Beamdog working on a new D&D CRPG (cancelled)

[Lilura]

Please, they have no fucking idea whatsoever how to fit transexualism into the Forgotten Realms.

It's irrelevant because you can just equip gender-bender girdle. Plus, Edwina. And this is just from BG/BG2.

But more to the point, Beamdog are a case of a company whose "services" are simply not needed or wanted. "Enhancing" games is such a bottom-feeder process that modders do it in their spare time, for free. And Beamdog haven't shown they can make a game on their own (interquel expansion doesn't count). Probably never will. After NWN:EE, just go to whatever else they can get. Rinse repeat.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss :

a pretense to indulge on crudest instincts such as greed, resentment, cruelty, vanity, etc

I do get that impression from, say, the dinosaur that is the YouTube comment system. Forums that are less prone to drive-by trolling and where people can easily continue conversations attract more balanced temperaments.

I don't know if there is a correlation, but youtube is dominated by males. Now, let me be more specific in my claims:

greed (quotas, special pronouns, safe places, speech control, empowerment, preferential treatment, climb the social ladder, obtain opportunist sex, etc., e.g., there are a lot of lesbian and soy-boys spreading misandric feminism in the hopes of getting inside women's pants.)

resentment (towards the west, capitalism, the rich, the men, whites, authority, etc.)

cruelty (towards anyone who has being accused of something, especially if it belongs in the targets of resentment)

vanity (in the belief that you are morally superior and virtuous because you are the protector of a opressed group (the poor, women, blacks, trans, and whatnot) as opposed to anyone who disagrees with you and is responsible for this oppression. That's the part that explains why the fight tooth and nail to maintain their beliefs, because it made them feel special. I have the suspicion that women tend to be more easily attracted to these beliefs because they have maternal instincts, etc.

 

[Theldaran]

The gender exchange girdle was played for laughs, as corresponding to the original timeframe of the game (1998-2000), when social justice wasn't a widespread thing, at least compared to now.

Edwina happened because

Spoiler

Nether Scroll.

Again played for laughs.

Compare with "white knighting transexuals" by Miss Scott, done in a blunt way.

Especially,

Spoiler

how Edwin is "punished" for his ambition into changing gender, and ridiculed by the rest of the team. Completely the opposite approach.

 

[Lilura]

It seems you missed the point: FR is high magic. You can do anything.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

It's irrelevant because you can just equip gender-bender girdle. Plus, Edwina. And this is just from BG/BG2.

I don't know if this is a good example. You are supposed to make fun of Edwin for becoming a woman with the spell. SJWs would protest against this. It is a joke to make you laugh at the moustache-twirling villain steryotype.

But more to the point, Beamdog are a case of a company whose "services" are simply not needed or wanted.

Not needed? By who? There is obviously demand, otherwise they would be closed by now. It has been seven years already, Christ! They keep paying their bills and violating IE games' corpse. You guys tend to project too much. The average cRPG player is dumb as doornail. I don't know when they will get tired of this, but it is not because they know that Beamdog's developers are incompetent.

 

[Theldaran]

It seems you missed the point: FR is high magic. You can do anything.

I'm talking about the different regards of transexualism between original BG and SoD, and how they've shifted through the years.

Of course, back in the 80s and the 90s you could run a campaign about how a distressed man wanted to grow tits, but I don't think many have done it. On the other hand, Scott actively pursues this kind of content in her RPG supplements.

Yes, your character changing gender wasn't unheard of, especially with wild magic, but it was used as a joke, even derogatory, not in a positive light or as the defence of a minority etc.

I'm aware of that note from Ed Greenwood where he said "of course, there's space for transexuals in D&D", but the reality is that this kind of content wasn't common in the past, and not in an inclusive way. Imagine how bad the whole shitfest was that even poor Greenwood had to wash his hands on the matter.

 

[Sentinel]

Hah! Is this really the thing everyone got so worked up about?

Well, that. And the generally poor writing.

Storm in a teacup. But really, it's just poor writing.

If "poor writing" is a euphemism for having sjw political views, as your images are indicative of, then yes.

It's not about SJW views. Although these are forced and shoehorned into dialogue in all 3 screenshots, in the first and second one the player has no choice in what to say. There are 5 options - all a variation of "how sexist, just because im a woman that doesnt mean im a wench! delete your lies and apologize!" in the case of the second screenshot, "you're transgender, wow, so admirable - i tip my hat to you my lady *nods respectfully*" in the first.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Hah! Is this really the thing everyone got so worked up about?

Well, that. And the generally poor writing.

Spoiler

Storm in a teacup. But really, it's just poor writing.

If "poor writing" is a euphemism for having sjw political views, as your images are indicative of, then yes.

It's not about SJW views. Although these are forced and shoehorned into dialogue in all 3 screenshots, in the first and second one the player has no choice in what to say. There are 5 options - all a variation of "how sexist, just because im a woman that doesnt mean im a wench! delete your lies and apologize!" in the case of the second screenshot, "you're transgender, wow, so admirable - i tip my hat to you my lady *nods respectfully*" in the first.

I gave up on Dragonspear after four or five hours. They're very bad at writing dialogue that sounds, well, colloquial for lack of a better word. Even if I gave a flying fuck about culture war stuff (beyond my inalienable right to rely on abortion as birth control) this would be the least of SoD's problems.

The originals were incredibly tongue-in-cheek/silly, which is what made all the standard fantasy tropes so palatable. SoD took itself too seriously.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss :

greed (quotas, special pronouns, safe places, speech control, empowerment, preferential treatment, climb the social ladder, obtain opportunist sex, etc., e.g., there are a lot of lesbian and soy-boys spreading misandric feminism in the hopes of getting inside women's pants.)

Not sure on quotas (affirmative action? It does give accomplished persons or under-represented peoples a foot in the door versus hoping your boss doesn't pass you over for something you had nothing to do with).
Special pronouns apply to such a small percentage of people, you are unlikely to be in a situation where they would be appropriate (they exist for the same reason any other gendered pronouns exist, to not feel like people are messing with us. See: gaslighting).
Safe places I think mainly refers to college campuses. The reason for their existence is stated in the common argument against them, "You're supposed to be exposed to different ideas rather than living in a bubble." The ideas typically given are that people who are different are horrible or should act "normal", which is the bubble people were trying to leave by paying a shit-ton of money to go to college.
Speech control, as in people loosing their jobs for crapping on other people, is not pleasant, but at the least it's less likely to be be used with far worse punishment for people not staying out of sight out of mind and silent. I agree that there could be more equitable ways to keep everyone off of each others' backs.
Empowerment covers a lot, so I don't have any specific opinion. The rest I don't know, either.
I do not support misandry. The feminism I support is for good treatment of everyone. Feminism in this case pushes back against ills that mainly come from narratives that paint males as uncontrollable horny dumbasses and/or rapists and women as euphemisms for weak, dumb, and paradoxically frigid ice queens and sluts.

resentment (towards the west, capitalism, the rich, the men, whites, authority

We have our history books for context regarding the west. We can't rewrite history, but we can act on it based on feedback from the people still being affected by it.
Capitalism/the rich is resented because a lot of people live in poverty in spite of all the resources available that could be used to help them, but those resources are behind arbitrary point-walls created by people who pay them for their services less and less.
Men (like myself) are the people who have shaped much of the world we live in, which includes the features people really come to hate day in and day out in their lives. Being good listeners and problem solvers can change this for the better.
Authority is by the consent of the governed and from expertise in fields of study. Without either of those qualities there is no authority to resent (this doesn't make sense anyway... if one is resented, how are they an authority?). Authoritarianism, ideological views that rules/rules should be followed for their own sake, is the one people don't like for the results they have to endure.

cruelty (towards anyone who has being accused of something, especially if it belongs in the targets of resentment)

People who have been treated cruelly (a subjective term) usually respond in kind. I support people who want to fix what was causing the problems in the first place (which like most solutions will have its own problems) rather than pettily punch down and up at each other. Those fixes, though, do have to have force as well as incentives to decrease the "cruelty" that itself was perpetuated by force and incentives.

"vanity (in the belief that you are morally superior and virtuous because you are the protector of a opressed group (the poor, women, blacks, trans, and whatnot) as opposed to anyone who disagrees with you and is responsible for this oppression. That's the part that explains why the fight tooth and nail to maintain their beliefs, because it made them feel special. I have the suspicion that women tend to be more easily attracted to these beliefs because they have maternal instincts, etc."

I'm a moral relativist (we all have differing ideas of right and wrong and neutral that are relatively different to each other). I try to find commonality in how we like to be treated (some people call it 'the platinum rule'), and try to act like that and encourage that.

It's been nice to visit (rather than just lurk for cool ideas and game news) the Codex again.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Sorry for dragging the boring RW conversation on too long Infinitron .

 

[AwesomeButton]

I gave up on Dragonspear after four or five hours. They're very bad at writing dialogue that sounds, well, colloquial for lack of a better word. Even if I gave a flying fuck about culture war stuff (beyond my inalienable right to rely on abortion as birth control) this would be the least of SoD's problems.

The originals were incredibly tongue-in-cheek, which is what made all the standard fantasy tropes so palatable. SoD took itself too seriously.

Men who like to boast about "their" inalienable right to arrange abortions are usually pretty far from knowing what they are talking about so lightly.

I've rarely seen women boasting about it however. For the record, I believe a woman should have the choice whether to have an abortion, as the consequences of having it or not are usually largely played on her.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

• 
  Build the Wall!

FUCK NO! This is an entire forum of RPG players. That's a stupid money pit that no player worth their salt would try to build in a non-fantastic modern rpg/sim/strategy game!

 

[Lacrymas]

I agree that not giving you enough variations of responses is one problem, but it's not the only one. The most basic and simplistic form of "SJWism" they propagate in SoD is misplaced and comes off as post factum and a bit cowardly, but that's basic "SJWism" in a nutshell. The war they are so desperate to fight and to give some kind of meaning to their very bland personalities is already over and has been won by much better men and women than them, at least in the West and it's spreading to young people in Eastern Europe as well. This makes Beamdog's attempts doubly cringe-y due to how incompetent, obvious and late it all is, sacrificing coherency and style to do it and which would've been gross even when LGBT people weren't so accepted. This context, coupled with what many people perceived to be a desiccation of a classic, makes their writing more than just bad, it makes it classless, tardy and inappropriate. They think this is how "diversity" is weaved naturally in dialogue and in-setting, but that can't be further from the truth. Given the overwhelmingly negative response they got from both straight and LGBT people, I'd say it's obvious it was everything but natural. Beamdog deserved everything they got concerning the writing, Mizhena, the limited variety of responses and their pandering to trends.

 

[Cael]

It is simple:
Buffy's Willow and Tara were homosexuals, but no one really batted an eyelid when they finally went public with it.
Cuckdog's Hexat was homosexual and people ridiculed her left and right.

The difference is in the writing, the dialogue and the actions of the players involved.

Willow and Tara were not clumsy attempts at preaching at people. Being homosexual was just a part of what they were and the focus was never on them being homosexual. They were just like any other loved up couple who happened to be homosexual.

Hexat, on the other hand, was a black lesbian vampire ninja special snowflake who ruined an entire questline by being a special snowflake (in fact, every single one of cuckdog's new characters ruined that questline by being special snowflakes, but that is another story). You can't make a bigger caricature out of cuckdog's characters, and that is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE if the intent was to foster tolerance towards homosexuals. That they became WORSE in Siege of Dragonspear and went full retard to the point that no other views or response other then their own were allowed made it that much harder to swallow.

Look the choices you were given in BG/BG2:
1. You can kill Rieltar yourself or you can refuse to do so, remembering at that point in time, all evidence points to him being your main enemy and the person behind Gorion's murder.
2. You can kill Tomoko or convince her to leave peacefully.
3. You can forgive Sarevok or you can let him die for good.

These are polar opposite choices and are equally valid in game. The writers didn't indicate which way was the "correct" way to do.

Now, compare that with cuckdog's writing as posted above.

If cuckdog was writing the original BG's dialogue, we would have the following:
1. You can accuse Rieltar publicly or you tell him what a bad man he is.
2. You can let Tomoko go or you can convince her Sarevok is a bad, bad man.
3. You can forgive Sarevok or you can take him along and grow to forgive him.

That is not just poor writing. That is forcing you to roleplay out the writer's worldview. If I wanted to do that, I'd read a bad fanfiction, not pay $$$ to "play" a game that is marketed as a RPG and have it rammed down my throat. THAT is the objection people have with cuckdog's offerings, and it is made doubly insulting because of the way they took over an IP and absolutely ravaged it beyond all recognition.

You don't foster tolerance by ramming things down people's throats, ridiculing them and then making it illegal for them to have their views.

 

[Fairfax]

Hah! Is this really the thing everyone got so worked up about?

Well, that. And the generally poor writing.

Storm in a teacup. But really, it's just poor writing.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Not sure on quotas (affirmative action? It does give accomplished persons or under-represented peoples a foot in the door versus hoping your boss doesn't pass you over for something you had nothing to do with).

The data on this suggests an increase in resentment towards the favoured groups, increased failures in the academic world (let's say, if you go to MIT using quota, the chances are that you will fail miserably, because you can’t compete with your colleagues), reinforcement of defeatist beliefs that works like a cultural hydrogen bomb among the favoured group (I can't compete with these people working hard, I'm entitled to things due to a colonial past, I’m different, etc.). Thomas Sowell’s “Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study” presents a more compelling case than me.

Special pronouns apply to such a small percentage of people, you are unlikely to be in a situation where they would be appropriate (they exist for the same reason any other gendered pronouns exist, to not feel like people are messing with us. See: gaslighting).

The problem is that this is not how these crazy policies ever work, is it? If I told you seven years ago that we would be discussing about how the LGBT community is running cRPG classics and making game journalism a toxic place for gamers you would call me crazy, yet, here we are. The same thing applies to the other crazy ideas, because they tend to spread and assume contours that are coercive in nature. First, they demand that I should use a special pronoun for a tranny, and pretty soon I have to guess what is the special pronoun someone decided to use for whatever reason. The slippery slope is real. These people are always pushing the envelope. See how terms such as “sexual harassment”, “alt-right”, and “hate speech” have been completely distorted to the point that they are nothing more than linguistic devices to attack people. I know people that have been falsely accused of rape due to the crazy misandric feminism. It is not harmless and will get worse.

Safe places I think mainly refers to college campuses. The reason for their existence is stated in the common argument against them, "You're supposed to be exposed to different ideas rather than living in a bubble." The ideas typically given are that people who are different are horrible or should act "normal", which is the bubble people were trying to leave by paying a shit-ton of money to go to college.

But the safe-places-mentality spreads in the culture, in the same way that everything else that is created inside that apparently innocuous ivory tower does. It's a mistake to assume that intellectuals are harmless because they can literally kill a whole culture and way of living. Their ideas will be spread by journalists, writers, movie directors, jurists, etc., and become the default background of seeing things. In one day you say that there are two genders and five years later gender is fluid and sex change are sky-rocketing.

Speech control, as in people loosing their jobs for crapping on other people is not pleasant.

That is just the immediate visible effect. What you need to consider is the long term /widespread unseen effects. The unseen, invisible effect of that is that certain groups will keep pushing for more stringent (which at the same time are more arbitrary) speech codes, people will tend to avoid to express opinions about controversial subjects, etc. The more the chilling effect increases, the more stagnant and sick is a culture.

The feminism I support is for good treatment of everyone.

In other words, you are what most feminist nowadays would describe as an insuferable-mysognist-patriarchal-supporter-pig”.

 

[Sigourn]

Exactly. It's a roleplaying game. When your only options (even if you are a Chaotic Evil bastard) are to politely thank Mizhena for hearing her riveting story of being a tranny in a fantasy setting where she/he/xir can easily morph their gender - the writing and design have failed on every conceivable level.

This. It wouldn't be a problem if the game let you react appropiately. Kind of funny considering all this crap is a thing because people tend to react negatively in real life to men playing dress up.

Hell, don't need to go 100% offensive. Just a good old

What kind of man dresses up in woman's clothes?

The lack of such a response is stunning in a game clearly inspired on a time period that was known, around many other things, for being as sexist as it could get. Being gay was a legitimate reason to be hurt by others.

 

[Lacrymas]

The setting doesn't permit a character like Mizhena at all, though, as there wouldn't be the concept of transgenderism given the existence of Polymorph Self/Other, the gender-bending girdles, potions, magic mirrors that can alter appearance and all other kinds of knick-knacks that will make the problem go away in an instant. The transition won't even be as faulty as it is irl, it will change everything, including chromosomes and you'll have sexually working genitals if you are a woman wanting to be a man, it won't sterilize you, you can go back easily (meaning you won't have to go through 1-2 years of psych-evaluation), you won't have to worry about potentially looking like a caricature and it will be cheaper. This lazy approach to lore is also why I mentioned that they sacrificed coherency to make a retro, impotent and pointless political statement.

 

[Cael]

The setting doesn't permit a character like Mizhena at all, though, as there wouldn't be the concept of transgenderism given the existence of Polymorph Self/Other, the gender-bending girdles, potions, magic mirrors that can alter appearance and all other kinds of knick-knacks that will make the problem go away in an instant. The transition won't even be as faulty as it is irl, it will change everything, including chromosomes and you'll have sexually working genitals if you are a woman wanting to be a man, it won't sterilize you, you can go back easily (meaning you won't have to go through 2 years of psych-evaluation) and it will be cheaper. This lazy approach to lore is also why I mentioned that they sacrificed coherency to make a retro and pointless political statement.

If you take her dialogue at face value, it doesn't even actually state she is transgender. Note that she only said she was raised as a boy. It never said that they actually turned her into a boy.

Historically, there are cultures where the firstborn is raised as a male, regardless of his/her actual gender. This was practiced in ancient China, for example, where if the firstborn is female, she is dressed in boy's clothing and treated like a male until a male is born into the family.

In Mizhena's case, she rebelled against her upbringing as a male and went the other way hard. Nothing indicates that her genitals were fiddled with, magically or otherwise... Not THAT way, you pervs!

The transgender thing came in because the devs came right out and stated it. If they had shut the hell up, it would probably have been passed off as a nurture thing. But because they opened their damned shitholes, that character is forever immortalised by "Hi! I'm a tranny!"

 

[Trashos]

Hah! Is this really the thing everyone got so worked up about? I assumed it would be a lot more hostile. There's not even any ironic misandry. Color me disappointed.

No, it wasn't just that. I won't let this be forgotten so easily. Here's their interview on how Baldur's Gate is sexist and them having to address that:
http://archive.is/Lwu6p

From that interview:

If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that]

Because, you see, this is how much respect those pieces of shit had for the history they had in their hands.

A bit later, after she explained how they had to "correct" established BG characters:

If people don’t like that, then too bad.

Because, you see, this is how much respect they had for BG's fanbase.

They did other similar stuff too, but that's enough searching from me. Any questions?

 

[Lacrymas]

I'm not sure where they see sexism, even from the pov of an SJW. They didn't "fix" anything they claim to be sexist, Safana (who I know they've said is "problematic") in SoD is the same she has ever been and they even added a black lesbian vampire (i.e. a sexualized exotic woman) in BG2. I find it funny that they fail at their own ideology on their own terms.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss , I don't think affirmative action by itself can help people as a whole. Better infrastructure (bad roads, people in poor neighborhoods have less access to good jobs and education facilities so underfunded and not really planned out to meet peoples' needs, law enforcement is poorly paid, trained, quality controled, and staffed leading to unnecessary deaths, jailings, and mistrust between people, of whom some commit crimes, and their protectors) and access to modern essentials like healthcare, food, housing, job placement, drug rehab facilities, mental healthcare, etc are things missing in too many peoples' lives. People who do grow up and live with these things tend to do better in school and employment.

If I told you seven years ago that we would be discussing about how the LGBT community is running cRPG classics and making game journalism a toxic place for gamers you would call me crazy

I graduated high school in 2007. I've seen so many political cartoons of this group and that group ruining everything with the most sensationalist predictions. People forget those, but they'll believe the next 'sky is falling' story from many of the same people just the same. I doubt I would have disbelieved you, but I don't see the issues the same way, either.

“sexual harassment”, “alt-right”, and “hate speech”

Sexual harassment used to just be something people had to accept to stay out of trouble. Attitudes toward treatment of people has changed, including those seeking legal recourse. Hell, child abuse and marital rape weren't even things until the late 1800s and early 1990s. Treat others how they like to be treated (not a hard and fast rule by the way). It is when we continue a pattern of mistreatment that treats people like things that we know communication has broken down, and protection under the law is needed.

Most people do want a special gendered pronoun for when they are talked about indirectly, but most people don't have trouble getting others to use it. You wouldn't like it if people constantly thought you were a different gender. Trans people get the same reactions most people would if it just kept happening. Plus, 'they' has a history of being used as gender neutral singular pronoun that can be used for anyone as an option, and 'they' isn't special.

'Alt-right'- I don't know what to say. I read so much of what they do- and see it, too- should people not have concerns about some groups under that moniker? Not to mention, they attracted those Antifa jokers who don't seem all that focused on following their name (they're not promoting fascism, but they seem to not have much organization and are just as destructive as the white nationalist marchers). Then there's conspiracy theorists- it's just tiring.

"Hate Speech" is a grey area. As far as I know, it is currently very limited to incitement to commit violence against groups of people ("The gays should be rounded up and killed!" is not enough as it is an opinion rather than a call for people to be murderer/terrorist proxies so the speaker gets off for not actually doing or conspiring to do the crimes themselves). I think speech including protests of speakers should be free as a matter of good policy. More speech can also increase inter-societal understanding, so there aren't such polarized views that people feel they should protest.

It's a mistake to assume that intellectuals are harmless because they can literally kill a whole culture and way of living. Their ideas will be spread by journalists, writers, movie directors, jurists, etc., and become the default background of seeing things. In one day you say that there are two genders and five years later gender is fluid and sex change are sky-rocketing.

Intellectuals also preserve records of cultures, their histories, their changes, their accomplishments, and their warts. The very existence of our English language in its modern usage (well, other languages, too, but English is my only language) is clear evidence that cultures never really fade away. Other cultures had to change a lot to resemble our own as well.
Regarding genders, how can we say there are only two genders when that is not how humans have ever acted? Take a look at laws that enforced how people dressed and acted in their own private lives. People don't make laws against stuff they do not see evidence for (EDIT: I thought of A LOT of caveats, but those depend on the cultures and their beliefs rather than common witness of mundane events). That people in the past didn't like it that humans (and many other animal species) don't fit into two categories doesn't mean they were ignorant. Saying one thing and doing the opposite was just simpler than putting thought into what would become studies in modern biology, neurology, and psychology.

In other words, you are what most feminist nowadays would describe as an insuferable-mysognist-patriarchal-supporter-pig”.

I don't give a damn. I'll try to be respectful and a good listener anyway. How the hell else are we going to get out of messes if our focus is on being butthurt? The RPG Codex helped me develop a tough skin.

 

[Cael]

I'm not sure where they see sexism, even from the pov of an SJW. They didn't "fix" anything they claim to be sexist, Safana (who I know they've said is "problematic") in SoD is the same she has ever been and they even added a black lesbian vampire (i.e. a sexualized exotic woman) in BG2. I find it funny that they fail at their own ideology on their own terms.

I read somewhere that they see Safana's femme fatale character as sexist as that made her into a sex object.

Which I find to be stupid because she definitely cut Coran's balls off at her leisure and kicked Eldoth's a few times.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Hah! Is this really the thing everyone got so worked up about? I assumed it would be a lot more hostile. There's not even any ironic misandry. Color me disappointed.

No, it wasn't just that. I won't let this be forgotten so easily. Here's their interview on how Baldur's Gate is sexist and them having to address that:
http://archive.is/Lwu6p

From that interview:

If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to address that]

Because, you see, this is how much respect those pieces of shit had for the history they had in their hands.

A bit later, after she explained how they had to "correct" established BG characters:

If people don’t like that, then too bad.

Because, you see, this is how much respect they had for BG's fanbase.

They did other similar stuff too, but that's enough searching from me. Any questions?

Sheeee-it. That’s egregious. I thought they just added skippable stuff to the EEs. When you start “correcting” degenerate art something has gone very wrong.

 

[Delterius]

What people ITT are missing is that, if anything, all FR characters should be regarded as until proven otherwise.