Bjorn

FWIW, I wasn't trying to make any objective declarations with the original post, I was just copying what everyone in the previous discussion had said and didn't want to make any judgment calls myself in introducing it here. I agree with this most strongly: In the original list, I think Edi is the one that is absolutely most emblematic of it. Her NPC form could have conceivably taken a bunch of different and interesting forms, but ultimately a backstory was created whose sole purpose seems to be to justify giving her a hot fembot to cruise around in. I'm also onboard with a lot of Reyturner's criticisms. It's that link between, "This character seems kinda sexist and male gazey" and "Oh, but wait, she's that way because arglebargle!" that makes it interesting and not just a trope about sexist/sexy design. And I agree that it's important to remember that a trope isn't a condemnation, just a description of a routinely used practice. It seems like most of the things thrown out as examples so far all come from things that one or more of us like (in fact, we seem to be more likely to identify the ones that actually come from shows/games we enjoy). I don't want to derail on this, but it seems like you are saying that selling sex is, by default, morally suspect and can't be noble. I haven't ever watched Firefly, so I don't know how it's presented there. But there is an established profession of sexual surrogacy and therapy, and it pretty readily shows that there exists a kind of sex work in which people are happy to provide a needed service to help someone's life. I'd argue that anyone who does physical labor has turned their body into a commodity (or really, if you take a job at all, you've commoditized yourself), and limiting our language use to talking about sex as commoditizing someone's body is a very stigmatizing way to talk about it. I have a friend who has periodically done sexual surrogacy, including working with people with disabilities and working with adult virgins. While the work is challenging and can be draining, she's overall felt that it has been some of the most fulfilling and satisfying work she's done. Not that there haven't been some rough spots (certainly, and the emotions involved in helping someone in this situation can be intense), but still a lot of good. Knowing this woman over the last few years has gotten me to challenge a lot of my own default reactions and thoughts I've had about sex work.

I am laughing so hard right now. Weirdly enough, I've stayed in closer contact with the people I met at community college than I have the people I actually graduated with from the university. I was an older, non-traditional student by the time I graduated, so felt like I had a lot more in common with the other people at juco than I did KU.

I know I've said to try and avoid painting gg supporters as children, but sometimes they do feel like kids on a playground exaggerating shit to make everyone like them.

Holy balls, I've known almost nothing about the two behind the Sarkeesian Effect video, other than that they exist and it's a thing. I had kinda assumed they were just a couple of regular shitheads. Nope, extra special shitheads. Also, these tweets, I'm not sure if he's capable of seeing the relationship between them:

So instead of paying any attention to the Royal's continuing implosion for the last couple of hours, I helped edit my daughter's paper and powerpoint presentation for her class tomorrow. She's in a class that studies interactive media and the intersections of various types of media. For their current project, she decided to cover gamergate, and examine whether or not there are elements in the history of gaming culture and development that helped lay part of the foundation for gg. That makes it sound a bit more impressive than it is, it's an undergrad research paper and powerpoint, so not like a dissertation or anything. But she did some pretty good work on it. One thing she's a little concerned about is that a lot of the people in the class are in a video game or programming track, and there are a bunch of young dudes in it (naturally). She actually saved one of those "Actually, it's about ethics" memes to her thumbdrive to pull up if someone is ballsy enough to say that to her during her presentation. At least I know that the professor will be on her side if anyone does decide to publicly be a dipshit, since he happens to be an old buddy of mine and I'm well aware of his stances on all this stuff. But we also had a talk about ways to handle it if someone does decide to go that route. Which is...I don't know, fucking weird and sad to have to have that conversation.

I'm not allowed to drink the Kraken anymore. The less said about that, the better (rum is my devil drink). It is delicious though.

Sorry, but serious lulz at Schaub. I really feel for raiders fans. I've had a whole weekend of watching sportsball. Went to a k-state vs Texas game with my dad, where KSU shutout Texas to take control of the big 12. Watched the royals game with him in the k-state stadium parking lot that night, then we came back to Lawrence today and spent the afternoon watching nfl games. He started the royals game with us tonight, but pooped out early and headed back to his rv. Not often enough I just get to spend a whole weekend being a sports geek with my dad. Pretty fucking sweet weekend. Now hopefully the royals pull the rest of this one off.

Ha, it's kind of funny to see that conversation resurrected. As for clogging, maybe? I'll put the rest in a spoiler, in case people don't want to read about toilet physics and my personal observations on pooping.

That's probably something they they should have anticipated, and possibly trued to avoid (I don't know how you do that). Having a bunch of internet sleuths try to track you down on reddit has to be terrifying.

At least now I know that some day there are going to be inflatable 9/11 rides at the state fair.

My graduating class had like...76 people in it, I think? I could probably name 50+ of them if I tried really hard, since I knew all of them from age 4-18. My 20th reunion is next year. Historically, we just rent out the building at the fairgrounds, drink, play shitty music, and then go to the bar once we get kicked out of the fairgrounds. Or dumb people go drive around drunk in the dark on dirt roads and shoot things. It's just like high school again. Depending on how my wife and I's current project goes though, next year could be real fucking interesting. Not sure if the new business will be open by then or not.

WAT?

I'm all for avoiding spoilers in forums, we have tags specifically for that and it's super easy to just be browsing a thread and see something you didn't want to (thought I admit a whole host of nested spoiler windows is fugly as hell). I like to be able to be active in a forum as I'm playing a game, or before if it's something I know I'm going to play. But in written works or podcasts though, spoil away. Just say, "And now we're going to talk/write in-depth about X, checkout for awhile if you don't want to know that." Done! The power to be unspoiled is put in the hands of those who care to make that decision, and the onus is also put on the unspoiled to come back and revisit the podcast or essay at a future time when they are prepared to. Weirdly enough, I've had to come to terms with the fact that the things I most don't want spoiled (often little, surprising and wonderful details) are the things that everyone seems fine spoilering. So whatever, I got used to it. Those always seem to be the charming things that reviewers use to try and paint a scene when describing a game. Because it's often the minor points or details that bring me the most joy in a narrative game. Arguably my favorite moment of any game ever came in Deadly Premonition, and it's the kind of moment that couldn't exist without being completely unaware of it. ^that moment only works if you don't know what's coming. It's not a story event. It just happens under the right circumstances. And it's awesome.

Nice! I kept trying to think of something like Back(side)story and couldn't make it work. You win the TVTropes naming game. Now we just need to come up with some more examples and put an article together. So, we've got ME3 and between Twig and Gorm, I'm sure they can come up with some anime examples. I haven't played either Bayonetta. Would her hair magic fall into this?

I'm pretty sure someone linked this a few days ago, but I'm going to link it again, as I just had time to listen to it. Isometric episode 24 is required listening if you care about this stuff (well, or required listening at some point when you can handle it, if you're overwhelmed with the bullshit, it's really raw). Brianna Wu talks very frankly about what happened to her, and quite frankly about her disgust at the outlets and men in the industry who chose to remain silent while this was going on. They also talked about something I wasn't aware of, that following the deluge of hate that Samantha Allen got this summer, she has not only quit covering games (that I knew) but has been trying to at least partially scrub some of her previous work from the Internet, or limit how high profile it is. Because she continued getting hate and abuse for months and months.

This is a good idea, and I support this. If it involves an actual quest in a game, it could be called Side (Boob) Quest. I don't have a TV Tropes account, but amongst us, I'm sure we can find or make one that is eligible to make a new article. So what's better, Booty Backstory or Boob Backstory?

This is my favorite so far (source is bigger):

Ah, that's the sweetest story. Congrats to you both!

It's a good question, and actually a good follow-up in general, pointing out the writing hoops that the ME3 team had to go through in order to justify Edi's body. And as blatantly sexist content has become slightly less accepted, creators will be increasingly likely to try and justify it in-world. We could come up with our own. Call it the Booty Backstory: A backstory or origin story which exists primarily to justify the sexualized design of a character. Also, Edi's design can get worse, but it only happens when you put on one of the alternate outfits. Someone on the design team straight up took the time to give her a highly visible camel toe. Because artistic integrity.

Sweet, thanks! I'm in at BjornDaDwarf (Bjorn was already taken ). I doubt I use it extensively anytime soon, I'm not even particularly active on Twitter, I mostly use it to follow a bunch of people, not really interact. But I am curious to see how it develops from the inside.

That makes me a bit more interested in them. Anyone still have any invites left?

Oh man, I'm going to defend ME3's story, kinda...I'm sorry. Edi's body was designed by Cerberus as an infiltration, AI controlled robot to use against Earth research and military facilities. While not stated (I don't think), the assumption is that she was made to be an attractive female as seducing people would have been one of the tools at her disposal to accomplish her mission. So the body does actually follow the "form is function" pattern established by all the other machines. Now of course, that's not getting into the way female characters were designed, and changed, over time. I'm pretty sure that every single female characters breasts grew in size between 1->2->3. And in 3 at least, both Samara and Miranda are running around in high heels, which is even worse than Edi having them, to me.

I haven't RP'd in a tabletop game in a long time, but when I was, I found myself increasingly drifting towards more and more bizarre characters, as they tended to be easier to actually role-play.

Thanks, that got a genuine laugh out of me.

Wow, all that went down in my backyard, and I hadn't heard anything about it.