I endeavored to post the following at the dccomics.com message board in response to a criticism one reader made about “Fallen Angel #9.” To my astonishment, it was repeatedly flagged as containing language that was in violation of terms, and it wouldn’t post it. Keep in mind the word “Hëll” is quoted from an already existing post. I tried to e-mail the board overseers but, guess what? Their e-mail doesn’t work.
Does anyone have a clue what the posting below could possibly contain that got me an automatic message scolding me? (Remember, the quote part is from the previous poster, and the rest is from me):
“Dislike: The dreaded Hëll Hound. I think it took up too many panels and I didn’t care for the obligatory smash to death. Sometimes this title is too “mature” for its own good. Showing blood and violence all of the time doesn’t make for a good story. In fact, I think it tends to take away from it.”
Well, the fight only took three pages, an average of 2-3 panels a page. To me, that was minimum; otherwise he wouldn’t have seemed like much of a threat. As for the blood and violence–have you ever been in a fight? Or seen someone in one? The blood pumping, the adrenaline rush…it’s not like in comics where people are in a fight and then back off the moment the foe is down. In real life, the adrenaline keeps surging, and you’ll watch as people will go after a fallen foe until either their energy wears out or someone pulls them off (look no further than Bernhard Goetz, who walked up to a man he’d already shot and was no longer a threat, and shot him again.)
For all its fantasy elements, the watchword for “Fallen Angel” is “realistic.” It was realistic for the Angel to be so pumped with adrenaline after the fight was over that she had to do something with it, including pulping the creature that had just been trying to kill her. Her emotions were real, and the blood was real.
If you go back and do a real panel-to-incident count, I think you’ll find there’s less violence in an average “Fallen Angel” than many other books. But when it does occur, I don’t clean it up, make it all nice and sanitized. There’s enough titles already doing that. In this one, blood and genuine streaks of human cruelty–when they are presented–are shown in their unvarnished ugliness.
PAD
• 
They seem to have a weird language filter on their boards. I recently wrote a post that included the contraction “who’re,” as in “who are,” and got the “Whoa!” message for it. I changed the text so that “who’re” was gone and the post was accepted.
The moderator address worked for me, though.
Paul
Peter:
Maybe it was having “Fallen Angel” in quotation marks.
Try underlining the words, or post the title in a different color and/or bold script and see what happens.
If that doesn’t work, ask Glenn if you get the chance before you reach a live person at DC or AOL that can answer the question.
I’m not impressed with the websites for either of the big two, especially Marvel’s. I think DC’s is only marginally better. I would think the primary concern for both companies would be to be accessable and inviting to those new to comics, and I don’t think either accomplishes that.
As to your post, who knows. So many of those language filters are wonky. Not surprising that the email didn’t work, though. Neither of the big two seem to pay enough attention to things like that at their respective sites.
I think it may be the quotation marks. I’ve had several bad experiences with doing my usual ‘cut and paste’ replies at DC’s board ever since their new one was installed. It’s just NOT very user-friendly over there anymore.
KET
If they’re sensitive to the word “hëll”, try uniting Hëll Hound into Hellhound and see what happens.
That’s weird.
I didn’t find anything even remotely offensive in that post you made. This sort of reminds me of that Sylvester Stallone movie, “Demolition Man”, where even the simplest of words is considered offensive.
Just be glad you aren’t being fined for it. 😀
Maybe it is the reference to “Bernhard Goetz”. Just a little to much reality for some, like referencing “Adolph Hitler” or “Jesus” will set off a whole politically correct bugaboo.
Perhaps it’s “pumping.” Reminiscent of sex, at least I think it is…none of us comic book readers can be sure about anything involving sex.
You didn’t know? “PAD” is considered foul language at the DC board. 🙂
In fact, I think
… contains the word “t, I t”. That’s all I can find.
Eric
Totally wild guess, but try changing:
it’s not
to:
it isn’t
The filters may be parsing the original as it snot.
I’ve had some trouble with DC’s new language filter recently as well. I’ve found the best way to deal with it is through the use of the preview button.
Copy your entire message into a notepad window, then copy back paragraphs and preview them. When one of your paragraphs sets it off, break it down into sentences. When a sentence sets it off, break it down into words. It doesn’t take that long to do and will help you “clean” your language within DC’s Martian Standards of Decency.
I know that one time the filters wouldn’t allow me to use the word “wristwatch”. What’s wrong with that word you ask? wristTWATch. How stupid is that?
The old Wizard World boards had a goofy filter too. We had to lobby to be allowed to say “Ðìçk Grayson” and “Dave Cockrum.”
I tested the whole post. It is where you wrote: “…it’s not”. It accepted the whole post when I changed it to “…it is not”.
Hope this helps.
You can test for the offensive word by highlighting and hitting CTRL-X and hitting Preview Reply until you determine the offensive word.
Michael,
It’s a good thing you guys tried to lobby for the change, instead of making a peTITion. I’ve had that word caught in online filters before.
Well, this isn’t exactly the point, but I thought the Hellhound went down a trifle easy;-)
I found that “šlûŧ” wouldn’t be allowed, but “harlot” would.
As Ken said above the problem is with the “it’s”, because their board removes all punctuation before checking for swear words, so where you said:
“adrenaline rush…it’s not like” after removing the punctuation you get “adrenaline ruSHITs not like”.
Having written a few swear filters myself this is one of those classic situations where you either try to filter everything and flag entirely innocent posts or you relax the rules but allow people to do things like “s.h.i.t” and get away with it.
This being the DC boards, and given Paul Levitz’s actions from a few years ago, perhaps the inclusion of the word “pulping” is a problem. 🙂
YES, Photoboy got it right. I just tested
“adrenaline rush…it’s”
on the DC boards and I got censored.
A while back someone told me that when the filter is giving problems I should bracket the entire post, like this:
[Then, if there is a trouble spot, it will be replaced with the little blue face getting it’s mouth washed out. This really works.]