Ineth

...another thing you would never dare to say in the above hypothetical scenario.

Yikes Alu, as far as hostile misrepresentations of another's argument go, this is pretty bottom-barrel. You didn't use to be such a nasty poster - what happened? I don't think it's a misrepresentation at all. It sure looks like it from where I'm standing. You were explaining why you reject Robin's statement and/or my expansion on it, yet neither of those were even remotely interpretable in that way. The Zoepost incident did not kick off GG. It was a minor kerfuffle mostly on fringe message boards and some journo comment sections, like many others before it. In fact, some of the previous ones (like Gerstmann-gate which I'm surprised you say you hadn't heard of) drew a much larger initial crowd. But they all blew over because there was no one to pour oil into the flames. The difference was that unlike the previous kerfuffles, this one happened to feature a women in a central role, which immediately drew swarms of online feminists and their blanket accusations of misogyny to the scene, which in turn emboldened the journos to forgo their usual strategy of "sitting out the storm", and to respond instead by declaring war on enthusiast gamers as a whole with the "Gamers are over" articles. That is what the GG movement started as a response to (and as a twitter movement, mostly consisting of people who had neither been part of nor cared about the fringe-message-boards Zoepost kerfuffle). This retroactive "They didn't mean all gamers, stupid!" defense is pretty weak imo. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: In reaction to some localized kerfuffle involving flagburnings or other ungainly things by some group of Muslims somewhere in the world, a consortium of right-wing journalists publishes a coordinated burst of articles across different news outlets, with titles like: A Guide to Ending "Muslims" The End of Muslims 'Muslims' don't have to be your audience. 'Muslims' are over. ...containing, in the article's contents, foaming-mouthed vilification and nasty expletives & stereotypes - always directed at the group referred to as 'Muslims'. Naturally, controversy ensues. The authors reject all criticism though, and one of them even follows her article up with this charming statement addressed to Muslims: "Islam is not your identity. Islam is not a race. If you think it is, then you’re in our way, and the work I do specifically exists to dispossess you of your sense of relevance.1" Later, apologists roam online forums, lecturing people that those journalists really only meant the "bad" subset of Muslims, and the people criticizing the articles were just overreacting and stupid to think the articles were meant against them. One of the apologists, going by the nickname 'silicondioxid', pontificates: "if it's not your shirt, don't put it on". Would you accept that defense? Of course you wouldn't, nor should you. You'd maintain that those journalists are bigots, because that's what they'd be. But unfortunately when bigotry comes from the illiberal authoritarian left rather than the illiberal authoritarian right, many liberals suddenly have giant blind spots. -------------- 1) I'm pretty sure that I remember the first version of this statement of hers having a much nastier phrase in place of "dispossess you of your sense of relevance". Something more akin to "destroy you". But I can't find a quote of that version anymore, so it's possible I might be confusing it with something else.

Sigh, it's 2015 and we're still discussing this. Here it goes: Some heterosexual couples are infertile as well. Why should they be able to adopt then, seeing how their individual biology clearly "wasn't designed" to have children?Throughout large parts of history, children were raised "by the whole tribe", or by extended families where they had constant access to their grandparents etc., or in various other constellations that differed from the way children are raised in 21st century bible-belt USA families. So who are you to declare the latter as the "natural" order of things?Just because a child is the product of a heterosexual relationship, doesn't mean it will actually grow up with a caring mother and father. Many end up being raised by single parents, or in families where one of the parents is always away and hardly involved in raising them, or where both parents are inattentive or inept. So going by your idea that every child "needs" to be actively raised by two dedicated people of opposite sex, a large proportion of non-homosexual parents would have to have their custody rights revoked as well.Even if it were true that having caring & capable opposite-sex parents was theoretically more beneficial for a child than having caring & capable same-sex parents (which is not actually backed up by science btw), the latter would most definitely still be better than many real-life opposite-sex or single parents. And the kind of people who are dedicated enough to go through the long-winded and tedious adoption process and all the scrutiny that comes with it, are much more likely to be caring & capable parents than the average adult. If you honestly cared about child welfare, you wouldn't be concerned about couples (of any sex) who want to adopt; you'd be concerned about couples who are carelessly bringing new children into the world despite not being ready to be good parents to them. At the end of the day, your argument is just another variation of the "homosexuality isn't natural!!!11" meme, which is and always has been rooted in bigotry rather than science and compassion.

Yikes Alu, as far as hostile misrepresentations of another's argument go, this is pretty bottom-barrel. You didn't use to be such a nasty poster - what happened? You picked two issues out of a list. Misrepresentation aside, what are you trying to prove by pointing out that you don't consider these two to be the "biggest" problems? The whole point was that they are various smaller problems arising from the same underlying issue. Advertisers, politicians, and the mainstream media certainly do. As do publishers to some extent, although admittedly not as much since they have their own sales numbers to draw conclusions from. Gamers' knowledge of the gaming industry is also shaped by the journos much more than apparent at first sight. Why do you think all of us know a lot about tiny niche games by San Francisco hipsters (Gone Home etc), but have barely even heard about most games from other parts of world, even ones that have much bigger scope and more "audience appeal" potential (if only the audience knew about them)? The global gaming culture and industry is very large and confusing, and most people only have insight into the same small slice of it which the English-language gaming media (which, despite serving a global audience, is mostly concentrated in the hipster scene of San Francisco, USA) focuses on. Even gamers who never read game journos themselves are affected, because what is published there shapes what is discussed on gaming forums.

People like Bruce have frequently accused GamerGate of not having a self-consistent idea of what it is all about - is it attacking games journalism for Indie nepotism, or for corporate bribery, or for feminism, or what? The movement can look like a mess of orthogonal agendas and pet peeves from the outside, so that is a fair criticism. I think there's a good case to be made though, that all those things which GG has been (and is) up in arms against are symptoms of the same core issue, which is the unprofessionalism and moral deficiency that has taken a hold on gaming journalism and gaming research. For lack of a better phrase, GG'ers have variously referred to this as "corruption" (a word which, mind you, does not exclusively have monetary connotations) or "lack of ethics". Here's a recent twitter statement from some GG'er explaining how it all fits together. It sounds pretty reasonable to me, and - I believe - indirectly covers all targets of GG criticism (from the problems with how several journalist+dev relationships were handled, to the patronising ideological lecturing that came with the rise of academic-feminist entryism into gaming): To any anti-GG people reading this thread: If all of GG sincerely stood behind Robin's statement, would you still oppose them? Do you disregard the ideas at the heart of this statement as a matter of principle, or is it just that you reject the particular group of people promoting those ideas and/or doubt their sincerity?

It will fit in perfectly with everything else in the Superman universe then.

Well, it's supposed to be an action movie not a character drama. I'd actually say that Nux is the only one with a real character arc, but that doesn't make him the most interesting nor the most important. Furiosa hasn't "changed or grown" much yet, but she could. Her actions - and the way in which she conducted them - set her up as a pretty cool character with enough nuance and potential that I would like to see a sequel where we'd learn more about who she is, what it is that she seeks penance for, and who she'll become. Of course I realize that such impressions are subjective, and I don't fault anyone for seeing it differently.

*shudder* I would have been just fine without knowing that, Kaine.

Btw, I liked this movie a lot. I don't understand the criticism that Max had a too minor role in it. He was part of everything that happened in the movie. Sure he didn't always say much or proactively lead the way, but that's just 'cause his personality is like that. I don't think a character needs to be a choleric leader type, in order to be a protagonist in a movie. It's true that Furiosa was a more interesting character (or at least one with more potential), hence I wouldn't mind the next movie in this universe to be officially about her, but that's a different matter. PS: I didn't perceive it as a "feminist" movie. In fact it featured quite a few things which feminists have gone outrage-crazy over in other movies or games in the past. Also, after watching the movie I'm still not in any way inclined to believe in patriarchy theory or the wage gap or the 1-in-4 rape statistic, nor to vote for gender quotas or the abolition of due process, so if there was any feminist propaganda in there that I didn't consciously notice, it seems it didn't work... :D

Actually I think the Arya storyline has also become kinda boring. (And it used to be my favorite sub-plot at one point...) I agree that the Sand Snakes story line was disappointing too - lots of exposition dialog, just to reach a weirdly acted and anticlimactic end. Tyion's journey is definitely the most interesting storyline that is still going on - as you said:

Every fantasy universe requires some suspension of disbelief True, though it's a shame the camera never really stopped to let us get a good look at him.

I haven't had problems with dizziness, but I still dislike 3D because: The glasses tend to be uncomfortable, and I end up adjusting them with my fingers all the time, distracting myself from the movie. When the glasses get a smudge or something on them, it sucks even more to have to look through them. Scenes that zoom out very far and show a large area so that the characters become very small, can look quite grandiose and majestic in 2D -- but in 3D, I tend to experience those kinds of scenes as if I'm looking at some sort of 'model' with tiny toy people. Totally ruins the immersion. The cinemas where I live charge between 40% and 90% extra for 3D shows, compared to the normal ticket price. Total rip-off.

Well, wishing for the constitution to contain things which are fundamentally incompatible/contradictory with the things the constitution does contain, is pretty much showing contempt for the latter. Also, this part would be quite damning if true: Second, Obama regrets that the Constitution places “essential constraints” on the government’s ability to provide positive economic rights and that “we have not broken free” of these Constitutional impediments. But yeah, chances are that this is not a completely fair paraphrasing of what Obama actually said (seeing how the author conveniently avoided to directly quote more than tiny sentence fragments, and apparently doesn't even link to the full text). I don't put much trust in these kinds of politicized attack articles/blogs, no matter the political side the author is on.

"Powerful" in the sense that it can be used to dispose trash mobs, sure. But that's true for most player abilities in this game, since even on higher difficulties most trash mobs aren't very tough (and their AI not smart at all). If you look at the relative effectiveness of Cipher powers compared to other classes' abilities though, you'll see that for example the Cipher's Mind Blades (level 2) is weaker in pretty much every way compared to the Druid's Dancing Bolts (level 1). At level 9, the Druid can spam Dancing Bolts four times per encounter, which is more than you need for most trash mob battles - and he can cast them without having to regenerate focus in-between. Thus the Druid pretty much steals the Cipher's frequently invoked "being able to spam AOEs non-stop without resting" selling point. And at the same time, the Druid still has that large selection of situationally-useful powerful higher-level spells which make him much better than the Cipher at boss fights.

This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. Except that it's true. The stupidity stems more from a complete lack of self-awareness ("very suitable for reinforcing feminist identity-building confirmation biases" in a topic that literally only exists to reinforce the participants' anti-feminist confirmation bias caused me to laugh out loud in disbelief) than lack of truthfulness. It sounds like, well, someone trying to imitate how he imagines people much smarter than him talk like, and failing miserably. Or maybe I just hit a nerve?

And the ones who do pay her are largely satisfied with it, so where exactly is the problem? True, she really does render a service which her fans are knowingly willing to pay for. From an observer standpoint it's a little weird that they claim that this service/product is something else (substantive research and meaningful insight into current gender issues in games) than what it really is (minimum-effort recitation of trite feminist dogma with some appropriately cherrypicked/faked gaming examples; completely unsuitable for gaining scientific insight but very suitable for reinforcing feminist identity-building confirmation biases). As long as this self-deception is accepted and consensual between seller and buyers though, it's not a scam.

Greece is the closest thing Israel has to a real ally in its neighbourhood. Though their common interests mostly amount to defending their claims on the Mediterranean Sea & its offshore gas fields against increasingly-imperialistic Turkey. So unless Turkey gets involved in Macedonia, I very much doubt Israel will either.

It appears you stumbled on this thread under the mistaken impression that a serious discussion of what it says in the title is going on here. When in fact, this is a therapeutic thread where a ...troubled individual with a narrow notion of what a woman's face should look like, can publicly unravel their psyche. The main benefit of this thread for the rest of us, is that it serves to contains that individual's pet peeve discussion in one place, and will hopefully mean that they'll stop derailing other threads with it. Also, those not too creeped out by it may be able to derive some entertainment value from this thread...

It doesn't do much damage at low levels, but most enemies also don't have much hitpoints in the early parts of the games. Don't underestimate the "guaranteed to hit" property - with his bow, the same low-level mage would probably miss most things most of the time.

Wizards in the IE games contributed quite a bit to low-level fights. For example using the first-level spell Sleep, which could make groups of goblins or orcs that would otherwise mow the party to shreds with bows (or even the tough Ogre battle at the start of Icewind Dale), quite manageable. And the Magic Missile spell wasn't "pitiful" either - it did some decent guaranteed-to-hit near-instant ranged damage against low-level enemies, and was a must for interrupting enemy spellcasters.

I wasn't aware that people under communist regimes were forbidden from reading to their children. I was talking about the idea/assumption that whether or not the family unit should be allowed to exist, is a function of how well it reinforces "the greater good" of "equality'" and "Social Justice". This loony professor is "merely" conflicted about the answer, but endorses the idea/assumption itself. Communist regimes OTOH have taken it much farther and implemented horribly oppressive policies in its name. A liberal-minded person would realize that the assumption is ridiculous in the first place, and would decisively defend the human right of people to found families and function as family units, without having to justify that lifestyle in terms of some nebulous "greater good", and without being ripped apart by an oppressive government with a penchant for social engineering.

You must not have a Rogue or Druid in your group (or if you do, you're letting their potential go to waste). Provided your Wizard has high INT (which he should), you can also safely cast Fan of Flames from behind the party by using the foe-only extended radius to your advantage.