Apple Cider

I know there's good subreddits but Reddit is just so overall terrible that I feel like going there feels like complicity on my part given how they make money, etc. It sucks but that's how I feel about it. I wish Reddit didn't provide a useful service for a collated way to have a community but then did a piss-poor job on oversight. It could have been a great place on the internet. It's why I eventually left SA and 4Chan too. The very niche needs that they were meeting just were still contributing to a place that -as a site- did nothing but make people miserable.

You people need to get right with Burt's Bees. http://www.burtsbees.com/Beeswax-Lip-Balm/11099-00-1,default,pd.html?cgid=&start=5&q=mint&navid=search#q=mint&start=5

I have never wanted to "be" there in general because even if they just started banning bad subreddits, they've let people generally be horrifically abusive for really long periods of time. Reddit has long functioned under this idea of libertarian free speech where literally everything is allowed because filtering out stuff that is legitimately harmful is akin to being fascists or something.

Yeah, my contentions were fulfilled in the Missing Pieces episode, I wasn't mad at all! Just strive for nuance, since the abuse storylines in Twin Peaks are the ones that affected me the most emotionally (for obvious reasons.) Sarah Palmer was a pretty abused and violated person and Leland Palmer was pretty motivated to keep control on these women. What kept me going through some of this stuff is just the fact that we're not often dealt a narrative that has abuse in it that feels so validating from a victim's perspective. The dinner table scene just made me feel a lot more for Sarah Palmer in general, since I think it was very easy to see how much she exists in compartmentalize/survival mode. She's a woman who knows how to emotionally tread water but doesn't have ability to get out of the current, so to speak.

Even if it wasn't pointed at Randi directly, it definitely speaks with a pretty condescending tone. Blockbot, GGAutoBlocker have been doing the heavy lifting of Twitter moderation for years because Twitter literally didn't acknowledge that it was a problem until very recently. The bigger issues though were that long-term abusive members that were tied to an identity could be filtered out but what about someone malicious who can make tons of throwaway accounts? That's something Twitter has to combat themselves.

I just feel like white dudes in general should be banned from Q&A periods until they learn how to behave properly.

Well no, the point I'm trying to make is that the two are not related when this is structural inequality. Everyone is soaking in this garbage. It doesn't matter how smart you are.

But that's the thing though - we want to believe that people who buy into this shit are all uneducated, "stupid" people but that's so not even close to true. Smart people buy into horribly shitty, bigoted justifications all the time. We can't keep passing it off as the educated elite suddenly buy into better ideas - look at Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is by no means a "moron" but he still says shitty awful crap every single day. He wrote what was considered the main treatise on atheism for chrissakes, and yet he's no more logical than the next nerd on Facebook when it comes to Islam or feminists. *I put all those terms in scare quotes because I really don't like denigrating people's intellect.

I like how it's artfully placed against a knife and a gun. Inside presumably someone dude's "man purse."

Yeah, I need to watch GTFO! and also Gaming in Color. Such great gaming docs out lately.

I got my turn through the KiA wringer yesterday by people stalking Austin Walker tracking down my twitter and making a huge thread about me because I dared to say that games exhaust me sometimes (with all context removed since none of them actually know who I am.)

This post combined with some of my backchannel discussions with Lost in the Movies regarding who has "ultimate" control of Leland is basically why I feel that Leland is the ego, even if Bob is the Id. Leland knows that there's bad/wrong stuff going on but he gives into a lot. I see Bob responsible for a lot more of the visceral violence but Leland is more than capable of being an abusive person all on his own. It's why I feel the presence and the times we feel the abuse most strongly are all tied to the house - because that's a physical stage for the kind of person Leland was even if Bob was in there too. Bob was merely a vector because Leland refuses to acknowledge his own guilt and suffering twisted up in all of this. The movie is a lot scarier when you take Leland's participation in all of this as being a factor. It's easy enough to explain away "possession" but not that your dad likes underage girls, incest and emotionally abusing his family. Edit: I took contention with Jake's idea that Sarah Palmer should have "known" and the thing is that I does think she knows on some level. But given that dinner scene, I extrapolated that Leland is not just secretively sexually abusive but emotionally abusive as well. Sarah strikes me as a wife who's been through this before Laura was ever born and has internalized it on some level.

My rule with comedy is "I know it when I hear it" and yes, I know there's a lot of factors at play but most of the time? Comedians fuck up over some really objectionable shit and get salty when called out on it. I'm not so dense as to presume that there's an ultimate hard-and-fast rule. But, to me, it's not that hazy.

We got this new rubber fish-shaped cat comb in one of our Meowboxes for Varin and he just LOVES it, it has two sides with different length nubbins for brushing and he just goes wild. And it pulls out a lot of hair as well. Despite being a shorthair, he has very dense fur and is shedding out his winter coat.

As both a humourless feminist and also a lover of stand-up comedy, I think the problem is the comedians really live by the credo that anything can be turned into a joke, without really thinking sometimes about how comedy works at promoting the status quo. I think comedy, much like satire, is best wielded with that in mind. You can't "kick down" in satire and have it really work, all you're doing is picking on already oppressed people in doing so. I think there's ways of being clever without being offensive or reproducing this stuff, but heaven forbid you tell a comedian they can't joke about something, they lose their shit. I mean, the reason racist jokes are funny predicate on the idea that we think less of people of color. That's the whole reason that joke works, it's not because the comedian is dazzlingly brilliant. I think we can be funny as people without relying on oppressive shit to accomplish this.

Except there HAS been criticism about that - is violence as a verb necessary and all that? Also romance options are actually a pretty "new" mechanic in that way and a lot of people have wanted DA and ME to just be a romance sim/narrative game, actually. I find the honing in on just romance options really interesting because that's presumably a mechanic that a lot of women like in games vs. men. Basically, it sounds like you're upset about not seeing this criticism when it's out there and you just haven't seen it yet. I'm all for more games with romance options over shooting dudes with guns, personally.

I write criticism pretty often and talk about this shit a lot, so I guess I don't feel like this is "going nowhere" but I also traffic in other places besides this forum. It's also hard to say that unless you, as a singular entity, are making some sort of substantial effort against a giant capitalistic system or video game company, then it's all for naught.

Why are we leaning on PoC cultures as counterpoint examples when talking about a culture that wants to present itself as homogenously white when it's not? Or that White Culture From Europe is what has sort of dominated the world since the time of imperialism/colonialism and those are two very different things? Say we didn't talk about Witcher 3 since that's what people seem to be getting hung up on - why are so many video games made by Americans (which is not a white-only country, which Poland isn't either, but I digress) all white people?

I honestly don't think it's excusable because I don't think any of it is excusable but that's me. I really just don't. But I also think the whole "medieval times" shit is boring and basic as hell on all of these fronts too. Just because it's not the worst doesn't mean it's not something to be criticized. (that'd pretty much leave, like maybe, Birth of a Nation.)

I also just want to know why people care about preserving games with entire white characters. I'm sincerely asking. Is this something you're really invested in?

This is less prevalent in games or at least harder to see, but Japan actually makes it pretty clear when they are representing Americans or white people in anime. It's us as Westerners who presume that anime characters are all NOT japanese but in fact white when they are usually all Japanese characters. American characters tend to have different features and mostly blonde hair. The issue is that if we didn't have an institutional problem with race in Western civilization, our media in both our hiring practises and the representation we see in games, Witcher 3 being a fantasy game based on Polish mythology being all white wouldn't really be a big deal. But the problem is it's one more game in million games that are made by studios with very few people of color, particularly the higher up you go, with almost all white characters. As far as bringing up Polish studios specifically, Hatred is also made by a Polish studio. Poland has historical issues with racism - Jewish people, Romani, and yes, black people. They even have words for black people in Polish. You want to know why? Because black people and other people of color have been all through Europe at literally every point in history. Black people didn't just appear around the 1500s when we started slavery and imperialism - they were merchants, traders, sailors, and also indigenous people's all around Europe (see the Sami, etc.) That being said - it's a fucking fantasy game with witches in it. They are trying to sell their games in the US. The US is diverse. They want people of color to buy their games. People of color are demanding this stuff, both from game studios but also attempting to get jobs within the industry and it just ISN'T happening. Same goes for women, trans folks, LGBT folks and all the way on down. Gaming has a huge issue and it's tied to the fact that we've had race issues for hundreds of years now. You cannot ignore it. And since you're not hiring these people or giving them spaces comfortable to address these issues in the games being made, they just don't come up as a consideration, they don't have a huge hand in making narratives that represent their realities, writers and designers don't research or work on writing and creating "The other" as it were, and the cycle repeats itself.

Fun fact: The "mother of pride" (Brenda Howard) who was a huge help in organizing the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, which eventually became Pride, was not only bisexual but a sex worker and poly. Stonewall was also partially due to Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, trans women of color. I laughed when I found out that one of the founders/organizers of pride was a bisexual woman who had a male partner.

Yeah, I definitely think there's a visibility effect that's great - but I still like to put my resources in at the local, donating to my local shelters, supporting my trans friends and stuff. Hey, it's Pride month! Is anyone doing anything fun? My city's Pride is this weekend which means I debate about going alone (since my partner is a guy and I'm a lady) and maybe the bisexual group won't get hassled this year. Unfortunately Pride is a very L/G centric event every year and heavy on the G, and I really dislike being around drunk dudes en masse. We shall see. But it is at the big festival grounds in town, on the lake, so that's always a nice change of pace.

Yeah, I don't know why people try to do a weird "gotcha" about politicians who are shitlords: If Mike Huckabee came out as trans, I'd support his decision to live his identity as he chooses but still hate his policies and bigotry towards others. I mean, how many women politicians have we had that actively oppose things like abortion? I don't hate them because they are women, I dislike the things they want to put into legal practice. Why is this a hard concept for people to wrap their heads around? That being said, I'm more into helping out more marginalized trans folk who don't have access to the resources that Caitlyn Jenner does. But I don't think she shouldn't get to live her life as she wants to.

Nah, you're good!