Merus

Here's something fun Milo wrote about Elliot Rodger, in case you were somehow still wondering how little integrity a man could have:

Anyway I've got my shotgun ready to fend off the zombies at the #gamergates, which frankly I did not need right now but zombies are not known for their consideration. I like how the Thumbs introduce Anita Sarkeesian and then immediately start talking about bizarre indie games. Idle Thumbs!

An 8/10 from Eurogamer is nothing to sneeze at, though.

I liked that one. Honestly I'm pretty up on chainsawsuit right now because the commenters did me a favour recently

Man, I don't want to do a personal tutorial for a guy who's clearly just turned up with all his baggage, but on the other hand maybe there'll be more light than heat from the discussion? I don't know, let's suck it and see I guess. The chief argument of feminism is that there are all these behaviours that presuppose weird gender stereotypes that most people think of as normal, and that if we want to be done with them and be more truthful to reality, we have to make them not normal somehow. The best/only way anyone really knows how to do that is to keep pointing gross stuff out so people can see for themselves how they've been conditioned to see gross stuff as normal. So the activism you're seeing from feminists is not just trying to promote their views, it's literally trying to achieve their aims. If you watch, say, Tropes vs Women, and you agree that the examples are gross, then Sarkeesian's aims have been achieved. You're more likely to see the same tropes somewhere else, and maybe you'll say something. Either way, it helps make it not normal. At the start of the videos, Sarkeesian talks about how it's possible to still enjoy a work while still noticing the problematic elements of it. This is important because the whole point is that sexism is deep-rooted into culture. It's unavoidable; it affects everyone, and you've still got to live in the world and there's lots of entertainment where if you can get past the shitty bits there's lots of fun to be had. In that sense it's just like uninspired camerawork, or that one actor who clearly isn't as good as the rest and you just sigh every time they turn up and fuck up their line readings. Same with people unthinkingly perpetuating sexism; they didn't intend to do it, they're just following what the culture tells them is acceptable. No-one expects you to not be sexist in the same way that no-one really expects you to not be rude or forgetful or whatever: if you fuck up, you just apologise, and try to make it up to people. Which is why people who care about these things get madder at the response than at the original sleight: Penny Arcade's dickwolves comic was a pretty good joke that also unfortunately helped to normalise rape as just something bad that happens, but what set people off wasn't the comic, but Penny Arcade being dicks about it, and then selling T-shirts so people could declare they were on Team Dickwolves. I am deliberately ignoring about half that gigantic screed for now.

Between this, the Zoe Quinn article, and most of the Cracked articles I've got saved to my pinboard, I think it's worth pointing out that Cracked use the list format to trick people into reading essays. We're not reacting to the existence of a list, but to the implication that it's a low-analysis collection of dubious facts. That's not a safe assumption with Cracked; I've seen a few of their articles which are literally republishing an essay the author wrote elsewhere, except they insert headers to number the paragraphs. Which, of course, raises the question of why people don't seem capable of reading an essay when they will read a 'list' with exactly the same content, except with numbered paragraphs. But then I think about how headers and pictures are considered good practice for long articles anyway, and I guess aping a list format is sending a signal that this article can be consumed in bite-sized chunks, so you don't have to choose between it and a Facebook update.

I'm a little uncomfortable with SBNation because a friend of mine was bullied by some of the writers, but the Breaking Madden pieces are pretty great. (Same reason I'm not fond of James Mielke.)

Given there appears to be a low-grade resentment over the UK's lack of engagement with the EU project, to the point of sabotaging it so they can keep autonomy, I wouldn't be overly surprised if the EU tries to oust the UK if they mess about too much.

The Swedish government is getting a very large chunk of that money in taxes. Apparently this video influenced a lot of Notch's thinking (and I linked it before and it was great and I'm linking it again because it's still great):

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is by turns fascinating and disturbing.

I am on tenterhooks to see how it'll go, frankly; Scotland's a pretty great country and the idea that this thing has caused wide-scale political engagement in a time of ever-increasing voting apathy is fascinating. I don't actually know whether it'll be a good idea because there are forces ready to prey on countries that can't really defend themselves, and seismic political change has a way of consolidating power in too few hands, but the idea that Scotland are not represented well by the UK parliament suggests that something has to give. I think, given how close this has been, that England will be on its own fairly soon, because if Scotland goes, Wales isn't going to stick around with a country that constantly disrespects it.

Yeah, I think this is probably going to be more fun as a collaboration. I can tell some of these are pretty deep cuts just from the instrumentation. I'm confident about 7, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 21. I have strong suspicions about 14, 19 and 20 but I might be wrong. I have my suspicions about 3, 4, 5, 10, 25, 28 and 30 but I couldn't narrow it down to a specific game. No clue about 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27 or 29.

Have I mentioned recently how spectacularly unsuccessful Gamergate has been at its aims? Zoe Quinn got writeups in Time and The New Yorker. Anita Sarkeesian's reach keeps getting bigger as people try and make up for the attacks she's suffered. Of the big sites, only the Escapist has made any moves to change editorial policy, and in doing so exposed that the site owner's kind of a dick.

I think people who feel marginalised are prone to picking up dangerous ideas. If they're isolated enough, they never really get set straight. You started to see a lot of that once 'nerd' got separated from 'loser' about 10 years ago, but it's only gotten more intense now.

I'd strongly disagree with the idea that fiction is uniquely good at providing introspection. I've gotten so, so much more out of non-fiction when it comes to stunning ideas that challenge how I see the world; I read fiction for the stories precisely because there's better options if I want my brain stretched. I think wanting stories is just fine, there's value in storytelling.

Dragon Quest IV has a section where you play as an item merchant. You stand in one spot while heroes come in and try and buy items from you. World of Warcraft has a quest where you play as a quest-giver. You get your very own yellow ! and a bunch of NPCs come in and take your quest. You have to go and clean up after one of them when you inevitably get bored of that.

Are you in touch with cinemas though Or small children Are you in touch with small children wait don't answer that

I think, also, YA fiction seems to be more willing to tackle ethics and morality, because they operate on a more surface level where they can safely marginalise the complications. We live in a society that ethics is vastly more complicated, in part because we don't treat harmful acts as either the sign of unfixable moral decay or as unfixable mental decay, and in trying to express the complexity of that position, adult fiction (and adult works) often punt on discussing the philosophy of the situation. We also have a goddamn lot more stories than we used to, and they're more complicated than they used to be. Many historical stories operate on the level of young adult fiction, but use allusions and references that were pop culture at the time but require education to grasp these days. We enjoy stories because they reinforce the culture of the tribe in ways that make sense to our brains, and they stretch what the tribe sees as possible. (Cue Neil Gaiman's quote about fairy tales telling us not just that dragons exist, but that they can be beaten.) There's a common thread through many successful civilizations that they start to tell stories about characters who use their brains to get what they want, and while their clever plans don't always work out, they pretty much always work against the strong, mighty character. People like stories about good and evil that have a clear moral stance, and it doesn't have to be brilliant. I wonder what the appeal of young adult fiction would be if ethics was taught in primary school. Most likely the books would just get more sophisticated.

I bristle at the conflation of libertarianism and the "left", because it's so completely alien to my lived experience and it's usually presented as being utterly uncontroversial.

So apparently Vivian James (the woman gamer 4chan invented to agree with them) wears a green and purple jumper in reference to a picture of Krillin from Dragon Ball Z raping Vegeta. Yes, the character design has a rape joke embedded in it. As bad as gamers have been, it seems like it's even rougher to be a prominent atheist.

SCREW YOU I really like TOFOP for my 'two comedians chatting in a room' kind of podcast (it's the only one that's managed to make me consistently laugh), and I hear The Dollop (which is a comic examination of a topic) is also really good.

I'm building a fuckwit detection tool for uni, will let people know how it's coming along (and how accurate it ends up being). It may only be useful for blocking 4chan fuckwits, but that's probably enough.

It's a good thing that sleeping with journalists is a crime, because otherwise RICO wouldn't apply to Zoe Quinn and all her employees, who are probably Anita Sarkeesian, Jenn Frank and Mattie Brice, and this is all logical and definitely not a delusional conspiracy theory cooked up by a paranoid 4chan loser yes, they should definitely contact the department responsible for investigating organised crimes and stay on the line at least 30 seconds I bet we'll all believe them then!