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Roderick

Feminism

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yeah, i'll acknowledge i can do it too, but we should try to be aware when we're a bunch of dudes steering a conversation into easier/personally interesting territory.  

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I have an irrational hatred for applying fandom words that described something specific and useful and broadening them so that they also encompass perfectly good existing words. For instance, brkl here describes matchmaking and why can't we just call it fucking matchmaking arrrrrgh

 

Because it's covert matchmaking and where I imagine this specific use comes from. 

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yeah, i'll acknowledge i can do it too, but we should try to be aware when we're a bunch of dudes steering a conversation into easier/personally interesting territory.  

 

true! whoops.

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Sometimes when mountain bikes and cameras mix, friends joke "look at that bike face" as someone rides down something technical. I found out today that apparently Bicycle Face was an actual bullshit thing used to try and scare women:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_face

(It seems one of the original advocates had more of a anti-bicycle agenda than a gendered-agenda though: http://garethrees.org/2012/01/10/shadwell/ )

Yea I stumbled upon that when writing a paper for a class, I could not believe it and kept refering back to it throughout the paper. It's such a lazy made up thing too.

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Yea I stumbled upon that when writing a paper for a class, I could not believe it and kept refering back to it throughout the paper. It's such a lazy made up thing too.

 

19th Century medicine was...not good at medicine.

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Until now I had only ever heard "fan service" used to mean "content that's in your work just to please existing hardcore fans," as Jake puts it. That actually works better with the term, so I can see how it gained that meaning. "Service cut" (apparently a synonymous term) works better for the original meaning, I think.

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Until now I had only ever heard "fan service" used to mean "content that's in your work just to please existing hardcore fans," as Jake puts it. That actually works better with the term, so I can see how it gained that meaning. "Service cut" (apparently a synonymous term) works better for the original meaning, I think.

 

Well, it's a Japanese phrase borrowing from English and then borrowed back by English, so it's bound to be not quite apt.

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yeah, i'll acknowledge i can do it too, but we should try to be aware when we're a bunch of dudes steering a conversation into easier/personally interesting territory.

Yeah, sorry for contributing to that whole thing. I wish I had more of worth to say about the actual subject.

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I have an irrational hatred for applying fandom words that described something specific and useful and broadening them so that they also encompass perfectly good existing words. For instance, brkl here describes matchmaking and why can't we just call it fucking matchmaking arrrrrgh

It's a complete tangent, but I agree with Merus. I find it really irritating when people apply a new and generally originally very specific word to a well-established phenomenon as if it's something entirely novel. I'm probably entirely projecting my own bullshit, but it seems like the culture of today claiming some sort of revolution that doesn't really exist. Sometimes it's restricted to particular people. Like someone I know who will refer to every single piece of software, component of a piece of software and function of a piece of software as an "app".

Feminism.

yeah, i'll acknowledge i can do it too, but we should try to be aware when we're a bunch of dudes steering a conversation into easier/personally interesting territory.

Regardless of what feelthedarkness actually meant in this exchange, what I thought they were saying is as follows:

People aren't necessarily using new words to describe something that is already discussed; by reducing the vernacular that way, you may be missing the subtilites that the new words are attempting to emphasize. One of the reasons people may do this is to make themselves more comfortable by generalizing the particular perspective so that it becomes the norm with which they are familiar.

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Fan service is when the contraption you use to transport air from one place in the room into your direction falters, and you need a handyman to come fix it.

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i really don't want to seem like i'm shutting down or stifling discussion, but just suggesting that we be careful when we, as a bunch of dudes, steer a conversation from "some sexist game developer's tantrum about a reporter not celebrating his panty shots" to "the true meaning of fan service." 1 luv to all. 

 

EDIT!

 

It was pointed out to me that this might read as I'm implying that everyone posting is men, which I didn't mean. I meant, that the men involved should monitor the space they take up. I apologize both speaking poorly, and at this point doing the thing I'm talking about. 

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i really don't want to seem like i'm shutting down or stifling discussion, but just suggesting that we be careful when we, as a bunch of dudes, steer a conversation from "some sexist game developer's tantrum about a reporter not celebrating his panty shots" to "the true meaning of fan service." 1 luv to all. 

 

I don't know about anyone else, I'm personally having trouble engaging with the torrent of crazy coming from the XSeed rep. It's such an ugly little ball of insecurity and entitlement that I'd rather have thought a grown adult would be beyond.

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Not all men

 

i don't absolve myself! 

 

EDIT!

 

It was pointed out to me that this might read as I'm implying that everyone posting is men, which I didn't mean. I meant, that the men involved should monitor the space they take up. I apologize both speaking poorly, and at this point doing the thing I'm talking about. 

 

 

 

I don't know about anyone else, I'm personally having trouble engaging with the torrent of crazy coming from the XSeed rep. It's such an ugly little ball of insecurity and entitlement that I'd rather have thought a grown adult would be beyond.

 

That dude is playing some bad idea bingo. "these women are free to choose to jiggle!" 

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i don't absolve myself! 

 

Flippancy aside, it's almost impossible to keep a thread on topic. That's why people are currently discussing vaccinations in the Star Wars thread. I appreciate the sentiment behind not wanting a bunch of men to derail a discussion on feminism, but that kind of self-policing can create its own problems. For one, it wasn't exclusively men who were contributing to the tangential discussion on fan service. And it is possible to overly spotlight your awareness to the point where it no longer seems that it's coming from a genuine place but more from a need to be validated for demonstrating how progressive you are. Example: basically all of the bios submitted to that Plz Diversify Your Panel website have a slimy tone of "I'm a white guy WHO GETS IT. Reward me."

 

(ifeelthedarkness -- I'm not accusing you of doing that and I'm confident that you have the best intentions. It's just a pattern I've noticed, especially in the past few days surrounding that particular website and I thought it'd be worth commenting on.)

 

I assume this XSeed thing is why everyone on twitter is suddenly talking about how boobs are represented and condemned in games and games criticism? 

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I nearly submitted for that site, but had been on an all white, all male panel one day before I saw it.

 

(This comment was meta reward fishing, and pointing that out is meta-meta reward fishing).

 

In seriousness, when I try to act on any kind of social problem, I also try to think about whether or not the way I'm acting is inherently drawing attention to me. Usually, the best thing I can do seems to be any course of action that removes attention from me, and also doesn't draw attention to the issue (i.e. not "Greetings HU-MAN FE-MALE, would you like to speak at our conference? It is non-diverse and needs more HU-MAN FE-MALES like you. Yeah talk about anything you want it doesn't really matter").

 

Diversity in a non-diverse industry can be a hard problem to work on without being unflattering to minorities* or appearing to want a Nice White Guy certificate.

 

*cough: within the context of that industry, I mean, not necessarily in general.

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Diversity in a non-diverse industry can be a hard problem to work on without being unflattering to minorities* or appearing to want a Nice White Guy certificate.

 

*cough: within the context of that industry, I mean, not necessarily in general.

 

Yeah, I was just thinking this same thing because RPS posted an article about how Ubisoft specifically picked a female hostage for the new Rainbow Six demo because they wanted the audience to "feel empathy" and "want to protect her" and "care about the hostage". And the comments are equal parts evolutionary psychology (apparently all humans are programmed by their genes to care more about women than men) and white-knight accusations (apparently Nathan Grayson is an asshole for not letting women fight their own battles against sexism).

 

Making sure you're an ally for diversity without attracting attention to yourself is important not only so that you don't make it about you, but so that you don't make yourself a target for people to malign your intentions as an ally. That said, it's all shitty and I don't know.

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Gormongous, on 25 Jun 2014 - 08:25, said:

Yeah, I was just thinking this same thing because RPS posted an article about how Ubisoft specifically picked a female hostage for the new Rainbow Six demo because they wanted the audience to "feel empathy" and "want to protect her" and "care about the hostage". And the comments are equal parts evolutionary psychology (apparently all humans are programmed by their genes to care more about women than men) and white-knight accusations (apparently Nathan Grayson is an asshole for not letting women fight their own battles against sexism).

I think it's pretty progressive of Ubisoft to dedicate time and effort to modelling a male hostage as well as a female one. As a male, I'm fed up with men being shoehorned into protagonist leads in video games (looking at you, AssCreed Unity). Nice to see some equal opportunity damselling for once!

Sarcasm aside, does anyone else find it really bizarre when an attempt at portraying a character realistically butts heads with convenient gameplay design? Like when Irrational designed Elizabeth to be as unobtrusive as possible so people wouldn't hate her guts like every other companion character in history. Totally legitimate from a design standpoint, but when taken in context creates all kinds of weird (but probably unintentional) implications. Then you have this hostage character, basically just a glorified flag in gameplay terms, but you're expected to care about her fate because she cries a lot and chokes on dirt. Like that's going to matter after the fiftieth time she goes down and you have to press A on her or whatever. Not trying to make a comment so much as I just find this stuff super weird.

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I think it's pretty progressive of Ubisoft to dedicate time and effort to modelling a male hostage as well as a female one. As a male, I'm fed up with men being shoehorned into protagonist leads in video games (looking at you, AssCreed Unity). Nice to see some equal opportunity damselling for once!

 

Well, until the Vegas games, Rainbow Six had always had male and female hostages, as well as male and female officers, so it's more of a step forward after a step back, but the rest of your post is ace.

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Sarcasm aside, does anyone else find it really bizarre when an attempt at portraying a character realistically butts heads with convenient gameplay design? Like when Irrational designed Elizabeth to be as unobtrusive as possible so people wouldn't hate her guts like every other companion character in history. Totally legitimate from a design standpoint, but when taken in context creates all kinds of weird (but probably unintentional) implications. Then you have this hostage character, basically just a glorified flag in gameplay terms, but you're expected to care about her fate because she cries a lot and chokes on dirt. Like that's going to matter after the fiftieth time she goes down and you have to press A on her or whatever. Not trying to make a comment so much as I just find this stuff super weird.

 

I think a lot of that is just the nature of video games and the uncanny valley.  It is very weird that we're expected to care about the  frightened flag proxy in a game that will mostly likely be a bunch of people running at each other shooting until only one side remains.  It's also weird to be able to get shot multiple times without dying, or carry an absurd amount of ammunition and gear, or accurately fire from the hip, etc.  Those are also legitimate design concessions that don't stand up to close scrutiny.  You probably notice things like character portrayal and human interaction because those are things you do on a daily basis and you therefore have a better baseline for what seems weird.  Your point is valid though.  Everything's weird.

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a bunch of people running at each other shooting until only one side remains

I would like to take a moment to register my appreciation of this sequence of words.

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