Argobot

Goodfellas is nearly a perfect movie. I'm not a big fan of its ending, but everything that comes before it is so wonderful. It may not be Scorsese's best film, but it's certainly the one I have the most fun watching, largely because it is all over the place with its characters and the plot. The movie is ridiculous and over the top and violent, but I can't help smiling the whole way through.

I don't really post here, but this place seems pretty cathartic, so here it goes: Two weeks ago I moved from DC to Seattle, where I will be starting grad school. I'm living in a new city, where I don't know many people, while my friends and family (including, for the time being, my boyfriend) are still in the East Coast. It's a strange situation on its own, but add to that my mounting worry over grad school and how exactly I'm going to afford going to school full time (hopefully find a part time job, I guess??), and you get a weird head space that I haven't been able to get out of. I'm excited and also terrified, but hopefully my situation will normalize once I get more familiar with my new home.

So I Married a DOTA 2 Player

Click here to learn this gamer dating secret discovered by an Old Midwestern grandmother. EA hates it!

http://littlelull.tumblr.com/post/60240420647/i-cant-go-back-or-why-im-so-bent-out-of-shape-about http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7428-feminism/?p=250834 http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7428-feminism/?p=250831 ? Here's a good essay on why making a rape joke and then hiding behind the banner of satire or art is disingenuous: http://mammonmachine.com/post/60201774063/penny-arcade-and-the-slow-murder-of-satire "Hive of rape and misogyny is hyperbolic -- no one who has criticized PA or PAX in this thread have accused them of all being violent rapists. People are trying to explain why they feel uncomfortable in a setting where an audience will literally cheer when someone expresses regret over pulling merchandise that was created in reference to a literal joke about rape. If you think what Krahulik or any other influential video games leader says about women doesn't have an effect on general attitudes in the community, than you are either naive or have never directly received any negative attention (I suspect it's more of the latter case).

I agree that most video game endings feel largely unsatisfying, but I don't necessarily believe that ending dissatisfaction is limited to games. Most books -- even great books -- have passing to mediocre endings. I find the ending to often be the most uninteresting, if not the most unimportant part of a story. It's usually not a problem, unless the fiction tries to set up a SHOCKING, BIG ending where ALL QUESTIONS WILL ANSWERED. The momentum is already against the writer when it comes to the ending, putting more pressure on pulling it off basically guarantees that you will fail. But that's the general structure that most video games follow -- a steady build to a melt your face off conclusion -- and that's why most video game endings are bad.

Boycotting bothers me because it implies that power comes from who has the most money. Realistically, I know that's how our current system works, but I really wish we could move away from this idea. Many of the people who are currently PA's loudest critics can't afford to actually attend the convention, so calls for a mass boycott isn't the most effective strategy. Sadly, I don't think individual people making the decision to not attend PAX won't influence Penny Arcade to change. What the Fullbright Company did has the potential to help move things in the right direction, provided that other prominent people in the games industry make the same decision. Outside of that, the only way I see any actual change coming is by continuing to have this conversation. If PAX is meant as an inclusive space for everyone, than it's important for those who don't feel included to speak up and explain why.

I'd rather have a thread about this.

The Idle Thumbs community is already like this, for the most part. It's one of the reasons I like it so much.

I'm sorry that happened. The few times I've attended PAX, my experience as a woman was no worse than it usually is. Sure, occasionally a developer will only talk to my boyfriend and seem mildly surprised when I express interest in a game. Or random (male) strangers will stop me when I walk through the hall and ask me for a hug. Or even better, someone will use my gender as excuse for why I'm able to do something they can't: "He's only talking to you because you're a girl." "You're pretty good at this game [for a girl]." All that may seem innocuous -- and I'm so grateful that I've never experienced anything worse -- but being treated that way really wears you down after awhile. It'd be nice if I could attend something like PAX and not feel like an unwelcome outsider.

Voting with your dollar isn't usually a strategy I enthusiastically support, but numerous people have attempted the one-on-one approach with PA and it never seems to stick. At this point, it feels like a lost cause and I don't begrudge people who no longer want to participate. I also don't blame those who still believe that PA is capable of change, I'm sure they are. But that change probably won't come without a high price, like lots of people turning away from PA and PAX because of their refusal to listen or learn from their past mistakes. Edit: A lot of prominent men in the video game community already are speaking out against the sexist culture. Patrick Klepek, John Walker, the Idle Thumbs, hell, even Cliffy B said some positive stuff about Anita Sarkesian recently. I'm happy that these men are speaking out, but I wish that it don't take a male voice for people to recognize that sexism is a problem. Plenty of prominent women have been making this argument for years, but their concerns have generally been ignored.

Exactly right. That's why I'm not afraid to walk around at night by myself. Statistically, I know I'm much more likely to assaulted by an acquaintance than by a random stranger. Maybe that's a naive way of thinking, but it's the only way I can convince myself to leave my apartment after a certain hour.

The thing is, street harassment happens all hours of the day. Offering to walk someone home at night, while considerate, doesn't fix the problem. Most of the harassment I've experienced happened in the middle of the day, in front of other people. It's a shitty, often undiscussed, reality of being recognizably female in public.

Over the past few weeks I haven't had much free time for reading, but I'm slowly making my way through Stoner. It's surprisingly beautiful, in a way that I wouldn't expect a book set in Missouri to be. I'm reminded a lot of Mary McCarthy's The Group when I read it, but obviously with a different gender as the main focus.

Further comments from PA (unsurprisingly, they're going for the censorship angle): http://kotaku.com/penny-arcade-artist-pulling-dickwolves-merchandise-wa-1245440640 I've been to PAX a few times now and while I've never personally felt excluded or mistreated because I'm a woman, but I also wasn't in that room when people cheered Dickwolves merchandise. It was petty and immature and goes directly against the idea of creating an inclusive space. It gives the impression that if you're a woman, the only way you'll be accepted into the space is if you keep quiet about jokes that bother you, because obviously fighting against perceived censorship is more important than being a decent human being. It's gross and sad, and I don't want to have any part of it.

He probably (hopefully) didn't intend for his comment to be interpreted as a complete retraction, but that's definitely how it will be. Is that fair? Maybe not, but if he truly regrets how aggressive the Dickwolves issue became, why didn't he just say he regretted ever putting up Dickwolves merchandise in the first place?

For more context: During a Q&A panel, when asked if he had any regrets, Mike Krahulik said he regretted pulling the Dickwolves merchandise (and the crowd cheers): http://www.twitch.tv/pax/b/455394585?t=2h35m The Dickwolves controversy is over two years old at this point. Bringing it up again, especially after a very recent public controversy that caused a well-known indie game developer to pull out of your convention, is poor form and childish. I'm tired of people acting like the threat of censorship gives them free rein to act like jerks, and I'm tired of seeing grown men smugly act this way in a forum where they know they will get support (seriously, the crowd cheering is the most upsetting part of that video). I know people in the games industry are capable of change -- Idle Thumbs are a really great example of that -- but this Penny Arcade thing is just depressing and tiresome.

Fair enough. And I agree, Veep is an amazing show that really deserves more attention than it's been getting. Veep, ONTB, and Enlightened are the much needed response to the overwhelming number of TV shows with a middle-aged, white, male antihero.

Any scene with Red in Orange is the New Black is fantastically funny.

It didn't even occur to me to question what the in-world explanation of the diaries were until I got to the end of the game and realized that Structuring the game that way is much more emotionally strong than if they had gone the Sunset Blvd route and revealed everything in the beginning. I had such a one-to-one relationship with Katie during the whole game and the ending was a forceful reminder that the player and Katie are actually separate people. The game is obviously Sam's story, but the ending reveal with the diaries really made me wonder about Katie and what she'd been feeling the whole time she'd been walking through this abandoned house.

I'm Gabe Newell

Right after the movie came out, this scene was getting a lot of attention in the press. This was Lindelof's initial response to criticism/questions: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1707650/star-trek-into-darkness-spoiler-special-burning-questions-answered.jhtml Another interview I remember reading justified that scene because Saldana was in her underwear during the first one, so the new girl has to be in her underwear in the second. I never had a strong desire to see the second movie, but I enjoyed the first one well enough and would have seen this one too, but the tone deaf use of female actresses in this movies really made me not want to see it.

Posting here in case anyone is still reading: For the people who are already in Seattle, I'll be in the downtown area tonight, wandering from bar to bar. If you want to hang out, shoot me a message! Best way to contact is twitter (sorry) --- @sarahargodale.

Safe flight!

Anyone remember VH1's popup video? They'd play music videos with little popups of factoids that related to the video or the artist. I watched a popup video of Young Frankenstein with my dad at some point in the 90s. It had the tidbit about the original Frankenstein set (which apparently they found just sitting in some dude's garage??). I also remember that the popups helpfully explained that "Blucher" is the German word for glue, which is why the horses neigh anytime someone says Frau Blucher. (Now I'm in a deep dive of weird 90s memories of popup video, VH1 and VH1 classics, and those VH1 "Where are they now" documentaries)