the height ofnits popularity because it showed that China before communism wasn’t that bad.
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Shanghai Noir is also a red flag, because it may glorify gangsters, another big bugaboo in China.
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Depictions of ghosts and skeleton at any time run the gamut from obscene, to merely unlucky, to the sort of bad taste that a thirteen-year-old boy might find “edgy” and “mature”. It all comes down to how big a deal the current crop of censors feels about it. While Lovecraftian abominations don’t cleanly fot into this, maybe some artwork did get too close.
Overall, this sounds like it had a lot of elements that they should have been warned of. On the other hand, usually the Chinese take the money and just worry about cebsoring products that stay in the Chinese market.
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I think he’s got some stiff competition this year in the “greater evil” category.
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Gøø∂ i∂eå.
Posted using a butterfly.
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Yeah, organizations like censorship groups really rely on attracting ideologically-similarly-minded conservatives who will exercise their prejudices on the job, even when those prejudices go beyond what they’re expected to officially disapprove of. Being ‘overzealous’ is a plus, not a problem. Being inconsistent is a plus as well - if people don’t know what to expect, they’ll start self-censoring more broadly.
I can say from experience that it’s not just corpses (or even corpse-like qualities) that set off the censors. The game I worked on had Lovecraftian monsters and the censors’ response was often, basically: “This is weird and I don’t like it, so it’s forbidden.” (Though I also worked for a Chinese-owned game company that said, “Oh don’t worry about censors.” The parent company CEO had government connections and those kinds of relationships completely alter how something is treated by censors.)
But if the game is primarily about pre-communist China, that explains the response. The censors would have given a pass to the Lovecraftian content for an export, but not the China stuff. Everything together was too much for them to accept, even if it wasn’t being sold there.
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- CTHULHU IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL
- NYARLATHOTEP IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL
- TRUMP IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL
- JOE BIDEN IS THE ULTIMATE EVIL
0 voters
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Never underestimate an octopus dragon with an (unimaginable, mind warping, apocalyptic) purpose, but there’s some stiff competition for sure.
Russian composer Shostakovich was legendary for towing the party line and self-censoring… while also (as later firmly determined) for burying anti-Stalin, anti-regime sensibilities and mockery into many of his compositions. Some of his works, though, could not see the light of day while Stalin was still alive (and a couple not even for a great while after Stalin’s death). In his 14th symphony (1969) though, he finally delivered, for all to see, an explosive one-two punch to all tyrants (and to Stalin in particular) by having a bass singer (to angrily strident orchestral music) forcefully deliver sung text from Guillaume Apollinaire’s early 20th century poetic take on an historic 17th century event know as the “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks”. If this work had been performed while Stalin was still alive, Shostakovich would have been flayed alive. I can’t listen to the 14th anymore without thinking of Trump. Poets can deliver insults like nobody else. Here are some of the subject lyrics; they ain’t pretty:
Neighbor of Beelzebub
wallowing in vice
Fed on filth from childhood
I won’t celebrate your birthday
Rotten cancer, Salonika rubbish
Unspeakable nightmare
One eyed, putrid, noseless
Born amid your mother’s shit
Evil butcher of Padolia
Scab-ridden horse’s ass
Pig’s snout
May the drugs be found to cure your ills!
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“But her e-flails!” screamed the dead voice on the line.
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On the flip side, some people choose printers in China to avoid having to deal with homegrown printers that refuse work based on religious objections.
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Eldritch horrors are only horrors because they remind us of how insignificant we are, that we could be toyed with by them the same way we toy with ants. It’s the horror of being taken down several pegs, which to be honest is more horrifying to old-school WASPS and those convinced they are the pinnacle of creation than it is to others.
Which could explain why some self-important censor took umbrage at something that challenges his position in the universe.
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Sure, but let’s see his long form birth certificate first, mmmkay?
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Buddy, you do not want to see what it’s written on…
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Where’s the “All of the Above” option?
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Why did I forget to post this earlier? The parallel is obvious - RPGs are subversive!
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