#mark kern

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

[medusamagic]

Remember Pete from the Eltingville Club? Remember how he had such horrific views of women that he conflated violence against them with sex? Remember how this culminated in him growing up to be a horror porn director who enjoys watching women getting murdered as much as he enjoys watching them have sex?

Anyway, former Blizzard employee and Firefall writer Mark Edward Kern, aka Grummz, has been secretly running multiple lesbian catfight websites for the better part of two decades under his 80 year old mother's name. These sites include "FoxyFighter", "FoxyFighting", "FreeCatFights", "Latina Catfights", and "Russian Catfights". He likely stole much of the Kickstarter money from his unreleased game Em-8er to finance these videos.

I just thought that was interesting.

[cognitiveinequality]

[burnouts3s3]

It's very interesting, to me, how Mr Matty and other Youtube Video Games channels are being called shills or being drawn into the Avowed controversy when all Mr Matty and company did was be invited to play the game early before the Matt Hansen stuff dropped.

They didn't even take a side on the Matt Hansen stuff; they were literally invited to play the game early by Obsidian, gave their thoughts into previews and then published their videos on their channels.

THEN, all the stuff between Matt Hansen, Mark Kern, Elon Musk and everyone else got into the pronoun situation dropped and now Mr Matty's being called a shill because he published a mostly positive video of a preview he went to before this whole thing.

I think it goes to show how quickly social media can change the conversation surrounding the game overnight.

[ranmagender]

Mark Kern is one of the most pathetic people alive right now.

He hasnt finished a game he sold preorders for and spends all his day tweeting about trans people and dei on twitter and freaks out if they add more fabric to a half naked video game character and treats it like its 9/11 when a character is black.

Nobody in the game industry wants to hire him because he's unpleasant to the max

I love how this whole antiwoke culture war bullshit is making dudes unironically start posting 2011-ass "we are,.. gambers... n,ot becaus we don;t, have a life,,, bu t becaeus we cjholse... to habe man;y" speeches

[pro-prin-prinny]

In the Woke!AU renowned lesbian fight club pornstar/director Grummiez is exposed for skimming funds from the sets for her terrible indie game dev hobby.

[tachyonblu]

Mark Kern fearmongers that his followers will be literally murdered by an amorphous mob, after Kabrutus's DEI Detected Discord server was temporarily hacked. Peter Coffin and I evaluate Mark's bold claims to see if they hold up.

[troythecatfish]

[mostly-myles-kennedy]

Myles and his second stage husband Todd

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

The invaluable Shaun dropped in November a very exhaustive look at Stellar Blade and at the manufactured culture war that Mark Kern/Grummz tried to recruit the game into in an attempt to revive Gamergate.

To summarize, an introduction to whom Mark is, his failed game project and the fake outrage is followed by quite measured review of Stellar Blade itself, including a look at the story, gameplay and design. Surprising no-one, Shaun is not very impressed, despite giving it a fair shake.

Of course my favorite part must be when he makes a point about NPCs having no reaction to Eve's outfit, by making her bring tragic news to an NPC while clad in a silly bikini. Which then extends into a short discussion of what's basically our blog's thesis, including examples of varying levels of ludonarrative dissonance caused by sexualized outfits in different games. Including this comment on the skimpy costume rhetoric:

"Of course it is up to your own judgment what you think is sufficient justification for any particular character outfit or design. And if you're happy to accept actually she has to be naked because she caught Clothes-Fall-Off Disease, then that's up to you honestly, I'm not going to argue with you."

I'm with Shaun here. Perhaps pretending that this sort of Thermian Argument rhetoric is serious media analysis goes a tiny bit over the line? Maybe admitting to being a horny, aimlessly angry gremlin would actually help guys like Mark and his audience to find some cheesy fun games they'd genuinely enjoy? Hell, he could just... actually deliver that game he promised them.

Or maybe they're just too commited to spewing anti-trans hate and other Nazi rhetoric at anything even remotely "PC/woke/DEI" in their eyes to even care about actual gaming, as our last related post elaborated.

~Ozzie

[solis-legacy]

Sasha and August took a term off while Roar was working on his online diploma and now they have all applied to university together. They can't wait to start this next chapter together.

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Credits: @simmireen, @simmerianne93, and @herecirmsims

[beingharsh]

"Tina's Hausu", Joanna Wang

[nodynasty4us]

From the April 24, 2024 article:

“Defendants and unindicted coconspirators schemed to prevent the lawful transfer of the presidency to keep Unindicted Coconspirator 1 in office against the will of Arizona’s voters,” the 58-page indictment reads.

The names of seven of the defendants, including Meadows, Giuliani and Epshteyn, are redacted, but the document makes clear who they are by describing their roles. Others include attorneys John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Christina Bobb, as well as Trump 2020 campaign operative Mike Roman.

Ken Chesebro, an attorney who helped devise Trump’s post-election strategy, is described as “unindicted coconspirator 4.”

The only defendants whose names are visible in the version of the indictment released by the Arizona attorney general’s office Wednesday evening are the 11 Republicans who falsely posed as the state’s presidential electors despite Joe Biden’s narrow victory there. Among them: former Arizona GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward, state senators Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern, and Arizona’s RNC committeeman Tyler Bowyer.

[postmortemvp]

sometimes i want to be shady but im also too tired for that shit

[tachyonblu]

When faking your doxing and lying about GamerGate aren’t enough for Mark Kern, he likes to spend his time fearmongering about how Call of Duty is going lead to mass shootings because of… trans bullets? I’ve tried to give Mark the benefit of the doubt, but the grift is too obvious.

[mostly-myles-kennedy]

I really need to read a fanfic where Mark Tremonti and Todd Kerns get in a fight over their shared stage husband Myles Kennedy and Slash is the cool uncle who has to step in to mediate the homoerotic tension.