Apple Cider

Yeah, I've been living with a chronic illness all this time and maybe I'll actually get to feel better soon!

What Brodie said. Most of us aren't actors in violence, either, in the same kinds of ways that we are in video games. Our culture is ultimately violent, yes, but our culture is also pretty well designed to sexually violate people as well, let perpetrators not even be named, get away with it and not support victims at the same time, if they are even believed. A lot of women and people in general suffer from even more low-level violation on a daily basis. It's a very huge, interlaced problem. Violence in video games is way more abstract or heavily fantastical in a way that most of us are never going to really relate to or find ourselves pursuing. Rape, however, is something many of us experience or even perpetrate. And it's often tossed in to make the world more "realistic" or gritty. Both of which are disgusting reasons. I don't know, it's really hard to explain this stuff to people who haven't had to live through it. I am going to have to live with shit that happened to me for the rest of my life. Edit: If rape was less prevalent, I doubt it'd be in video games at all, actually. I think the reason it turns up in video games is related to why it's so prevalent in society, but that's me. Edit2: here, here's just my blog post about it: http://www.applecidermage.com/2015/01/16/a-brutal-landscape-sexual-assault-in-gaming-narratives/

I finally have health insurance after not having it for 10+ years. It feels great.

I just wrote up a piece about why I hate rape in games because it's literally what people are talking about on Twitter and I honestly wish it did not exist in games outside of survivor/victim-driven or centered narratives.

I'm mostly interested in the fact that this stuff is making national news. I always thought Anita's stuff was pretty rudimentary/101 level but that fact does not diminish that she's still a human being and doesn't deserve death threats or her safety being diminished. I know rape isn't frequent but there's quite a lot of background violence, assault or generally shitty stuff implied that floats around a bit more, making up a miasma that's a little more complex. I honestly hate the idea of it being used at all, ever, as shock value, because it's quite a bit more horrible than shocking. I can tell you that it's incredibly alienating, however, to someone like me.

Well, that's somewhat of a hyperbolic joke! Lake Michigan used to be a huge shipping lane and therefore, Milwaukee and other larger towns (not cities) along the lake grew up over time as industrial production centers. There's also the capital of Madison, which boasts UW-Madison as well as the State house/senate. The west and extreme north ends, yes, are incredibly rural, though, and comprised predominantly of farmland. We also are the third largest producer of cranberries! Edit: Funny story, I've grew up and lived most of my life in NY state.

Did anyone catch the Nightline segment with Anita Sarkeesian? I thought it was pretty good even if it was a little corny because it's a packaged news segment. http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/feels-gamergate-target-28238598

I honestly have NO idea how Canada can look at the US and go, "Oh yeah I'm completely okay with that." If Canada gets rid of its socialized medicine, I will feel so bad for you guys. Healthcare is a horrible crushing nightmare here, choosing between debt or dying or both is really a horrible thing.

I am not sure of this but I bet a lot of our culture re: drugs is largely based on Reagan-era politics/War on Drugs, making marijuana a schedule 1 drug, etc. I think this is also what made cartels so incredibly powerful, but again, I know very little about that. Canada produces quite a huge amount of pot itself, particularly British Columbia, I know that much.

RE: Ben Horne

It should be noted that even in places where pot is legal, the pricing and local authorities are still slanted in favor of white people who are somewhat affluent. So while I think it's great to legalize, there's definitely people who have been and still are enjoying the benefits but we still live in a carceral society that enjoys free labor from people of color being imprisoned.

Someone needs to make vape-themed clothing called Vaperwear

Yeah, there's enough really horrible stuff to pick apart in the subject matter, I think?

Gordon Cole is easily one of my favorite characters from Twin Peaks just because I'm also a loud talker.

RE: Discussing the letter from the spoiler section, this is plot spoilers for both Twin Peaks/FWWM:

Am I pointing out something really obvious but did Lynch play some really long game and actually plan for a Twin Peaks reunion literally the same length of time in the future that was mentioned in the Cooper Red Room scenes?

TBF, a lot of ladies I know just wait for sales because a lot of us love nice underwear but also don't have a ton of cash. Victoria Secrets or Lane Bryant usually do a 5/$25 deal, which is where a lot of women I know stock up.

No-preservative regional food is the BEST. Give me some butterscotch krimpets, Blue Bell ice cream, etc.

I don't know if I could really quantify random creepy encounters (I'm not including really horrible incidents in my life in this) versus systematic abuse online and which one is worse since they tend to flock about the same topics (my weight, my looks, my sexual behavior, my body, my gender, slurs, etc) and have the same effect. (making me feel horrible)

Seriously, you can always go back to school when you're older/more settled in, having a job right now, that young, is way better than most of us who got a degree and are now jobless or were very recently jobless. College degrees still don't have a very high value versus getting experience, these days.

Oh, I was literally just looking for an opportunity to use a Tumblr joke, that's all! Ha. :'(

Fertilization is possible without cis men, yes, but who still remains in power and is still pushing tons of legislation regarding abortion? Does that not scare you a tiny bit? Someone still has to carry the babies. There's some work being done in making uterine replacements and that's what I'm interested in because outsourcing gestation is a really huge leap. Edit: Sorry, I should note here that I have a lot of really strong feelings on recent repro rights legislation.

Well this kind of discussion brings up the idea why pregnancy is so terrifying - it literally anchors your physical capabilities to your value as a human being. It's why women spend most of their time being asked when they are having kids, why birth control in the hands of women was so fucking revolutionary and safe access to family planning is crucial. I know we can laugh at dystopias presented in Handmaid's Tale but as someone who read that as a young teen girl, something in my bones felt like it could very much be real. As we see more and more legislation regarding fetus personhood and less rights for pregnant people, I can see that sort of thing coming on the horizon. If we ever experience catastrophic infertility, people who can conceive, with no scientific alternative to gestation, will be little more than chattel. Pregnancy ties you so heavily to your body as it stands now. There's literally forms of abuse of men getting their partners pregnant surreptitiously (I know we hear so much about "spermjacking" but no one talks about this) so they can keep them in a relationship (poking holes in condoms, sabotaging or literally withholding a woman's hormonal BC pills, etc) or somewhat hamstring a person's ability to "get far" without them financially. Pregnancy can absolutely be a life liability to many people and seeing more and more repro rights being snatched up is really scary and makes me glad I neither want nor can have kids. It's not out of left field to imagine gross sci-fi where women are literally turned into fucking incubators.

RE: Night in the Woods They have a NITW demo, but Longest Night (first supplemental) and Lost Constellation was put out in order to just show other bits of the world/characters but not be immediately related to the NITW story, so it gives you more insight into the kind of place that NITW inhabits. This is what I can recall from Scott (@bombsfall) talking on Twitter about it. Also: "Average person visits Disneyland once in their life" factoid actually just statistical error. Average person visits Disneyland 0 times in their life. Danielle Riendeau, who lives in It's A Small World & visits Disney 13 times a year, is an outlier and should not have been counted. The Disney stuff is really chilling as I've heard of a lot of really sad stories about Disney cast members (all women) who were assaulted in some way by other employees.

My boyfriend wanted me to remind the thread that Ancient Greece was not a codified nation until after the Romans decreed it as such and were actually non-assembled city states that had vastly different cultural rules - see Athens (heavily misogynist) and Sparta (we're not sure how this place worked since most of the accounts were from Athenians and not very accurate).