#THAT MISOGYNIST IS PIXELS. FOCUS UP.

[walleeli]

Thinking about…… him <3 (Sylvain Jose Gautier Fire Emblem)

[myswimminglightcollector]

Double first posts!

About me:

35

I'm nervouse I'll add more here later.

This whole page is me expecting to just be horny into the void, But feel free to message

minors, do not interact with me

Hard limits:

Scenes in front of a public that did not consent.

Scat in mouths.

Idk, I'm sure you'll find others.

Rebuilding the feed

My Tumblr feed use to be full of women being objectified and used and degraded; hogties, being pissed on, kneeling in front of me and being subservient.

Don't get me wrong, this is still what I think about when I'm grinding myself against my vibrator for an hour plus a day.

But now I'm focusing on what I actually want more.

A man

Gooning for hours over people in situations you envy just doesn't seem like a good use of time anymore.

My former Dom

Wouldn't even let me cum half the time I asked. I'm hyper sexual, he knew this. He would focus me on keeping my home clean, self-care, being generally productive. I NEED that in my life. I need discipline.

I crave it.

I want a man whose not afraid to tell me no. Who is not afraid to spank me, a full grown woman who hates spanking, as often as I need it.

I can be a fucking brat. 😬

A man who is not put off by my desire to break rules and can make it very clear to me I won't be getting away with it. A man who can tell the difference between depravity and discipline.

I want to be HIS.

I want to be his cock-warmer. His fuck hole. I want to be worthy of these things and know that I have earned my place at his feet. To be kept humble, to feel second to him.

I need a man to..

Recognize that I need his guidance to make the most of life and push me to achieve things I never thought possible while ensuring I stay his humble and subservient little girl at his feet.

So, no more depravity on Tumblr?

Well, we'll see what my feed evolves into.

But for now I'm removing things I think my ideal Dom/partner would find objectionable.

Bdsm involving nudity

CNC involving nudity

Any uncensored woman wearing less clothing than a diaper and T-shirt.

Misogynist captions involving nudity

You know, basic Tumblr shit.

I'm very Bi, but most of my attraction to women in these photos is imaging being in the same position. My head is already full of scenes like this, it's just not productive to get stuck in a gooning feedback loop.

Censored?

Yes. Though I'm not the target audience of most of the content, the idea of getting off to pixelated women really triggers my desire to be denied and controlled by a man.

Diapers?

I'm not really into ABDL, but I'm a bit of a DL at times. And, I'm a slut, so I would dive happily into the AB side if a Dom in my life wanted to me too.

Diapers are a very simple way of constantly admitting that I am not in control of myself, and I have given that control over to others on occasion .

What does that leave for a Tumblr feed whose only purpose is to get me off?

Um, not much 😅 LOL

Right now it's a lot of women in diapers. Which just remind me I'm not in control. Censored women with weird captions like 'jerk it to my belly button'. And hot men in any state of undress often with their cock out or thinly concealed.

I like it so far!

As someone who almost exclusively sleeps with men, I was getting off to too much pussy. It's easy to end up there on Tumblr.

So many diapers. Maybe I need to cut back? I haven't seen a photo of a woman in panties in a week. It just seems normal now for us to give control over to our men, or the idea of them at least.

My horny brain defaults to not being in control now more than ever.

Though seeing only a clearly bikini clad hottie with only her belly button uncensored after a week has me far more aroused than I would have ever thought.

And when one of the few just straight male eye-candy blogs I follow scrolls into view I open my legs and I get off to the idea of being his.

[nectarous]

[tags: noncon photography + trading of nudes, obsessive behavior, misogynistic undertones.]

photography has always been a hobby of komori’s. preserving still moments of beauty, city lights in tokyo and temples in kyoto and lapping waves reflecting crescent moons in miyako, makes him feel more connected to the world around him. makes him feel meaningful, in some sort of odd way.

it was suna that introduced him to a different side of camera work, shifted his interests into something a bit more superficial— something more piquant. the problem is, komori’s allows himself to be consumed, suna taught him too much too fast, and now he can’t get enough of this deviant side of his hobby. starting these risqué photo albums with a different focus.

obsessive tendencies run in the family, and he wants them all, all girls, all shapes and sizes, shrunk down to pixels on his phone, blown up on his computer screen, printed and layed out so he can splurt heavy loads onto the soggied paper. 

he has photos of everything he can lay his eyes on. legs and smooth dips and expanses of skin littered with cum and bruises. cunts that he pumped full of cum, girls at his feet foggily staring up at him, hazily blinking up at the bright flashes of his phones being forced into her face.

the visuals are important. he likes to compare the before and after, the poised versus the broken down. he stitches the digital albums together— so that sweet, naive smiles on first dates swipe to rolled back eyes, slack cheeks, smeared lipstick and spit ruining the once charming faces. 

komori has dozens upon dozens of folders, dedicated to these planned outings and the careless flings. it’s easy to bait them, playing up his kind face to hide the excited flash in his eyes. with a mellow smile, the way he leans in, tall and lean, falsely exuding a content energy pushing the pressure just enough. he’s getting to good at hiding his plans of violations and bruises and orgasms so sharp they’ll leave cramps sinking into their toes.

then he’ll break them down, tearing clothes apart, squelching and squeals echoing in whatever area he finds himself in at the time. yanking heads, squeezing throats, whipping his models around so that they’re angled just right, making sure screwed up faces are the center of attention.

say cheese.

he looks at those photos every chance he gets, smack dab in the middle of the locker room hoping someone peeks over his shoulder, so he can share this hobby with just one other person. he can barely last a week without them now. it’s become more than just a hobby for him. it’s a need, an itch he needs to scratch more frequently with every pass to get satisfied.

his eyes ache and stain red with strain, become decorated with purpley veins, after night after night of stroking his swollen cock until his thighs shake with overstimulation, remembering how responsive the girls are, tight cunts and fatty hips underneath his strong hands. how he was the one to stage these works of art.

an evergrowing collection exchanging photos of knocked out girls, unknowing girls with their tits pulled out and with cum splashed over their eyes and dribbling out of their holes. the collection and the aftermath is just as good as the hunt, luring and finding girls into unsavory places, capturing fucked out faces and welted skin.

he knows how much suna loves collecting these types of photos. they trade folders, a blonde for a brunette, small tits for chubby stomachs, hairy cunts for whore foreigners that had no problem blowing them in public. 

komori’s started to lose that methodical, careful sense he had when he first started. his hands that shook from excitement start to tremor with withdrawal. the two faced man is already starting to crack—he’s getting too greedy, too sucked in, obsessed with these works of art. his odd ticks, overprotection of his phone, stubby brows drawn in with constant annoyance, turning antsy and mean, is getting obvious even to his apathetic cousin.

when he sees you cheering in the stands, warmups for the big game get pushed into the back of his mind, strategies that the captain hammered into his mind are replaced with a single thought. 

he doesn’t have a folder with a girl like you yet.

[mucky-puddler]

Here is Kubrick blog no. 2

So, this week I’ll be looking at Kubrick’s early work (again), Paths of Glory, and the introduction of Depth of Field; Stanley Kubrick, film, and the uses of history – yes, that is the whole title.

The first thing Nathan had us all do was shout out any themes we could think of that Kubrick had used in the films we had watched so far. This list ended up being ridiculously long and appeared to contain every film under the sun (which is something I never understood – creatives don’t really think about themes when creating things, it just kinda happens, so what is the point in listing themes to look at?). Here are a few examples of themes we named;

- Madness

- Masculinity

- Obsession

- Photography

- Chess

- Brutality

- Violence

- Animalism

- Sport

- Fathers/mothers

We then reviewed the Seafarers (again) and looked deeper at the shot composition used; one of the more obvious ones was the shot change from machinery to people, suggesting that within the seafarer community the people are simply machines designed to complete certain tasks.

Let’s move on to the man himself. It has been suggested that Kubrick makes his films for men, and the evidence is as such – his characters fulfilled the stereotypes of having the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armour, making his female characters weaker and in need of assistance, he would often utilise the male gaze to sexualise women (as seen in the Seafarers when the camera pans up and holds on the image of a naked calendar), all of which makes him seem misogynistic. Alternatively, Kubrick could just be representing the world around him – personally, I think we give people who grew up during the 40’s and 50s much more credit than they deserve – there is no way we can assume that so many people during that time felt the way we all feel now, because the times have changed so much and we don’t want to ruin our idealised, romanticised perspective of a different time. I’m not saying that there weren’t people that thought this way, I have no doubt that there were, I just don’t believe that everyone thought that way. In every single piece of media I have studied where there is some injustice, the argument has always been made that they were “representing the views of the time”, inferring that the creators did not have the same views when it is entirely possible that their own views aligned with the unjust perspective they present.

Okay, rant over for now.

Something else I picked up on, that is somewhat related to what I’ve said above, is how Kubrick used his camera to give himself as much freedom as possible. Kubrick was commissioned to film the Seafarers as a promotional piece, meaning there was very little creative liberty given to Kubrick – what he did have control over was the camera movement. It would appear that his favourite were the long tracking shots, giving the audience long takes of the food hall (and the food itself, to a pornographic extent).

Another clear feature is Kubrick’s sense of humour – his sense of humour was young, like that of a teenage boy (hence the calendar shot). He would sneak as much suggestive evocative imagery through the loopholes into his films to entertain his audience.

And now for our word of the week – Gematria; Greek for geometry, turning letters into numbers, giving the numbers power, meaning texts have hidden codes.

It has been suggested that Kubrick used gematria in his films – critics and fanatics have spent hours poring over his films, trying to discover the hidden meanings behind the numbers and text he leaves in the shots. The numbers 7 and 3 are said to be popular numbers in Kubrick’s films but no one has figured out why yet. I personally don’t see the point in obsessing over every pixel in a shot to mangle it into an alternative meaning, but some people enjoy it, so you do you.

The last thing I took from the lecture was that theme and style should be considered together, especially over the many films brought to life by a single director. For Kubrick, we should look at similar themes through films like 2001 and Spartacus and Lolita, just to name a few.

Now onto the film – the film we watched this week was Paths of Glory. Like all of Kubrick’s films so far, it starts with a lovely bit of narration and a somewhat boring long shot – expositional, some would call it. Both these features together let us know that we are in for a war-time film. For almost the entirety of the rest of the film, I couldn’t understand what these characters were saying, So I had to gather the deeper plotlines from context. Something I drew from the film was how realistic it was for a film of that era; it does not romanticise war like others have, it is a good example of strong men being scared to obey orders, then suffering the consequences.

Here is something about the film that confused me – there is a single shot that pans around the characters to watch them leave, and a washing bowl that was used at the beginning of the scene comes back into the shot – why? It is not referenced at all in the scene, or even the rest of the film. Why was that shot included? Was it because it looks cool? Thinking about it deeper, the character played by Kirk Douglas was using it at the beginning of the scene – this character goes on to defend the men who get called to trial for ‘not following orders’ but assigning their deaths anyway because of the the decision of the court. To someone who grew up religious, this sounds familiar (that’s right, we got Jesus imagery right here). Kirk Douglas’ character could be reflected as Pontius Pilot – he washes his hands of the blood of the men under his command (as demonstrated by the washing bow) – making the men that were sacrificed as an example to the rest a reflection of Jesus – they were strung up to poles.

Let’s now talk about authority, an obvious theme in this film. There appears to be two types of authority – those who care about the mission, and those who care about the people. The general, who is the former of these two authorities, could be considered obsessed with winning the battle and then the war, and does not consider casualties (he’s a bit of a dickhead). On the other hand, the colonel’s concern is for the men and the logic behind why they did not obey orders (which makes sense). There is, as there is with reality, challenge and contention within and between the ranks; everyone wants to either impress their superiors or undermine them. Within the theme of authority, I’m going to make up a sub-theme – authority vs reality; those in higher authority have an idea that they want to execute, and put it into action without thinking about the factors that could make it possible e.g. the men that would have to die to make their ideas a success. The reality of the ideas is that it most likely isn’t possible, and hundreds of men would die in the process before the authority would begin to realise. One of my favourite scenes from the film is when the fate of the selected men are being decided by the colonel and two generals, one of whom is for killing them in a court-martial, the other hearing reason and willing to give them a fair(ish) trial. The colonel is framed between the two generals, and at first, I thought it would have made more sense to have the more neutral general framed between the two arguing parties. However, after a second thought, the colonel is the one frames between two opposing but equal forces – they are the angel and devil on his shoulders (hell year).

Ah yes, we love a courtroom drama, a turn I did not expect this film to make – it reminded me of the courtroom scene in Hacksaw Ridge (such a good film), and I feel this is a fair comparison; the intensity was continual and high, there was a ‘will they, won’t they’ vibe to it, and an all-round good scene for both films. Only with “Paths of Glory”, I hated the son-of-a-bitch prosecutor and the court for clearly favouring him, giving way to another sub-authority theme – humanity vs the court. Like the overbearing general, the court sides with the authority rather than reason – I thought the defence was not given the opportunity to give their case to the fullest extent, even though their evidence was solid.

The final theme I’m going to look at is religion (catholic flavour) – there isn’t a whole lot to say here as it doesn’t play a huge role in the film, the only religious figure (other than the Jesus imagery) is the father that comes to bless those who were chosen to be sacrificed as an example to the others.

Okay, onto the reading – this reading doesn’t really have anything to do with the film specifically, and I only got through the introduction again. These people really need to calm down with their intros because I’m never going to actually read something of merit if they keep their intro’s long. The book I read is called “Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the uses of History”. One of the first things it discusses is the phrase ‘depth of field’, because it’s meaning it two-fold; the first is concerning photography, as depth of field refers to how sharp and in focus parts of a shot are (which is relevant to Kubrick because he loved photography, so would be able to use depth of field to his advantage), and the second is in reference to researching and trying to understand as much about an area of expertise as possible (this could be Kubrick researching for his films, or could be these critics learning as much as they can about Kubrick – I suspect it’s the latter).

Also, they spoke very briefly about how what is in the frame is the only thing that can “portray the world of human emotion/feeling and action realistically”. I completely disagree with this statement – there are so many elements that goes into portraying human emotion, like music, rhythm, acting lighting, just to mention a few.

Something else I don’t quite understand is how/why directors are praised for working in multiple genres over their career – how is it different to a student having to do multiple courses or modules at the same time? Surely, they just work in whatever genre they want to at the time?

This might just become a list of things I don’t understand because we already know that Kubrick liked to have control over every single aspect of the film, but according to this introduction, he let the cast and crew experiment with their tasks? How does that work?

A quote I found interesting is this – “…seen as bringing the terrible news of the twentieth-century history…to a mass audience” – sorry what? What is this even saying? Is he translating what was happening around him into film for other people to better understand? But if that is the case, then the ‘terrible news’ would have already passed because of how long it takes to make and distribute a film. Why aren’t these people reading the news? Surely no one relies solely on film to give them ‘terrible news of the twentieth-century history’? Or does this mean the people outside of America, seeing as global news was not yet prevalent?

Anyway.

Adorno is a man that pops up a few times in this intro and is said to have said “art and ideology are becoming one and the same thing” and I honestly love that because it’s kinda true. This is also the same guy that said “poetry became impossible after Auschwitz” which is the kind of deep, philosophical shit I enjoy.

This intro really does jump all over the place because then they discuss how Kubrick primarily adapted texts that weren’t already popular, with the exceptions of The Shining and Lolita, so his audience could judge his work as his own rather than an adaptation. This seems a little selfish to me. Like he’s not acknowledging the fact that it’s someone else’s work?

I do plan on reading more than just the intro’s to the actual readings, but it’s so difficult because the intros are so long! Also, somehow this blog ended up being longer than the last one, I don’t know how that happened, please don’t hate me.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Gatekeeping

I’m the sort of person who, when they see mention of something truly atrocious, tends to go seek it out. Yeah, it sucks when it’s someplace where the individual responsible for the ass-haberdashery gets paid when I go and look at what they’re actually saying, but I feel like it’s important to understand what they’re saying in order to properly pin it to a dissecting board and figure out what the fuck is wrong with these absolute melon-ballers.

So recently a post flagging up the plight of Stan Lee came out and it was recently brought to my attention that the YouTube vid in the original post was made by ... well, a misogynist fuckbake. You know, one of those people who turned ‘SJW’ into a slur, who is trying to turn ‘feminist ally’ into a slur, who uses the term ‘beta male’ unironically, etc etc etc. The individual’s channel is called The Quartering - Google if you must; I’m not deliberately giving this guy click-through revenue.

Anyway, thing is that he recently posted a video claiming that a ‘D&D creator’ had made a post on Twitter claiming that ‘women are too stupid to play D&D’.

I wanted to deconstruct that, so I watched a bit. Enough to at least see the tweet in question.

First, not a creator of D&D.

Second, not what he said. What the tweet was flagging up was how those who gatekeep with convoluted rules systems that focus more on stats than story are the same ones who are really keen to keep women out of D&D as a hobby.

Now, it’s telling that the individual behind The Quartering went from there straight to, “women are too stupid to understand convoluted rules systems”, with an undercurrent of, “OUR MASTER PLAN IS WORKING”. Because it doesn’t tell me any such thing. What it tells me is that people who aren’t these gatekeeping neckbeard asshats are more invested in the story that you can create with friends than in Doing Something Epic Because Stats.

Note that I’m not saying that this is a woman’s sole provenance. I’m sure that there are some women who greatly enjoy calculating THAC0. I know there are a lot of men who are happy to handwave rules systems as long as the story is compelling. But this individual goes right to, “He’s saying that women are too stupid to understand basic maths!” when the message is, “Women are statistically more likely to get involved in something with a compelling story”. And there are a lot of reasons for that, but the main one being that it’s a lot harder to gatekeep on the basis of storytelling ability, which is entirely subjective, than it is to gatekeep about basic maths. You can say, “Oh, you’d slow us down; women are no good at maths!” - and while you’d be wrong, enough misogynist crap about “women’s brains being unsuitable for complex mathematics” has been published over the years for them to feel secure in that. It’s a little harder to tell a woman that she can’t tell a dramatic story and feel like you have the receipts, so to speak.

The reason I come to this conclusion is the comments to that video. It’s full of people bitching about how 5e isn’t coming out with new numbers; just ‘fluff’ about worldbuilding and playable races. And I’m sitting there going, “...They’re giving you the tools to build your own damn world and you’re bitching because they haven’t just handed you another premade dungeon and more excuses to do maths?” These people don’t want to play pretend; they want to min-max a badass and ... you know, I don’t know what number-cruncher roll-players get out of RP. I assume they must get something out of it; I just don’t see what. I don’t get it. What’s the point of being a series of numbers on a board? I get more investment than that out of any video game you care to name, because while I’m just a collection of pixels and a metric fucktonne of binary or whatever, I can project myself into the story via that collection of data. But the more you focus on the data, the more the story element is lost, and they don’t seem to want the story at all. They want Tomb of Horrors, over and over again.

Is it because it’s emotional investment? Is it because they’re terrified that ‘playing pretend’ is ... I dunno, ‘girlie’ or ‘faggy’ or whatever unforgivable slur these assholes use to belittle people who have the temerity to enjoy the same hobby they do, just in a different way? I don’t GET IT. I’m happy to let people who are into the number-crunching aspects alone do that, so long as they’re not giving me shit for ‘doing it wrong’. I’m not saying they’re ‘doing it wrong’ if they’re not staying in character or min/maxing their asses off; I’m saying they’re doing it their way and they’re welcome to it but it’s not for me. But that’s not good enough for these people. They are ... well, they’re gatekeepers. If ‘their’ hobby is not being pursued the way they themselves pursue it, it’s an intrusion.

I like the focus on expanding the possibilities of worldbuilding that 5e has created. I know just enough about THAC0 to know that I would have fucking hated it. No, I’m not great at maths, but I can do it if it’s worth it. This is better. This is giving me paints and a canvas and asking me to create worlds. I can do that. More to the point, I can do that joyfully.

If your only joy in a hobby is keeping other people out of it, then you’re frankly a greedy little whinge-merchant and I pity you.

[myontasm]

man im really startin to hate this place and its fuckawful community hiding in the woodwork just waiting for one straw to pull on.

theres so much wrong with this place, where do i begin? terrible people who masquerades themselves as internet vigilantes, gets literal nobodies killed over dumbest shit. a lack of focus of what really matters, instead getting outraged over some pixel boobies. gatekeeping, racism and, for some reason, fucking heterophobia and biphobia??? how do you people fucking function in life.

everything is misogynistic or -phobic. on the other side, terfs who think terf is a slur. i wish it was a slur, its only befitting you. fuck you.

nazis and commies raiding people's asks boxes asking for their political opinion. like, imagine fandom blogs getting "so what about seizing the means of production?? youre not a nazi right" like what the fuck is wrong with you lol. leave them alone. dont drag them into your dumb shit.

why are MAPs a thing?? what is the purpose of doing that. just dont do that. for the love of god. please, never.

outrage culture. get mad at everything, sob about nothing. pay for my shit while youre at it.

distinction of fantasy and reality. video games arent real asswipe. go take a cold shower and wake up. please stop caring about anime babes getting fucked by eva 02. let the people jerk off in peace good god

also im really sad about how all these tumblr funnymen are legitimately terrible fucking people. god damn dude get a grip on your dumb ass.

doxxing is really fucking bad in this place. no sense of morals at all, not consistently anyways. only when its suitable. the treshold for whats acceptable enough to do a sick dox here is so fucking low, limbo low. you dont have to hurt anyone to get doxxed and told to kill yourself.

people caring too much about others having fun. remember when that weird alt right dude went and got super mad because people posted discord chat logs? i do.

theres no peace in this place. I want out.

[aion-rsa]

His Dark Materials Season 2 Episode 5 Review: The Scholar

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This His Dark Materials review contains spoilers.

By now, this series has firmly established the rule that if you put Mrs Coulter in a scene, you’ve got yourself a scene. It almost doesn’t matter who she’s paired with. Lee Scoresby, a Magisterium toady, a mirror… So long as Ruth Wilson is there, fizzing with barely concealed rage and oozing manipulative seduction, it works. 

She doesn’t even need to speak, as this episode’s opening showed. Let Mrs Coulter watch a woman from our world tapping away at a laptop while rocking her baby and it’s all we need to understand the character’s fascination, frustration and regrets. 

With that in mind, it makes sense that this adaptation keeps inventing new places for Mrs Coulter to appear. Much of ‘The Scholar’ was devoted to telling her story in our world, and did so with humour and empathy. It’s a courtesy most fantasy stories don’t afford their baddie; show me the Narnia chapter that delves into the psychology of the White Witch, or The Lord of the Rings book that explains what really makes Sauron tick. Products of a different time, neither attempts what this TV adaptation does. 

That’s also because Mrs Coulter, for all her tweezer-torture, child-murder and daemon-abuse, isn’t the real villain of His Dark Materials. The real villain is the misogynistic theocracy that made her. That’s what everybody’s lining up to bring down. 

In the Cardinal’s council scene, episode five gave us a backstage pass to exactly what’s being fought against. Nobody’s safe in a reality-denying autocracy, even, as Father Graves discovered, the inner circle. Challenge the hierarchy and down you go with the rest of the heretics, dissidents and, heaven help us, women. Top marks to the casting team there, by the way. There’s not been such a ghouls’ gallery of anaemic creepiness in one place since the release of the Dominic Cummings 2021 Calendar. 

In episode five, Marisa glimpsed the possibilities of a life outside that system (“What do you mean she runs a department?”). Her conversation with Mary (“Mrs Malone?” “Doctor”) was almost as destabilising as the one she had with Lee Scoresby in that prison cell. She was shaken by the implications of Mary’s impertinent, intelligent freedom. In this world, she too could have been a Doctor leading an academic team, like Mary. Just not in those jeans. 

The jeans moment (what do you think Mrs Coulter feels more contempt for – denim or Lord Boreal?) was one of a few straight-up gags from writer Francesca Gardiner brightening this episode. First was the comedic sight of the golden monkey wearing a seatbelt. Then came Will and Lyra’s tension-puncturing “Why are we whispering?”. Next was Carlo being so basic that, having explored the entirety of our world’s culture, he chose to show off his sound system with The Lighthouse Family’s insipid and omnipresent-in-the-90s ‘Lifted’. “The sound quality from these speakers is quite something,” he told Marisa, really putting the bore in Boreal. We’ve all been there, Mrs. C. 

By ‘we’ of course, I mean middle-aged women like me, Mrs Coulter and Mary. Selfishly, I’m obviously delighted at this family show going deep on those two, but how riveted a child might be by this focus I couldn’t say.  

Younger viewers have their own draw in Will and Lyra, now a proper double-act with a demonstrable bond. Even now, Will’s kind words that Lee or Ma Costa would be lucky to be anything like Lyra bring a lump to the throat. Their growing intimacy in this show’s quieter moments is satisfying to watch.

Unsatisfying, but begrudgingly understandable with such a crowded cast, is this week’s total lack of Lee and Jopari. We waited four episodes for Andrew Scott to pitch up, and then as soon as he does, he’s taken away. Let’s hope that, now she has the alethiometer, Lyra makes good on her promise to do nothing else until she finds Will’s dad. 

It was hard won, the alethiometer. That fight between Pan and Mrs Coulter’s abused daemon was unpleasant to watch – the emotion evoked all the more remarkable for the fight being between two bundles of pixels. A reprisal of the monkey’s series one attack on Pan, it showed how far Lyra’s come since then. Too far, by her own admission. 

Things ended with another journey for our other scholar. Dr Malone ‘deceived the guardian’ (another gag fondly puncturing the heightened fantasy atmosphere of angels and coded missions) and passed through the sacred… roadworks tent to another dimension. Armed with a sleeping bag and a flask, Mary’s embarked on her trip, somewhere further than Devon alright.

The post His Dark Materials Season 2 Episode 5 Review: The Scholar appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[santaragione]

2013 Interview for Lee Witney (never published)

1. Why have you chosen to create with this medium, what are you trying to communicate and why is it important to you?

The answer is a complex one, because what we end up doing in our lives is often a result of many different experiences. The obvious, uninteresting answer is that we've always been fascinated by games and video games, as most kids are. As friends (we met when we were 17 and 20, respectively) we were enjoying discussing our different play experiences, analyzing them, and imagining how we'd have done things differently. It started as a fun exercise of thinking "what if” we had a voice in the making of our favorite games, and as naïve sense of discovery about how things work. When we grew up and began to feel like we had something to say for ourselves, games were naturally the medium we had invested lots of thought in, and we had matured a genuine belief in its expressive potential. We decided to actually start making games with the intention to create something that wasn't catering exclusively to the games world, but was also aimed at a non-gaming audience, who share our sensibilities for themes and aesthetics. We are interested in seeing how things that are typically communicated with other media look through the medium of games and video games (like politics, for example, in our 2013 game http://finalcandidation.it that we designed for the Italian elections).

2. The term 'Game' seems quite limiting for a tool that allows a person to interact with another's ideas. Do we need a word that articulates the medium accurately, that embraces protean experiences, if so could you suggest one?

It could be argued that words like "game" and "play" are not limiting in themselves. They accommodate many different meanings that keep changing based on locations, players, social interactions, narrative content, and more. Games may be perceived as puerile, because they represent concepts and actions that are deeply rooted in our human nature, but are typically experienced for the first time during infancy. We've found that trying to define the meaning of the term "game" or "play" could be as hard as defining the meaning of the term "art". We like to consider play as a behavior and to think of games as tools that enable a play behavior. This way we do not have to think in terms of restrictions such as goals and rules. Instead, we focus on what, to us, are more important design challenges like “inspiring actions”.

3. It is important to respect history but not be constrained by it. In the mediums inauguration developers innovated because they basically had a blank canvas. Where are we now, are we bound by our history or enriched because of it?

As you say, in art, history certainly has this dual effect -- it simultaneously restrains and frees the artist. This might be true for every medium, and it might simply depend on the approach. Surely, games themselves suffer from an excessive dependence on the history of video games. We wonder if it is because game-making was for so long only relegated to engineers. On the other hand, even people with different backgrounds today choose to make “retro games”.  For instance, pixel-art is extensively celebrated, often merely out of custom or tradition, without considering the implications. There is nothing inherently wrong with making games about old games, but it is a little saddening when this celebration is all that creators are interested in participating in. Imagine if every movie was like Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist”.

4. How can you sell diversity to risk averse consumers, especially when the work of the imitator is embraced more than the risk taker?

There was a very interesting talk by Nathan Vella at GDC China in 2012, called “Perhaps a Time of Miracles Was at Hand: The Business & Development of #Sworcery” that explains how Capybara Games managed to have a successful product by relying on a completely niche market. If the question is about surviving while making the games we want, then Nathan’s talk possibly has the answer: there is always a niche market large enough that shares our mindset, and fortunately, contemporary distribution models enable us to reach them. We, personally, do not worry too much about the “risk averse” consumers. They will eventually turn to things they are more interested in as they develop their passions and taste. What is more important is to reach people that are interested in diverse entertainment or culture that resonates with them. The interesting part is that these people may not be familiar with games, or may have never considered that games can satisfy their need for low-fi, political science fiction worlds, and the challenge is to reach those people.

5. What responsibilities do consumers have? Their demands for the videogame to be respected contradict their buying habits; which support the same immature themes over and over again.

It is tempting to say that consumers have a responsibility. When people keep buying the third or fourth chapter of the same game with more than two hundred updated guns for $69.99, well, it’s very tempting to point fingers. But developers have really as much of a responsibility -- to do whatever they can to make the games they want to make, without starving. Let’s face it: nobody is in the game industry because “it’s an easy job”. It isn’t. Crunches, sacrifices are way too common, and it is mind boggling how so many devs are willing to go through that to work on games they dislike. Some of them might be trapped in some financial loop where they are stuck in producing the most profitable game possible, but that can’t be the final goal for people that want to express themselves through games. Another responsibility game creators have is to enrich one’s own life with enough diverse experiences. It’s hard to be original in making games if we do not have personal, deep, original experiences to draw from. Finally, it’s really disheartening the amount of sexist, misogynist, overly violent, homophobic, and transphobic content there is in games and it is our responsibility to do better. We face the problem of an audience approaching gaming as pure entertainment and not as a medium capable of convey meaning, and we, as developers, should focus on ways to change that.

6. As new concepts are explored surely critique needs to evolve, especially when trying to define experiences that do not fit into our current forms of measurement. Is there an alternative to how games are currently evaluated?

The technical focus, for instance, could shift to accessibility. Instead of telling us if this or that game is making the best use of a technological expedient, critics could tell us whether it was built with a degree of accessibility appropriate to the audience the game is addressing.  It could also be interesting to see mention of relevant media to contextualize the overall experience offered by a game. If you are playing a game about fairy tales, how does your experience relate to different works by Hans Christian Andersen or the Grimm Brothers? Why are these themes treated aesthetically differently in the game with respect to early 20th century illustrations? The tendency to evaluate games only from the game prospective and not refer to the rest of human culture and history can be limiting.

7. What happens to an idea that could advance the medium but fails to tick the boxes under our current review system. Is it left in obscurity or maybe refined by someone else. If so what is the originators role; a sacrificial stepping stone for others?

I like the idea of failures as sacrificial stepping stones. We've been inspired by our own past failures as well as by various unsuccessful game productions from obscure developers in the '90s. There’s nothing wrong with failed projects and going back to see what was good in them. It would be unfair to say that projects fail just because they don’t tick all the review or feature boxes -- there are so many factors to a game’s success.

8. Please explain your definition of quality? Does it reside in a score, an accolade, sales, mass consent, personal opinion or is there something else?

This is a tricky question. It is helpful to distinguish between what we consider a successful execution of the design we set out to realize vs how well-received the final product is. In the first case it is really a matter of scale. Not all projects are born equal, and we always put this into perspective when evaluating the quality of what we create. What was the budget? How much time did we have? The quality is the ability to forecast the scope of the project based on these values and do the best you can under the circumstances. If we couldn’t have made anything better (or, should we say, more interesting), within those constraints, then the project is successful. If, instead, we are discussing success in terms of “enabling us to work on more projects through sales”, for us success can be measured based on whether or not the revenue will allow us to work on a bigger project than the one we just finished. This is especially true now, because we are very small, and we feel we still do not have the funds to work on projects with a big enough scope to let us experiment in the ways we would like. For example, we would love to hire artists and engineers to work with us and add their vision to our projects.

9. The crash of the videogame in the 80s was due to excessive poor quality and saturated plagiarism. Do you think the market could fall again and would that necessarily be a bad thing, especially given that the videogame could be reinvented without the limitations they face today.

Back when video games rose from their ashes, the industry welcomed a new approach to game development, championed by Nintendo, that set the standard for the modern industry until this generation of games. Around this time, the whole developer kit and seal of approval model was invented, in part, to prevent plagiarism. It created a safe environment where customers could finally have fewer but better games, but it also made designing games prohibitively expensive from the start (the sky-rocketing royalties to print cartridges and the cuts Nintendo would take from the sales). The result was fewer, better games on the market but also a culturally sealed world, with not much variety of exp. Today, easily accessible platforms and big online markets like Steam or App Store, things are similar to the 80s somehow, but the medium and the consumers are open to developers with different backgrounds.  Meanwhile, thanks to new accessible frameworks like Unity, Game Maker, etc, the barrier to entry is much lower. New generation consoles so far also seem to go further in this direction. The difference might be that we now have the capacity to create independent networks that filter or curate content for end users in efficient and particular ways, so that the public won’t be as lost as it was in the early 80s.

10. How do we pursuit other forms of emotional content if there is always this expectation of fun? What is the most significant hurdle in creating work that might not be accepted commercially or critically?

The separation between “fun” and “emotional” content is not always so clear cut. Many recent games find spaces between these two areas, where interesting, elevated, or even touching content can be experienced through an entertaining series of interactions. Of course there are productions that try to distance themselves from “fun” as much as possible. But there are also many productions that stay somewhere in between these two extremes and could serve as a bridge for players from one type of content to the other. It is also fundamental to understand that fun in itself is not intrinsically related to “laughs” or “delight”. Greek theater was undeniably a form of entertainment, hence “fun”, but its themes go certainly beyond those of comedy.

11. What needs to change in the developer/publisher/consumer/critic relationship to encompass new ideas. Does any one group hold more influence than the others?

Yes, consumers have the biggest influence, as well they should. They are spending their hard-earned money, as they say, and they certainly have the right to get what they want. It is our job to reach out to consumers, critics, and publishers that have a sensibility akin to ours. If publishers and critics are responsible for slowing down the maturing of the medium, it is because they are sometimes slower at capturing the new trends, the new needs of the consumers. Some game experts can fail at seeing how a certain phenomenon, apparently non-game related, is eventually going to radically shape the way games are made. It took a while for everyone to understand, for instance, the potential of tablet/portable/mobile games as a legitimate, expressive platform for games --  the first to understand this were certainly the consumers.

12. In your ideal future what would a videogame represent and how would it be perceived?

As a medium capable of conveying meaning, not just tied to the entertainment industry, we wish for games to be part of an interactive literature, to put in Espen Aarseth’s terms. We hope people will mainly approach video games for what they communicate, rather than for just killing some time. Cinema has a great diversity, from Sundance to Cannes to the Oscars, for example, these are events that celebrate different ways to use the medium, differentiating content and other aspects, all the way down to the duration of the movie itself. We should hope for this kind of diversity for video games in the future. We would also like to see the indie community outgrow what sometimes looks like an elitist behaviour. Self-referencing groups are not bad, per se, and they are pretty common in fields where the research goes beyond the common knowledge on a topic (for example, scientific publications are often aimed at an élite for a reason). But we think it’s not good when our community scorns those who believe that games can also evolve in different directions outside the “indie manifesto”. It feels like we are going against our own goal, which is to explore the communicative power of games. The recent interview with Kurt Bieg (developer of Circadia, Twirdie and SwordFight) at penny-arcade.com addresses this problem in a very critical, but interesting way. It is definitely an important issue, and we cannot afford to lose the voice of talented and passionate developers like Kurt.

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Last Thanksgiving I wrote a column titled, “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along,” in which I committed myself to resisting this travesty of a man, proclaiming, “I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.” I made this promise: “As long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.” I have kept that promise, not because it was a personal challenge, but because this is a national crisis. Donald Trump, I thought that your presidency would be a disaster. It’s worse than a disaster. I wasn’t sure that resistance to your weakening of the republic, your coarsening of the culture, your assault on truth and honesty, your erosion of our protocols, would feel as urgent today as it felt last year. But if anything, that resistance now feels more urgent. Nothing about you has changed for the better. You are still a sexist, bigoted, bullying, self-important simpleton. But now all of the worst of you has the force of the American presidency. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The degree to which Russia aided your ascendance, and the degree to which people connected to your campaign were willing and eager to entertain entreaties from Russia, are coming into clearer focus everyday. The legitimacy of your presidency is in question. The corruption of your administration is not. You are a national stain and an international embarrassment. You are anti-intellectual and pro-impulse. The same fingers with which you compulsively tweet are dangerously close to the nuclear codes. You are historically unpopular and history will not be kind to you. It is all so dizzyingly distressing. But what irks me most is your targeted attacks on historically marginalized populations as a political ploy to secure the support of the racists, misogynists and homophobes. During your campaign, you pathologized black people and generalized about their daily lives, ultimately making this pitch: “What the hell do you have to lose?” You hovered over a taco bowl and insisted, “I love Hispanics!” You told CNN, “I love the Muslims. I think they’re great people.” All of these were lies, demonstrated by your actions in office. Your hostility toward minorities and your courting and coddling of the people who hate them has become a standard practice of your presidency. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME We see that in your continued attempts to institute a Muslim ban and your continued insistence on building your wall of hate. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story We see it in the way that you attack Antifa but make excuses for white supremacists. We see it in the way that you attack N.F.L. players protesting police violence, while you encourage police officers to be more violent. We see this in the way that your Justice Department is moving to return to rigid, racially skewed drug policies that helped to fuel our unconscionable level of mass incarceration, a phenomenon Michelle Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow,” while also returning to a reliance on private prisons. We see this in the devastating contrast between the ways you have talked about and treated hurricane victims in Texas versus in Puerto Rico. We see it just this week in your “ending a humanitarian program that has allowed some 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010,” as The New York Times put it. Trump is clearly, blatantly, virulently hostile to people who are not white and non-Christian. That is not a statement of opinion, but a statement of demonstrated fact. During the campaign, Trump tweeted: “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.” And yet, it is Trump who is proving to be a threat to the L.G.B.T. community, particularly to transgender Americans, with his ban on trans people in the military, his rescinding of federal protections for trans students, and his Justice Department’s reversal of a policy protecting trans workers. Trump repeatedly said — or tweeted — during the campaign that he respected women. Anyone who had been at all aware of Trump or had access to a search engine knew that was a lie. But then, as real-time proof, the “Access Hollywood” tape was released on which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. And women came out in droves to personally accuse him of sexually inappropriate behavior, the kinds of accusations that people are now losing jobs over. To add insult to injury, Trump the Groper has just thrown the weight and word of the presidency behind Roy Moore the Alleged Pedophile, choosing the claim of a single horrible man, even aside from the allegations, over nine women who seem to have nothing to gain by coming forward. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Trump not only doesn’t respect women, he doesn’t even hear women. This man is a pathological liar. He commends and conforms to anyone who pretends to love him, whether they are Russians or racists. He is inherently a patriarchal white supremacist and it seeps out in all sorts of ways, but it is most pronounced in the way that he attacks people who are not white and male. When you accept those truths, everything else makes sense. But accepting the truth is not the same as accepting the liar. Trump is unacceptable in every possible way, and must continue to be met at every turn with the strong arm of defiance. That is why today I recommit myself to resistance, and so should you.

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Last Thanksgiving I wrote a column titled, “No, Trump, We Can’t Just Get Along,” in which I committed myself to resisting this travesty of a man, proclaiming, “I have not only an ethical and professional duty to call out how obscene your very existence is at the top of American government; I have a moral obligation to do so.” I made this promise: “As long as there are ink and pixels, you will be the focus of my withering gaze.” I have kept that promise, not because it was a personal challenge, but because this is a national crisis. Donald Trump, I thought that your presidency would be a disaster. It’s worse than a disaster. I wasn’t sure that resistance to your weakening of the republic, your coarsening of the culture, your assault on truth and honesty, your erosion of our protocols, would feel as urgent today as it felt last year. But if anything, that resistance now feels more urgent. Nothing about you has changed for the better. You are still a sexist, bigoted, bullying, self-important simpleton. But now all of the worst of you has the force of the American presidency. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The degree to which Russia aided your ascendance, and the degree to which people connected to your campaign were willing and eager to entertain entreaties from Russia, are coming into clearer focus everyday. The legitimacy of your presidency is in question. The corruption of your administration is not. You are a national stain and an international embarrassment. You are anti-intellectual and pro-impulse. The same fingers with which you compulsively tweet are dangerously close to the nuclear codes. You are historically unpopular and history will not be kind to you. It is all so dizzyingly distressing. But what irks me most is your targeted attacks on historically marginalized populations as a political ploy to secure the support of the racists, misogynists and homophobes. During your campaign, you pathologized black people and generalized about their daily lives, ultimately making this pitch: “What the hell do you have to lose?” You hovered over a taco bowl and insisted, “I love Hispanics!” You told CNN, “I love the Muslims. I think they’re great people.” All of these were lies, demonstrated by your actions in office. Your hostility toward minorities and your courting and coddling of the people who hate them has become a standard practice of your presidency. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME We see that in your continued attempts to institute a Muslim ban and your continued insistence on building your wall of hate. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story We see it in the way that you attack Antifa but make excuses for white supremacists. We see it in the way that you attack N.F.L. players protesting police violence, while you encourage police officers to be more violent. We see this in the way that your Justice Department is moving to return to rigid, racially skewed drug policies that helped to fuel our unconscionable level of mass incarceration, a phenomenon Michelle Alexander calls “the new Jim Crow,” while also returning to a reliance on private prisons. We see this in the devastating contrast between the ways you have talked about and treated hurricane victims in Texas versus in Puerto Rico. We see it just this week in your “ending a humanitarian program that has allowed some 59,000 Haitians to live and work in the United States since an earthquake ravaged their country in 2010,” as The New York Times put it. Trump is clearly, blatantly, virulently hostile to people who are not white and non-Christian. That is not a statement of opinion, but a statement of demonstrated fact. During the campaign, Trump tweeted: “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you while Hillary brings in more people that will threaten your freedoms and beliefs.” And yet, it is Trump who is proving to be a threat to the L.G.B.T. community, particularly to transgender Americans, with his ban on trans people in the military, his rescinding of federal protections for trans students, and his Justice Department’s reversal of a policy protecting trans workers. Trump repeatedly said — or tweeted — during the campaign that he respected women. Anyone who had been at all aware of Trump or had access to a search engine knew that was a lie. But then, as real-time proof, the “Access Hollywood” tape was released on which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. And women came out in droves to personally accuse him of sexually inappropriate behavior, the kinds of accusations that people are now losing jobs over. To add insult to injury, Trump the Groper has just thrown the weight and word of the presidency behind Roy Moore the Alleged Pedophile, choosing the claim of a single horrible man, even aside from the allegations, over nine women who seem to have nothing to gain by coming forward. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Trump not only doesn’t respect women, he doesn’t even hear women. This man is a pathological liar. He commends and conforms to anyone who pretends to love him, whether they are Russians or racists. He is inherently a patriarchal white supremacist and it seeps out in all sorts of ways, but it is most pronounced in the way that he attacks people who are not white and male. When you accept those truths, everything else makes sense. But accepting the truth is not the same as accepting the liar. Trump is unacceptable in every possible way, and must continue to be met at every turn with the strong arm of defiance. That is why today I recommit myself to resistance, and so should you.