Hermie

Can I join the "no friends" support group? After a dramatic decision to leave my life behind to go with my long-distance girlfriend one country over, we've had a hard time making friends in the small town we ended up in. We have some acquaintances at work we have lunch and occasional drinks with, but no real friends. We're trying to get back to Norway, but man, it's hard. And meanwhile we're staying at home, playing games and watching Netflix, without someone to talk to but each other.

Just make sure you keep it in the packaging so they don't take it away in customs.

I saw another one of those "SJWs to avoid" lists floating around. And it made me wonder, do these people think that everyone except the journalists and developers that have spoken up is on "their side"? That it's a small secret society that work together to ruin video games by letting women in? Because there's only really two groups in the professional games industry: Those who have spoken up, and those who are afraid to because of the backlash.

Yeah, I did that, but forgot to mention it. Everybody pile on the report train!

Nope, he did not! I checked his profile before posting, and when I checked now, there's a fake profile with his name and image spamming the link; https://twitter.com/ollymoss/status/504752849415196673 Scroll down a bit and notice "Olly Moss @tvtroung1994" posting the link over and over again.

Is this legit? I saw Olly saying he wont sell it, but it feels weird giving this random internet store money for his design.

Oh man, a Steam sale of indie/SJW-cabal games? The trolls would lose their minds.

Yeah, I also think it's really cool and couragous that you took the time to write this and post it "out loud". It's too bad that a question from Thunderpeel has haunted you for two years like this, I doubt he meant it like that. On the other hand, by the end of the post it sounds like you have stepped closer to finding your OWN identity? Not as in "identifying as X", but you seem like you know more who you are instead of questioning yourself, fluid sexuality included. You mention that "Bisexuality has no cultural visibility whatsoever", and I agree with that. It led me to an honest question: Is there such a thing as "bi culture"? You mentioned the stereotypes, but there's also gay clubs, media such as TV shows, music and literature aimed specifically at gay men, lesbian women or other groups such as drag artists. But does places, art or other things under the definition "culture" exist specifically for bi-sexual people? (Stating again, I'm genuinely curious.)

There's many people expressing the sentiment of "I have legitimate concerns about the way ZQ or Sarkeesian present their arguments, but the Feminists are ignoring me and calling me misogynist, troll, MRA or worse. Thus, I will shout louder at these people because this is what *I* care about." I wish that instead of just shouting louder and getting more agressive, they would instead look to the left, look to the right, and see what language the people making the same arguments are using. And then, ideally, would turn to these people and say "hey, can you chill the fuck out? Your noise and harassement is making it impossible to have an actual debate." This, of course, could swing both ways. If we spend too long conflating everyone as trolls/4chan, a counter-culture ends up being created. We at least have to be clear about WHY this debate isn't interesting when people's lives are being invaded and destroyed. Addendum realisation: "Of course she doesn't deserve to have her life threatened, BUT..." is exactly same as "Now I'm not a racist, BUT...".

This reply from JonTron made me laugh out loud: Does he not see the irony?

I'm kinda glad the discussion circled back around to this, because my Twitter feed is discussing it right now, and I'm here mulling it over. What broke it open for me was reading this sentence again: The key word used is "product". Video games are products, by this line of thinking. And that is how many of the people arguing about corruption are thinking too. "How can they recommend this product to me if they have been affected by the producer of said product?". Instead, what if we think of video games as (here it comes) art? Or at the very least, we think of the makers of them not as "developers" (a moniker also used for software coders and urban planners), but as auteurs, as creators? If they have a proven track record as a creator, it makes sense to subscribe to them monthly and trust that they will continue to produce creative works that one, as a critic or journalist, can enjoy and even write about. The rest of qouted post from Singlespace underlines this way of thinking, so I included it in the quote. Of course, this doesn't touch on divulgance or not, but it makes sense of why it feels okay that a writer should be able to back a Patreon at all, even if they aren't "purchasing a product" with every donation. (at least in my head)

I can see that. I found it entertaining as a spectator/long time Daily Dota fan, but I understand what you mean. But I have no idea about the play level of Na'Bi going into the match, so if I knew maybe I'd have felt differently. Then again, LoL tried a more standard draft against you guys, and it didn't work out, so maybe they're at their best doing crazy strats?

Watching LoL's two games from yesterday was so much fun. Basically the definition of clowny-ass Dota. In the second game Crispy drafted Riki, Slark and Bloodseeker on the same team as some kind of insane gank machine.

Hah, one of the creators is the dude who started arguing with forum member Lacabra on Twitter, mostly by ignoring that the attacks on ZQ has anything to do with misogyny.

After me having an animated monologue in my sleep, my girlfriend looked into apps that record sleep-talking to find out what the hell I was saying. One of the apps had this review:

Regarding the subversion of the male gaze in Marvel movies, or should I say, regarding ~**HUNX**~. This is actually what I found the most interesting about the first Thor movie. Marvel could easily have made our protagonist/cipher a young white male, or cast Natalie Portman but made her only a love interest for Thor, with sexy scenes where she seduces the naive new hero. Instead, she's a plucky astrophysicist with a love for science, that dresses like a normal woman, and seems like someone who probably spends sunday mornings in bed reblogging Doctor Who gifs on Tumblr. And then a shirtless hunk literally drops out of the sky for her. Of course, I wish she had more agency later in the movie and in the second movie, but I at least found it as a positive step from an unexpected direction.

I call dibs on White Knight Paladin.

In Norway, the Police federation/union is pushing to have police always carrying arms. They repeated this stance earlier in the month after a suspected terror threat towards Norway, when the police did carry weapons and set up checkpoints. The crime stats went down, which they took as proof that carrying weapons lowers the crime rate. Link. The authority of the Norwegian police academy replied, saying that's a "complete miss", and gets support from the police leadership and politicians, citing that if the numbers indeed went down in this period, it's most likely due to the amount of visible uniforms on the street, not the guns. And that in Sweden, where they do carry arms, they have 6 times the amount of shootings by the police, despite having less than 2 times the population. They also worry that the criminals will arm up to match the police. Google translated link. And similarly, Iceland had their first case EVER of Police killing a person in December. (via Henroid on Twitter)

That is 40 minutes from where I live currently, and where I spend a lot of weekends. =) Let me know when you have a set plan, even if I'm not around, I can provide Tips&Tricks.

[THREAD HIJACK] Woah, where in Sweden? I might be in Norway for Christmas, but if not we should totally hang.

Exactly! Based on a rumor confirming a previous assumption, these people are harassing a person incessantly. If you're interested in discussing this, might I suggest starting a separate thread about game journalism ethics? It's an interesting topic, especially regards to f.ex. youtubers taking cuts of profits and so on, but discussing this in context of Quinns having her life gradually invaded feels like ignoring the more serious issue at hand, especially in a thread about feminism.

I'm with Jon (Edit: and Sarah) on this one. EVEN IF she cheated multiple times, and EVEN IF she used her sexuality to get favors from journalists, that doesn't really matter in the context of what's happening right now. Let's try removing "gaming" and "the internet" from the situation, and imagine you're reading a newspaper article: "A vengeful man has gathered hundreds of people to harass his ex-girlfriend, including calling her phone, threatening her, showing up at her home, publishing the contact information of her and her closest relatives and friends, her financial records, and taking over her place of work. They have also harrased her family and friends. The man claims that this is because of infidelity, including using sex to get favors at work." If you read this, are you really concerned about what she did at her work? Or are you worried about her safety and hoping the people breaking the law are brought to justice?

In regards to the original question: "Can an object [drawing] be objectified?" Our brains are really good at filling in the blank spaces, so if we see on the screen something that looks and sounds like a woman, our brain identifies it as such, even if semi-abstracted. To that point, while I can't say you can objectify the single character on screen, you can certainly objectify women based on their depiction on screen, be it through film, cartoon or other mediums. As Argobot points out above, a lot of porn contain unrealistic images of both sex and bodies, and I don't feel like drawn porn should be excluded from that criticism. Even if no woman was filmed to create it, doesn't mean it doesn't perpetuate the myth of women as gatekeepers, for example. In fact, you can even see the direct influence of their depiction in what Chris points out: This is a really dangerous attitude, because these men decide in their heads what women should and shouldn't be, based on what they see in fiction that is made to only appeal to them. And so, when people criticize this depiction and warped world view, they get defensive. Just look at the Dragon's Crown debacle. And notice that whenever people speak out about feminism and misogyny in video games, they get harassed in the comments and on Twitter by a bunch of white dudes with anime girls as avatars. But as Rodi points out above, you can't through everything under the banner "anime porn". There's interactive fiction that has really complex stories and characters, that also has sex scenes. There's Yaoi, soft gay erotica aimed primarily at women, and so on. We can't chastise porn for generalizing women and then generalize it ourselves.

Jon, have you watched the Daily Dota videos on GB? They're even better for learning than watching the tournament, because in a lot of them Crispy is constantly dropping tips about how to effectively use the heroes, particularly whatever Brad is playing. And more importantly, he's always aware of the flow of the game, so if you pay attention when he's telling the rest when to push, when to retreat, when to roam, etc, you learn a lot. At least, that's how I ended up coming into matchmaking fresh and knowing way more than my fellow newcomers.

Interesting! My podcast backlog is pretty big right now, so I'll have to try this.