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Jake

Idle Thumbs 71: Nothing's as Good as Ya Eat 'Em

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The talk about the Day-Z vet and the callback to the Resident Evil 5 dude reminded me of an experience my friend and I had that was similar. We were playing SWAT 4 coop multiplayer on a server, and it was just the two of us plus some random guy. SWAT 4 is a very slow, deliberate game: you check each corner and each room before entering, you make little plans about how you're going to breach a room, you secure each suspect and handcuff them and tag evidence before leaving each room, etc. You have to be slow because if you go fast you might get caught off guard and killed in one shot.

So the mission starts and immediately this third guy sprints off into the distance and enters the building where the suspects are. My friend and I figure he has no idea what he's doing. All we can hear is *BANG* *BANG* "GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!" *AGH* *BANG* "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" We get into the building and the room is full of suspects stunned by pepper spray. The other player is nowhere to be found. We handcuff everyone, secure all the evidence, and move on, all the while hearing *BANG* "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" "DROP YOUR WEAPON!" *BANG* in the distance. Every time we get into the room, it's just a bunch of dazed suspects, disarmed and ready for us to cuff them. It becomes apparent that this man, who we dub "SuperCop," is bursting into each room and disarming everyone, by himself, at amazing speed. He is a one man wrecking crew. My friend and I spend the rest of the level following in his wake, one room behind him, cleaning up after him by handcuffing the snuffling, disarmed suspects.

I think we finished the map with a perfect score: no criminals dead, and SuperCop, my friend, and I came through unscathed. We went to the next level and the same thing happened, only this time it was in a large office so instead of going from room to room, we got to observe SuperCop as he darted from cubicle to cubicle spraying enemies into submission. With grace and experience he had turned SWAT 4 from a slow, measured slog into a game of zipping around preparing criminals for the arrival of his two sidekicks who could do nothing but marvel at his skill.

So, thanks for reminding me of that!

I think if you're going to set out to deconstruct a piece of western media you can pick apart the white male patriarchy in 99% of what is currently available for consumption. However, Borderlands did not stand out as a misogynistic game to me when I played it. Of course, part of this stems from my being male and having a privilege blinded perspective. But (and I know I'm going to get raked over the coals for using anecdote here) I played with my girflriend and we both loved the experience and she never pointed out anything that seemed super sexist to her. Well apart from the Moxxi expansion which was really crass and awful in all the predictable ways. I won't stand up for the writing, they clearly rely on stereotypes for every character in that game. But you can play as a woman and even that, sad as this may be, puts it miles ahead of most current video games (including the Aliens example you cited). And she isn't constantly moaning and acting sexy. She's kicking ass and is by most accounts one of the best characters in the game, after all. Should it have had more playable female characters? Yes. But I have complaints along these lines for nearly everything I consume. We need more women, more people of color less white men in media. Is it shitty that the only black character in Diablo is a witch doctor? Yeah. But it's also good that the barbarian woman is not an idealized fantasy babe and has a natural body shape. Patriarchy and racism runs through everything but I think as long as we point out the negatives without flushing the baby with the bathwater we slowly improve as a society.

So while I think the writing is lazy and not critically thinking in the slightest, I don't think Borderlands deserves the description of misogynist. In fact, having a female character who isn't just a set of boobs, sets it apart from most other gaming experiences. To pull from anecdote again, this is the main reason my girlfriend picked it up to begin with.

I'm not defending girlfriend mode, I think that's been covered. But I'm interested to know why Sean thinks the original Borderlands can be described in such negative light.

The female player character is basically a seductress. Her skills have names like "Diva" and "Hard to Get". Her class is named "Siren." Her butt gets top billing in the game's promotional screenshots and she manages to show off her breasts and blow kisses simultaneously. She is basically one of Kate Beaton's strong female characters.

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Sorry, I should have explained it. (I wrote like three or four versions of that post before finally submitting it so totally my fault.)

"Gamer" used to be a way to give a group identity to people who were traditionally marginalized within larger groups. It came about at a time where few people played video games, and they were typically thought to be nerds, kids, etc. But now that more people play video games than don't, it seems that "gamer" is used as a way to disqualify people. Women may play more video games, but they don't play the "right kind of video games" to qualify. Casual and Facebook games—up until people started getting legitimately worried about Zynga's status as drug-dealer—used to be denigrated purely on that alone. The Wii is another system treated as not for real gamers.

Is that clearer, or am I seeing phenomena that aren't really there in the larger community? I come at it from the perspective of having spent time in the Shacknews forums, which is now an increasingly-aging group of people who grew up with PCs and have reluctantly made the transition to consoles.

It entirely depends on who you're talking to. I call myself a gamer and I have a Wii (although I mostly play PC and never touch it (but I could never sell it because I love Nintendo)).

Anyway, I don't give a rat's iPhone if an exclusively-mobile games player calls themselves a gamer. It's entirely objectively accurate. For me, the word is infinitely more about self-identification than it is about groupthink or whatever.

But then I feel that way about most things, and I'm fully aware that I don't take this shit nearly as seriously as a lot of people.

I watch movies, but I wouldn't call myself a movie-watcher, because movies don't define me. Gaming does.

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I was one of those people who got fired up about the David Brevik / Jay Wilson comments, over each side.

Jay Wilson saying, "Fuck that loser," is definitely out of line. But I'm an asshole who enjoys that kind of honesty because people being polite all the time is boring. That aside though, I have issues with David Brevik's comments. Or maybe not his comments, it's the perception surrounding his comments.

Something left out of the podcast from the same interview was Brevik saying that Blizzard let go of the people who know how to handle the genre best (the playstyle of Diablo). Now, I really hate to be a jerk who is trumpeting the same point others have made, but the guy went from Diablo 2 to Hellgate: London. And it was legitimately panned as a game and ultimately collapsed, as did the studio behind it. So for Brevik to say that he and the others are the 'experts' at the genre when they most definitely had a humbling experience really changes the tone of whatever he had to say about Diablo 3. He has no introspective, no humility. So for me, when I read him saying that "we would have made different decisions," it was really, "we would have made the RIGHT decisions." Which is a crap sentiment to have because it's not something there's a right or wrong to. Be it the loot system, or auction house, or how skills function, etc. There is merely "different." Some people like Diablo 3 a lot, some like it mildly, some are unhappy but play it sometimes still, and there are people who loathe it. That is a range of taste that exists for all games. The tone Brevik took, citing the existence of the latter two as evidence that Diablo 3 was poorly made, is disingenuous in that regard.

Plus, this is commentary from a guy who conceived a series who lost control of that series. Of course he's going to say he would do better.

Going a little further on this, what I said about him have zero perspective on things, his specific points he brought up have flaws. His comment about 'blue' loot being better than 'yellow' is something that happened in Diablo 2 for crying out loud. It would have been one thing if he said, "We had that problem too, but knew to try to avoid it." I would like for someone who played Hellgate to weigh in on loot tables there, and if the same sort of thing could happen there. Another point he brought up, skills playing off weapon strength, was not some universally hated mechanic. From my perspective, people were happy as shit about it. It works that way because in Diablo 2, melee skills worked off your damage in such a way, but not magical skills. Magic builds had to build up via specific stat bonuses and skill level bonuses only. It brought around a legit fix to evening things out. Whatever issue he took with the auction house wasn't specifically addressed, so I can't really comment on that.

The bottom line is, of course a guy in his position is going to have sour grapes. I disagree with "it's a polite way to say things" sentiment because he's coming from a bitter place.

Edit - Oh, one last thing - "people didn't like, so-" type answers bothered me too. He wasn't answering from his perspective, he was just commenting on things we know. Yes, people don't like x, y, or z. And this is unique or meaningful how? Even coming from a series creator?

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By the way, speaking of women in video games:

Has anything about the production or marketing of Dead or Alive 5 been changed in any way after the recent furore surrounding representations of women in games, considering that the franchise is known for its oversexualised female characters?

With the representation of female characters in the Dead or Alive franchise, we’ve always wanted to make the girls look as attractive as possible, and that’s something that’s not going to change for us at all.

We are a Japanese developer, and we’re making the female characters with our common sense and our creative sense. When you take that to countries outside of Japan, it tends to be very misinterpreted in some cases, people considering it sexist or derogatory etc.

For us, within our culture, we’re showing women like that, and we’re trying to make them look attractive. We can’t help if other cultures in other countries around the globe think that it’s a bad representation. Within our nationality and within our national borders, we obviously have morals that we create our female characters from, but within our Japanese sensibilities, we’ve made those characters the way they are and we’re not going to stop doing that.

Source: http://www.mcvpacific.com/news/read/interview-head-of-team-ninja-talks-dead-or-alive-5/0101641

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We are a Japanese developer, and we're oblivious.

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To be perfectly fair to the guy, Japanese society is totally sexist so he's not wrong. Unfortunately.

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Yeah Japan is an incredibly misogynistic culture, in my experience (which admittedly was only six months long). So there's that.

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I have spent about 30 hrs watching people play Day Z in particular these guys - http://www.youtube.com/show/dayzadventures

Hearing a helicopter is one of the scariest sounds Day Z for me armed with an uzi and a Lee Enfield.

Choosing a female avatar means you can't wear the camouflage or ghille suite and the direct chat face animation doesn't work but it would be interesting to see if players react differently to female avatars in terms of willingness to kill v leave alone/help.

Chris point about how sexism in games will only change if Kotaku have an article every week reminds me of an interview with the woman who was the voice of Korra in the new Avatar series. She was asked what she thinks about the recent upsurge in female lead action movies and she said that she wasn't sure this was the beginning of a tread or a brief blip that would be have no lasting change. She had a line that a slow constant release of female lead media was better that a dump of every few years which would be forgotten.

I do think for this stuff to change it can't be the occasional explosion every few months but needs to be something that is constantly addressed. So far this year there has been a constant stream of content dealing with this and not just on gaming sites - like the new York time article on the problems facing women who play games, in particular online - but I think it is too early to tell whether it will haven any long term effects. I do have hope because of new sites like the Borderhouse which deal specifically with issues like sexism, racism, anti-LGBT problems and also the fact that Kotaku has had a decent stream of articles dealing with this. I can't figure out is it due to Stephen Totaillo and new writers and/or the fact that one of the most important metrics for Kotaku articles are new readers which are now be reading Kotaku as it is now addressing sexism and various other problems that matter to them - a case of ethics combing well with money.

This is something that has also gotten alot more attention in the SFF section of the web and I don't know is this a coincidence, there being a decent overlap in the two communities which is leading to a feedback loop between the two groups or symptoms of something larger.

Finally does anyone remember an article from the last few weeks where the author talks about how developers, writers and players should deal with this so that change does occur versus the more likely reaction where things will stay the same. I was looking for it to post here but can't find it

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It's hard not to be bummed when you see things like the response to Tropes. A unanimous and brutally ignorant chorus of the most rancid shit a man could say yelled at a woman, to "explain" to her that there is no problem. I don't know how the people involved can't see the shit they say in the context, like when you're the 1,000th rape or death threat maker.

That's the world where "girlfriend mode" lands. Maybe the actual gearbox dude has an actual girlfriend that isn't great at Video games, and he meant no harm (the actual features are neat) but to many women, it's just the Xth hideous reminder of what people around you think, and feel comfortable to say.

I try to see things like there are many thousands of people who supported her plan, but I also recognize the luxury being able to see that, not being on the business end of the shitstorm.

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I feel like thumbs posts here have discussed the sexist nature of his comments well enough, but after reading the original Eurogamer article, the whole premise of the design seems misguided. TF2, one of the greatest multiplayer shooters, excels a lot because it presents a wide variety of play styles between each class, with each one playing off the strengths of the player. Are you extremely good at fast twitch headshots? Play sniper. Can you easily determine intersecting trajectories of slow projectiles and opponents? Play soldier or demoman. Have a good sense of spatial awareness in setting up defense and traps? Play engineer. It set up these different play aspects without ever overtly presenting the idea of being good or bad at first person shooters. It's all about providing gameplay mechanics that appeal to certain skillsets. Once upon a time (before all the crazy items) I'm sure people cut their teeth on medic because it allowed you to focus on learning positioning without dealing with having to aim, all while not being insulted, neat!

This Borderlands 2 article comes across as crass and dumb. Can't get a headshot? Well you must suck! This seems like a boring misguided way to look at shooter design. It's even more insulting when you consider that Borderlands 1 is a game in which enemies appear, run directly at you while you point your gun in one direction until they die. It's not a nuanced high skill ceiling shooter at all.

But remember the other thing in that eurogamer article? About there being a seperate skill tree in the works geared towards skill? I got the impression that the two trees were supposed to contrast with each other and provide something for the variety of play styles that you're endorsing. I got the impression that the Best Friends Forever tree was going to have skills for convenience rather than domination, I highly doubt the ricochet auto-aim bullets were all going to be free critical headshots, if that were the case then that would've been poorly balanced shooter design and I doubt veterans like Gearbox would make oversights that egregious. Also I don't think they ever set out to make a nuanced high skill ceiling shooter, the RPG element usually makes things err on the side of just becoming ridiculously powerful with the level and loot grind coming into play. Plus for what it's worth BL2 has been trying to sell us on the variety of enemies and behaviors so hopefully things will at least be more interesting to shoot at but they're definitely not going for a CS or TF2 level of precision design. Really rather than be disgusted at the prospect I was intrigued about how investing in both trees would work together and remember this class is still a work in progress. Sigh, I hope the good ideas don't get scrapped over this situation.

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I am so completely burnt out on sexism and Video games. It's a huge, glaring, pink-elephant problem, but jeez-- I'll try n frame it:

When Obama was up for presidency, it was virtually impossible to talk about him being black. There's people saying WHERE'S HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE! and HE WON'T WIN BECAUSE AMERICA IS RACIST! or HE WILL WIN BECAUSE OF THE BLACK VOTE, or IF YOU DON'T VOTE OBAMA, THEN YOU ARE A RACIST NAZI.

My point is that it's all just ffffucking garbage. Everyone wanted to be the one who's got it all figured out, so everyone's yelling, and as usual the loudest people drown out the wisest people. So no matter what you wanted to hear insight on, you have to wade through a sea of idiot soap-box crap to get to it.

I clicked a Kotaku article a while ago that was titled something about strong female characters, and when I read it it was about the lack of STRONG AS IN MUSCULAR STRONG? FEMALE CHARACTERS? Aauurrrrrgh!

Same thing happens if you make a blog post about art games- or practically everything Jonathon Blow ever says: You get a hundred comments saying

"I agree. I knew games were art as soon as I played Bomberman! 100 thumbs up"

That's not--... that's just rubbish! That's nonsense! Sometimes posts like that are like 5 paragraphs!

So yeah- long story short: It's hard to have one more discussion about Lara Croft, and what she's wearing, and what her boxart is, and who's raping her. It's not that I don't think there's valid discussion to be had there; it's just that I kind of already know what Dark_Dude_94's opinion is gonna be. It's gonna be that rape is bad, and people shouldn't rape.

I KNOW! I sound like a huge dick, and this isn't much of a spark for discussion, but I just wanna flush this thinking out of my head and into the aether, just once, y'know?

EDIT-- Aw fffuck why do I always end up at the top o the page... This is not a page-topper, I'm sorry.

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To be clear I do think the tree sounds fine, I just think the way they framed their motivations was unnecessarily disparaging. Honestly a helping skill tree sounds more fun than a high risk one, because it seems like the first one would make more weapons viable.

That's the world where "girlfriend mode" lands. Maybe the actual gearbox dude has an actual girlfriend that isn't great at Video games, and he meant no harm (the actual features are neat) but to many women, it's just the Xth hideous reminder of what people around you think, and feel comfortable to say.

I was thinking this before, but if he had explained the skill tree line with an actual anecdote I feel it would've been less terrible than his weird half-hypothetical generalization. Especially the cute character line, which just gives it a weird context in my opinion. If he was referring to a real person who thought the art was cute and would like to play as her but has no shooter experience it would've bugged me less. As it's quoted it sounds like he's prescribing the mode to an entire group of people.

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I am so completely burnt out on sexism and Video games. It's a huge, glaring, pink-elephant problem, but jeez-- I'll try n frame it:

When Obama was up for presidency, it was virtually impossible to talk about him being black. There's people saying WHERE'S HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE! and HE WON'T WIN BECAUSE AMERICA IS RACIST! or HE WILL WIN BECAUSE OF THE BLACK VOTE, or IF YOU DON'T VOTE OBAMA, THEN YOU ARE A RACIST NAZI.

My point is that it's all just ffffucking garbage. Everyone wanted to be the one who's got it all figured out, so everyone's yelling, and as usual the loudest people drown out the wisest people. So no matter what you wanted to hear insight on, you have to wade through a sea of idiot soap-box crap to get to it.

I clicked a Kotaku article a while ago that was titled something about strong female characters, and when I read it it was about the lack of STRONG AS IN MUSCULAR STRONG? FEMALE CHARACTERS? Aauurrrrrgh!

Same thing happens if you make a blog post about art games- or practically everything Jonathon Blow ever says: You get a hundred comments saying

"I agree. I knew games were art as soon as I played Bomberman! 100 thumbs up"

That's not--... that's just rubbish! That's nonsense! Sometimes posts like that are like 5 paragraphs!

So yeah- long story short: It's hard to have one more discussion about Lara Croft, and what she's wearing, and what her boxart is, and who's raping her. It's not that I don't think there's valid discussion to be had there; it's just that I kind of already know what Dark_Dude_94's opinion is gonna be. It's gonna be that rape is bad, and people shouldn't rape.

I KNOW! I sound like a huge dick, and this isn't much of a spark for discussion, but I just wanna flush this thinking out of my head and into the aether, just once, y'know?

EDIT-- Aw fffuck why do I always end up at the top o the page... This is not a page-topper, I'm sorry.

Would you say that the discussion in the podcast was useless because, like you say, you "kind of already know what Dark_Dude_94's opinion is gonna be" and you found the podcast discussion to be like that? Or would you say that even if someone says something that is new and adds to the conversation in meaningful ways, you still don't care because all the idiots are also saying idiot stuff? Or are you fine with the discussion in the podcast but not in the gaming industry in general?

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Oh on the topic of the cast, I assume once Chris said the title, Jake gave Sean a staredown so he wouldn't make the 'Idle Thumbs #X: Y' joke. Because it has never been more appropriate.

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Choosing a female avatar means you can't wear the camouflage or ghille suite and the direct chat face animation doesn't work but it would be interesting to see if players react differently to female avatars in terms of willingness to kill v leave alone/help.

What.

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Oh on the topic of the cast, I assume once Chris said the title, Jake gave Sean a staredown so he wouldn't make the 'Idle Thumbs #X: Y' joke. Because it has never been more appropriate.

You can actually hear me laugh really loudly in the background because Jake reached for his notepad, which is a telltale sign that he is writing down a possible episode title.

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Choosing a female avatar means you can't wear the camouflage or ghille suite and the direct chat face animation doesn't work but it would be interesting to see if players react differently to female avatars in terms of willingness to kill v leave alone/help.

I was curious about this as well and realized that I would never use a female avatar in Day Z because of all the horrible things people on the internet will do.

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Would you say that the discussion in the podcast was useless because, like you say, you "kind of already know what Dark_Dude_94's opinion is gonna be" and you found the podcast discussion to be like that? Or would you say that even if someone says something that is new and adds to the conversation in meaningful ways, you still don't care because all the idiots are also saying idiot stuff? Or are you fine with the discussion in the podcast but not in the gaming industry in general?

I was kind of like "Aw great, more girlfriend mode stuff" in the same way these guys would groan if someone asked em whether or not games are art or something.

But y'know- it's Idle Thumbs so I'm not gonna defiantly switch off the cast. There was some fumbling around with semantics, but hese guys are smarter and more aware than the average dudes who tell you what's coming out every week. It's a different story when it's my fave cast, cos what Chris said about the industry being a tight bubble and making it more malleable to change was interesting.

But if most any other blog site or game news site or whatever wrote an article about the portrayal of ladies in games, I would probably not click it in a hundred years. I watched a PAX panel about this stuff once, and it was like 50 minutes of just "hey guys, Dead Or Alive is super weird and that's not right!". They circled around the top layer of the discussion forever and it just drained the life out o me. I don't enjoy it!

Maybe this is just a broader issue of how I feel about reading things on the internet, because most video game forums are like 95% SSJ_Bubsy420 and some dude with a Sephiroth avatar circling the drain forever on racism.

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What.

I think DayZ kinda hacked in support for playing as a woman. With the editor, you could always play as various bystanders and stuff in ArmA, but I don't think they ever fully made everything work with female characters. Like, I don't think you can normally play as a female character in any of the official ArmA campaigns or missions.

I could be wrong.

I watched a PAX panel though about this stuff once, and it was like 50 minutes of just "hey guys, Dead Or Alive is super weird and that's not right!". They circled around the top layer of the discussion forever and it just drained the life out o me.

That sounds like a shitty panel, but I don't think that invalidates the topic. I think I get where you're coming from, but it's kind of a crappy attitude to say that people should drop it, because it's usually fruitless. That means we need to elevate the discourse and have better discussions!

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I agree with Awful Falafel. "Girlfriend Mode" aside, I found Borderlands to have surprisingly strong female characters all around. You could say that Moxxi's "predatory sexuality" plays to a certain kind of trope, but I think it speaks to her pragmatism more than anything: she'll use any resource she has to get what she wants. In men, that's often called "ambition."

But keep in mind, Borderlands is a game that's about shooting stuff and you never, ever are asked to shoot any woman. Ever.

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I agree with Awful Falafel. "Girlfriend Mode" aside, I found Borderlands to have surprisingly strong female characters all around.

I'm not really convinced.

LVz1t.png

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But keep in mind, Borderlands is a game that's about shooting stuff and you never, ever are asked to shoot any woman. Ever.

Pretty sure you shoot lady ninja siren people in the dlc. It's a feature!

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I think I get where you're coming from, but it's kind of a crappy attitude to say that people should drop it, because it's usually fruitless. That means we need to elevate the discourse and have better discussions!

Yeah it makes me sound like a real jerk. I don't think everyone should stop, I'm just gonna sit out on it for the rest of forever.

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I must have missed or just not taken in the Thing analogy when I was listening to the cast. Does anyone know roughly when it is?

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It's this much of the way through:

78bdc60dd81a9086454287abcb99ff1a.png

He's basically explaining that all sorts of gross douchebags come out of the woodwork when people discuss this kind of thing, but it's worth doing anyway because then at least you're confronting the blood alien.

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