BadHat

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Everything posted by BadHat

  1. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Nice. I hope it's not all goofy and theatrical and there's some more spacey stuff like Z1. A friend just released an EP, which I'm partially linking as a plug (hope that's alright), but also because I'm enjoying it. It's super janky instrumental hiphop with loads of broken-ass beats and weird vocal sampling. My kinda stuff. https://vegeta897.bandcamp.com/album/tangled
  2. You should start with Alien Resurrection. Then you have nowhere to go but up. Something about episode 176 which I'll shove here because I only just caught up on the show again: it was so good to hear Anita in the midst of all the shit that was going down when I heard it. I went down the rabbit hole of the gamergate thing pretty hard because my curiosity is dumb like that, and it was such an embittering experience to see all that vitriol without a human face or voice to it (internet aristocrat doesn't count). Just hearing her talk about stuff like a person was exactly the tonic I needed to pull me back to reality where people exist as more than ugly caricatures.
  3. Our favourite moments of play

    Finishing Journey with a randomly matched player was a huge one, but that's kind of cheating because that's basically what that game is all about. There was that one time I took out an entire team in Gears of War multi. I was the last one standing, killed them all in the space of about ten seconds just by shimmying around a single piece of cover and blasting them with the shotgun as they tried to rush me. I don't normally gloat in multiplayer but they got an earful in voice chat on this occasion.
  4. Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

    I tried real hard to get into Odin Sphere, imported it because I loooved the art style and then just bounced right off it. It's probably a difficulty curve thing but I couldn't get past the whole thing with growing plants and the bosses seemed unreasonably tough? I should check out a let's play just so I can stare at the pretty art some more.
  5. Steam Curation!

    Don't forgot the numerous popular gamergate curator groups who all makes jokes about feminism because it's totally not about feminism.
  6. Steam Curation!

    Made a group with a few friends I play stuff with: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6864644-Michael-Shannon-Fanclub/ There's a few dumb in-jokey reviews in there because we're mostly doing it for fun, but most of them are things we've genuinely enjoyed. Not totally sure how I feel about this update yet, but writing these short reviews is a lot of fun somehow.
  7. Feminism

    Yeah, chrome hung and froze and refused to load a bunch, wouldn't expand the "read more" comments. Chucked it in firefox and it worked straight away. :iiam: One of the panelists in this video kind of echoes this. Basically, that male voices are needed in these discussions because other men may be more on guard when speaking to a woman. Hearing it said so clearly made me feel a renewed sense of responsibility... then I remembered I don't use twitter.
  8. Feminism

    Wow, geez. I love the way he completely led himself to the anti-men angle with absolutely zero prompting, took immediate offence to every barely implied insult, then basically flat out stated "nerds rule cool kids drool" as his closing statement. This is totally not someone who lets deep-seated insecurities and paranoia rule his life!!! I'm actually surprised with how much gamers are willing to identify themselves as a marginalised group through this whole thing. I've gotten into discussions with people about this who are happy to downplay harassment of industry women as "overblown" and "just a misdirection" (one person seriously suggested that women were quitting the industry to play up their own sociopolitical agenda, what the actual fuck), and yet any perceived slight against gamers constitutes a systematic attack on gamer/nerd culture which somehow goes to the roots of the journalism industry. It doesn't matter that plenty of non-gaming sites are criticizing this movement as well, these people will not fucking budge, and conversations like the one you posted demonstrate why. It's such a weird thing to see for me, as someone who was pretty nerdy all through school at a time when being interested in computers was still kind of taboo, seeing people who are still so attached to that identity like it's a hard-won status they have to protect. It's kind of weird and unsettling, actually. I have to wonder what else is going on with them that they're so suspicious of outside influence. Also, why does storify hate chrome so much. Had to open it in firefox just so it wouldn't hang constantly.
  9. Feminism

    I mean obviously rape isn't as big a deal as, say, a jar of honey.
  10. I Had A Random Thought...

    "What are you doing?" "I'm rearranging the little boy face on my stomach fat so his features align properly."
  11. I Had A Random Thought...

    That's the kind of portrait I expect to see immortalised in tattoo form.
  12. anime

    Apologies if this was already posted but you just reminded me of this, which was kind of hilarious. Not worth watching unless you have access to Madoka Magica, it's like a rifftrax thing with him talking over top of an episode, but with zero context and no audio/subs. Something like this with Dan would just be... magical. Oh man even better, Dan and his dad watch anime. Oh and I guess there's a second one out already, for another show I haven't heard of.
  13. Feminism

    Man, now I've had time to sit on that rant for a bit I'm not really sure if I came across that well. I mean the vitriol was 100% intentional, like I said I was venting, but I feel like I should clarify that I wasn't trying to indict any legitimate discussion of ethics or whatever other topics have come out of this shitstorm. I was reacting to a pretty common attitude I saw, which was people brushing right past the very real harassment happening right in front of their faces, and then taking as gospel whatever conspiratorial nonsense came their way. Like, if any positive discussions come out of this that's totally cool, I just don't think it's worth ignoring what is absolutely definitely happening in order to discuss what might possibly be happening. Anyway, maybe this was obvious already, just didn't want to seem like a massive ass. Massive Asslice.
  14. Feminism

    Whoa. I knew who this was before I started, but even so having a voice I intimately associate with Shepard talking about current events is kind of surreal.
  15. Feminism

    It's like I walked into a burning building and made a burning building analogy.
  16. Ello.co

    Thanks. I guess I should do something with this now. https://ello.co/badhat
  17. Ello.co

    Sure, I'll take one. I just about didn't ask because I didn't think I had PM privileges, then I remembered this wasn't Something Awful. Now I feel kind of bad for making that association.
  18. Feminism

    Good lord, what a week. Even being on the periphery of this whole thing it's been pretty bewildering and rage-inducing to follow, and it's taken me a while to solidify my thoughts on it (the recent Thumbs episode and that Isometric cast someone linked helped a lot). I'm just gonna vomit them here because I need a place to vent, even if this doesn't effect me directly. Lots of profanity and rage ahead. As ever I continue to be the most frustrated by the so-called moderates, the "reasonable" ones, the people who are content to sit on the fence and decry both sides while accomplishing nothing and worse. The people who took up the clarion call of taking journalists to task for their questionable ethics when it was really just a smokescreen for more nefarious parties to harass and (successfully!) expel elements of their culture they found unsavoury with impunity. That is to say women, obviously. It angers me to no end that these blind, ignorant fuckups can sit there and level excuse after excuse (but Zoe this, but Zoe that) in order to redirect the conversation towards their own interests when real, actual lives are being ruined as they sit on their hands and complain about the journalistic integrity of Kotaku. Fucking Kotaku. I swear to god every comment I read that resembles "yes that's bad, but..." makes my blood pressure rise. "Yes, obviously this shouldn't be happening, but--" no, fuck you, that's not good enough. You should be outraged that this is happening, in the name of the very thing you're trying to defend no less. "Well those are just some bad apples, both sides have those, they don't represent me!" Then fucking do something about it, otherwise what good are you? It's like they walked into a burning building, saw someone burning to death, and calmly explained to them that they weren't the ones that lit the match and besides didn't you say some means things about fire in the past? Worse still, some of these people have thousands, millions of followers that hang onto their every word. They had an opportunity to say something and they squandered it on trying to be "reasonable" and "even handed." Because being seen to support one side or the other would open them to criticism, too. Because feminism is a dirty word. Because this whole thing is absolutely, undeniably mired in politics and "social justice," as much as everyone else wants to deny it. Because according to the people who pay their ad revenue, it's not about feminism... until you take a stand against harassing women, and then fuck you get your politics out of gaming. The thing that gets me is, if these people value gaming at all, which they will go to lengths to convince you they do, why would they not want to stick up for developers? The answer is plain as day to me now - it's because they don't care about gaming, they care about games. They don't want to think about how the sausage is made, they just want a nice fatty piece of meat on their plate, at a price they deem befits the maker's standing ($15 for a 2D platformer, are you shitting me? I'll just wait for the humble bundle, my Destiny pre-order arrives tomorrow anyway!) and they can starve for all the shits they give. But as soon as someone tries to tell them, hey, it's cool that you enjoy that, but wouldn't it be cool if these other people could have something they enjoy too? You're no longer a gamer to them. Because gamers don't have agendas, gamers play games. Fuck. I know I generalised a lot at the end there but that's pretty representative of the deluge of comments I've been enduring on reddit and elsewhere, so my brain is probably conflating some stuff to save space. There's just too much stupidity and inconsiderate bullshit out there right now. What frustrates me the most is that I couldn't stomach it enough to say something at the time, even if I would have been one voice among countless others. The whole thing was so repellent that I just bounced right off it. Not that I could organise my thoughts at the time anyway, so I probably would've said something stupid and inflammatory - instead I just settled for inflammatory. Whatever, I just hope when this shit all dies down people will remember what sparked it all off. It'd be so easy to look back and cherry pick the positive discussions which gave room for all this horrible shit to happen and completely ignore the casualties of this whole mess. People are out of a job now, not because they were actually incompetent, but because they refused to endure the mob that told them in no uncertain terms that they weren't wanted. That, if nothing else, should communicate to people how disproportionate the level of outrage over this stuff is to the actual stakes at hand. People are voluntarily leaving the industry because they've been shouted out by people who claim to represent gaming, and other gamers still have their guns pointed squarely at journalists, because OF COURSE Gone Home didn't deserve a 10/10, I knew it all along! The message is that journalists need to raise themselves to such an insane standard as to be completely unimpeachable, and for no extra benefit to themselves except some smug youtuber won't record a 30 minute expose at the faintest whiff of corruption. If this is their audience, then why should they?
  19. The Falcon iPhone 6 Bespoke

    I refuse to believe this is real until I see will.i.am endorsing it. Side note: in the process of googling to double check I had his name right, I discovered http://will.i.am/ is actually his site.
  20. Who here likes video games?

    Ironic "fuck video games" post.
  21. The Dancing Thumb (aka: music recommendations)

    Aw shit, thanks for the reminder. I got one of their EPs ages back on the strength of one track and haven't checked them out since. This band was just brought to my attention and I'm severely hooked. Metal outfit with a really distinctive, confident style. They also manage to be pretty versatile without falling into the trap of sounding gimmicky or unfocused like a lot of other prog outfits, which I love. Here's something sweet and something harsh
  22. Hey this is old but this guy is legit amazing. Here's some bonus creepy!!
  23. Idlethumbs changed my life forever

    Oh good, it's not just me.
  24. Recently completed video games

    I finally got around to playing Fez and "finished" it with the 32 cubes ending. Holyyyy crap. I think that's my favourite game ending now (I don't know if I even had one before). If the 64 cubes ending is anywhere near as cool as that I'll be pretty stoked. Too bad these anti-cube puzzles are kicking my ass.
  25. Idlethumbs changed my life forever

    As a fellow sort-of gay I think this is great and I'm happy you found some solace in swooning over the thumbs. On the other hand, reading this gave me the heartiest gut laugh I've had in days. So, thanks for that too.