D&D 5E Mearls' "Firing" tweet

billd91 · Jun 27, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
It has been used for 700 years, but that doesn't make it grammatically correct. ..

That all said, it's changed in how it's been used (as language is wont to do), ...

Yeah, languages change. Hence, it's grammatically correct.

And for the citation-minded ParanoydStyle in Comedy of Errors, Act IV, Scene 3:

ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE
There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend,

The antecedent of the bolded their is singular "man".

Dausuul · Jun 27, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
It has been used for 700 years, but that doesn't make it grammatically correct. I recall my English professor who would go nuts at using a plural pronoun for a singular antecedent.

Who gets to say it isn't "grammatically correct?" Most of the Rules of Grammatical Correctness were arbitrary pronouncements by 19th-century grammarians who suffered from severe Latin envy and hated the fact that their native language was descended from the uncouth speech of Saxon peasants.

If something has been used for 700 years, and great writers and orators were among those using it, that's a pretty compelling case for it being grammatically correct as far as I'm concerned.

Parmandur · Jun 27, 2019

ParanoydStyle said:
I wish you could both laugh at something and give XP to it, but, having picked XP because XP IS LIFE, I want you to know I laughed.
[MENTION=44640]bill[/MENTION]d: if you just unironically said that "they" being a plural pronoun is "JUST" a "political weapon", as opposed to how the English language works... wow. I'm sorry but...I have no words for that, just laughter and/or tears. Not everything is political.

"they has been used to refer to singular entities for centuries. It even appears in Shakespeare."

Citations please, Citations! Shakespearian AND otherwise.

Resistance to singular they is recent fad, singular they is natural to English: https://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/austheir.html

Azzy · Jun 27, 2019

Sacrosanct said:
It has been used for 700 years, but that doesn't make it grammatically correct.

Actually... The way that language is used in everyday affairs is what is correct. Grammarians have to play catch up to actual usage... Silly notions of what they once concidered proper be damned. If language wasn't constantly evolving, we'd still be speaking whatever pre-Proto-European language that all languages (presumably) evolved from.

Gradine · Jun 27, 2019

ParanoydStyle said:
I wish you could both laugh at something and give XP to it, but, having picked XP because XP IS LIFE, I want you to know I laughed.
@billd: if you just unironically said that "they" being a plural pronoun is "JUST" a "political weapon", as opposed to how the English language works... wow. I'm sorry but...I have no words for that, just laughter and/or tears. Not everything is political.

1) I appreciate your willingness to accept and use a person's pronouns despite your personal misgivings. Seriously. That's a pretty big step up from a lot of human beings who would refuse out of some principle (either entirely misplaced or deliberately harmful), including on this very board. As someone who uses they/them pronouns, I do want to say thank you.
2) That said, yeah, literally everyone else has covered this, but the singular use of "they" always was and has always been "correct", in plain language if in nothing else. And not just for an individual whose gender is either undetermined or deliberately non-binary; one of the quoted examples here shows Shakespeare using it immediately following the use of singular "man". It's just a thing that always happened.
3) Hate to break this to you, but yeah, grammar is inherently political, if nothing else in the sense that grammar is literally a politic of linguistic use. The fact that self-appointed experts codified rules of "proper" grammar and then elevated that above the "common" use of language was a deliberate advancement of elitism. Even today "proper" grammar is used as a bludgeon against populations whose cultures maintain distinct dialects (most often AAVE or "ebonics" as it is commonly referred to).
3b) Calling this "political", by the way, is not to imply that it has a bias in regards to the left/right dynamics of our current day politics (and parties). Beyond racial minorities and trans/non-binary folx, those most targeted with the use of grammar as a political weapon are "uneducated" white southerners who have their own peculiar dialects (and which AAVE is, ironically, generally regarded to have originated from).

Gradine · Jun 27, 2019

ParanoydStyle said:
I wasn't as offended by this as I was afraid I would be. (I'm sure as hell no MRA, but I no longer support Posthuman Games because of their public statement many years ago firing fans who disagreed with them, but I somehow missed this.....BY 78 PAGES? JEEBUS ABOVE.)

This though honestly just feels like a momentary, spontaneous burst of genuine frustration, delivered off the cuff, not a deliberate crafted policy statement, and that makes a really big difference. I don't get the impression that he is actually making the declaration that D&D is so tolerant and inclusive and diverse that everyone who disagrees with him about anything can piss off forever. I did get that impression from the Posthuman's statement years ago.

For what it's worth, gatekeeping is bad (when it's based on someone's demographics: in general, if you're gatekeeping everyone equally, and the level of gatekeeping is not OBNOXIOUS, it's actually logical and socially normal, at least that's my hot take).

Gatekeeping women is especially bad because goddamnit I am so tired of this hobby being a sausage fest, you guys, but all other quote unquote minorities (I read somewhere that women are not, in fact, a minority?) should be welcome in D&D space as well. I'm going to have my first non-binary player (that I know of) soon, I think. Their pronouns are "they/them" which drives the grammarian in me ing CRAZY because those words are meant to refer to PLURAL entities, not SINGULAR entities but respecting people's pronouns is a thing so...am I 100% comfortable with this? Heck no. I'm still not entirely sure what non-binary even MEANS exactly after having done some cursory ignorance-rinsing research (thanks Bill Nye!). But it really doesn't matter if someone is a trans-asian weregoat if they can roleplay, are fun to play D&D with, and aren't a jerkass. Different strokes, folks, etcetera. I don't like actually think there's any need to keep stating this? but I didn't want to be misunderstood.

Also, I want to clear up some other misconceptions here maybe?

1) The thing that most people are upset with Mearls about here isn't the "firing gatekeepers" thing. Rather, people were upset by the fact that when noted vile garbage person Zak Smith was brought on to ~~consult~~ ~~playtest~~ consult for D&D 5e Mearls repeatedly stood up for and defended Zak. Then insulted the people who claimed to have been hurt personally by Zak as "attention seekers". Mearls then proceeded to clear things up with Zak first, primarily by name-dropping several of his critics directly to Zak, a man who, it bears repeating because this was common knowledge even back then (with much worse stuff only coming to light later) with a history of leading harassment campaigns against his detractors. In other words, Mike Mearls did a series of bad things, some of which may or may not have been defensible given what information he was privy to at the time and some of which almost certainly are not.
2) WotC responded to (much later) revelations that Zak S was a rapist and abuser along with being an obnoxious internet bully and made a weaksauce statement insisting that Zak was only a ~~consultantplaytesterconsultant~~playtester and that his special thanks in 5e PHB credits would be removed in future prints, and people were upset because they didn't think it was enough. Mearls never apologized for his crappy behavior or even just admitted that he was wrong to defend Zak in the first place (which is almost certainly because of stupid lawyer BS and not due to Mearls being a genuinely bad person) and WotC basically swept him under the rug for half a year while refusing to engage directly with anyone calling for more serious consequences for Mearls.
3) Mearls has been more or less back in the spotlight recently due primarily to his involvement in Baldur's Gate III, and that combined with WotC rainbow-washing their logo as a show of support for Pride (which, whatever) caused a handful of people to bang the anti-Mearls drum for a third time (because we'd be remiss to not acknowledge that there were plenty of people calling out Mearls' behavior as it was happening as well; also many of Zak's victims themselves were LGBTQ+, hence why they were reacting to the rainbow ampersand tweet.). It's pretty clear that Mearls faced some consequences from WotC (even if it was just sidelining him as the face of D&D for like... half a year or so) and nobody's going to actually confuse D&D 5e with being non-inclusive in intention (if not sometimes staggeringly inept in execution) that's probably the last we'll hear about it. Which is, again, whatever.
4) As an aside, this is the first time I've heard of Posthuman Games and their stance, but I'm always down to support smaller ethical companies, so I'll definitely be giving Eclipse Phase a look. So, thanks for (backhanded) recommendation!

doctorbadwolf · Jun 27, 2019

Dausuul said:
Who would have thought that a system specifically designed to encourage people to speak without thinking, that blocks you from expressing anything complex or nuanced enough to require more than 280 characters, and that gets essentially zero moderation would turn out badly?

You know you can thread multiple tweets together, right?

Dausuul · Jun 27, 2019

Gradine said:
Then forwarded privately sent messages warning Mearls about Zak directly to Zak, a man who, it bears repeating because this was common knowledge even back then (with much worse stuff only coming to light later) with a history of leading harassment campaigns against his detractors.

That is quite an accusation. Is there evidence for it?