Mangela Lansbury

For the last couple hundred years, the Japanese haven't really practiced cultural imperialism. They had a brief foray into imperialism (as a political motive, since they still have an emperor) in the 40s, but it was quashed. Also, Princess Mononoke was generally respectful of the Ainu, a marginalized racial group in Japan.

You mean the Japanese games that generally feature a lot of people with generically white characteristics? Uh-huh. EDIT: Also, the Polish word for black people (that's kind of taken on a racist turn in recent times!) has the same root as the English word moor and dates back to... the 1300s? Which means it was in common use before that. Soooooooooooooo

Too many white people isn't the complaint or the problem. The problem is that it's ONLY white people, to the exclusion of anything else. Someone else made this argument better than I could, though.

It's actual dehumanization. The writers are literally saying "White people are people, but every other race is something else." That's a problem.

I had an usually frustrating week because I couldn't perform an incredibly simple task at work. The department I'm working in right now uses these pen devices to record their meetings. You hit record and the pen starts recording audio, then remembers at what time in the meeting you wrote notes in the pad so that if you want to jump to a part of the audio where they talk about something, you can do that really easily. It's super cool and useful! One of the higher ups wanted the audio pulled off the pens, wrapped up in a PDF, and sent to them for reference. The proprietary software that comes with the pen is supposed to be able to do that, so it should be really easy to do that! Sure thing, boss! One of the pens went off relatively without a glitch -- the only problem was getting authorization to install the software on my computer, which is just standard office stuff. Got it done in no time at all! With the second pen, things started falling apart. For whatever reason, the audio and notes were no longer connected in the database and there was no way for me to get them together. I email the person that wants them and ask if they just want the notes and audio separately and they say they only really need the audio, just make sure to title it so she knows what's what. Alright, groovy. So I start exporting the audio -- and end up with 5 minute long m4a's instead of the 2 hour file that plays in the proprietary software. I spend an afternoon with tech support and their solution is "download audacity and fix it yourself." Frustrating, but whatever, I do it. The last three days have been spent on and off the phone with their customer support just trying to get data off a third pen. It uses different proprietary software that has to interface with a third party, and it's impossible to get it to load files directly onto your computer EVEN THOUGH you have the option to hook it up to your computer to sync the data on it to a remote server. Between Wednesday and today -- with most of every day being committed to talking to customer support about the issue and trying a million different things -- no progress has been made. I finally broke down today and got abusive to the customer service rep I was working with's supervisor, telling him off about how the frontline cs reps were incredibly undertrained and had nowhere near enough knowledge or resources available to them, that his company should be ashamed of the joke of a customer service department they're running, etc, etc. I felt kind of bad about it, but at least I made the rep I'd been working with laugh when I said, "I'm so frustrated that I need to chew someone out. You've been really nice and these failings aren't your fault. Please escalate my ticket to someone in charge immediately." Just argh. At least I got off early when my boss came over and was like, "You are too nice to get that mean easily. Go home. I'll pay you through the end of the day. Have a good weekend."

That podcast was really nice to listen to. It's only 15 minutes long, if anyone wants to give a listen! http://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/pride

It's kind of sad that bisexual history has been largely erased because of the political nature of identifying a bisexual in the early days. It was seen as affirming heterosexuality, so there were a lot of bisexual men who publicly identified as gay men but who slept with women. It's starting to be reconstructed -- if you go through the ACT UP oral history, you can see a lot of personal stories that include this, and most gay histories I've read from the last few years have included something about bisexual history, like the importance of bisexuals in early development of safe queer spaces in non-urban settings -- but it's still spotty at best. Lesbian and bisexual nurses were hugely helpful in the early days of Kaposi's sarcoma too, but no names are coming to mind immediately.

Motor City Pride is this weekend! I'll be going, but it'll be in a new capacity for me. I've been working with a nonprofit that's trying to document an oral history of the city's queer communities from the AIDS crisis on, so tomorrow I'll be helping with some technical stuff with recording the interviews, then transcribing them! I expect I will cry more than once. Gay white dudes have kind of taken over the queer movement and a lot of us are super shitty about everyone who isn't a gay man. It's pretty bad and I have screamed at people for being awful at pride before (you don't boo a bi group in the parade, shitty white guys!!!). It's really disheartening to see an event that's supposed to be about celebrating your freedom to be yourself and publicly express who you are turn into a weird show of power so everyone knows the gay white dudes are at the top of the pecking order. Shame is the poison and pride is the antidote and all that. No need to shame people when you should be celebrating them. That stuff has been getting in recent years, but it still happens.

Demon's Souls 2: King's Field would be the best case scenario

The good thing about high visibility people like Caitlyn Jenner is the effect they can have on resources for more marginalized people. I've seen things around on social media about people donating to homeless shelters for trans youth lately, and that's probably because of Caitlyn. I feel pretty similarly to you in general, though.

This is adorable. My screen name comes from some gender stuff I've mostly worked through and a desire to be JB Fletcher. My longest running screen name is something that came from me mashing the keyboard then making that pronounceable in 7th grade, when I wanted to retire my old screen name Sekhem Em Pet (I think??? The Latin name for Anubis, the edgiest of Egyptian gods). I still use it a lot of places, but it's embarrassing to google so I'm moving away from it.

I would absolutely be supportive of Huckabee if he came out as trans. No matter how much I dislike someone's actions, I think it's important that everyone feel comfortable being who they are. Doesn't mean he would get a free pass for being shitlord supreme, ruler of his own fecal fiefdom, but disliking a politician's policy is different from disliking their identity. And that goes for Caitlyn Jenner too. I don't know enough about her recent past to know in depth what kind of person she is, but I know she has a hyper masculine history and legacy so coming out and that coming out as a woman has been a gauntlet of horrors. She deserves unequivocal support of her right to be who she is, but that doesn't mean you have to support what she's done. And yeah, celebrity culture is a whole other terrible thing. It's sad, but it's the society we live in.

Another thing that might work is a mechanic like one in Heroine. There is no real fail state, but you have to resolve a situation in a certain way. It can be mandated that they resolve the problem in a scene by coming together or by noticing something vital or remembering something from their past or whatever else you want. Games like Heroine would be better to adapt improv rules from, probably. Story games more than role playing games.

I can't imagine the strength and presence of mind required to make being mocked on that large a scale over such a personal betrayal into a good thing. Even if you don't think the media savvy is of any note, just being able to turn such an all around terrible experience into a net positive for yourself basically requires you to be a remarkable person.

This alone makes you the best

Trans communities are largely invisible even within LGBT circles, which leads to their needs being ignored. A highly visible person coming out as trans, especially one whose history is full of traditionally masculine accomplishments, is a great thing. Discouraging people from paying attention to or talking about a trans person just because you don't like the people they're associated with is a super myopic and selfish perspective. Sadly, I expect the hate and rhetoric, but the dismissal is just unexpected to me, and it's super thoughtless.

I mostly named my WoW characters after historical or literary figures as little personal jokes, like a Tauren named Taft. I think I'm really funny but am usually wrong.

The reactions to Caitlyn Jenner that bother me the most aren't the vile hatred and disgusting rhetoric, but the apathy and dismissal from otherwise progressive people who say, "Ugh. Don't pay attention to the Kardashians, they're not worth it!"

Jack will always be the unbearable idiot shouting "We have to go back, Kate!" to me.

Spiders popped here and there, but there's only one room full of spiders that comes to mind immediately. I'm probably forgetting a few though.

Multiplayer games I've played are usually rated M for boobies and explosions, which are things that don't exactly draw a highbrow crowd. I don't usually use voice chat except with people I know. When I played Dota more, I would sometimes use voice chat when I could tell that the people on my team were constructive and nice and just wanted to coordinate (which was more often than you'd think), but generally speaking... no. I have a bit of that homosexual lilt to my voice sometimes, so it could end just terribly.

I still break out the Constant and watch it when I'm feeling down. Lost was terrible sometimes, but it could be some of the best TV around when it hit the mark.

There are actually some really great articles about how effective Russian propaganda has been in the last few years. They fabricate complete lies, which are covered by western media for various reasons (point-counterpoint style reporting, the push to provide "both sides" of a story, etc) and then enter the world consciousness with high legitimacy despite being recognized as complete fabrications. I'll try to find the specific people who cover that and/or the stuff I listened to and read about it after work, if anyone wants. I think I just found it all through Blogs of War and Lawfare, or maybe some links from people at Jihadology.

He only ever wanted to be Horatio Ma-chillin.

All the stories I've heard about renting something from Fry's -- a big box electronics retailer with a lax enough return policy that people will buy products with a task in mind and return them once that task is complete -- are probably indicative of a not insubstantial subset of people who would buy games with the intent of returning them if they knew that was an option.