Oh, tinykitty (or: autocensors, FIMFic & you) · 2:53pm Jul 29th, 2017
When a new major update appears for Marvel Puzzle Quest, I generally head over to the dedicated game forum at D3 to see what the truly loyal players are saying about it. (I don't post there: I just drop in and read the expert analysis.) And in doing so, I noticed something: the forum's code completely forbids cursing.
Or rather, you can curse as much as you like. But every time you do so, the code will automatically substitute 'tinykitty'.
New arrivals to the MPQ forums tend to be ambushed by this. They just wrote out a nice long post about their tinykitty round where they were doing so tinykitty well until they got tinykitty ambushed by tinykitty Thanos, hit the Submit button, and then it's what the tinykitty? They've got a few tinykitty questions which someone had better tinykitty answer -- okay, what in the tinykitty tinykitty is going on? Long-timers just wearily smile and get back to the tinykitty grind, occasionally using the automatic word swap to make a tinykitty joke or two. Either way, the actual spirit of the originally intended words usually comes across.
Obviously, FIMFic has no such autocensor function. Nothing is ever blocked out in Group discussions or Comments. (Doing it in Teen & Mature stories would be self-defeating.) But y'know, we're supposed to be at least a little bit family friendly. We're based on a children's show, after all.
So if Knighty ever decides to install some word swap code -- what would be some appropriate terms to use?
Frankly, I have no littlepony idea.
What the
are you talking about? There's really only one 
ing choice for that 
. Mother
ing Fluttershy.
This reminds me I need to buy some apples...
There are no appropriate terms which do not eventually produce a clbuttic mistake.
Replace all the
swearwords with the site's native emotes. It's 
obvious.
You can sing "oh, tinykitty" to the tune of "Hey, Macarena".
Auto censors can be fun. But not without their problems.
On one forum site I was a part of, the common slang term for "penis" was changed to "rooster". The side effect being that trying to discuss the little room at the front of the plane where the pilots sit was a real challenge.
"Ass" was changed to "donkey." But "arse" was not. So, people using British spellings could be more offensive.
The derogatory term for female genitailia was swapped with the phrase "I'm a pretty little girl." And the gay slur that was also a woodpile was changed to "I like rainbows." These two only seemed to anger the people that used them even more...
I've seen it on a couple of websites and sooner or later it runs into the Sbuysomeappleshorpe Problem... I mean, the Scunthorpe Problem.
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In one Polish website with funny pictures, someone thought it'd be a good idea to censor the word "porn" in the comments. You have no idea how many innocent Polish words contain that phrase (like "odporność", which means "resilience", "uodpornienie" - immunization, and so on). At least it only censored them with asterisks rather than swapping them.
4616826 I can only see that happening.
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I remember the Tyson Homosexual incident.
That Homosexual can really run!
And there's a Sonic crossover at the top of the New column.
Oh,
.
(One blog topic I've been avoiding: crossover subjects which automatically make you believe the story is going to svck. I'm sure there are good Sonic/MLP stories out there. I'm just about as sure that I'm never going to find one in the New column.)
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I highly favor this approach. One teensy downside, though.
Bob: My brother was in a car accident.
!
Me:
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How much time did you spend figuring this out?
Speaking of MPQ... there's a few subjects which have been making players pull out the tinykitties. One is the return of all *** and **** characters to random draw tokens, with another being the possibility of switching up the PvP events to a win-based reward system. (You score end-of-event honors based on a points total, but progression rewards are earned via total number of victories -- and losses don't set you back.) Both of these things are provoking their own battalion of fights. But the thing no one was ready for was the rework of Riri Williams.
Riri's a ****. And prior to her revamp, she was considered to be one of the weakest on the tier. She had a blue power which gathered a few enemy Strike, Protect, and Attack tiles to the center of the board, then locked a few of them down. She had an red direct attack which came back around a few turns later. And she finished it off with a green ability which sent one opponent airborne for two turns, temporarily removing them from the fight -- while also sending her airborne. Plus her Health was low enough to make you suspect she'd armored herself in tissue paper.
She had utility, but it was generally agreed that you had to max out and Champion her before you started to see any of it. She was also situational: why bother bringing her out unless there were enemy special tiles in play? And to top it off, she was fragile.
That was then. This is POW!
Here's a **** preview. (And yes, this is where I have her.) That one extra * begins to make things very scary...
Ironheart (Riri Williams) (Cover: Invincible Iron Man #1) Blue, Red, Green
Health at L274: 15,884
Powers:
Blue (4 covers assigned) Magnetic Repulsors Cost: 9 Riri really likes your toys. She likes them so much that she's going to take them away from you, and then she's going to do a little -- tinkering. If sufficient enemy special tiles of any nature exist, bring up to four of them to the exact center of the game board. (If there are less than four enemy special tiles, enough random basic tiles will be shuffled to complete the count.) Once the shuffle is complete, do 2048 damage to the front-rank opponent, then convert the four center board tiles into Charged red tiles. Any matches or cascades created during any part of this process resolve normally, keeping in mind that each Charged tile counts for three red points to your color pool, and is worth triple damage for that tile only. (If maxed, damage is increased to 2601, with no extra tile conversions.)
Red (4) Remote Control Gauntlets Cost: 11 Her sensors see you hiding back there... Riri launches a guided flank attack, targeting the members of the enemy team occupying the back ranks. Each character in those positions takes 3281 damage. If you're down to one enemy standing (meaning there can't be anyone in the back ranks), this attack turns into an old-fashioned fist to the face, doing 6565 damage to the only available target. (If maxed, 5291 on the back strike or 10586 right into your nose.)
(Just to mention -- there's a special rule in play for the Gauntlets: they don't set off intervention powers. This means you can get around Piotr's Immovable Object, sneak past **** Jessica, and not worry about Ben's talent for getting in the way. However, something like **** Wade's black power will still go off because you did damage to his buddies -- and Riri can't target invisible opponents.)
Green (5) Selfless Intervention Cost: 8 To her credit, she's willing to do whatever's necessary in order to help. To her occasional detriment, she's still trying to figure this whole 'hero' thing out. Riri flies directly into the front-rank opponent. This does 4166 damage and sends them airborne for three turns: during this duration, the opponent cannot act in any way, but also cannot be targeted by powers or match damage. However, if there are at least four enemy special tiles of any nature on the board when this power is used, Riri's armor automatically gets her out of the area, sending her airborne for one turn. (If purchased down, less direct damage and the opponent is airborne for a shorter time.)
In Play: Poor Riri. She's among the most frequent targets of those who feel that Marvel has been taken over by social justice warriors, who like to declare that any comic book shops selling her titles must be burned to the ground. She's a legacy character who inherited her title after about a two-second run-up, making even a few of the more flexible readers question what she's earned. And even the MPQ people thought she was a waste of ISO.
But the thing about those who wear the armor is that if you give them a few minutes, they'll come back with an upgrade.
On her previous best day, Riri was situational. Now she's terrifying.
It all starts with the blue. Does your opponents have any toys out? That's nice. (You don't strictly need them, but it's nice when you can take something away from the other side.) Their toys are now sitting in the center of the board, they've been turned into red Charged tiles, and if there were any normal red tiles around that center? They auto-matched into your color pool. Now, if you didn't have any enemy tiles around, then the tiles shuffled were basic ones: Riri will never get your own toys. And maybe there isn't any red on the center's border, which means you have to find some way of getting to them. But on her good days, that blue power will create match-fives (with Charged tiles involved) at the board's center, along with possibly creating a collateral match during the shuffle. This brings the Gauntlets online. Who's hiding at the back? Who just figured out hiding at the back wasn't enough any more? And do we have some green? How about we just put the most dangerous opponent on hold for three turns while we figure out how to match some of that Charged red? In fact, if you're down to one opponent and have enough green handy, you can just keep them juggled in the air until the red is available, and once that happens...
Now, this doesn't always work. Using the Repulsors to create a Charged red match requires timing: you'll always get rid of up to four enemy special tiles, but you won't always have the red around the new ones needed to get them all into your color pool. (You can also produce a little collateral damage to yourself: Riri won't attract/convert your own tiles, but the random shuffle out of the center can create some weird matches.) Use the Repulsors twice in a row to create more Charged red and improve your odds? If you've got the blue to power it, go ahead -- but any Charged red tiles still in the center from the first conversion will now shuffle out. Is their new location somewhere that the computer can get to them? Have you made a sacrifice to the RNG lately?
The Intervention has the potential to temporarily remove Riri from the fight: use it in the midgame when you're fighting a team with *** Ororo or Daken, and it's just about guaranteed that Riri will spend a turn in the upper atmosphere, wondering if there's anything else she could be doing with her life. You will get the rare situation where this can be used defensively: if you think there's a big attack coming next turn and the enemy special tiles are thick on the ground, you can get her clear with this. But for the most part, the consequence will kick in because you forgot it existed. (Rookie.) However, no matter what happens, the fact remains is that whoever you charged down will be doing nothing for the next three turns. There are situations where this isn't an entire good thing: leave **** Frank as the last man temporarily standing and his powers go nuclear, plus Adrian loves being airborne because he does horrible things once he comes back down. But 95%+ of the time? You just disabled their strongest team member for three turns. Next man up. And then next man down.
Riri has come to destroy you. And also have a few words about why you keep setting innocent comic book shops on fire.
As An Opponent: You must color-block her. Even if you don't use red, blue, and green, you'd better be matching them at every opportunity, just to keep them out of her color pool. Especially the blue. Horrible things happen once she gets enough blue. Using special tiles? You can only use them in the early game: once she's charged, she'll take them away from you -- so anything you're pulling out had better put her down fast, and every kind of altered tile on your side represents something she can get.
It's possible for her to power you up: the Repulsors, if used frequently enough, could leave Charged red all over the board. You can also find yourself in situations where you get to her new center power supply before she does. But for the most part, once the Gauntlets come online, anyone you were trying to protect in the back won't be, If it's down to one team member? That one team member will probably go down. And there's nothing quite like having that heavy hitter in front, one move away from winning the game for you -- just before Riri introduces them to three turns of low orbit.
Hit her first. Hit her fast. Hit her hard. And, optionally, pray.
Best Friends: Riri runs on blue, red, and green. The faster she gets to those colors, the better her life is. And we've talked about a rule before this: you can never have more than one version of the same character in an active trio. If you have *** Peter and the new ***** Peter? Pick one.
Riri and *** Tony? Count as separate characters.
He grabs yellow. He hits Recharge. If all three of his countdowns go off, she has one paid use each on all of her powers. The mentor provides, and the student dominates. It's terrifying to watch in practice and isn't all that comforting to think about when you're seeing it as opponent theory, because now you have to block four colors.
Beyond that? Black, Yellow, Purple. It's not a common color grouping to find in a single character -- so go with a double play: on her tier, Tyrone & Tandy might make for interesting company. You're looking for defenders and possibly healers to accompany her into the fight, plus any extra board shuffles could bring her the blue which starts the cascade effects that much faster. But on the whole, she's a fairly generic part. Just cover her weak colors, polish the armor, ask what kind of hair conditioner she's using because getting that to look good coming out of the helmet would be Mission Impossible for everyone else, and prepare to inflict pain. For innocent shops must be avenged.
Worst Enemies: There are characters who look at Charged tiles and count them towards a board limit, causing auto-damage once that number is exceeded. Others have the ability to stop all tile conversions of any kind. Riri has a lot to fear from those characters -- and they're found on the ***** tier. Problem.
On the whole, you're looking to cut into her power supply. Victor has the potential to completely destroy all the blue on the board, Jennifer can Charge her into the ground, and Loki can at least inflict a little draining payback if those charged mega-matches come to pass -- assuming he lives long enough for those countdowns to go off. You'll also want to keep her stunned if at all possible: the longer the duration, the better. And if you've got someone who can deliver That One Mega Punch? Punch her. Quickly. None of her abilities work once the armor is in pieces.
But for the most part? Her worst enemies exist in the real world. They want her dead. They want to make sure that no one like her can ever exist again. And they'll do whatever they see as necessary to make that happen.
Except for reading those comics to see if they're any good. Because that would just be stupid.
BUYSOMEAPPLES
I've run an anime society forum for some* years, and when setting it up changed the censor filter to remove all the default expletives, and replace them with just one truly offensive term. It took about six years for people to stumble on the one word we just could not tolerate:
"japanimation"
( * lots )
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Honestly, I haven't liked her run on Invincible Iron Man. I love her, mind you; she may have replaced Ms. Marvel as my favorite All-New All-Diffrent charator- but both of the Iron Man comics at present move their plots along at a pace roughly equivalent to a glacier. With a limp. And chronic laziness. I really hope she sticks around during and after Marvel Generations as Tony's sidekick, because the idea of Tony not only trying to a responsive; adult, but to be a role model for someone even more anti-authority than him is terrific. It'll be like D.W and Gosalyn, but both of them can level skyscrapers and there's no Launchpad to mediate-
That went scary.
There was a stor
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I seem to recall a story (Vinyl Scratch Tapes perhaps?) where some radio DJs use Fluttershy's 'yay! as a censor sound...
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That sounds like a terrible OC in a Lovecraft fanfiction...
Of all the tinykitty-ting things to worry about.
pre04.deviantart.net/d425/th/pre/f/2017/151/b/6/tia_peekaboo_by_lynx318-dbb4n4g.jpg
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Hopefully not nearly as long as that song will be stuck in everyone else's head. :V
Quick bit to add on the marvel Heroes forums there is a similar censor, full words only so no odd word nonsense, just full short prhases replacing profanity, can be one word but doesn't have to be. But it shifts, and there is often a theme. Like arround the first guardians movie I'm nearly certain it was "I am Groot" and one thanksgiving it had something to do with turkey, and there are others I forget. Thus here are some suggestions and what they fit to for this site.
Happy Hearthswarming, Good Nightmare Night, ect. = Obvious enough
Bigscreen Freindship = Movie time
Stop, ponytime = when nothing else is going on
*spoiler* = either the season primere or finale are upcoming
Brad (or Flash Sentry) = equestria girls is upon us
One site I used to be on (it closed its digital doors a few years ago, no surprise there) had two major barriers to communication on its forums and chat:
1. It had not only a profanity filter, but a religious references filter.
2. It didn't replace words; it just blocked the entire message and told you: "Stop swearing." And if you didn't type it in Notepad first? You lost the whole post. And even if you did save it, the fact that it still counted if it was a substring of a larger, innocuous word means it could be extremely easy to overlook, and you might never find it.
So yeah, making posts there could be a real pain.
I recommend that all words which could be interpreted as profanity get replaced with "fuck".
Partly to subvert expectations, and partly to highlight how difficult it is to do any nuanced cursing when you're down to only one word.
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I see you are very far in front of me on the power curve. My highest **** is **** Carol and she is 1/1/1. Still she goes great with *** Steve and *** Cyclops, for the hurl shield, executive decision, hurl shield mega hit. I chained up to 20k with it once.
I love the fact that the conversation in comments is bouncing back and forth between:
1) People talking about forum comment censorship, and
2) People discussing the Marvel game and throwing around paragraphs about **** Jessica and *** Steve and ***** Peter.
... why do you have ****hero-name and swearword filtering in the same topic? That keeps tripping me up all the time. I always imagine people are trying to say "Motherfucking Batman and Bitchslapping Ironman make a great combo"
Peeved, obviously.