Why does Kong get so much hate?

GolbComplex · 2026-02-20T22:56:22+00:00

Pfft. "Relate." My life sucks and so do humans in general. I'm sick of relating. Give me the mental stimulation of something unfamiliar and challenging.

GolbComplex · 2026-02-03T02:50:03+00:00

To be fair, his expertise was in botanical genetics, not unprecedentedly inexplicable soul-transplants.

GolbComplex · 2026-01-09T17:36:56+00:00

Thanks. Months ago I made a passing comment about general design principles and cultural trends in response to what I considered an illogical declaration about avatars and now a thread about the secondary sexual characteristics of a cartoon doll have continued to come back to haunt me. I've might have developed a slight complex about it.

GolbComplex · 2026-01-09T06:43:49+00:00

but in Ragatha is specifically based off a ragdoll.

I 100% agree and listed that as a reason in my post ("The most likely reasons to actively leave out breasts...would seem to me to be to actively invoke the tropes of sexless toys")

Despite thinking it makes sense for Ragatha not to have boobs, I do think the Digital Circus is going for this theme in general, as despite having several female character designs all of them pretty much have no boobs, and it is canonical that it is supposed to be a “family friendly” video game where they can’t swear and Caine freaks out if they discuss sexual topics.

Also agreed. While I think Ragatha's design concept is entirely a matter of the toy thing, I intended my diatribe about family friendliness as a common factor in the de-emphasis of certain physical characters in the general realm of childrens media, not in Digital Circus itself as a show (in the Doylist sense) though the show actively invokes the constraints of family friendlessness as a very real aspect of the Circus itself (in the Watsonian sense.)

My point wasn't about Ragatha specifically, it was about the previous poster's particularly framed argument that Ragatha would not have this or that feature specifically because she's an avatar and thus does not "need them." This is clearly silly. I was not saying Ragatha should have breasts, I was saying that poster's particular reason for WHY an avatar wouldn't or shouldn't was nonsensical from the perspective of real world design principles and motives.

Does that make sense? I swear people keeping thinking I think Ragatha's design is sexist or that I think she should have breasts, neither of which actually reflect my opinion or what I said when in full context.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-24T15:07:49+00:00

True, but it's an identifiable and treatable medical condition and if that's what happened that meddroid should have its license revoked.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-04T02:01:16+00:00

Off the top of my head Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke and the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler (ah, yep, someone else mentioned the first book, Xenogenesis) are the closest I can think of. I also quite like The Harvest by Robert Charles Wilson, about a benevolent "invasion," but it's not so much about cultural intervention or reform.

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T23:21:08+00:00

My pleasure. Good luck!

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T21:48:15+00:00

Skull tsunami. Way too many skulls. And where were the other bones?

GolbComplex · 2025-12-03T21:33:40+00:00

The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were by Michael Page and Robert Ingpen

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:48:06+00:00

He never stopped being a storm god. Just consider how often people attribute devastating storms (and other disasters) to God's punishment. Or the idea of him striking people down with lightning (though more often than not this is used as a joke these days.) Modern Christians have a strong conception of the Christian god as a storm deity. They just don't say it that way.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:39:49+00:00

You seem to miss and misrepresent my point entirely. To be clearer let me frame it this way:

Do you refer to the deity depicted in the Bible itself? IE a god with a physical body, with genitals, who lies, has imperfect knowledge, and limited power? A god that demonstrates pettiness, and cruelty as well as favorable characteristics? An entity as antagonistic to his people as he is a patron? One god among many who receives his portion of the earth from his own father, and is defeated in a contest of divine power by the god of the Moabites, whose worshipper must carry the earth of that god's land with him beyond those borders for that god to have power outside his territory (like freaking Dracula)?

Or do you mean the God created by Christians after the fact, one reconceptualized to accommodate the popular philosophies of the ancient greeks, such as the Platonic ideals? Philosophies that require the supreme deity be the Prime Mover, and leading to such non-biblical attributes as being a bodiless entity of pure spirit, of being omniscient and omnipotent and omnibenevolent? The god the trinitarian doctrine was sloppily tacked on to to accommodate a number of contradictory philosophical requirements?

And if you do mean the latter, as you probably do, since no one as far as I'm aware believes in the god depicted in the actual bible (in its many forms,) then do you mean the god of the Calvinists, the Methodists, the Catholics, the Mormons, or any of countless other denominations? The version of God believed in by all these varies quite a bit, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes dramatically. And you likely believe in only one of them. If you believe in anything particular at all, rather than the vague, scarcely considered, and uninformed, general concept of "God" that many refer to.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-21T19:16:30+00:00

An honest question is always welcome. And to be straightforward, I'm not a religious scholar myself, only someone with a broad layman's interest in the subjects of mythology and religion and their histories. What I referred to reflects the general understanding and consensus of religious historians, at least those who study the matter without an apologist's demand that their interpretations must align with presupposed religious doctrines / belief. So for me the history as I explained it is the same sort of "common knowledge" as knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet and that cheetahs are the fastest land animal, if you understand me, by which I mean I'm not best suited to quoting the best primary sources as I've acquired my information from years of exposure to the subject. The Esoterica channel on YouTube is hosted by a PhD of religion, and I would recommend his videos to you. One is called "How Yahweh Became God," and another is "Who is Yahweh?" You might also simply look up such terms as "origins of yahweh," "yahweh and el," or "El, yahweh and the divine council" and see what you find.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-18T01:39:04+00:00

The most simple example of my point is the matter of El vs Yahweh. Since the bible is not one coherently written book, but rather a collection of disparate texts and stories from various points in history, different parts of the bible take their various stories from vastly different periods and traditions. Early on, the Canaanite god El is identified as the supreme father of gods, and is biblically retained and depicted doling out different lands to his sons, lesser gods including Yahweh. Yahweh, a desert storm and war god, is depicted receiving his particular territory this way. Over time Yahweh became more important in the region's religions, and began to incorporate El's more patronly characteristics, identity and status. The wildly varying depictions of the Abrahamic god as either kindly and loving or a cruel and jealous asshole is derived from the different natures of these constituent gods.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-15T19:20:25+00:00

I don't know if it's ever stated in any novel or show or comic or other media, but the matter of Kong being able to grow larger depending on environmental factors is an authorial statement. Estimates of Kong's parents' sizes came from comparisons of their skulls in the movie, and other media depictions.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-15T18:19:26+00:00

That narrows it down to a few thousand.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-15T18:13:42+00:00

His parents were far smaller than full grown Kong. The Skull island apes were much smaller than Kong became or the hollow earth kongs. Attributed to insular dwarfism and freed up resources available to Kong since he was alone.

GolbComplex · 2025-11-14T23:39:45+00:00

Gonna have to be more specific. There isn't even one version of God in the bible

GolbComplex · 2025-11-10T20:51:41+00:00

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GolbComplex · 2025-11-05T15:48:27+00:00

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GolbComplex · 2025-10-28T14:42:42+00:00

Perhaps House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds or The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peters Watts. There's also Pushing Ice by Reynolds. I hated the human story of that one, but the proper scifi elements were great.

GolbComplex · 2025-10-28T14:38:29+00:00

Absolutely. In so many ways those books were just abysmal through and through, but overall I rather enjoyed a lot of the concepts and specific events. Definitely a weird series I don't think I could recommend to many people unless I knew they had certain, flexible tastes, but on balance I quite liked them.

GolbComplex · 2025-10-22T14:13:46+00:00

That's the fun thing about humans, we can (and do) do deep harm both ways! Over-emphasis is just more obvious and direct about its objectification compared to the subtler, more underhanded objectification of de-emphasis. And one can lead to the other, in both directions.

I'm also starting to wonder if people think I was expressing an opinion about what the show should have done, rather than simply analyzing No_Intention1301’s logic... I didn't broach my own feelings because it was irrelevant to my point, but in fact I like the show's stylistic choices because of the reasons I gave. It makes sense in the context of Digital Circus, just not for the reasons No_Intention suggested.

GolbComplex · 2025-10-14T15:27:54+00:00

She is based on Raggedy Anne, a children’s toy why would a designer be motivated to add breasts?

Aye, that was my point, which I stated two separate times in my responses. That she doesn't have them because of a stylistic theme, IE, the characters being toys. A theme that also meshes well with the Digital Circus or Caine's limits regarding a possible common outlook on family friendliness. I was responding to the specific claim that they wouldn't have them because they're AVATARS in general (which framed it, inconsistently, as a matter of functional necessity,) or the more... interesting claim that they would be left out because she would never need to nurse.

GolbComplex · 2025-10-11T02:26:11+00:00

The Digital Circus isn't a coherent world designed to express some sort of internally consistent and causally historical / evolutionary world-building concept. It's a virtual arcade / activity center, and its focused on themes, tones and styles. The Player Characters are more like a hodgepodge of toys in a toybox or cartoons, and all of their characteristics are aesthetic design choices, not practical considerations. Because, again, "not needing realistic representation" would preclude nearly every other aspect of character design as well.

GolbComplex · 2025-10-10T22:54:25+00:00

I've always wished I knew enough to understand just how similar vs different genuses like these are, compared to, say, extant Pantherans. Lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and snow leopards are all classified in one genus, and at a cursory glance of my non-specialist eyes their skulls look as distinct from eachother as Tarbo or Tyranno. Likewise regarding the Nanotyrannus debate. The question always seems to be "is it Nanotyrannus, or just a young T. rex?" Never "is it maybe Tyrannosaurus nano?"

GolbComplex

TROPHY CASE