My funniest one --- Players fought a team of villains who had a female mentalist as a member. Later, I forgot about that and rolled the team out again with the same mentalist as a male. The group said "wait a minute -- last time that was a woman!" I disagreed and told them they were mistaken, which they completely proved me wrong with their notes. After that, anytime I threw a mentalist at them, it came up --- are you SURE this is a man/woman?
I once ended a session by having the PCs find a letter that contained vital information. They had spent the whole session looking for it, felt good they had found it, and one Player transcribed the letter as they were certain it had more clues than were obvious.
The next session they formed a plan to act on their new information & I had a NPC interject to remind them of an important thing they were overlooking (I didn't want to waste a session with them going down a blind alley). They insisted that *wasn't* info that they had. I insisted it was in the letter they had just worked so hard to get. The players all looked at me in silence & the one who had transcribed that letter held up her notebook page & proved that info *wasn't* among the info they had gotten from the letter last session.
Knowing I had screwed up & left out a vital point, I (rather lamely) had the NPC declare there was "a hidden fold" in the letter that contained the information.
The Players all laughed for about 10 min at my weak save & from that point on if I ever tacked something on to an ongoing info dump someone would mention that "there must have been a fold".
This has been a running joke now for 25 years. I married one of them. The woman with the notebook was our Maid of Honor. In the years since I've gotten christmas cards that say "Merry Christmas! and a >obvious fold in the card< "Happy New Year". I texted my wife 4 things to pick up at the store a couple weeks ago, then remembered something else 10 min later & got a text back "was there a fold?"
My funniest one --- Players fought a team of villains who had a female mentalist as a member. Later, I forgot about that and rolled the team out again with the same mentalist as a male. The group said "wait a minute -- last time that was a woman!" I disagreed and told them they were mistaken, which they completely proved me wrong with their notes. After that, anytime I threw a mentalist at them, it came up --- are you SURE this is a man/woman?
It does when you realize that being PC is not the domain of a specific group. In my day we didn't have the term. You just had groups that tried to suppress anything not in line with their own beliefs. Be it Discrimination, you are different and therefore not allowed to have the same freedoms as "correctly minded" people. Or Bigotry, You don't agree with me therefore I refuse to listen or talk to you. We didn't call it political correctness, but it was alive and well. Trek ignored these conventions by setting up great stories and then injecting items that were decidedly not in line with "correct mindedness". The Vietnam protests were a less elegant, though just as important to how America evolved. They were all driving forces in reinforcing the fundamental right of free expression guaranteed in the US's governing documents. When I was growing up, even distasteful or even hateful groups had a right to free expression.
You cannot guarantee a citizen a right and then pick and choose who exercises that right based on whether you personally agree with it. So while they may be idiots and mentally unstable, a member of the Nazi Party can indeed have a rally or protest. Is their outlook and vision repugnant and against any sane persons views? In my opinion yes. But do they have the right to gather and express those views? Absolutely. If you don't want to be exposed to them, don't go. On the other hand, you cannot actually understand their true positions and platform until you have actually listened to a speech. Not read an article or view a clip composed/edited by someone else to tell you what they think you should know about them. But actually see, contemplate and form your own first hand evaluation. That is what colleges used to be. Areas allowing free thought, even of things that were frowned upon, so that people could form their opinions first hand.
Sometime in the 80's/90's(??) the idea of free expression became dangerous to those same institutions. Because free speech and thought is well, free speech and thought. They suddenly began suppressing dissent by labeling anything that didn't fall into a narrow view not as "wrong" or "forbidden", but as "mean" or "ill mannered". Over time it has evolved as anything not rigidly in line is "offensive" and any action that does not prominently support that rigid narrow view (regardless of actual reason) is a "micro-aggression". Anyone who requests the underlying reasoning or information supporting a position is a "hater", "bigot" or when all else fails a "racist". Instead of reasoned dialog and using discussion to promote a view, the modern methods is to lambast and drive out anyone with a different view and bunker down in closed "safe-spaces" hiding from any form of unapproved information.
Just before the election I was radio hopping, looking for a station that did not have end of the world ranting on it. From everyone, Left, Right, Middle. Everyone. So I found a station where they were talking about restaurants. Not wages or other politically charged topics, but general types. Chain, Top End, Hole-in-the-Wall, etc. They had not even brought up type as in ethnic origin at all. So the male radio host said ask about what the female host thought about Hole-in-the-Wall restaurants and mentioned that it seemed to him that many people tended to think, right or wrong, that they were less clean that others. Now here is the main catch, the female host immediately snapped out that he couldn't say that because it was a racist statement. That!? I didn't realize that Hole-in-the-Wall was a race of humans.
The key point I am making is that our so called centers of education have so isolated themselves in a protected bubble that echoes with only their personal ideas and completely insulates them from, well anything, to the point that they not longer even understand what it is they are supposed to be against.
Bigot is now synonymous with Racist.
Racist means anyone that does not agree with you.
Instead of listening to someones statement and then saying I disagree and moving on as informed.
They ban anything that might possibly disagree with preconceptions based on someone else's opinion formed equally without information because they also never took the time to listen.
That is what we now call Politically Correct.
It is not exclusive to the left and what ever agenda a group may have. All spectrum's have their own defined PC listing.
The sad thing is that most of the small groups have become the rabid hate groups that they are supposedly fighting. Star Trek never bashed a group or idea. They never spewed hatred.
They always told a great yarn and then casually slide in a "this is OK too" in such a manner as to provoke thought while at the same time not screaming "you all suck" to anyone that did not agree.
Trek was great.
Take Discovery.
There is going to be a gay character. So? what is the difference between a gay football team and a not gay football team as far as playing the sport? Nothing. In fact "gay" is irrelevant to football.
What will the character be? An Engineer? OK cool. Gay is not a factor in engineering. There is no need for trumpets and fanfare. Trek is about exploration and discovery. Treat the side story personal relationship stuff just like they do for the non-gay characters. Casual side comments and "its no big deal" this is just normal.
The main character is going to be a woman? So? This is not even worth a mention. Sci-Fi/Fantasy across all media has been having strong leading female roles for decades. Half of my favorite shows on TV to include Crime Procedurals and Drama's have female leads. This is just a non-event.
What is bad about Discovery is the giddy joy that it can now have soft porn and gritty violence. I love Game of Thrones, but full frontal nudity, soft porn and gory blood splatter scenes fit that story.
Star Trek implied off screen romance and centered the stories on exploration and discovery. Note I said romance, not sex. While they can be the same, romance implies a less gutter version.
The problem is that we have so many people (under 30) that no longer even know what they are so violently against. They pop out catch phrases and memes without any real understanding of what they are even saying. Ask for someone to define the word "bigot". Generally speaking, though not always, they will pop out "a person that is racist". They definitely won't say "a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions". And they will not get the humor of pointing them at a mirror.
I once had one of my mentors tell me something that stuck. He asked me how I would know when I had reached the point of being accepted as equal among my peers? His answer surprised me and then I realized it was true. You are equal when what you do is not longer remarked upon, when you are effectively ignored unless interaction is needed. While I was in training, success was denoted by praise, failure by admonishment. Once I was fully qualified and actually competent, success was expected and and not considered special.
Many groups simply do not know how to handle the fact they have succeeded.
Equality in America means that if you don't work hard you will fail and no one outside your immediate family will really care.
Success means working 50-80+ hours weeks for years until you achieve that success.
Are there people that get a hand up because their parents were successful? Sure. But that is true in the US across the spectrum origin.
Our biggest issue is that the people that are most vocal in dissent, I don't call it actual protesting because a real protestor has a specific goal and an idea of how to achieve it. They are just demanding and wanting some undefined vague "other person" to pay for it.
You want universal free healthcare? Cool. But you cannot use any of the existing structure. You need to redefine how things are paid for. Yes paid for. Since it is free, you will need to establish a tax to pay for it. Since it is mandated and free, you have to eliminate the very lucrative lawsuit machine. To ensure quality of care is evenly available you need to eliminate monetary issues, establish a civil service/military style pay grade system. All surgeons with 15 years experience get 50K a year plus a locality adjustment to compensate for local housing costs, etc. The operation goes bad? No you cannot sue for compensation. An inquest will determine if it was negligence or criminal and the offender (if there is a guilty one) will be punished. But you will not get $, you will get free medical because it is free.
So far all the Treks have been great. I may not have personally liked a series because of story line or theme. Both Voyager and Enterprise sucked because IMO time travel in Trek is the admission from the show runners that they have run out of ideas and are punting. But all the shows did the exploration and discovery of wide and varied themes very well.
The new movies have nailed the cast but for some reason don't seem to have any idea of what Trek is. Explosions and destroying the Enterprise in each movie is not it.
Adding soft porn and violence is not a formulae needed in a Trek show. And neither is casting according to a PC checklist. Instead just cast the part to fill the role needed without fanfare.
Fry Daddy got a reaction from drunkonduty in GM Goof-ups
Fry Daddy reacted to Jhamin in GM Goof-ups
Fry Daddy got a reaction from Duke Bushido in GM Goof-ups
Fry Daddy got a reaction from Hugh Neilson in Congratulations Darren Watts!!
Fry Daddy got a reaction from Pariah in What Are You Listening To Right Now?
