Gormongous

So I watched Cross Game and it was amazing. Now I'm watching Chihayafuru and it's amazing. Is sports anime generally amazing or am I just getting amazingly lucky?

I really only knew about TotalBiscuit as a YouTube celebrity who used to get linked a lot in the comments of RockPaperShotgun reviews but hadn't been lately, so it's been really interesting to build an understanding of him almost exclusively through his efforts to be the "voice of reason" in #GamerGate... Actually, no. It hasn't been all that interesting, because he's acted exactly how I've come to expect amateurs who build their careers on charm and wit to act when they're suddenly forced into prolonged contact with the professional field that they resemble and sometimes imitate. He still tries to grab the high ground using force of personality, but this isn't a YouTube video of just him talking, watched exclusively by fans, so his authority falls apart with saddening alacrity when challenged. He doesn't seem to know how to respond to opposing viewpoints beyond nitpicking, he can't seem to change his mind without moving the goalposts first, and he certainly doesn't know how to acknowledge and account for his own ignorance other than pretending it doesn't exist. I've tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but seeing him go onto 8chan and declare that Totilo making him look like a country bumpkin on his first visit to the big city of journalism was "just as planned" just confirms a longstanding suspicion that he's just a yahoo with an audience, spouting off without a care in the world unless what he says somehow impacts him and his friends directly. How someone with little professionalism and less self-awareness intends to position himself as the mediator of this great issue is frankly beyond me. Basically: I don't know, I don't get the people that #GamerGate allows to represent them, but then beggars can't really be choosers...

I'm inclined to include both Rei and the plugsuits as examples of our nascent trope. Really good thematic justification to back up the diagetic justification doesn't mean that the trope isn't in effect, it just means that the trope isn't just a fig leaf. Also, In the second volume of the Eva manga, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki talks specifically how plugsuits were designed first and foremost to be "uncosplayable" and how disappointed they were when people wore them to the next Comiket anyway, so definitely that, at least. I've got bad news, Twig, there are going to be things you don't like that are examples of this trope. I think it's a Justified Trope, if only because conscious justification is necessary to its implementation, but many examples border on Hand-Waving Tropes.

Yeah, Cine. I know there are reasons for feeling how you feel and doing what you do, but you're a part of this community and you're all really important to us. Don't be a stranger, okay?

Yeah, there's this weird insistence with even the most "reasonable" people from #GamerGate that any allegation of misconduct is evidence of systemic corruption, with regards to the supposedly guilty party if not the entire profession as a whole. I don't know how Totilo can go toe to toe with TB for ninety minutes when every one of the latter's questions assumes that there is wrongdoing somewhere and it must be found. I try not to be petty, but I'd be making reference to chemtrails and grassy knolls after only half that amount of time, if not just turning the tables on TB like you suggest.

I hope you continue to listen and post notable moments, because I had to duck out after about twenty minutes. Just listening to Totilo carefully explain all the ways in which the relationship between journalists and their sources is complicated and sometimes fraught, then having TotalBiscuit try to catch him in a contradiction with sometime he wrote almost three months ago or force him to make a black-and-white statement on aforementioned complex issues, is exhausting to the point of pain for me. If the new online journalism is explaining basic questions of professional conduct to naive but militant onlookers, I don't blame anyone for wanting to get out of the business. I love the D-Day comparison. Do they even have an idea of the physical and logistical commitment of that operation? To them, it seems more as though Allied high command was like, "Shit, North Africa and Italy are going a little slow, aren't they? Who knows when Russia's going to pay off. Hey, why don't we just cross the Channel, that'll knock those Nazis out quick!" Again and again, the Reddit and 8chan segments of #GamerGate show an obsession with racking up tactical victories even though they have no connection to any actual strategic plan beyond "winning."

Is this given the attention it deserves in the third game? Why aren't all the other species in the galaxy incredibly freaked out by a secretive race of long-lived sexual chameleons that harvest genetic traits and possess powerful psychic powers?

I think it's fair to be extremely careful about preferring the more innocent etymology of a word known to come from a site that's otherwise steeped in rape culture and homophobia. Even if originally someone was thought to be butthurt because they were a baby with a rash and not because they were the recipient of figurative "surprise buttsecks," I doubt that held for long or is the case now, so even though I think the word's funny as hell, I try to find other ways to describe a person angry with entitlement and loss. Also, I am really done derailing this thread. I feel terrible that I'm not letting other people discuss this game and instead that I've helped to turn it into a weird lovechild of Feminism and "Ethics and Journalistic Integrity."

I feel like some people were waiting for it to turn nasty and stupid, for whatever reason. But yes, otherwise you're right. I'm also just ready not to be sad all the time.

I'm sorry you don't feel like you're being allowed a voice here on this matter, but I do think it's mistaken to see this drama as the product of two sides that either can end. If #GamerGate didn't attack women (or at least create circumstances within when women can be attacked under the aegis of their movement), there would be no feminist involvement whatsoever. There'd be no need for any. It's only a feminist issue because women and their allies have been repeatedly under attack, by both anonymous trolls and self-appointed faces of the movement. If people want the conversation to move to "ethics," then the easiest way that to happen is #GamerGate working with its critics to identify trolls and end their harassment. But, like some posts in the #GamerGate thread here have shown, many members are afraid that losing the trolls will make their movement weak or even irrelevant. So basically, they're creating and perpetuating the circumstances under which their own movement can't be taken seriously, for which I only have a small amount of sympathy. I don't know, I'm trying to be better about not engaging if I don't have anything to add. It leads to the kind of sickness you're talking about. The Last Night looks cool, but I don't want to support someone who sees themselves as part of the cultural force that created #GamerGate, so I part ways amicably. I don't want anyone feeling alienated by that.

It's hard to condense a lot of these opinions down into sizes fit for discussion, but I think that it's fair to interpret from Soret's post (and he should feel free to correct me, because I don't know shit) that the label of "gamer" is important enough to him that he doesn't feel he should have to qualify or abandon it, no matter what awful stuff is being perpetrated by other "gamers" using that same label. I think it's one thing to say, like Twig does, that you're a gamer and you're going to push back against people who use that label for shitty things, and another entirely to say that you're a gamer but you're not accountable for any of that label's meanings beyond the ones that you personally find relevant. Both are valid, of course, but one of them feels a bit more defensible to me as an ideological stance. Not that he should have to defend himself to me, but that's his choice, too. I also considered a long post, but then I realized that I'm not interested in debating where exactly the middle ground of this whole mess is. If you repost Sommers' videos without comment but call Sarkeesian "toxic" because you don't agree with her, if you say that culture is a "free market" of ideas but think that it's unfair to be judged by the actions of people who have chosen the same label as you, I just don't think we have a lot in common and my time is better spent elsewhere. No offense and good luck with the game, etc.

A strawman is a simplified, often fallacious version of an argument created by the opposing side to caricature a real position and make them easier to refute. For instance, a feminist strawman is a feminist who wants to kill all men and take away their money. Obviously, that's not what any feminist believes, but it bears enough resemblance to superficial traits of feminism that some people might confuse it for the actual position and therefore be convinced when an anti-feminist destroys it in an argument.

I hope you've never felt that I look down on you for it, Twig, even though I've personally come to a place in my life where calling myself a "gamer" doesn't feel true to my relationship with games anymore. What I honestly can't stand are the people who see only two sides to the issue, either for hardcore gaming as a discrete culture or against it, and so they argue for the gamers even though there's a lot of messed-up stuff in which they don't believe being argued along with it. I like that you're here and a conspicuous voice for a self-reflexive and inclusive gamer identity that doesn't condone or even excuse harassment, misogyny, and gate-keeping. As far as I can tell, those are the historical legacies of #GamerGate from the past couple months, so maybe this whole mess is a crucible where new identities and labels can be formed.

I once found the complete Titan Quest and its expansion for five bucks at Half-Price Books. That was a steal, but not really a find.

I'm an hour and a half in and I'm a little disappointed in this interview. Fleishman is not a very good interviewer, repeatedly talking over Wu to make points that are often too broad or too trite to further conversation. Wu, on the other hand, has a variety of strong opinions, but is spending a lot of effort to depoliticize them in a way that's ultimately distracting.

Double post, but has no one else seen Birdman? I just got back from it and it was really good. I know the trailer makes you think it's about all this magical realism stuff, but it's really just a very tightly screwed script about art and fame and being an old and somewhat ugly Michael Keaton. I can't wait to own it six months from now and watch it intensively.

It's really strange to see how effortlessly a very specific type of jerks knows how to congregate on one side of an issue. It's like they have meetings to make sure they're on the same page or something.

I can't type enough exclamation points to reflect in full my excitement about this announcement about a spiritual successor to King of Dragon Pass! Appropriately, for anyone who wants to know what one of the best story and history games ever made is like, the GOG version is on sale for $1.49. 2016 is given as the release date, but I'm worried that I'll have to wait longer, because the developers are software rather than games people and don't really understand digital distribution. They rightfully blame publishers and the retail system for making the original 1999 release on PC a failure, but repeatedly deny that things are different now. On the other hand, they love designing for iOS, but took years to contract Heroquest to port the game to Android. Basically, cautiously optimistic, but the only way it can go is up!

And the final phase of #GamerGate's transformation into a radical right-wing movement has begun!

This was actually the design issue that cut short my time with Monaco, which I got very close to hundred-percenting before the mini-expansion doubled the number of achievements. There's a small amount of pleasure to be derived from executing a plan perfectly, but when so much air is built into the interactions to make them tense during combat, stealth suddenly has a lot of unavoidable tedium that's hard to see as the reward for a job well done. I've only played two, but I suspect all multiplayer stealth/heist games struggle with incentivizing stealth while still keeping combat interesting, although push comes to shove, I'd rather the fail state be enjoyable, so that's why I'm playing Payday 2.

Yeah, I was about to post exactly that. Basically, both #GamerGate and its opponents rightly assume that most industry figures are remaining silent because of fear, but the experience of those industry figures finally speaking out shows that it's always fear of #GamerGate, which is usually overcome by the realization that #GamerGate interprets silence as support. In their minds, they represent the six billion people who've not taken a stance on the issue but are oppressed daily by the feminist Illuminati.

When we remember.

You're absolutely right. Also, Reddit and 8chan love to go on and on about the Streisand Effect that their critics are apparently invoking when they attack them, but I know I have found so many new, interesting, and different voices in the games industry due to the publicity that comes from attempts by #GamerGate to silence them. It makes me feel like they read the Wikipedia article but didn't stop to understand how it could apply equally to them.

It's posts like that one making me wonder whether it's inevitable for segments of #GamerGate to radicalize. If someone sent the AHA, the MAA, or the SSCLE, the three professional associations of which I'm a part, a similar list of demands, it might be brought up at the next meeting, which only happens once a year at most anyway, but it would almost certainly be ignored in its entirety, because most of its content is erroneous, some of it is contradictory, and none of it is achievable, especially not if these associations actually adhere to their own bylaws. In particular, the idea that candidates for the executive board should or even could be selected on the basis of ideological sympathies, rather than professional achievement or seniority, is as insane as it is impossible. It would require a degree of scrutiny of which no one in the association is capable, let alone qualified. Also, academic freedom, eh? It all puts me in mind of bank robbers who take hostages, demand a billion dollars and amnesty, then look for sympathy from the public when the police refuse to "negotiate" those terms with them. I don't think it's intentional here, but the effect of laying out such flagrantly uninformed and unrealistic demands is mostly the same. Baaarf. Thanks, though. I'm sure she'd appreciate the props, even though it's more that she really just doesn't have patience for the justification of unkindness in any form.

I loved the corpsman bit, but I was so checked out after two hours of "Home Alone on a boat with black people" that it didn't even really register until I talked about it with others.