Salacious Snake

I probably got this from here, but I don't see it anymore-

I keep trying and failing to get into BioShock. The problem I have is that I'm paralyzed when I have to make a choice about plasmids. When I reach the point at which there are more to choose from than I can equip simultaneously I just sit there for a few minutes and then quit the game. This obviously is because of some kind of mental problem on my part, and not a strike against the game. This video thing makes me want to take another crack at it. Maybe I'll take some xanax to help me through those bits. Also, I love Jake's design work for the stream.

I haven't paid attention to Lego since I was a child, and I was never really into it even back then. Thanks to the assholes at Tested.com constantly talking about Lego in their podcasts, I've suddenly unleashed my inner manchild and now I have an enormous Sopwith Camel to assemble. I don't have any idea where the fuck I'm going to put this thing when I'm finished. My apartment is relatively spartan at the moment, so it's going to look ridiculous. That Gollum figure looks terrifying.

No contest: 12 hours of Team Fortress 2 could get you a sweet virtual hat!

The games don't fulfill any need except that of entertainment for the people who enjoy watching kids kill each other. There's a powerful central seat of authority against which the outlying areas rebelled at some point in the past, and in retribution, the central authority obliterated one of those "districts" and instituted the Hunger Games. Each remaining district hands over two kids to participate in the games every year (I think). The stated reason for it is that it's supposed to remind the districts that they shouldn't rebel or something... it's not elucidated very well. I guess some of the lack of clarity can be attributed to the fact that the narrator doesn't know fuck all about anything. I presume the later books feature another rebellion.

Haha, I feel dumb now. I read the first Hunger Games installment, and the general momentum of stuff happening kept me going until the end. I read a few pages of the second and immediately put it down in distaste, because I couldn't deal with any more relationship stuff. I didn't want to kill myself reading the first one, but I don't understand why it's such a phenomenon. The writing style is abysmal. The whole way through the book, I couldn't stop wondering why people cooperated with the games. It's a pretty awful thing, and it doesn't seem like it would work if everyone simply refused to participate. edit: I mean I guess you could make the same argument about a lot of real life atrocities which have occurred, but this one in particular seems so artificial. Like, how did they get that shit going and convince people it was a good idea? Hey, guess what! New show, where we kill a bunch of kids. It'll be great! Those districts are of great economic importance to the Capitol, right? I guess I needed some more detail on how the heck it all works and how it came about.

I'm sure I'm guilty of this. Sorry, everyone! It's hard not to react negatively when you say things that sound so similar to the (exhaustingly repetitive) rhetoric of the opponents of equality. It's not immediately obvious that you're speaking in an academic sense. I think a disconnect is occurring, because others in the conversation are arguing from a position of deeply-held passions. Those arguments have been honed to a sharp edge because of the very real opposition which lurks around every corner. I'm sorry that we keep bringing the knives out on you, but I think it would behoove you to state your positions more clearly. I know that's kind of a half-assed apology ("I'm sorry," followed by "here's what you did to cause this"), but I think of equal importance to the civility which Ben X advocates is an emphasis on clarity of communication.

I'll probably play it out of morbid curiosity.

You answered your own question: That's not the whole of it, but it's significant. Historically, even scientific fields like psychology are approached from a distinctly male perspective, using the healthy male psyche as the norm and extrapolating from there. The "female perspective" is in dire need of voicing and exploration on its own. I'm sorry it turns you off, but Leigh's job isn't to turn you on. It's important stuff, even if you don't personally find it interesting.

Some of this has made me think about a more basic issue which is divorced from sexism, racism, nationalism (as Gwardinen touches on), etc. "Razzing" among friends is something that I left behind at some point. I don't even know when it happened or what changed me, but I never bust on people for anything anymore, and I have very little tolerance for other people doing it (to me or anyone else). It's pretty much never funny, and I find that people generally don't like the person whose go-to way of relating to people is making fun of them. Even the gentlest ribbing tends to be pretty dumb and uncalled for. It has become very normal in certain areas of our culture, but not everyone appreciates it. There's the stereotype of "snarky" geeks who sit around coming up with new ways to insult each other, and I've known people like that. When they're outside of that kind of circle and they still fall back on those tactics with new people, they come off really badly, and nobody wants to deal with them. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't think pointing out the faults (real or otherwise) of another person is particularly endearing. edit: Didn't mean for this to come out sounding so lofty, like I've ascended to some higher level of enlightenment. It came out like that because I only just realized that I feel this way now while I was writing it, so this post catches me mid-revelation.

Well yeah, but put it in context. It aired during the height of American involvement in the Vietnam War in particular. The Tet Offensive was underway. It was kind of a big deal! (I mean Vietnam was a big deal, not Star Trek.)

This was a good post. It's easy for us dudes to forget just how constant and fucking exhausting this stuff can be, and we all need a reminder sometimes.

Star Trek can be pretty heavy-handed; I don't see how you could ignore the political elements. A Private Little War Let That Be Your Last Battlefield The Omega Glory These are just the first few to pop into my mind. A lot of the show is quite overtly political.

OK Twig, I think there has been a miscommunication here, because you're really talking about professional comedians. It seemed earlier that you were defending things like the casual sexist comments that people make over the internet to strangers as being ok if the person making the comment thinks it's just a joke.

First off, I apologize because it feels like we're piling on you now, but this thing about intent is important. Intent is very much not at the heart of what castorp was saying. In fact, it's irrelevant. Those examples in castorp's second paragraph are bad, and you obviously agree with that. Just try to imagine what it would be like to have your life shaped by those kinds of prejudicial judgments from other people, and then imagine also having to deal with people who have no idea what that's like making jokes about it. It's going to suck, right? What does the intent of the jokester have to do with it? Your examples from your own life aren't the same. I'm sure many of us on this forum can relate to being picked on for being nerdy or whatever. Nobody enjoys that, but there is no systematic oppression of nerds happening in the world that I'm aware of. There aren't towns where you have a good chance of being dragged behind a pickup truck until you die for being kind of a nerd or having weird teeth. When true menace or at least marginalization is an everyday reality in your life, jokes can take on a different meaning, and it has nothing at all to do with the intent of the speaker. I hate going back to subject of rape jokes, but if you tell a joke in a room full of people (including women), there's probably someone there who has been the victim of rape. I mean, that's just a statistical reality. Your intent doesn't change that reality. Not caring about that is callous and solipsistic. For another gruesome and maybe a bit facile example, lynching was still a popular pastime here in the states as recently as the 1960s. As in, there are many black people living right now who don't have fathers because they were hanged by mobs of white people. Do you want to take your chances and make a dumb joke about that? I'm not advocating censorship here; I don't think any of us are. I'm advocating caring about the audience and not just your own "intent."

I see what you mean. Unfortunately, people constantly claim to be joking when what they are obviously doing is offhandedly making hurtful remarks which perpetuate toxic ideas. To use the "sandwich" example (which we all agree is at least dumb); there's barely enough going on there to call it a joke. Comedians flirt with ugliness on a regular basis, but the good ones do it with a certain degree of craft. They knowingly subvert your prejudices. I don't advocate silencing creative expression that goes into dark places. I do think people should care about how their words affect the people around them.

That seems a bit misanthropic. I feel like I must be reading you wrong.

Have a crappy instagrammed picture of some of the folks behind Resonance! From left to right: Dave, Janet, Daryl, Edward, Sarah, Vince and Logan

I played a bit, too, and I'm digging it so far. I'm going to the launch party tonight in NYC, so I wanted to have at least gotten a taste of it.

http://www.animalnewyork.com/2012/ill-doctrine-all-these-sexist-gamer-dudes-are-some-shook-ones/ Jay Smooth (local public radio host and internet personality) weighs in on the Anita Sarkeesian kerfuffle in his usual levelheaded manner. I love this guy.

Posts like this are not productive. As others have said, just don't read the thread if you don't like the way the discussion is going. The recent flurry of posts in here has been a decent conversation aside from stuff like this. I don't understand why you'd post in a thread just to say that the topic isn't worth discussing. Vote with your, you know, eyeballs or whatever.

Hackmaster started out as a joke game, based on a nerd comic strip, so it has a lot of goofy shit. The first edition was essentially a parody of D&D... which makes the creepy shit stand out even more.

I don't want to seem like I only enjoy the creations of people who I agree with. What I thought was weird wasn't so much the message itself, but the way it's presented. It's very one-sided and preachy. The political ideas aren't challenged in any way, so they don't have to be proven. I kept thinking some kind of counterpoint would show up, but it's the same spiel all the way through. It's boring. I wasn't crazy about the movie, but I like the satirical elements.

If your mom wasn't raped, she was a whore, she was an adulterer, or she abandoned you. Most of the defense I saw about this when I brought it up was that it served the gritty "realism" (or verisimilitude, a word loved by rape-apologist grognards everywhere) of the setting. Meanwhile, I don't see how this is realistic. What about plain old unplanned pregnancy, and why is it weighted like that? If your gaming group wants to get into the intricacies of how half-orcs are made, then they can use their imaginations. I could even imagine it being an interesting and safe thing to explore for the right group (I can also imagine what it would be like to be an astronaut). But, it shouldn't be staring you in the face in a chart that everyone is probably going to see when making a character. It's insensitive at the very least, and further, it has a creepy undercurrent that suggests an unhealthy attitude toward women.