Gormongous

You haven't exactly done a great job selling your point. You dive into a conversation that's dozens of pages long with the attempt to tone-police a brief two-page sideshow of questionable seriousness. You also chose one sentence to answer out of multi-paragraph posts I made questioning the efficacy of a conciliating attitude towards #GamerGate. I appreciate you linking me actual studies, which I will look up when I go to the library Thursday to renew this semester's load of dissertation reading, but the data still does not bear out in this situation, since conciliatory moderates like Gerstmann and Day have gotten just as much hate as confrontational feminists like Wu and Klepek, gender and exposure being equal. If your model held at all, Day's wishes not to be doxxed in order to open a dialogue of trust would have actually been borne out, rather than violated within minutes of her posting said wishes. I wish love and kindness could always win the day, but people only have two cheeks to turn. If you're worried that making jokes at the expense of #GamerGate's beliefs is a sign of dehumanization, don't worry. I know a couple self-avowed members of #GamerGate personally and I would never allow my utter contempt for their ideology of hate to obscure the fundamentally human nature that they display with their attraction to and use of said ideology. In the meantime, restructuring the very arguments #GamerGate uses into nonsensical jokes is a way for people who have to deal with the harassment and abuse that is the movement's primary means of expression to keep sane. If you think that we make jokes about hypothetical members of #GamerGate to show that we hate them, your relationship with your friends and family must be very staid. Humor is not a weapon unless used ignorantly, and the amount of consideration and thought displayed in these past eighty-five pages shows to me that the one thing this forum doesn't have about #GamerGate is ignorance. Honestly, I've spent the night thinking about it, and I think there's a danger in taking #GamerGate too seriously. First and foremost, there's a danger because they're not that serious themselves. I mean, sure, they commit awful acts that take dozens of hours of work to pull off, but they do so in defense of a facile understanding of ethics, both personal and professional, and using talking points that border on thought-terminating cliches. If we're always there to oppose them with all of our rhetorical might, we end up taking #GamerGate more seriously than they are even able to take themselves, which accordingly lends them a legitimacy they can't get on their own. But more importantly, at least for me, there's the issue of self-care. The tactics of #GamerGate, like the tactics of most longtime and dedicated trolls, are meant to exhaust their victims, both intentional and collateral. Many people in #GamerGate are willing to say the same vapid things over and over because they know we'll wear our fingers to the bone typing out responses, no matter whether those responses are charitable or vituperative. There's a certain awareness, mostly implicit within the movement, that a human wave built around these tactics will eventually see success. And they have seen some success, for sure. That's why it's so important to keep our hearts however we can, whether by taking a weekend vacation from #GamerGate or by using their talking points to build knock-knock jokes. Sometimes that's how we have to sustain ourselves when a hate campaign against women lasts for over two months.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, over the past two months has ever led me to believe that, if we treated all members of #GamerGate with the utmost consideration and respect from the outset, we would be any closer to seeing this mess being ended. There have been no instances in my extensive reading of the articles and conversations, beyond intermittent one-on-one dialogues between personal acquaintances, where a moderate stance by a critic has led an avowed member of #GamerGate to retract and apologize for radical statements. All I have seen to that effect is conciliation treated (perhaps rightfully) as weakness by #GamerGate. I ask again, what is your evidence beyond paraphrases of uncited studies and a rather unintuitive understanding of radical reactionary movements that such is the correct way forward? Also, quite frankly, and I only speak for myself here, but fuck your high ground. Incredible, intelligent women are homeless right now because of these bullies and those who apologize for or defend them. They have every ounce of my disdain for that, however sympathetic their reasons may be. I will not pretend otherwise on the outside chance that my exercise of restraint will somehow give them pause, especially with no evidence whatsoever that it even can. I find it unethical to tolerate hate in the hope that it will abate with time. If these people want to be treated with respect, then they need to distance themselves from a movement that has repeatedly and publicly been shown to resemble a hate group in every way. I know of no other way to say it.

I cannot agree with your assertion that my position on any given issue is mostly a historical accident. Sure, many of my friends agree with me when it comes to #GamerGate (though not all), but that is because events and people have caused me to grow enormously as a feminist over the past decade, in accordance with which my circle of friends has shifted appropriately. Even if that weren't the case, it's not like I'm not still responsible for the views I hold as part of my social milieu. Why should I feign sympathy and concern for hostile and radical viewpoints that have done exactly nothing besides harming innocent people in the industry, just on the outside chance that it'll give one of those bullies (or supporters of bullies) a moment of doubt? The rest of what you're posting reminds me a lot of the people who demand that feminists always be giving their opponents Feminism 101, even when under direct attack. The fact is, it's impossible for even the most kind-hearted person always to be doing outreach, and it's been shown that if someone isn't already an ally to women, there's not much that can be said to make them one. With these radicalized issues, there is no magic bullet argument that will make someone reverse their position. The purported existence of one has largely proven to be a chimera that serves only to distract and divide progressives from speaking out on important issues (intentionally or not). As far as I've seen, the moderate Gerstmann has received just as much hate and condemnation from self-proclaimed members of #GamerGate as the openly feminist Klepek, although neither as much as any given female in the industry of course, and this is because neither are speaking in support of the movement, when said movement's principal action besides harassment is seeking out assenting voices like they're Pokémon. The middle ground has failed repeatedly as the means for dialogue over the past two months, both with industry and mainstream figures, so I don't know where exactly you're getting the idea that there have been no efforts at conciliation of "moderate" members of #GamerGate and that such efforts would be effective. What historical precedents do you have in mind here for a group like #GamerGate successfully being deradicalized by a more universally moderate approach from their opponents? Also, are you seriously saying that what the Tea Party has been needing to reduce its influence is due consideration and compromise by the mainstream? I don't know, maybe you haven't been watching the news, because that's pretty much all that the American right has been doing and it has led to the biggest crisis in the Republican Party in decades.

I think they're definitely helping people here feel better about two solid months during which their favorite industry figures have been under siege and in fear for their lives. Demanding that these people always take the high road against those who do them harm denies their humanity just as much, if not more. I don't know, man, you've read the manifestos that adherents of the movement have posted and the harassment they've carried out in support of them. Are a couple of goofy knock-knock jokes really what's perpetuating the antagonism here?

Yeah, but it's not an attempt to excuse her sexuality with a less sexual and more rational justification. The rationalization for her being sexy is that she's meant to be sexy, the inclusion of which broadens this trope into something impossibly wide.

Tegan, if that isn't much to contribute... Never mind, thanks! I like that Kate Beaton was here first.

Yeah, male appearances and behaviors aren't innately sexualized in our culture, so Captain America is super buff and wears skintight clothing because that's how we know to recognize a superhero. There is a sexual element, but it's not the same as Catwoman's or Wonder Woman's costume.

I would take this game. I feel bad, I haven't contributed to this thread in maybe half a year.

Can we try to float some one-sentence definitions of this nascent trope, then? I thought for a while, and this is the best that I have: "Baby Got Backstory: when the creator of a work gives a conspicuously non-sexual explanation for a character's sexual behavior or appearance."

Yeah, a fictional universe full of strippers and supermodels and prostitutes is a different trope. For me, this trope is a female character having a huge pair of boobs because of a very good reason that has absolutely nothing to do with sex, why do you ask? Dozens of superheroines wear skintight bodysuits because they supposedly give better freedom of movement (or something equally facile). Major Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell strips naked for infiltration missions because optical camouflage doesn't work with fabric over it. The titular character from the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series of books eventually acquires a type of vampirism that lets her feed off of people by having sex with them.

My distinction, being the one who asked if a name existed for the trope in the first place, if that the backstory replaces the obvious fact of sexuality, rather than just supplementing it. For instance, no one ever calls Ryuuko or Satsuki sexy. Their appearance and everyone's reaction to it are described entirely within the terms of the fiction, even though it's plain as day that they're half-naked and sexy. The latter never (or hardly ever) comes up. On the other hand, Inara from Firefly is depicted that way because, within the context of the work, she is attractive and a prostitute. The show and its characters bring this up repeatedly, so her sexuality is definitely the principle reason for her being this way, even if the fictional universe has some odd rules about it. The example I was going to bring to the table is something a lot simpler, Yoko from Gurren Lagann. She wears a bikini top and hotpants, explicitly not because she thinks she looks good or whatever, but because she doesn't like clothing that "restricts movement."

I'm more surprised that he doesn't consider a Key property like Clannad to be moe. After all, Ayu from Kanon is one of the three mothers of moe in otaku lore, the other two being Lum from Urusei Yatsura and Rei from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

These are all big winners. Especially the last one, tell me you're not the first to make that joke, PM. I'm inspired to try my own! Q: How many GamerGaters does it take to change a light bulb? A: Just one, but he'll probably use a sock puppet to support himself while he does it.

There are a bunch of little failures of imagination in the fiction that come from or lead to things being exactly the same as they were in Civilization V. One that a Steam review pointed out is that the opening movie claims Earth's nations fled societal collapse and chose the best of the available exoplanets upon which to start anew. How incredibly boring is it all the nations of Earth picked up and went to the same exoplanet, but each in their own spaceship, to resume squabbling just like on Earth? How is that an "optimistic" vision of the future at all? I don't know. I'm really frustrated that some of the best sci-fi of a generation was ignored or watered down to make something that is so baldly just Civ in space. Firaxis doesn't have a history of abandoning their games, so it probably will become something interesting someday, although the bland faction leaders and generic fantasy tech is hard to overcome, but the fact that it was compared at any point in its development to such a careful and considered work as Alpha Centauri shows a serious misunderstanding of the latter game.

I'm almost certain that "Marxist" is thrown in there to make sure everyone experiences the correct reaction to the accompanying "feminist" descriptor. In the eyes of reactionary movements everywhere, both are ideologies predicated on equality of outcome that have a multi-generational history of hypocrisy and failure. Any other distinction that can be made between the two is irrelevant.

I actually saw something like this on the Facebook wall of an acquaintance last night. At the time, I wrote it off as the imbecilic ravings of a wannabe intellectual because he was all over the map from comment to comment, pulling in anything that justified his belief that there was a greater cultural design and purpose to the hatred and terrorism of #GamerGate, especially the lack of higher-level education among his readers (despite having a lower-tier degree than me or my acquaintance). Reading those manifestos, his repeated cry of Kulturkampf makes a lot more sense, not in and of itself but with regards to the evolution of the movement. There's no more predictable response to the rejections and defeats that #GamerGate has experienced at the hands of Western culture as a whole than to broaden its historical scope into a struggle of generational proportions. I really wonder how these so-called gamers will feel some months on, when they realize that their allies are the same people who would gladly outlaw Call of Duty given their druthers. The enemy of my enemy, indeed. I have no idea. We often compare the rhetoric of #GamerGate to reactionary movements like the fascists and the Nazis, but that final paragraph that Jason quoted sounds like mid- to late-1944 Japan, defeatist to the point of fixating on moral victories instead. I guess they love video games more than us, because they are willing to destroy them? Someone should tell them about the Judgment of Solomon. EDIT: Also, what does that guy in the first of Jason's quoted posts even know about the hard sciences? I'm close friends with a dozen graduate and post-grad students in biology, physics, and chemistry. All of them and all their departments are obsessed with the horrible gender problem from which their institutions suffer, where incompetent male scientists are promoted over competent female scientists, often by the former claiming co-authorship or even authorship of the latter's work. Any chair of the aforementioned departments would give three toes and a kidney not to have to kowtow to the racist, sexist, and classist preconceptions of their tenured faculty and to raise their US News and World Report ranking accordingly, so for this one dude to claim it as the front lines of the "culture war" and not a ludicrous backwater of it is, uh... I know I shouldn't get mad, because it's just the typical nerd thing of trying to claim the high ground by virtue of some abstract "rationality" that is really intuition and anecdote in practice, but what the actual fuck.

I guess I failed to run my comparison all the way through, in terms of the giallo. They're just Italian horror/slasher movies, often with very little in common with each other, so why do we have a different term to distinguish them from French or American horror? Well, because a term existed at a time when they were very different from what the rest of the filmmaking world was producing, so it got borrowed and kept. Same with J-dramas and K-dramas. Likewise, "anime" as a term is a historical accident, but it's clearly somewhat useful, because there are substantial differences between the cultures surrounding Japanese animation and Western animation. At the outset, I'm interested in almost all Japanese animation but very little Western animation. Having a term that reflects such differences is useful, even if admittedly obnoxious. Admit it, if there were a native-derived term to differentiate British television from American television, it would see almost ubiquitous use. I don't see the difference here.

The funny thing about Citizen Kane is that the "spoiler" is expressly meant to show how ridiculous it is to think that any single detail about a man's life is essential to knowing who he was (and also how unknowable a man's life is). Actually knowing the identity of Rosebud as a viewer changes nothing about the movie, because that's the point.

I think you're focusing too much on the art and production rather than the culture and industry, syn. Sure, anime is just Japanese animation, but it's been produced, disseminated, and consumed in ways that are sharply different from Western models. Even though it's mostly a relic of mid-century Eurocentric media culture, the term still has utility in those respects. I mean, like people say, we don't have special terms for them, but British TV and French film are both seen to be distinct subsets of their mediums despite individual works often having a lot in common with those of other cultures. If you go within genres, you find stuff like this all the time. What are gialli besides horror/slasher movies made in Italy, with a few stylistic similarities shared between them? But there's an intensive history specific to the giallo that makes that term appropriate.

Movies are mostly made with the intention that they be watched with no foreknowledge, but that doesn't mean that's the best way they're to be experienced. Death of the author and all that. My favorite example from recent years is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I listened to the Quarter to Three movie podcast about it, which covered most of the movie's major themes and motifs, before going to see it with two friends. Knowing in advance what was important and what was not, I was able to focus on the performances and direction that make the movie transcendent, while both my friends struggled to follow the admittedly complex plot and couldn't really spare attention for anything else. Spoilers were the difference between them hating the movie and me loving it, so I don't give as much credence to that kind of intent as I used to do. Besides, chances are you're watching a movie on a TV or a monitor in the comfort of somebody's home, able to pause and rewind at will. That's all very far removed from the intended viewing experience of the filmmaker, but I doubt it bothers anyone that much. Like Bjorn said, I don't really care about things getting spoiled. A quick disclaimer like "We're going to do spoilers for five or so minutes, skip ahead" is all that's necessary in my mind, but maybe that's because I have never had a movie or game that was noticeably degraded by any sort of foreknowledge. Like Twig said, it's not better or worse, just different.

Shaft is generally known for this practice. I didn't mean my personal enthusiasm for their work to be a general endorsement for all types of viewers. Anyway, stylish and smart anime that doesn't trade too much in tropes (for better or for worse)... Revolutionary Girl Utena, Gankutsuou, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, Mushishi (do you ever get tired of recommending it, Twig?), Ghost in the Shell movies and series, Miyazaki movies, Hosoda movies, Shinkai movies... Hey, does Moribito hold up under scrutiny? I remember Balsa being a strong female character (in the near-vanished unironic sense of the term), but the show as a whole kinda washed over me when I watched it several years ago, so I'm not sure if I should be recommending it as anything special. Same goes for Eden of the East, too.

Nope. Not even a full episode, I think? There are very few fixtures in terms of plot.

It is easily my favorite comedy anime. Since there are no licensed versions of it (and probably never will be), I bought all fourteen volumes of the manga that have been translated (there probably never will be any more) to show my support.

All Shinbo-directed anime is great. Even Bakemonogatari deserves a spin, though I'll never forgive it or Arakawa for not being Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei. Actually, it's really telling how distinctive a style Shinbo has that I was watching the new Blu-ray of WataMote (which I'm coming to believe is a really important anime from a "state of the medium" perspective) and wondered if it was a Shaft production. Nope, it's Silver Link, which also did the surprisingly not-terrible Kokoro Connect, but the director is a protégé of Shinbo. I like both of them.

Yeah, that's fair. I suppose I get frustrated because it's always taken as a given that spoiler-free is the best way to experience anything, with which I tend to disagree. You only get to watch something for the first time once, and many of my best media experiences have involved movies and games that have been heavily spoiled so that I know exactly what to look for in terms of artistic choices. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a particular standout about which I think I actually wrote the podcast. Sometimes I would like to have the Thumbs drill way down on the central themes of a game, but they usually hold off either because other people on the podcast haven't played the game and plan to do so (totally fair) or because they think it's something that should be experienced firsthand (not so fair). Two of my favorite third-generation Idle Thumbs episodes are the Bioshock Infinite and The Last of Us spoiler casts, even though I didn't and never intend to play either, because the use of spoilers allowed them really to explore those games (and games in general) in ways I never could have done. Like I said, I'd like it to happen more, but I understand that it's hard for everyone to have either played the game or given up on playing it. I don't really have solutions, just desires.