Bolegium

So we can slingshot a probe to land on a comet 10 years after launch, we can eradicate smallpox, increase the healthy lifespan of most humans by decades, wage centuries of wars that cost millions of dollars and lives, but equal rights for women is impossible and we shouldn't even bother trying? If life itself can't convince him, i don't know what will.

Any thoughts on Taylor Swift pulling her music from ad supported streaming services like Spotify? I think there are some similarities with the dichotomy between F2P (ad supported streaming) and outright purchases. The f2p/streaming model makes a comparatively huge amount of money, which mostly seems to go to the publisher, record label, streaming provider/app store rather than the artist. Another argument is that the ad supported model devalues the music and encourages consumers to not actually purchase music. Anyway that's what I assumed would be discussed when Swift was brought up this episode. I don't listen to her music, and am pessimistic about the chances of her protest causing much disruption to the streaming models. Nonetheless I think it's great that she is taking a stand, and that she's in a privileged position to do so without the crippling loss of income that would befall an indie artist if they were to do the same. I'm definitely interested to see how this plays out. Context: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/taylor-swift-pulled-all-of-her-albums-from-spotify-2014-11

Podded a great cast!

I've seen Whiplash twice now with different people, it's one of the most intense movies I've seen this year. Watched 'The Drop' a few days ago, good movie with a wierd tonal shift right at the end. There's a bit of ambiguity about it which I wish was a bit stronger. Rundskop (Bullhead in english) by the same director is also well worth watching. One of the best 'revenge' stories and a bunch of really interesting characters.

That was great! Should be noted that it contains flashing imagery. Since short films have been brought up, I saw Watchtower of Turkey by Leonardo Dalessandri.

Was listening to the most recent idlethumbs podcast in bed last night, and was semi conscious. Started to become fixated with the imagery of straight streams of colour flowing down over the surface of various objects in the room, and whatever else came to mind. Wasn't quite a dream since I was more or less awake. I had been listening to the badassdigest and quarter to three podcasts on interstellar prior to going to bed so this seems to have been a result of my frustration with the movie.

Decided to see interstellar. Found most of the movie boring, being 'bad' in interesting ways would have been preferable. Feels like a bioshock infinite situation where I can see the ambition behind it, and feel confused by the praise it's getting. Interested to see film crit hulk's take on it.

Forgot to post this earlier, the 5th chapter is coming out on the 14th Nov. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/11/06/the-dream-machine-chapter-5/

Spielberg was the "original" director of Interstellar, Jonathan Nolan was hired as the writer and recommended his brother for the director position when Spielberg left the project. I haven't seen the movie yet, and still haven't decided if I want to support it. It might be an unpopular opinion but I think Nolan's work has declined in quality since he started getting big Hollywood budgets. Spectacle is great and all, but it's not why I want to watch a Nolan movie. It's a shame because the idea of big budget Nolan movies sounded great around the time of The Prestige, and now it feels like he just does adverts for IMAX.

First time hearing about Jane the virgin, sounds great.

I sometimes have really shitty "lucid" dreams which are more just sleep paralysis episodes. They used to be a terrifying experience, now they are just annoying and tiring. My lucid dreams will be about me being awake in bed when i'm actually asleep. I try to imagine something awesome like flying but then all I can think about is that it's the middle of the night, i'm not wearing many clothes, and I can't actually fly. So then I spend what feels like a huge amount of mental and physcial energy to try to actually wake up, and being caught in a loop of waking up, moving my arms, realising i'm still asleep, trying again. Also the feeling that you aren't actually breathing doesn't help. I feel like all of this has honed my ability to distinguish reality from 'non-reality', whatever you want to call it, but that might be another delusion. Anyway, dreams are awesome, I just wish I could remember the interesting ones better.

I am glad you're alive too. I know two of my friends both are/have struggled with depression and academic setbacks, I could say the same for myself as well, but I think i'm doing mostly fine now. I can't give any concrete advice on what to do. The most effective thing is time passing, even though that sounds trite and impractical. It's difficult because we can't control it, and we live in a society that is obsessed with deadlines and competing to be faster than everyone else. My friend took a year off after failing most of his subjects, but now is back doing his final semester. My other friend admitted himself to hospital yesterday and should be coming back today. I don't know how to say this without it sounding cliched and awkward, but if they can make it so can you. Never feel bad for asking for a help, and take all the time you need to get better. You have all the time in world, even if it feels like you don't.

I like those traditions of spending time with loved ones as well, just always thought it was a shame that it seems to be relegated to a single day. But maybe that's just me being cynical about a glass being half full/empty. I don't know much about the history of Halloween, so my attitude is born from ignorance. I haven't noticed any kind of religion/paranoia based movement to 'reclaim' or 'defend' Halloween as there has been for Christmas, so that's another reason why i'm cool with it. (*Just did a little searching and it looks like there is a "War on Halloween", but it's conservative fundamentalists attacking Halloween rather than some secular bogeyman trying to abolish it) Also I don't actually do anything different on those days, nor do most of the people I know. Realising now how boring that sounds

Halloween doesn't seem to be as big a deal in Australia as it is in the States. Getting costumed up on the cheap and watching horror movies is pretty fun when i've done it though, so Halloween gets thumbs up from me. Does that make me a hypocrite or something?

As a non-believer in both religion and capitalism, Christmas can piss off. Having said that, people finding genuine happiness and empathy for others is great, I just wish people actively made an effort to do that more often than one day of the year. My "Christmas" ritual includes listening to 'Killing in the Name' by Rage Against the Machine, and 'Christmas' by Jesu (so bloody perfect haha). Favourite "Christmas" movies are Tokyo Godfathers, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (or any Shane Black movie), Die Hard, and Frozen (I can't help it). Anyone want to help me build a snowm- I mean list, of good Christmas-y movies?

Yeah I may have overstated how definitive the definition is, and it's totally gross when people use it as a rape joke. I try to take it on good faith that people aren't, but that's setting myself up for easy disappointment.

I don't know about anyone else but I've been aware of specific nastiness towards non-mainstream (e.g. feminist critics) going on for a long time, at least as far back as 2009. My own ignorance is to blame for not following feminist gaming culture before then, and it's myopic to speak about current events without understanding the historical and wider social context that they exist in. I don't have anything else to add that hasn't been covered better by other people hundreds of times over, so allow me to add another derail. I also thought for a long time that "butthurt" had homophobic connotations, but apparently it just means "getting overly upset over a minor grievance, for example when a baby cries after falling on its bum". So yeah, I still think it's a weird phrase and I don't personally use it, but you can rest easy knowing that it's not an anti-gay slur.

At first glance that sounds pretty extreme, though only if you forget that this is a response to death threats, SWATing, 'doxing' etc. I wouldn't be suprised if Brianna gets a wave of 'well meaning' but ultimately misplaced criticism over this. I hope this is enough to deter people from doing this shit in tbe first place.

Tim, The word 'gamer' is, like any other word, continually evolving in its meaning and usage. This change happens both on a large scale in wider culture, and on a small scale as individuals decide how to use that word. It's disappointing that you bring up Orwell's '1984' but have seemingly misunderstood much of it. No one is trying to abolish the word 'gamer' from the English language (how would that even be possible?). Many people are critiquing the culture that identifies as 'gamers' due to evidence of systemic inequality and overwhelming harassment. Gamer culture is not being singled out unfairly, other aspects of society are and have always been critiqued as well. This critique did not begin in 2014, it has existed since the dawn of 'computer games'. I don't have a problem with critiques of gamers, so what about this makes you antagonistic? You say you are offended by people making generalisations about gamers. Are you also offended by the harassment, death threats, violations of privacy, lies etc. that are being committed by self-described gamers? I hope you are, but your twitter feed and your posts here only seem to be about how you've been 'forced' to not self-identify as a gamer, and posts about how gamergate critics are 'wrong'. This leads me to believe that you may be pro-gamergate, or at least have very misplaced priorities. You say you prefer creating rather than arguing over the internet, yet this is exactly what you are doing and the reason many people have taken issue with you. People haven't been 'twisting' your words against you, these are responses to the things you have said yourself. In fact you've been the one doing the twisting to paint yourself as being attacked. "Your opinion doesn't matter" is meant as a reminder that the opinions and experiences of the under-represented and oppressed carry far more weight and importance than those who are not. No one is saying that your opinions are worthless, only that there may be more qualified people to speak about certain topics than you or me. You claim to be here to address misconceptions about yourself, thanks for taking the time. I hope you return the courtesy by addressing your own misconceptions about feminism, cultural critique, and the real nature of gamergate.

Watched Happy-Go-Lucky on the recommendation of FILMCRITHULK. Love it.

A bit tangential, but this reminds me of a near-argument I've had on a forum where another poster thought it was funny that "actor" was used to describe someone who was female. I assumed that this attitude was a result of the poster coming from a non-english speaking background with grammatical genders rather than them just being prescriptively sexist. Turns out I was correct, and we amicably discussed how English is largely gender-neutral and Spanish is heavily gendered.

If Colbert *had* actually asked that question it would have been excellent satire of how ridiculous gg beliefs are, except that people actually do think this way. Poe's Law strikes again.

Just saw Pride. Really uplifting film, I was expecting it to be overly saccharine but it's not. Really glad I watched after despairing about how fucked up everything seems at the moment.

The new trailer showed a bit more of the diegetic arcade game, and implied that it will it wont be simply restricted to being a minigame. I don't like being too critical of that choice before the game is even funded, let alone released, but it definitely is the main thing that makes me lose interest in the project. The weird puzzles in 'The Witness' are seemingly similar, but to me it's very clear that they are integral to the experience of the game as a whole. I still don't get that feeling from The Black Glove, even though they've tried to hint at it. It must be difficult juggling how much information to divulge before you start 'spoiling' the game, but I wish Day for Night were a bit more clear in communicating what they are aiming for. But then I feel selfish and indulgent for wanting them to spell out so much of their game. I think a breakdown of their budget might have helped sell the project better as well, 'Sunset' from Tale of Tales comes to mind as being pretty clear about how they were going to use their funds. Generally speaking much of Kickstarter as it exists now is caught in a strange place between being another pre-ordering mechanism and a genuinely disruptive production/funding facilitator. It seems like it's more of the former unfortunately. I'm not sure about other creative works, but I know that for film/video productions, pitching and applying for funding needs open communication about any and all aspects of your work. That means not shying away from spoilers etc. A lot of Kickstarter game projects are enigmatic rather than open about these things, which I guess is commendably consumer-friendly, but not collaborator friendly at all. I think this needs to change, if for no other reason than to foster realistic expectations for what can be produced. The production of creative works is inherently a much more difficult field compared to that of practical works, as there are so many more things that cannot be quantified. So I understand how difficult it is to get funding and retain creative control, from anywhere. It will be a shame if The Black Glove doesn't get produced eventually. Also I have no idea how game production and funding works, so please correct me when I'm wrong. Film has had a long and established history of studio and independent systems in place, so it might be unfair to compare it to game development.

She also did some art for Gone Home, which is how I became aware of her and The Yawhg. I have a friend who also has it but we haven't played it yet. Collaborative multiplayer sounds cool, just wish I actually had people to play with. Speaking of collaborative multiplayer, i've heard that it's an interesting way to play Heavy Rain, with different people playing as each character.