Apple Cider

I think everyone has the ability to bow out of stuff that's beyond their comfort level but I think this thread has always sort of loosely gathered around the idea that you can consume problematic media as long as long as you can speak critically or not defend the gross stuff. I watch Game of Thrones but say, I won't play the Witcher. I also haven't played Bayonetta. I am not sure if anyone was espousing otherwise.

I'm going to agree with Argobot on this one, fully. I think a lot of male critics absolutely know what to turn the criticism dial up to 10 on (which is still on point, even!) but then neglect to apply that level of stringency towards things they like. If you want to go all in on one thing, you have to be willing to do that for all the things you like. I get it, too: it's incredibly hard to tear down something you love because of how much flack you'll get but it's part of being a fair media critic. Game of Thrones has some of the same issues as The Witcher as many other things and both of them require that picking apart, even if you enjoy both. So yeah, it's frustrating. It's also frustrating because male reviewers get probably 50% less shit about it. (On the PoC in GoT tip: Many of the PoC in the show are still portrayed in a way that is very much in line with fantasy tropes, like The Mystical East. They also have more supporting roles, versus main ones. The only reason this season is coming out ahead is just because they are at least in Dorne now, but Dorne is absolutely a mish-mash of Middle East and Southeast Asia flourishes.) TL;DR Male game reviewers get way more kudos for doing less work in this regard because anything they do that's progressive or "on message" is seen as ultimately revelatory.

I honestly think Chmielarz is kinda of beyond the point of concern for me. I have no need to interact with his shit because he is so patently belligerent about this shit.

Diablo 3 has been polished into a really tight game that hits the right spots that you can also just pick up and put down on a whim. I love it so much now.

Diablo is a bit of a more edge case, but I know that for years, only playing WoW meant you weren't a real gamer. On the other hand, I'm a woman so nothing I play is really video gaming, naturally. But Blizzard games and the community around them are quite insular for something that is so massively popular. There's always felt like there's a barrier around WoW especially that separates that game's fans from the rest of the gaming community, weirdly, and I think that's a product of MMO culture in general. They are an all-consuming type of game so if it's your first game (from being a "non-gamer") it tends to be what you play (also known as your "one game" which I know has been mentioned on the podcast before.) Either way, I still really love Diablo 3 even if I only play WoW off and on now, but still, weird to hear both games being discussed on Idle Thumbs regardless. I always feel like more popular gaming spaces really did a good job of neglecting both for years.

Vanaman does the best ad spots on the podcast, he just has this kind of sly enthusiasm and very cleanly enunciated patter that just makes the ads sound so goofy and fun, especially when he's talking about underwear. (Also if any of the thumbs want to play WoW or Diablo, hit me up! It's so weird still to hear people talking about Diablo or WoW when I know people don't consider those "real video games.")

I like it, there's not enough feminist gifs out there.

I personally didn't like it from the start, well before it was a Kickstarter because I didn't like the idea of feminism and harassment being reactionary or a game. I had a talk with Kiva herself about how a trauma card was completely terrible as a "strength" card from a personal and mechanical standpoint and while she's gone away from the game idea, I don't get what a deck of collecting cards is really for. I don't like the idea of feminists being turned into a collectible deck like superheroes. It was a cute project when she was cheering people up but now that it's a kickstarter and has money attached to it, she's not gotten a lot of good counsel on how to actually treat people legally fair. There's been very few consent forms, very few permissions given from these lists of people who are now, by dint of it being used as "get back at GG" fodder, are back into the line of fire. All around, I think it's a pretty nonsensical project that has a lot of problems. I don't think the artist is a bad person but this is a pretty terrible project. Flipside of this is I also don't like Anna Anthropy for personal reasons and first half of that blog post is putting an unrelated woman's head on a spike in order to effectively...shit on Kiva's project in the second half. Hence why I haven't relinked that post at all.

I am really truly sorry that I said that the movie gave me a "feminist vibe" since I think that's being conflated as saying it's a feminist movie when really all I wanted to do was talk about it from my perspective.

I'm not in the habit of marking things as "feminist XYZ" versus finding some value in a discussion about them with a feminist lens, so I'm sorry if that's the feeling you got from the thread (or my posts). Alien seemed like a good place to start. I think there's a lot of ways to read film in general, but we've gotten a lot of suggestions for different movies. (Although a lot of horror films, which doesn't surprise me too much.) I presume all of them were suggested because people wanted to pick them apart for various reasons. If a movie features a competent woman and it doesn't have some value in discussion, I would expect that to come up! Even if Ripley is not supposed to be seen as a woman explicitly due to the mechanics of the script, I still read those scenes that way myself. It's hard for me to subtract her gender from those scenes because they remind me so much of my own life, even if it was unintentional. Authorial intent isn't the only factor here, at least in how I interpret things. Edit: My friend Maddy brought up while we were watching that Dallas (I believe) specifically calls Ripley "my dear" which I feel wouldn't be the case if he was talking to a guy.

Yeah, I think the history of how the story and the character actually came into being would be really fascinating to dig into because I think there's definitely places where she shines as a character. What might have colored my perception is that I watched this along with a really die-hard feminist Alien fan and she explained to me some stuff as we were watching (including where jump scares were, because I'm a giant baby.)

The problem with criticizing Japan is it frequently ignores that we have similar issues over here. Sure, our video games aren't coming out with floppable breast dolls but there's a lot of other shit we try to push regardless. (Also reminder that Quiet was sexually abused as a character, as well.)

Bechdel test is interesting because a lot of people forget that it was more to provide a context to a lack of lesbians in film (iirc), but it's merely a very gimmicky litmus test for something really specific, a very low bar that unfortunately many films don't cross. However, it's not really a litmus test for literally anything else or value for a feminist lens since there's films that pass the Bechdel test that are horrible in other ways. Basically, I want people to look past that one particular thing and look deeper. To start off - I want to say that having only watched this as a kid, and now as an adult, I am really intrigued by how much of the plot is driven around the idea that Ripley is way more competent and knowledgeable about what should have been done than any of the men on board. Obviously a key to this was that one of the major antagonists was specifically designed to work over her head as an android for Nostromo, but it was ironic to see men literally go over her head for their own pursuits and feelings and might have spared the entire crew horrible deaths. Two key scenes (in the cut I watched) early in really provided the thematic base for Ripley being shot down by both Dallas and Ash. They don't defer to her expertise or the rules given but feel that their own judgement on the matter is superior. It felt very telling and very reminiscent of things in my own life even though no one in my life has gotten eaten by a giant xenomorph. Dialogue is not something I primarily focus on a lot when I watch films because oftentimes the art really comes through in stylistic editing and direction choices but the scant dialogue in this film before the action bits really get going are what really secured my love of Ripley, in the face of both domineering corporate immorality and men continuing into the future with the same BS they pull off now. Alien really had both a strong anti-cap and feminist vibe for this reason, to me. I also like that despite Ripley originally being written for a man, there's moments that show that that character was pulled away from that initial characterization a bit - she's both athletic and a bit stoic but there's moments of humanity like her saving Jonesy. One of the traps I feel writers get into when wanting to write a "strong female character" is they forget that yes, gender shouldn't be the sole tickybox of a character, but that writing a character irrespective of gender still throws women back into a very masculine place because a lot of male writers don't know how to write strong otherwise. Ripley defies this in some ways by being compassionate as well as smart.

Non-director's cut I think is just a tighter narrative edit overall, with a lot of scenes lopped out. AFAIK. Also if people want to start discussing Alien, we can! I just wanted to give people most of the weekend to actually watch the movie.

Jesus christ, Kill La Kill.

I think we're good on suggestions for the time being, I might actually start slotting these into a big spreadsheet so people can keep up with teh schedule.

Stepford Wives old/new would be an interesting double-header, same with doing Witches of Eastwick and perhaps Practical Magic.

Yep, I ate at Peter Luger...'s and it was really great but I had no idea it was Peter Luger until just now. THAT'S JUST HOW THIS SHIT WORKS.

Sorry, I'm from NY, you don't have a restaurant that's JUST a name with no possession.

Okay, other note: Doing Disneyland after Blizzcon was a horrific fucking idea and I am never doing it again. It is a pretty popular thing to do - to take advantage of Disneyland's proximity to the Anaheim Convention Center by going after or before Blizzcon (also known as Blizzneycon). Going before Blizzcon is probably breezy and joyful. Going after you've been tromping around the concrete jungle that is Anaheim in a smelly, huge convention center with other nerds is horrible. My friend's wife wanted to do Disneyland after we did Blizzcon and since they were my ride home, I was obligated to go. My feet were horrifically tired after walking around at Blizzcon, I don't like kids and it was really hot since we went during the heat of the day. I was so exhausted that I slept most of the way from California to Arizona.

Danielle recounting her experience at Gary Danko's reminded me of going out to eat at a fancy hotel restaurant recently in Chicago - both my friend and I felt fabulously out of place, both of us not dressed up as fancily. However, both of us know enough about food (myself in particular) to wing our way through cocktails, shared appetizer course and dinner. We were super nice to our server and when we ordered dessert, we had her bring over a bottle of white wine that paired well with the sorbet we were eating. It was fun and we gave our server a huge tip. As long as you are nice to the waitstaff, they literally don't care about you not being as "fancy" but it is really hard to deal with sometimes. You definitely feel not necessarily a class imbalance but definitely "out of place." No matter how much I read up on this stuff or learn about food culture, the opulence of the elite of restaurant dining is just beyond me.

Yep! Starting Monday we will get a) second movie for next week discussion for movie we just watched. I figure a week is not too horrible of a pace for people who work full-time to squeeze a movie in.

I watched Alien last night so I am excited to post up my thoughts on Monday!

Men talking to other men about feminism and patriarchy is actually really great because it gets tiring answering the same 101 questions a lot. Just don't use it to derail a conversation women are having about their issues!

1.) First point - feminism got a lot of bad press/propaganda touted in the late 80s/early 90s by right-wing groups and we're finally starting to crawl out from under that given the widespread and easily accessed nature of the internet and social media. It's got a higher profile now for a variety of reasons. 2.) Whether men can be feminists or identify as such is a much fought over topic when really it should be that if men want to have that label, they need to recognize the work that goes into it and what that means. Being "a man" doesn't mean you don't also suffer from oppression along other axes, and that should be recognized as well. All identities are not flat modifiers, they all intersect and overlap. However, it really depends on what kind of space it is, to have a man lead a feminist group. Is it a safe® space for women or is it an open-interest group? As for the rest of what you wrote, I feel like this is where intersectionality is a big deal - you are dealing with how your man identity fits into a feminist construct while also grappling with the whole "not being white" part, which is also very different. I honestly don't have any good answers about how men should participate in feminism so much as I just know that I really want them to unlearn socialization that has always means their opinion HAS to be shared, that it is central to the discussion. Participating in feminism means learning when you should let other people talk, and have a central place in your constructions and ideologies, conversations. A lot of men don't really grasp that when it comes to sexism (only) that they don't have a lot of experience and should defer to the people who do have to deal with it. A lot of issues with feminist spaces comes from just the fact that a lot of men recognize privilege but they don't recognize what kind of subtler impacts that's had on them, whether it's aggressiveness, willingness to talk over women, that their presence may be a deterrent to discussion, or that their voices are naturally regarded as more valuable.