After searching longer than I expected, I found the referenced quotes.
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SPM was a big part of my childhood in a way that New Paper Mario never could have been. I'm annoyed with New Paper Mario, have no interest in it, and think it is significantly worse overall. But when I see "he HAD to know how bad this would look," I expect, like, racism or homophobia or FE: Fates-tier inappropriate bad stuff.
Does that mean I think this quote is a good or neutral choice? Nah. Besides being a kinda silly villain motivation, it's plausible enough to be petty and mean-spirited in a totally unnecessary way. But when I think of mean-spirited stuff in gaming, what comes to mind for me is, like, HP: Legacy's plot being to quash the rebellion of big-nosed banker second-class citizens who purportedly steal blood from people
(antisemitism off the charts), GamerGate, and death threats going out after Dexit. Assuming this quote is mean-spirited, it's probably the softest thing I've seen in the gaming world that I would call mean-spirited.
When I think about gaming mean-spiritedness that is often ignored and defended, what comes to mind is excessive gamer-backlash, like the last two examples in my list. In that vein, -in what is not a justification of the quote but a justification for finding it to not be immensely significant - I'm sure New-Paper-Mario-Haters have put much worse bile out there.
From the tweet thread:
This is a pretty weak argument I think. Both Francis and Olly are parodic - they're both making fun of a demographic, and they're laughing at them instead of with them (we assume). As a SPM lover, I think Francis is considerably more mean-spirited than Olly's quote: "These otaku* have every responsibility done for them, reduce women to sex objects
(or literal objects in timpani's case), have zero self awareness, and form relationships with forum people and fictional characters, everyone point and laugh at these pathetic impotent creepy losers!!" The forum/fictional relationships thing honestly feels particularly barbed, the dude clearly has extreme social troubles, good on him for finding some kinds of relationships anyway, no need to push him to isolate even more.
*he's visibly an otaku and not some kind of general "gamer nerd", he's less "likes nerdy crap and he games hardcore" and more "gross shut-in who does no work and fawns over anime women", i think that's plenty specific
My hot take: BIS is "okay"
bad story, three (unless i forgot someone? it's been a while) interesting (i mean "funny", not "complex") characters, weak music, weak environments, derivative-if-still-good combat/items/etc.,
vacuum mechanic being a soft accessibility problem
it being the only M&L game i've played gives me a pretty pessimsitic outlook on the ranchise as a whole, though eg PiT definitely seems to thrive more in the first four