Blarghagh

I didn't mind it so much but I'm still bother by the poor writing and the fact that nobody thought that having the first 15 minutes or so, be a narration info dump for a system that's pretty self explanatory was a good idea. A waste of screen time in order to quell what I think was the filmmakers' fears that people would be confused. Well, it is the same audience that claimed ad nauseum that Inception was hard to understand.

"Spoiled white people who survive on begging" seems weird?

Did that really warrant a serious response?

Yeah, it's too bad that Kluwe and Cernovich are both idiots, yet those are the types looking to get into fights over this. I'd be much more interested in seeing TB, Oliver Campbell, Jenn of Hardwire, Georgina Young or Brad Wardell debate over it because those are people who actually care about ethics in games journalism as opposed to Cernovich or Baldwin, who just want to bash feminism. But the fact of the matter is that the smart people aren't picking fights, they're creating meaningful change. Which is probably a pretty clear and scathing commentary on how many frustrated walls of debating text I've written on the topic. Time to stop posting and write some well-meant rebuild initiative e-mails.

Well, if we're getting self-driving cars I want self-shooting guns!

Indulging in my nostalgia with a new game instead of old games for once: Shovel Knight, an amazing 2D platformer throwback. The best elements from Mega Man, Legend of Zelda, Duck Tales, Little Samson and even Kirby's Dreamland. Loving it.

That game is also incredibly sexist and if that's what is supposedly good for female gamers I'm not sure how games like Bayonetta are worse. It's a trend I've noticed. Dear Esther was a critical darling and anyone who actually paid attention to the dialogue in that game knows that it literally runs on Women In Refrigerator.

See, that is a much better counter argument from Volo. But my point is, cars are dangerous machinery the use of which could potentially kill you or others and there should be something to force you to learn how to handle it before you get to use it. How are guns any different? I'm sure there would be a lot more car accidents if you didn't need a license.

Except you need a license for a car which is most likely what you would buy gasoline for, dangerous drugs are mostly either illegal or prescribed by a professional, and people don't get their panties in a twist when other people's kids get taken away by child services if they've been treated irresponsibly but they do if somebody else's guns get taken away (mah conshtitutinal rites!). Also, did you just equate sex with guns, gasoline, cars and drugs? Even if those things weren't true, it's still a meaningless point to make. I was pointing out the hypocrisy that people are fine with one thing requiring a license but not the other, and you've only just gone "well, other things also don't require licenses". Why would you be against having to get a license for being allowed to use guns in the first place? Is it really that unreasonable to you that someone who wants to own a piece of machinery that could kill others be expected to take a couple of lessons in how to handle that thing? I mean, good for you that you know how to but how can you expect a new gun owner to already be an expert? The only change for you would be that instead of you being able to bitch about how "bah, irresponsible people can't handle guns" in this thread this conversation wouldn't be possible because this crap never would have happened. But-but-but the inconvenience!

Destructoid posted an article about 2014 in gaming. https://archive.today/mjjpU (harsh language warning) It was posted under an anonymous persona. I found it an interesting read from someone who essentially just bashed the entire game industry, including gamers, journalists and developers. But I found it more interesting that it was posted anonymously. This situation is going out of control and nobody gets to say anything out of fear of reprisal. Hell, TB got a wave of harassment today because he promoted a charity stream from somebody against #GamerGate and that person got pissed off. "How dare you try to help a charity", I suppose?

Need a license to drive a car? Okay. Need a license for a gun? My human rights! Waaaah!

Tale, the thing is, it's the same way from the inside. I'm extremely careful with how or what I tweet because if my real name gets connected to #GamerGate, my career is essentially over. Many women developers agreed to appear on BroPill YouTube videos, not even to support #GamerGate but solely to talk about the merits of the claim that the game industry is somehow misogynist... with vocoders and in silhouette, because they feared the backlash so much. Pro-#GG developers appearing on interviews on The Escapist or TechRaptor tend to be anonymous, followed up with a statement from the journalists that they have verified their identities. I've seen a bit of similar fear culture in those against #GamerGate, but it's not even close. You fear for Obsidian? Obsidian has already been unfairly targeted by FemFreq before when they had zero clout ("New Vegas encourages you to kill more women than men") and now FemFreq has an army of violent yes-men to harass and doxx anyone who disagrees with them. The core mechanic of PoE, Obsidian's baby, is interesting combat. Have you seen what FemFreq's writer Jonathan McIntosh had to say about games with combat? There's no reason to assume this doesn't extend to Obsidian. And those journalists aren't people "whose opinions we don't like", they are journalists who have injected supposed culture criticism where consumer advocacy should have been, lowering grades for games because of objectionable content while claiming their scoring categories are "gameplay" and "graphics" while at the same time promoting people far too close to them for there not to be conflict of interest (and I'm not even talking about Quinn, I'm talking about promoting the games of people they lived with). And this is a group whose behaviour has already cost many an Obsidianite their jobs after the whole Metacritic scoring debable because they control the scores, and some of their behaviour suggests that they can control the scores together. How does #GamerGate have a bigger impact on Obsidian than #GamerGate's detractors have? #GamerGate could send you nasty e-mails and publish your adress, it's detractors can destroy your career and your future forever. How about the accounts of developers such as six days in fallujah or the planned serious holocaust game that never came to fruition because the media attacked them and made sure those "serious subjects could never be used for entertainment" as media watch dogs? We're culture critics because games are art now, but they cannot explore any serious subjects. If Obsidian wanted to make a dark game, I wonder how much dark themes they would be forced to leave out because they are simply "out of bounds". I feel for their possibility to get targeted over saying the wrong thing regarding #GamerGate (in fact, I believe I said in the earlier thread that they're probably better off not acknowledging it at all), but that is probably going to happen whether they speak against it or for it and in the meanwhile everyone is walking on eggshells simply because you can't say anything without some side yelling "bigot" or "corruption". Hell, I'm actually completely and absolutely fine with culture criticism of games, but I just want disclosure and transparency about when something is promotional, culture criticism or consumer advocacy and personally I'm getting very, very tired of being accused of being in league with harassers over reasonable concerns just because those harassers are blabbering nonsense about the same thing. Hell, I'll even welcome FemFreq's input (and in fact I have because while some of their claims are bunk, others are true), but the problem is that the journalists who claim "we're culture critics now" are just regurgitating her non-peer reviewed or sourced "research" as fact. It's why I said they injected "supposed" culture criticism, because really they have no bloody idea that really is. As for not saying "gee, that's terrible" I think that's more a problem with you only popping in occassionally. It comes up quite a lot. The problem is when "gee that's terrible" comes up it's usually in the guise of "of course that's terrible, it goes without saying, stop trying to pretend I support it" because it does go without saying. It's why every single post in this thread doesn't have "remember kids, rape threats are bad, the more you know ABC" addended to it. The treatment of Zoe Quinn is pretty deplorable and inexcusable despite the fact that I disagree with her on a lot of things she's said in the context of GG, but I'm not obligated to be constantly condemning it when it's not really relevant to anything I am doing. Like I tried to point out, if I get to be held responsible for these things because I tweet with a hashtag about supporting ethics in game journalism then you get to be held responsible for those who claim gamergate is terrible similarely because you post about how terrible gamergate is in message board threads. There is literally no difference. I'm not constantly hounding you in this thread to denounce the constant harassment and false allegations against Brad Wardell and Daniel Vavra by #GamerGate detractors, am I? I made such claims in my last post, but they were obviously sarcastic. I don't hold you responsible for them at all. There is no use to it, we're in iteration 8 or such of this thread? And we can keep wasting our time talking about how bad things we have no control over are if you want but we've been over this so many times that instead of being really outraged at another instance of abuse (on either side) we just get tired and irritated and jaded about it (such as in the last thread, when the response to the harassment of Liz was mostly just "sigh, well that sucks").

"Y'all"? Well, since you seem intent on on blaming the people here for other people's comments on another board about the parents of someone of whom I haven't even gotten the faintest clue who it is because they are supposedly on our "side" (because using a hashtag to talk about a subject certainly is a unifying factor to turn a diverse group into being represented by single people), I'm going to peg you as the other side and blame you for supporting the guy harassing a female #GamerGater by printing out her pictures, ejaculating on them, and then uploading photos of that to tweet at her. Also, you must be one of the people who have been sending the police to the founder of #NotYourShield's house by calling in and saying he's suicidal and trying to kill himself. Real hero, you are. Seriously. Every single time you've stepped into this thread you seem to have nothing but just random attacks on everyone for the actions of others. I generally like you Tale, but it's honestly getting really, really dumb and annoying. From now on, every time you do it I'm going to blame you for some jerk who did something nasty against a #GamerGater and demand you distance yourself from the opposition or be branded a harasser by association. Next thing in line that I'm going to blame you for when you decide to paint in broad strokes again is the guy who spammed child porn on 8chan (to "test the mods") and then spread screencaps of it on Twitter saying "look at all this child porn on this pro-GG board", so look forward to that. As for reporting FemFreq to the IRS, not going to defend that. Some people just respond badly to people who have put themselves in the spotlight. No idea what the point of it is since attacking FemFreq just increases their martyr complex. I guess jerks are entrenched on both sides and prefer attacking the other side over being smart or contructive. I'd say "GG should ignore FemFreq" but seeing as both of FemFreq's writers are consistently engaging with and talking about #GamerGate to the point that their GamerGate related content now doubly outnumbers their feminist frequency related content, I'd say my patience with them has worn thin even as someone who has never really taken issue with them. If you keep poking a stick into the beehive, you don't get to feign surprise if they keep coming out to sting you, #GamerGate has literally ballooned FemFreq's profile and obviously they want it to continue. Same thing for Zoe Quinn, judging by the fact that she has written article after article about it the subject. Without #GG, nobody would even know who she is and obviously why would someone go back to that? Boohoo, victim blaming. To be fair, I've been inactive in #GamerGate except for sending e-mails to advertisers and developers because I and so many other people are getting fed up with the dumb ****s in #GG, but I guess that's what you get if two sides clash and only the dumb ****s have the patience to keep engaging with each other. I just ignore the warfare now and just focus on being constructive. I suppose you could do the same, but you'd rather come in here and try to shame us for things we have no involvement in other than gee, they also claim "I support ethics in games journalism". It's kinda like being blamed for killing someone because the killer said "I like milk" and you also like milk. /Frustration

Out of morbid curiousity I decided to give DDP Yoga a chance and it's surprinsgly fun. It's a former wrestler's Yoga workout and recovery schedule and though I expected it to be a joke (and in fact the wrestler's boundlessly enthousiastic persona initially made it seem so) I actually really like it. I recommend it to anyone except health freaks who are probably better off doing serious cardio and lifting (translation: back off Woldan, no interest whatsoever in derailing another thread over fitness talk ). This is really basic, but it includes a bit of cardio, a bunch of yoga stretching (some relaxing and some more difficult) and even some minor muscle building. Most surprising? It was recommended to me by people who used it to get over injuries and only a few days in my back and more importantly, my wrist are doing a lot better. It might be my imagination but I think I'm actually regaining some mobility in my wrist. Either way, I feel a lot better.

This thread.

A jump to conclusions mat.

This is what I've been saying all along!

I didn't like the new Hobbit movie that much, but I have to admit that this guy is glorious and just thinking about him makes me laugh.

I'll admit to having a hard time understanding Dutch. Of course, as an American I'm under the assumption if you yell in English loud enough anyone can understand you. And most of us would prefer if you would stop yelling, it makes you harder to understand.

An honest mistake, but a pretty amusing one.

It's true that as a venatorsexual flytrapkin I often feel misrepresented in the media. EDIT: How sad is it that I didn't make those two terms up?

No, I'm pretty sure what Sharp_One is saying is "emotional connection is for pussies" just like I used to say when I was an edgy thirteen year old who preferred playing video games until 5 am powered by energy drink instead of having meaningful interactions with real people. I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Very true, even in the Lord of the Rings novel a lot of things are told after they happened. Interestingly, Tolkien once tried to rewrite The Hobbit to be more in tune with the The Lord of the Rings and supposedly a lot of those notes ended up in these films. I'd be interested to see how many of these changes Tolkien intended to make himself before he decided to nix the idea entirely.