Argobot

I listened to Rifftrax for awhile after it came out but eventually gave up. Others are right -- the jokes are a lot more mean-spirited than on MST3K and rely way more on fart/puke gags (which I know MST3K had as well but at least those were counterbalanced with decent writing). There's a lot less charm behind mocking a $300 million modern blockbuster than with mocking a legitimate 60s B-movie. Rifftrax is too similar to angry nerd on Internet makes YouTube video where he YELLS LOUDLY about plotholes in the prequel movies.

I understand how social changes happens.

I seriously doubt that the stagnation you're describing would have been halted by adding women to the staff. That's not something that either of us can ever prove, but still. Injecting women into a community that is fundamentally the same community won't produce the dramatic effects that I think most of us are clamoring for.

The Giantbomb thing is mildly disappointing, but it feels like too many people are giving this situation more weight than it deserves. Not hiring a woman doesn't mean that games will never become better and if they had actually hired a woman, it wouldn't have magically fixed all those problems either. I wish we could stop pretending that meaningful social change is going to come from sources like Giantbomb, who will always be shackled to the demands of their community.

Finished reading Dune Messiah. The story ended in an interesting enough place that I'm definitely going to read the third book in the series. It's crazy to me how much better this book is at telling the story that the Star Wars prequels were (I think) trying to tell. A preternaturally gifted individual is corrupted by his talents and directly leads to the death of his beloved (who dies giving birth to his also very gifted children who, despite his prescient abilities, he does not realize are in fact twins). Most of the similarities are probably coincidence, but it's still striking to me that Herbert was able to tell a mostly competent story along this vein in 300 pages.

Dune Messiah is finally starting to turn around for me. I don't have the same reaction as I do reading Dune, but it's still pretty good. I probably will end up reading the next one as well.

Congrats Danielle!!

I think that Kafka on the Shore actually is pretty good.

Flippancy aside, it's almost impossible to keep a thread on topic. That's why people are currently discussing vaccinations in the Star Wars thread. I appreciate the sentiment behind not wanting a bunch of men to derail a discussion on feminism, but that kind of self-policing can create its own problems. For one, it wasn't exclusively men who were contributing to the tangential discussion on fan service. And it is possible to overly spotlight your awareness to the point where it no longer seems that it's coming from a genuine place but more from a need to be validated for demonstrating how progressive you are. Example: basically all of the bios submitted to that Plz Diversify Your Panel website have a slimy tone of "I'm a white guy WHO GETS IT. Reward me." (ifeelthedarkness -- I'm not accusing you of doing that and I'm confident that you have the best intentions. It's just a pattern I've noticed, especially in the past few days surrounding that particular website and I thought it'd be worth commenting on.) I assume this XSeed thing is why everyone on twitter is suddenly talking about how boobs are represented and condemned in games and games criticism?

Not all men

Fan service for the most part seems strongly focused on (straight) men, whereas "ships" are almost entirely held by women. I'm endlessly fascinated by the role that women play in creating ships or fanfiction in general. This essay gets into some of that http://www.theawl.com/2009/10/smut-please-the-fabulous-online-universe-of-twilight-fan-fiction-in-which-edward-and-bella-get-it-on-and-on-and-on

I thought shipping originated with the X-Files. Or at least that's certainly where the version of fanservice that Jake describes comes from.

Haha, sorry for that. I have a made up name because initially I wasn't sure if I wanted people on the forums to know that I'm a woman but now I (obviously) don't care. If it's less weird to use my real name that's fine with me. In other news, started reading Dune Messiah today and am about 1/3 of the way through. It started off a little shaky and it definitely isn't captivating me in the same ethereal way that Dune did, but it's getting there. The Paul character is still interesting enough that I want to see where Herbert goes with him.

The Fremen are Slavic in this version?? My interest in seeing this miniseries just went up 200%.

That's one of my problems with this whole thing. It has a very "look at me" attitude with nothing to back it up with. The problem here is that there just aren't enough women in prominent games positions and that's what needs changing. Focusing on panels is kind of like focusing on the last part of the problem. Yes, I do agree that organizers should strive to be more inclusive and yes I do realize that there are already a number of talented women who deserve recognition for their work, but I also realize that at times there just might not be enough women available for organizers or podcasters or whoever to pull from. The progression for changing culture won't be changing panels leading to more women working at games studios; it'll be the exact opposite. And as an aside: Part of my real life job was organizing a week-long training program designed to encourage young women to seek out leadership positions. I am a white woman and so was the majority of our organizing staff. We agonized over finding a diversity of speakers (women in leadership positions) and it was struggle. Sometimes that was because as white women, our network of talented people to pull from was predominantly white, and sometimes it was because it was honestly difficult to find minority women in those kinds of positions. That's sad and frustrating, but we did our best to be as diverse as possible and were fairly successful. But having gone through this exact process so recently, I can greatly sympathize with organizers who experience a similar frustration. Even when you have the best intentions, sometimes you won't be able to successfully do all that you can to promote better representation. The heartening part of this story is that from the applicant pool of young women who applied to the program, we had absolutely no problem in selecting a diverse group. There was a sizable number of talented young women of color who applied and participated. Seeing that, seeing a large number of amazing young women from different backgrounds made me so hopeful that the next few generations will have a shift in the demographics of women leaders so that the idea of struggling to bring in more diversity to your events won't even exist.

As with a lot of campaigns that evolve from twitter sprees, I agree with what the goal here is in theory, but I have a lot of problems with its implementation. Too often it feels like the solution is focusing on the end result of a much larger, much more complicated problem. Things like this create a lot of noise, but accomplish little and end up crowding out actual valuable conversations on these issues (because complicated issues require complicated responses that just don't fit in with twitter culture). This site also has a weird twinge of self-promotion and self-congratulation that I do not enjoy. Personally, I feel that the Idle Thumbs podcast has demonstrated numerous times that they have a very thoughtful response to a lot of these issues and I don't believe that they need to prove anything by participating in something like this. The conversational format of the podcast would make any transparent nods to diversity fairly awkward if the guest didn't mesh well everyone else. That's why Danielle works so well as a guest; her personality lends itself well to the Idle Thumbs structure.

I read Dune partly because I watched that documentary and partially because I was told that the sequels take the concept of a Messiah character in an unusual direction for this kind of genre story. I wouldn't be surprised if the sequels aren't as good as the first book, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they are.

Everything that I've heard about the later books makes me interested in reading them just to see where Herbert takes the story. The writing is straightforward enough that I feel like I could knock out the next 5 in short period.

https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9458-dune/

Bungie is apparently selling shirts that say "That wizard came from moon" or whatever http://www.polygon.com/2014/6/20/5828892/that-wizard-came-from-the-moon-shirt-destiny-bungie Edit: I bet Chris would love that.

Oblivion.

The was the most difficult of the Feminist Frequency episodes for me to watch. I know intellectually that women are casually treated like sex objects in basically all media, but since I'm able to select what I watch/read/play, I've been able to avoid a lot of the more gratuitous examples of this over the years and only ever hear about it secondhand. The clips in this video absolutely astonished me, because it's been so long since I've willingly exposed myself to this kind of thing. I had no idea that so many modern games have topless women as set decoration. It was so disheartening for me to see scene after scene of awkwardly rendered women fondling themselves in front of the camera. The worst though were any of the clips of NPC sex workers propositioning the player character. There's nothing more unsexy about a dead-eyed game woman flatly offering to sleep with you (for a reduced price player, because you're so much more handsome than her usual clients!!). And the Red Dead Redemption "Dastardly" achievement actually made me feel sick to see. My experience with games is so atypical and I'm grateful for that. It saves me from having my opinion on the value of games be poisoned by this utter trash.

I managed to finish reading this book, but I also did not enjoy it. You're right -- the social commentary is superficial and ineffective. The ideas are interesting, maybe even plausible, but Shteyngart doesn't develop anything well enough. He writes something like "Fox News" and "Ultra Fox News" and then calls it satire when really it's just lazy. I haven't played any of the GTA games, but from what I've heard, the "satire" they employ is on the same level as what Steyngart is capable of in this book.

Was Nick actually on this episode of the podcast or did he just get animated in? If it's the latter--good. I've watched this video five times in a row now.

God. All of this is wonderful.