Apple Cider

The porn scene with Ani read really hard to me as a) evidence of her own private life that is heavily contrasted to how other people think she is b ) felt really...queer? I don't know how to explain it but one of the theories I had about Ari's characterization is that she's so close to being what would be the stereotypical "rough lesbian" strong female character that's reminiscent of Kima from The Wire, etc. Except she's been shown to not be, but I'm not ruling anything at this point. She has been given obvious man-hating overtones already for one reason or another. It's just a very typical thing that TV shows do so I'm just wondering what's up with that.

The only issue is that the newer word has specifically been referred to as a way to detract from the former term, which has caused the issues, honestly. There's enough space for two words but the opposition is what makes things so tense at times, and largely I've only ever seen this happen on Tumblr.

I cannot imagine the United States having a Twitter account like that.

The only reason pansexual acknowledges intersex or non-binary trans folks is because bisexuality was specifically painted as binarist and anti-trans. I know pansexuality also has old roots but there's a lot of contemporary politicking about it, but people can and should identify how they choose (there's also polysexual which indicates that there's attraction to more than one gender but isn't specific as to what genders they are) Edit: Sorry, that was a little shitty/rude of me.

Oh just heads up forum people, justice points had a snafu with domain registration so our site isn't 100% up at the moment, and so the new episode will be out next week. (Since I know not all of you are on Twitter)

Bisexual and pansexual have come out of the past due to the fact that bisexuality was originally a psychological designation much like homosexual was and has been seen as fairly limited to binary gender ideas - the issue being that, however, many political activist groups sprung up with bisexual as a term so a lot of older people (like myself) have clung to that term even though most (not all though) bi people tend to say that they are pretty much the same as pansexual people. Pansexual people and bisexual people have quite a considerable amount of overlap in that regard. There's quite a lot of internet squabbling about it potentially being transphobic or binary-normative to still call yourself bisexual but that's the gist of it - pansexual people just openly use that identity to say that nothing about a person really matters other than THAT person, gender identity or presentation does not matter. This is basically how it is for me, but I am older and pansexuality wasn't a "thing" when I came out at 16, so I stick with "bi". however, a lot of times? A lot of bi or pan people get tired of having to re-explain what exactly they are and a lot more people find either label or any label constricting so people just sometimes call themselves "queer." It's a bit more of a catch-all term that leaves a lot of the details fuzzy because it's exhausting sometimes. Queer IS a slur (don't call someone "a queer") and even reclaiming "queer" as a descriptor is a person's choice so it's best to follow their lead on that one. However, queer is also a non-person descriptor for things like "queer theory" so a lot of the useage is contextual.

As a queer woman who is frequently fetishized for her sexuality, I am going to begrudge them, even if it's privately. If I don't have the ability to freely side-eye things sometimes, I would go mad.

The characters and abilities come from Warcraft, but much like how World of Warcraft and Warcraft 1-3 share some lore, they are still two different genre of games, with separate franchises and audiences. Many people will overlap but you can play all three without having to play the other two. Hearthstone is an online CCG, WoW is a MMORPG, and Warcraft is an RTS. They made Hearthstone as an internal project but it got very popular so they fleshed it out for public consumption. Then they retroactively added tiny little touches of it to World of Warcraft to make it "in-universe" but the genesis was not WoW, originally. Also I counted wrong, there's six franchises, my bad! (Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, WoW, Starcraft and Diablo)

It's part of navigating an intensely complex, shitty system, Jon. After a while, you get used to seeing how it's all mixed up from time to time. People who are on either end of the spectrum in terms of takes tend to be reacting in the moment and I think most of us fall in the same place with regards to how big things can do shitty and great acts. As for me, the most mind-bending corporation to support Pride was Playboy. Ah yes, that great supporter of Pride: the porn company that has banked on fetishizing queer women for their consumer base of straight men.

I'm reasonably sure she was promoted. However, when it comes to things like how Warcraft is presented, it's a very different animal. That's also one woman out of what, five major franchises?

I know there's quite a few women developers at Blizzard but they NEVER let them go out on stage or let them be rockstars. I definitely agree with the leadership/trust issue - plus women are less relatable to a presumed male audience. How would a woman developer know anything? She's not some aspirational rock god game dev you want to have beer with.

Well, I guess I don't see it as negativity? Negativity would be like "Games is going to be white guys forever." vs. "This is the figures and facts we have at our disposal, we need to do something about this." It's very hard sometimes to constantly be painted as negative when I'm critical or looking to fix things because we have facts on hand that support that things are shitty because that's where work starts. I mean, the games space being so overwhelmingly white and male bums me out too. But that's part of the work I do. This is the feminism thread, after all.

sorry, I get allergic to that kind of reaction sometimes because it's frequently what turns up when I look at something critically, as if to say "Why are you being so sour, some good stuff happened too."

It's totally okay to be stoked! I'm stoked! But I also know there's so many other protections we need for everyone, especially where it concerns jobs and bodily safety, especially for our trans folks.

It's such a marginal, low bar of progress. It was great to see Aisha Tyler pass a mic to Angela Bassett and I liked seeing more women in games and on stage! It still was a fuckton of white dudes and shit though. I think you can do both things at the same time? Critique doesn't mutually exist from celebrating progress. I guess I'm okay with existing in the more critical space than celebration.

SCOTUS just voted 5-4 for marriage equality in all 50 states as well as recognizing marriage licenses from other states. Still no housing or employment protections, however.

That tumblr post is just really good at hitting the nail on the head. It kinda summarizes how I've felt about a lot of guys in general juxtaposing themselves against GG.

What made me never want to buy the comic book: http://www.themarysue.com/mad-max-furiosa-mark-sexton-women-captivity/ I generally don't like Ana Mardoll's take on anything and she even got into it with me on twitter about my feelings on Mad Max and went off on some weird tangent about Max's benevolence. I don't think incisive media crit is actually a strong suit of hers. Nonetheless, I have no interest in a comic that graphically depicts rape and bodily submission in that way. See? Nailed my feelings on it in 2 sentences.

Well, I know what percentage it would be if that applied to the United States.

I will look into PocketCasts - I do not listen to podcasts on my commute (data usage) but I just manually go to a podcast's page to listen to it at work.

RE: How Shitty!Cop (Colin Farrell's character, I have no head for character names) gets away with what he does I really got the strong sense that the cops are part of the corruption the journalist wants to dig up and that his character is basically their bulldog/strong arm/enforcement type that they have get his hands dirty for them. I don't know if they know what kind of other activities he gets up to off-hours though. Edit: I didn't catch Maltese Falcon in the Caspere car scenes, I started laughing because it straight up looked like Weekend at Bernie's.

I gave Sawbones a try and while I really like the format of the show, a lot of the banter and some of the offhand comments about gender or sex really kinda rub me the wrong way. Also I think I just also don't like any McElroys.

What I'm looking forward to seeing with S2 is how they pull off that sense of not only place but genre that S1 hooked me with and so in that sense, I mirror what the guys talked about on this episode. Pizzolatto really made the series a love letter to Southern Gothic and everything is soaked in it. The thing is, there's no specific "genre" that encapsulates the overbaked, overly corrupt drugs-and-violence sins of Southern California, however there's enough cultural touchstones that can tie it all together both visually and narratively. In that way, the place drives that narrative - there's no way to not see these things when you do a slow pan over the burnt hills, factory wastelands of outer towns. I have very distinct memories of my dad talking about this stuff in particular, hence why I have such a fascination with it, especially as someone who grew up predominantly on the East Coast. It's so alien/alienating and makes for a great place to escape to in media. (But doesn't repeat the same 4 locations that other things that are shot in LA.)

You don't have to like it but it's definitely not pointless and it occupies the same sort of space as video games - part consumer culture, part art field, part skill people believe it's important to have.