Is Posting Threads Busted?

[TychoCelchuuu]

I CANNOT FIX THE THREAD TITLE (long story)

so

please imagine that the title is:

Nick Breckon and Porpentine: Same Person? Twins?

This is "Fuck" Nick Breckon - Idle Thumb, game developer at Telltale Games, PC gaming enthusiast, Machiavellian schemer, former Bethesda employee:

This is Porpentine: indie game developer, Twine evangelist, Rock Paper Shotgun columnist, professional weeper, curatrix on Free Indie Games, trash harpy, queer tranarchafeminist:

Click me (large image)

The resemblance, I submit, is uncanny.

Possible Explanations

F. Nick is Porpentine

Evidence:

1. Both the Breckon and the Porp are game designers who focus largely on narrative. Despite having recently released Armada, a game with graphics where you attack stuff with slime and so on, Porpentine is mostly known for her Twine games. Breckon, meanwhile, has a writing credit on The Walking Dead: 400 Days and is now working on the second season of The Walking Dead. The skillsets and interests of these two game developers clearly lie in narrative games that they spend their time writing....

2. Nick is a master of disguises - see the following picture:

3. I have never seen them in the same room together. Porpentine has never been on Idle Thumbs, for instance.

4. They look a lot alike!

Possible Issues:

1. Nick is a dude and Porpentine is a lady.

2. Porpentine's hair looks like hair, not a wig. So it's unclear how she can have long hair while Nick has short hair if they are the same person.

Likelihood: MEDIUM. Further investigation required.

Nick and Porpentine are Twins

Evidence:

1. They look a lot alike!

2. Both speak of having played video games growing up, but Porpentine often talks of consoles, like the N64, whereas Nick is much more of a PC gamer, with fond memories of TIE Fighter and so forth. They grew up both enjoying games, but they couldn't both play on the PC or on the consoles, so they agreed to split. Porp got the consoles, Breckon the computer.

3. We don't know Porpentine's last name. It could be Breckon.

Possible Issues:

1. Nick has never mentioned sisters, and Porpentine has only mentioned a sister. Unless Nick is the sister Porpentine speaks of, and unless Nick never speaks of his sister, we have an issue.

Likelihood: MEDIUM. Further investigation required.

They Have Nothing to do with Each Other

Evidence:

1. This is the null hypothesis, so to speak. Most people have nothing to do with each other.

Possible Issues:

1. Have you looked at the pictures?

2. They both like video games.

Likelihood: MINIMAL. I would not bet money on it.

Thoughts?

[Merus]

My first thought is that you could do with a new hobby

[clyde]

Simply put, Porpentine doesn't have time to do what she does AND show up for Idle Thumbs Episodes.

Still, the best way to be sure is to have both Nick and Porpentine on the podcast and have both of them speak at the same time (without Steve there).

[Ucantalas]

My first thought is that you could do with a new hobby

But this is a new hobby.

[TychoCelchuuu]

My first thought is that you could do with a new hobby

My old hobby (trying to prove that Edward Norton, Anton Chekhov, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky are all the same person), has met with little success, despite what I take to be very strong evidence:

I don't want to go back to that just yet. I feel like this new discovery is even more surprising because these two people are alive at the same time rather than in different eras (which of course would suggest immortality).

[clyde]

By the way TychoCelchuuu, thanks for hipping me to Porp. As I've been playing a little bit of her games, reading a lot of her tweets and recently watching an interview with her that exposes her radical consideration, I've become a fan.

[JonCole]

what

[melmer]

Wait, i thought i was Nick Breckon

[Nappi]

Damn, I can't find the Nick-sleeping-unaware-of-being-photographed picture anywhere anymore.

[tegan]

My old hobby (trying to prove that Edward Norton, Anton Chekhov, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky are all the same person), has met with little success, despite what I take to be very strong evidence:

 

What about Keanu?

 

[syntheticgerbil]

Is this thread offensive?

[clyde]

Is this thread offensive?

Why would it be offensive?

[syntheticgerbil]

That is a very good question!

[clyde]

I pride myself on my ability to come up with good questions. So... "thank you."

[TychoCelchuuu]

Is this thread offensive?

We already talked about what things are offensive in the "I Had a Random Thought" thread on page 51 and thereabouts. This thread is about doppelganger discovery.

[tegan]

Is this thread offensive?

 

That is a very good question!

 

 

You know, I didn't really want to say anything, but isn't Porpentine trans? Saying "she looks like a dude," even phrased as "she looks like this specific dude," is the sort of dark grey area that I usually make a point of deliberately avoiding.

[shammack]

[TychoCelchuuu]

You know, I didn't really want to say anything, but isn't Porpentine trans? Saying "she looks like a dude," even phrased as "she looks like this specific dude," is the sort of dark grey area that I usually make a point of deliberately avoiding.

No, she and a dude look like each other. Porpentine no more looks like a dude than Nick Breckon looks like a woman!

It's like how Conan O'Brien and Swedish President Tarja Halonen look like each other:

[Nappi]

It's like how Conan O'Brien and Swedish President Tarja Halonen look like each other:

 

[clyde]

I was actually having a conversation last night about whether or not there are inherent masculine facial-features and inherent feminine-facial features. I suspect that there are not. I think that what I think of feminine facial features is the result of photoshopped ads and creepily selective casting.

That said, I would hate for either Nick Breckon's or Porpentine's feelings to get hurt by reducing their identities with each other. I'm not convinced that this is happening here, but I think it's a valid concern. During the interview of Porpentine, Jonathan Holmes asked her off-handedly if she was "The Lady Gaga of games" and Porpentine said that she didn't like to be compared to other people because she is Porpentine.

I was at a wedding once and a bunch of people got excited that I look just like someone else at the wedding. They wanted us to stand beside each other for a picture. It was kinda weird because we didn't think we looked like each other, but we didn't really take offense and everyone else seemed to be excited. I'm glad they took the picture because I think it's interesting that people think we look the same and i can look at it and feel the dissonance.

I wonder if this is related to twins being mistaken for each other.

[clyde]

https://twitter.com/aliendovecote/status/405421160369639424

[TychoCelchuuu]

That said, I would hate for either Nick Breckon's or Porpentine's feelings to get hurt by reducing their identities with each other. I'm not convinced that this is happening here, but I think it's a valid concern. During the interview of Porpentine, Jonathan Holmes asked her off-handedly if she was "The Lady Gaga of games" and Porpentine said that she didn't like to be compared to other people because she is Porpentine.

I thought her main point there was that didn't like being compared to other women because people do this thing where they try to think of all women in terms of other women and pit women against each other to find out who the "best" woman is, when really we should be looking at people as individuals instead of saying "oh, a woman doing something? Let me find the nearest similar woman and compare the two!" People are fine with talking about a man's accomplishments without finding another man to always compare him to but with women people are always interested in rankings and in linking women together so that they can pigeonhole what "women" do into a certain category. It's all part of society's constant efforts to make into the "other" anyone who isn't a straight white male. Straight white male is default: if you're a gay person, people will talk about your art in the context of other gay artists, if you're a person of color, people talk about your art in the context of other persons of color, if you're a woman, people will talk about your art in the context of other women, etc. That's what Porpentine was deriding I think.

Her point about just being Porpentine, and not like Lady Gaga or whatever, was clearly a serious thing about not trying to fit someone's life and work into some pat little box so you can understand it: take people for what they are. If you think my Nick Breckon/Porpentine assimilation is seriously trying to slot one person's accomplishments into the other's so as to understand them through one reductive frame of reference, I think you're misunderstanding the tone of this thread.

https://twitter.com/aliendovecote/status/405421160369639424

Part of me REALLY hopes I'm one of the two theories and part of me REALLY hopes there are actually three theories out there and mine is obviously the best.

[Dewar]

I thought her main point there was that didn't like being compared to other women because people do this thing where they try to think of all women in terms of other women and pit women against each other to find out who the "best" woman is, when really we should be looking at people as individuals instead of saying "oh, a woman doing something? Let me find the nearest similar woman and compare the two!" People are fine with talking about a man's accomplishments without finding another man to always compare him to but with women people are always interested in rankings and in linking women together so that they can pigeonhole what "women" do into a certain category. It's all part of society's constant efforts to make into the "other" anyone who isn't a straight white male. Straight white male is default: if you're a gay person, people will talk about your art in the context of other gay artists, if you're a person of color, people talk about your art in the context of other persons of color, if you're a woman, people will talk about your art in the context of other women, etc. That's what Porpentine was deriding I think.

 

 

Drawing stupid comparisons between an unknown (or lesser known) thing and a more popular thing isn't entirely a sexist issue. You only have to look at the Citizen Kane of video games to see that, along with any number of comparisons that are made to Einstein, Mick Jagger, etc. That doesn't make the comparison any less dumb, I just think we're jumping to conclusions here.

 

I have no comment on the subject of this thread as I have no idea who Porpentine even is.

[Zeusthecat]

Mick Jagger, etc.

 

Oh my god! I think Mick Jagger, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Willem Dafoe are all alternate versions of each other.

[tegan]

It's already been firmly established that Nick Breckon is the white Eddie Murphy.