#i love this. it doesnt just look fucking cool but its a tangible part of the world and you can go and interact with it

[waywardsalt]

i think elden ring will always been my favorite game in terms of environment. every area is so impressive, even the copy-paste stuff manages to be impressive with atmosphere, and the amount of just. stunning-looking locations is wild especially with how natural even the most amazing looking shot you can find is.

just the fact that you unavoidably see this when you walk into leyndell is incredible. one of my favorite environment views in all of the games ive ever played

[swampgallows]

like this shit is so long

Only once Jaina was back in her own rooms in Theramore, and her head had begun to cool off from the madness – indeed, wild hope, chilling fears, joy and a thousand other emotions spinning through her head, only one step from insanity – only then did she remember that she had forgot to ask one important question, and it froze the grin on her face.

Something so small but so important to the culture she grew up in – even stricter than normal for her, a woman of such a fine family line. Something so small, so ridiculous even, but not dismissible and it had haunted her only in its current form in peaceful times. There had been no time for it before, not when her life took plunges – I will be a mage, a scholar dedicated to study and magic to We may not be alive tomorrow and onwards through We are alive and building a new home.

She stared out of one of the window of her chambers, without really seeing anything. Unwittingly, one of her hands went to her stomach.

Only after the chaos she found herself the owner of her own throne, and with that, being a person who was expected to eventually produce an heir who could sit on that throne later on.

Before that, she had only been haunted by regret and bitterness, and the memory of sweet whispers, of fingertips and warmth that had turned colder than ice. Both of them young and foolish, knowing they were as good as betrothed – it would only be a few words away, the match was suitable even in a politician's eye – but duty called him, and magic her. And then he turned into the greatest evil to walk Azeroth, barring Archimonde and his ilk.

Bitterness and regret being mere personal torture, but with her current position the problem became a tangible… inconvenience to say the least. Before, she may have pushed it aside and felt that she would face it the day she had a suitable suitor.

And how long ago was it, young lady, that you could bear thinking of anyone but him touching you?

this shit is so fucking long and it doesn’t say anything new. there are three different paragraphs talking about “before” but it’s not for emphasis and it doesn’t provide any new information. if i were the editor, i would do this:

HAHAHA OH HOLY SHIT I GOT ON MY LAPTOP AND THIS WAS THE LAST THING ON MY CLIPBOARD HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

anyway my edit would be like

Only once Jaina was back in her own rooms in Theramore, and her head had begun to cool off from the madness – indeed, wild hope, chilling fears, joy and a thousand other emotions spinning through her head, only one step from insanity – only then did she remember that she had forgot[en] to ask one important question[.] and it froze [T]he grin on her face [froze].

Something so small but so important to the culture she grew up in – even stricter than normal for her, a woman of such a fine family line. Something so small, so ridiculous even, but not dismissible and it had haunted her only in its current form in peaceful times. There had been no time for it before, not when her life took plunges – I will be a mage, a scholar dedicated to study and magic to We may not be alive tomorrow and onwards through We are alive and building a new home.

She [blankly] stared out of one of the window of her chambers, without really seeing anything. Unwittingly, one of her hands went to her stomach.

Only after the chaos she found herself the owner of her own throne, and with that, being a person who was expected to eventually produce an heir who could sit on that throne later on.

Before that, she had only been haunted by regret and bitterness, and the memory of sweet whispers, of fingertips and warmth that had turned colder than ice. Both of them young and foolish, knowing they were as good as betrothed – it would only be a few words away, the match was suitable even in a politician's eye – but duty called him, and magic her. And then he turned into the greatest evil to walk Azeroth, barring Archimonde and his ilk.

Bitterness and regret being mere personal torture, but with her current position the problem became a tangible… inconvenience[,] to say the least. Before, she may have pushed it aside and felt that she would face it the day she had a suitable suitor.

And how long ago was it, young lady, that you could bear thinking of anyone but him touching you?

like so much of this is just not contributing anything. it’s a fic, we already know who these characters are, and there was already a previous chapter before this detailing jaina’s situation and hyjal and everything else. all of it is really implicit that she forgot to ask thrall if he wanted kids, it doesn’t need the like three paragraphs of Jaina is a Human Female and Expected to Have Children. this isnt an alien species being introduced to us like most couplings in azeroth bring up children as a factor. 

i dunno like i know people write fic for fun but this shit is 100k and when there is this much unnecessary detail it’s hard to see the forest for the trees as it were, and it makes it a slog to get through. i also dont “speed read” because most of my reading has been academic where every single word counts, and part of me feels like it’s disrespectful to the author. like they put these words down to be read, and so i will read them, but that’s also the way i’ve been trained to read.  also since i spent most of my schooling reading stuff like shakespeare or canterbury tales or les miserables you have to stop like every five syllables to look shit up or derive some kind of analysis unless it’s a modern adaptation that doesnt require any “translation” necessarily.  

basically like. writing is fun but editing is important. more people will read your fic when it isn’t 30% filler. and ive complained about it before but like word count doesnt have any fucking bearing at all on the quality of writing. in fact, when i see ship fics that skyrocket to like 150k words in a handful of chapters im like dang bitch you cant write for shit!!! if you cant get across what you wanna say in that amount of words and youre STILL not done it means you gotta pare some shit down. 

it’s why i prefer writing over talking EVERY time because i KNOW i ramble irl. and in a casual setting like this, a blog post, i of course will ramble here too. but in writing??? writing that people read? everything you write should convey something and drive your story forward. every sentence you type is communicating something. if you get through the whole paragraph and all you can extract from it is “jaina realizes motherhood is a possibility again”, it needs to say something more. i mean this is all just my opinion but like it’s so important to the tone of your writing.

i remember when i was reading the shining, and early on in the story jack is being instructed in the boiler room. and the attendant or janitor or whatever you’d call him goes on for a HUGE block of text of all the mechanisms and step-by-step explains each and every facet of the machinery, how to use it, what it’s for. there aren’t even indents in the paragraph. and then it mentions off-handedly how jack was giving quick responses like “yup”, “uh-huh”, shit like that. i mean it’s been a few years since i read it so im paraphrasing. but that part of the book stood out to me because it was so immersive. the way it was written and the way the information was being relayed was specifically to bore the reader, to put them in jack’s position, and also maybe intimidate them a little bit. and of course it was foreshadowing, too, when later in the story jack is struggling with the boiler, and i actually went and flipped back to the instructions earlier in the book to review what jack was supposed to do. and then i thought, “boy, i bet jack wished he was me right now, because i have everything all written down!” 

but anyway, like. that’s good writing. that’s using the medium of text to its advantage to communicate on a meta-level how the audience should feel, and that we are all jack in that moment, being told a huge laundry list of shit we have to do—being paid to do, our sole responsibility on this job—and totally mentally checking out. i LOVE jaina, and i LOVE thrall, but the way this fic is written portrays them both as totally spaced out, completely unsympathetic characters. what i read above isn’t communicating jaina’s trauma to me; it sounds condescending, like she’s such an air-headed dim bulb that she forgot to ask her new husband if he wanted kids.

and the “proposal” was like... extremely awkward? i mean maybe that’s what the author is going for but thrall being basically like “uhh i guess? yeah i guess.” and then it says they talked for an hour but couldnt stay longer than that because they’re both leaders and couldn’t stay away too long. like... i feel like this is supposed to be a pretty important thing? marriage? it’s the setup for the whole fic and it’s played so... underwhelmingly. which i dont feel is intentional.

I KNOW it’s just a fic and i’m being very critical but it’s just like damn everybody bitches about blizzard’s “bad writing” but then nobody steps up to the plate. :\ i dunno how anybody spends so much time reading fanfiction when most of it is such a fucking chore to read. god i hope my story isnt like that.

[hexalene]

:V

So I dunno if anyone would like care But the manga does actually have an in canon explaination for Naruto's last minute “healing” abilities and Sasuke's sudden proficiency with the Rinnegan in those final battles. There's also some decent evidence for why the Senju don't have the mokuton and even why Naruto can't use it, though he could have if he wasn't a jinchuuriki. but its a whole thing and I'll probably make the post for me if nothing else. But ANYWAY I started thinking about it with those “Sakura has the Mokuton” posts…which I don't hate/dislike really but I feel like kinda misses a point about Tsunade and Sakura that was half-assedly made (so I don't blame anyone for not seeing it, or disagreeing with me) and would have been made a lot better if Sakura hadn't been so unpopular while the manga was running cause like…shonen jump sucks guys. Like it really sucks. I don't think it's a coincidence that two of the Big Three wiffled around boring fight scenes for eons before farting out an epilogue bathed in bad haircuts and heteronormative/undeveloped “families” before the creators jumped ship to just leave (bleach) or wash his hands of the property (naruto). Honestly. Cause like

Kishimoto once said that jump made him do the chuunin exams, when he'd planned on having Naruto travel around and learn stuff about the world and likely meet ppl and get ready to be a kage…I bet this is why some of the villages are so hinted and developed, cause it's likely the story was gonna GO to these places. But jump wanks hard over TOURNAMENTS and fights and anyway the chuunin exam was p awesome, so…it did work out there. The war arc….not so much. Better people than me have broken down that tho so I'm gonna talk about the thing I wanna talk about which is Tsunade and Sakura. So like…in the fight with Madara, we find out that Hashirama was OP as fuck, and could HEAL WITHOUT HANDSIGNS OMG (Madara like…drools over this srsly) and Tsunade doesn't lol about that, or Madara’s reverence, so it's clear that was like A Big Deal back in the day. And Hashirama is like…the god of god shinobi. That…is one fuckoff huge shadow to live under?? Like how do you top that? He healed, had an amazing “bloodline” ability, went up against all the bijuu like NBD, and ~changed the world~. We never learn about Tsunade's parents and honestly…I think it's because they never crawl out from Hashirama’s shadow…this is a total headcanon admittedly, but I don't think they died early, since that'd likely be a part of her trauma. But anyway. With Madara, Tsunade is like “I couldn't do what my grandfather did, so I made my OWN DAMN WAY.” And whips up the yin seal. And I hate that this came SO LATE into canon and not before because that's a COOL THING?

Like Tsunade couldn't be Hashirama so she became the Greatest Medic of All Time….thats a HELL of a way to break out of Hashirama’s shadow. And like…people will remember Hashirama as a legend but I like to think that Tsunade is more tangible as an idol for people, idk.

She made that yin seal, and I feel like she probably laid the foundation for all modern medical ninjutsu, and probably was a seal master in her own right. I wish we'd gotten more about Tsunade other than her trauma, she's fucking awesome?? The only actual Sannin, let's be real cause orochimaru is a shit and Jiraiya is a dumpster fire. But this whole shindig is supposedly about Sakura, cause I had a point about her and her character:

Sakura is like The Official Normal on the team who is always worried about being in Naruto and Sasuke's shadows and can't catch up and like…every time she's like “watch me guys I got this, I've caught up” *proceeds to fail and need help*

I was always like “IF YOU HAVE TO SAY IT THEN YOU HAVENT OKAY?? STOP WORRYING AND FIND YOUR OWN THING AND BE YOUR OWN PERSON”

Team 7 like Failed dude…I love the cute genin days but it was a failure and of all of them Sakura clings the fuck out of those days and like Never moves on (I don't think Naruto—still hated by the village and scared of rejection and ignorant about everything and living alone in a shitty apartment—or Sasuke—stewing in the hatred and lies from his brother and working for a kage who ORDERED THE MASSACRE OF HIS FAMILY….i mean even Kakashi, guilty about everything and unfulfilled and depressed...yeah they may have some fond memories but they probably aren't scrambling to go back, you know?) I legit believe her Sasuke obsession is in no small part fueled by a desire to go back to idyllic childhood days where the world wasn't complicated and the future looked bright…Sakura FLAT OUT says this in her last “”””confession””””” to Sasuke before the VOTE2 fight.

She's like those people who peaked in high school and never stop telling you how they were prom queen once and god Kaytlyyn I get it prom was a thing that mattered to you. It's why she acts so childish around Sasuke and why they'll never be a real couple She just Devolves back to being a 13 year old again and tbh I ship SNS hardcore but I DO THINK Sasuke could have loved her if she'd actually let herself grow up and act like a grown woman around him…a poke is not better than a kiss holy fuck. I CRINGE my asshole inside out whenever I see that panel where Sasuke denies her the kiss but TBH??? I would too?? If this THIRTY YEAR OLD WOMAN comes up and “tee hee”s and stares up her lashes and points her toes in like a little girl?? And then doesn't like…communicate?

THE issue that started Gaiden? SO GLAD THE SS FAMILY GOT THAT FIGURED OUT

Nor does she go for a kiss goodbye on the cheek? Or a hug? Or SAY anything? Or give him a return date to come back or we need to rethink this if only for our emotionally needy daughter? Like a Sane Person in an adult relationship?? Some wife?? She should be able to do these basic ass things without acting like a preteen?? Seriously y'all go find a thirty something year old woman and picture them acting like Sakura did in that scene…so infantilizing. I wouldn't kiss her either, damn. And we see like no sign she acts any other way with him. SASUKE DOESNT KNOW HER. And because Sakura can't act like an adult with him, she's never gotten to really know him either??? So infuriating but this isn't supposed to be anti-SS, and I mean it cause I DO THINK Sakura was supposed to do something in this story and didn't cause we needed new genin for child soldiering. I THINK SAKURA COULD HAVE ENDED THE CHILD SOLDIER PRACTICE. We see in her shinden novel that she and Ino are establishing clinics for kids and orphans and like…assessing their mental health, and then we hear like nothing of that but that might have been her revolutionary idea outside of Naruto and Sasuke's shadow cause she does it cause she sees how fucked in the head her teammates are and she had a healthy childhood and look what that did for her. DUDE she deals with SAI her best friend can walk into people's MINDS whyyyyyy???? did Sakura not get to revolutionize medicine again with mental health care?? Helping shinobi cope with trauma, proving that neglect, abandonment, trauma and war is ruining kids and contributing to the cycles of violence?? Tsunade learned to fix bodies and Sakura mastered that so why not let her discover how to help people fix their minds…and change the system that way. Look I get that this is speculation and headcanon, but it feels like that's the groundwork tentatively laid? Sakura growing up and leaving her idyllic childhood behind and changing the system with her more balanced and objective view on things since SHE had a normal childhood (in context, okay) Anyway I could spiral into like 10 different rants from this and I probably will at some point but whatever Hey tumblr I'm hexalene I'm late to the fandom and I have a lot of useless opinions

[nightandstarlight]

Demeter, Apollo, Ares, Centaur, Siren, Nymph, Agamemnon, Jason, Sun Chariot, Caduceus, Aegis, Golden Fleece, Olympus, Tartarus, Elysium, Ogygia, The Labyrinth? :3c

Asdfghjkdhslñ so many omfg why iLY ((I have to say tho i didnt really think about having to answer more than one of these at a time before i rbed the qs and since im on mobile and theres no way im gonna remember all of them im probsbly gonna do one first and then like edit this post to add the rest or something so it might take a while))

‡Demeter: do you have any pets?

>Unfortunately i dont my dad never wanted us to have any :// last time i had an actual pet living in my house i think it was when i was like 10 y/o or so and they were a couple of turtles who used to escape all the goddamn time like we would literally find them on the street trying to get away from our house even tho we had a enormous backyard and we treated them as well as we possibly could?? idk they prolly hated us so my parents mightve given them away i dont even remember,,, and thenn like two years ago i think i got a pet sheep called peter.. Peter the sheep was only around for a week tho and he wasnt even officially my pet but i loved him as if he were i still miss him and think about him often.. basically that summer when we went to visit my dads brother in misiones we took him with us from my dads farm ? (not really my dads farm but i dont wanna get too sidetracked here lmao) to my uncles farm for breeding or whatever so it was a solid 6-7 drive with him in the bed of our truck and me just starting at him and trying to get attention goD i never thought id care about a sheep that much anyway once we got to misiones we couldnt take him straight away to my uncles farm for whatever logistics reason i never asked about because all it meant was that he would have to stay in my uncles backyard for a couple of days and i would get to spend more time with him !! so thats what happened !! I took tons of pics and recorded him doing nothing and loved him from afar and then i was there when we dropped him off at my uncles farm.. and then i never saw him again.. the saddest part is that weeks later when we were all back home my uncled called my dad to let him know that Peter wasnt even fit for breeding bc rumour has it he had a third testicule lmao so he was technically useless rip peter the sheep ,,, aaaand now that i live alone i really wanna get like a cat or something but i never learned how to take care of anything so im scared i wont know how to if i have to do it all by myself

if i could add tags to this on mobile id apologize for talking so much about peter instead of just answering the question but i cant soz

‡Apollo: What kind of music are you into?

>alt/pop/rock/indie/pop punk,, i dont really like defining it by genres because who knows for sure what do they even mean anymore but the second best way i have to describe my music taste is ~basic white girl who thinks shes special~ and that makes me feel even weirder,, if you want i could try to make a playlist once im back in my apartment like next week or so lmk

‡Ares: whats a big pet peeve of yours?

>probably when people dont listen,, (u mean deaf people?? thats pretty fucked up dude) no lmao i mean people who pretend to listen but dont care about what you have to say or even worse when theyre so self absorbed that they dont even try to act like theyre paying attention and just straight up talk on top of you or interrup you constantly and not even bc they have something important to say but just because they can like whyy ohh or even worse when they do all that and then have the nerve get angry/offended if you dont pay enough attention to them??? Boyyy oh boy i hate that but i *cough love my parents i love themm

‡Centaur: Last book you read?

>all the bright places by jennifer niven,, didnt actually read it but i listened to the audiobook a week ago so i think that counts,, and if audiobooks dont count i read Evenfall by Santino Hassel back in march

‡Siren: Last song you listened to?

>((when i answered this (at 3:30am) i wasnt listening to anything but)) spotify says it was devil in me by halsey,, rn (13:40) im listening to alone by halsey

‡Nymph: Last dream you remember?

>i cant remember any recent ones atm but a couple of weeks ago i dreamt i was dating veronica from riverdale?? I probably posted something on here about that and it was so sweeett other than that idk maybe something about my classmates i see some of them pretty often in my dreams and theyre usually really nice cause i almost never remember any bad dreams/nightmares

‡Agamemnon: whats an achievement that youre proud of?

>i cant think of anything rn maybe getting into uni or coming out to my mom

‡Jason: have you ever travelled abroad?

>nope,, the closest i was to leaving the country was in 2014 when i was gonna go with my english teacher and class to nyc i got my papers and everything ready but then everyone started to come up with reasons why they couldnt go so i was gonna have to go completly alone/with friends of my teacher and their students which i didnt know at all so i got scared and decided not to 3 i know (hope) i’ll get another chance to go tho

‡Sun Chariot: whats your favorite mythological creature

>umm maybe sirens or gorgons im not 100%sure

‡Caduceus: whats your favorite color

>too many for different purposes but mostly purple?

‡Aegis: whats your favorite book or series?

>all for the game by nora sakavic atm

‡Golden Fleece: whats your favorite animal?

>ive loved dolphins since i was a kid but felines are too perfect in too many ways they make me weak at the knees

‡Olympus: describe your dream job

>so i know id looove to have an office job really stable and monotonous and everything like translating books but i also know that im terrified of getting stuck? And i feel like a job like that doesnt really leave much room to grow professionally so even if at the time im happy with just doing that the idea of looking back one day and realizing i sat at a desk and did the same thing for 20 years is not the best (which is ironic bc im wasting my youth ™ doing exsclty that for free basically but yea idk ) Dream job as in actually ~dream~ job would have to be like whatever people did on that show extreme makeover home edition?? I used to be obsessed with that show when i was a kid and i still think its a great idea even if its not as extra and over the top like that was id love to help people that way i could also make this longer but its lowkey too personal

‡Tartarus: Whats a short term goal you hope to achieve?

>going back to therapy and not quitting this time? making friends? Id say improving myself as a person but i feel like thats more of a long term goal but not hating myself rn would be nice,, also something tangible would have to be passing my calc II final that i shouldve taken a year ago and didnt cause i got scared + too depressed to study properly lmaao

‡Elysium: if you could have a superpower, what would it be?

>telekinesis and or being able to teletransport sounds cool

‡Ogygia: describe your dream husband/wife/life partner?

>patient, better at comunication than i am, respectful but that should be obvious, loves puns and bad/dad jokes, loves me? Also loves kids and is okay with adopting cause i definitely wanna adopt childrepn someday

‡The Labyrinth: have you ever died and came back as a vampire?

>not sure if im allowed to talk about this but i bet no one is gonna read all this cause its wayy too long lmao also i dont care anyway so yes, yes i have

half a day later im done!!! i know its a lot I hope its not too boring tho lmao

[robin-hood-for-freedom]

Its been a LONG time since I’v done anything regarding Anita Sarkeesian.  And to be honest, I wasnt going to make a response to this.  But I feel like he actually raises some interesting points that are worth discussing.  

to the skeptics and anti sjw's she'sseen in all ways as a force for bad adishonest critic opportunist a scamartist and ideologue a huge dick 

I guess thats fair.  At this point I dont think most anti-sjws really care about her though.  I will say that, I, personally never got on board with the whole idea that she was a scam artist(though I can see why some people came to that conclusion).  Imo, even if its true(and I doubt it), its largely a red herring.  

so what I'll call the Internet left however she was broadly understood as an all-around decent critic who was unfairly maligned harassed and abused because she was a woman who spoke about feminism and about her unfair treatment on the Internet

Since you are part of the ‘internet left’ I’ll take your word for it.  

I genuinely like Anita sarkeesian I agree with lots of her points and thought she was pretty cool before I knew she was somebody who everybody hated

I’m gonna be honest: Even if I was inclined to agree with anita’s criticism(I’m not), I dont know if I would really like her as a person or say she was ‘cool.’  Her videos and public appearances to me just come across as boring and uninspired.  

To be fair though, my only interaction with her has been through those videos/appearances.  So its possible she’s actually really nice and funny in person.  

even if I didn't like her though I still wouldn't think she deserved the ire of the public you know threats and harassment from people who hated every fiber of her being

Looking back I’m actually somewhat inclined to agree with you.  Aside from the obvious that nobody deserves threats and harassment(although those were grossly exaggerated), I actually think the attention given to her was unwarranted.  That said, I think most of was less hatred for Anita as a person, or even as a woman, and more concerns about her potential influence and how that might affect games(and other media) we love.  

Looking back that influence turned out to be ‘basically none’ but you know what they say about hindsight.  

I'm gonna be looking closely at a few people mostly Thunderfoot and sargon of akkad

I’m going to point out at this point that I’m not really that interested in defending Sargon or Thunderf00t(especially not Thunderf00t).  I have my quibbles with their takes on Anita.  

the first big argument that Anita sarkeesian wants to make that looking at games we can see a general tendency toward centralizing narratives of male and particularly straight male empowerment and what's more that this narrative tends to place the women of video games into some pretty weird positions women are less likely to be the protagonists of games they're more likely to be presented as sexually appealing to have their bodies put on display they're more likely to take on passive or victimized positions as damsels their to be rescued by predominantly male heroes

You cold argue that there are games that do this.  I could point out loads of counter-examples of games that dont.  

But, more importantly, I think, is that she doesnt really make an argument for why this is bad.  And even the limited attempts she does make, you explicitly reject later in this video.  In other words, we’re left with no reason to accept this as a criticism, unless we’ve bought into feminist ideology prior to clicking on Anita’s videos.  

If you want to argue that these videos were meant to be specifically for a feminist audience and that its silly for non-feminists to care, I guess thats fair as far as it goes.  But I dont think thats what you are getting at with this video.  

not being an expert in games myself I can't really go through er work fact-checking each and everyone of those examples besides that's not really something that interests me

I guess thats fair as far as it goes.  I’m actually glad you acknowledge that you dont know that much about games(unlike anita).  But I think you’ll miss a lot of the criticisms of her in that case, which tended to focus on how fairly she was presenting the games she looked at(not very in most cases).  

He then posts and summarizes a Thunderf00t video here, I’m only gonna respond to one point then pick up later(watch the full video for context)

Jamie's girlfriend didn't need to get beaten up we didn't need to see her panties as she was taken away

I pointed this out when I responded to Anita, but compare the amount of Marion porn, to the amount of Chung-li porn, and then tell me how much men desire weak or disempowered women(granted this isnt overly relevant to anything he said, but it was something that always bugged me about anita’s arguments).

Double Dragon might be a story about heroism in some broad sense but it's also a male power fantasy it makes you feel good because you get to play as a badass

No, it IS a story about heroism.  I can agree that the game sidelines and ‘damsels’ Marion(although again I’m not sold on the idea of that being inherently a bad thing).  But the fantasy isnt just about beating people up for no reason, its about being able to protect and save the people you care about.  I’m seriously skeptical that Double Dragon(or most other games) would resonate as much without that aspect.  

I’m skipping most of the rest of the Thunderf00t stuff, because I dont think thunderf00t made the best arguments, and dont have much desire to defend them.  

here's her second and much more important position that games being like that that's a problem Anita isn't just here to make a bunch of neutral statements about what video games are like she wants to say that video games have some relationship to things like sexism misogyny the patriarchy negative and pervasive stuff she sees in our culture

And since I’m not convinced that games can cause people to become sexist or other have other negative views(and neither are you as we shall see).  The only problem is that the games in question offend her feminist sensibilities.  

[these youtubers] nitpick small errors in her analysis see she spoke too broadly about hitman her general observations about video games must be totally off-base

Its not just hitman.  That was just one of many, many examples of her misrepresenting or deliberately using game mechanics to painting games in a worse light than reality is.  Also she shows no understand of how gameplay affects player attention and focus(presumably because she doesnt know as a result of not playing them)

cultivation Theory cultivation theory is an area of research and psychology that attempts to study and demonstrate the impact that media has on people the sorts of behaviors and dispositions it cultivates and when these youtubers talk about this theory it is always to point out that the research has proven it false

Not so much that its been proven false.  But that the effects shown are much more subtle than is commonly portrayed, tends to reinforce previously held beliefs rather than implanting new ones, and may not even apply to games.  Liana Kerzner(funny how you dont cover her despite the fact that she got a decent amount of attention for arguing with Anita), and AydenPaladin have both discussed this extensively, so I’ll just leave links to their videos.  

let's say for the sake of argument that these people are absolutely right about their science every study we've done shows that video games cause no shift in behavior or disposition our research into cultivation Theory has given us nothing but a bunch of bummed out psychologists now assuming all this let's ask a question what exactly would these findings mean to Anita sarkeesian's claim that video games can be harmful

It would mean she’s wrong.  Actually she’s wrong even in the real world where cultivation is a thing, just more subtle and might not apply to games.  

but to me it would mean absolutely nothing and why is that well here's one big reason I don't think that science is actually capable of disproving obvious facts about the wa ypeople work media's abilities are cultivate behaviors emotions and dispositions isn't some incidental point about it that requires further proof rather it's the entire reason why media exists in the first place

You’re conflating two very different things here.  Nobody denies that media has an ‘effect’ in the sense of causing an emotional reaction or giving some new information to people.  But thats a VERY different thing than saying media can alter peoples long-term attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.  

I agree the former is obvious.  The latter isnt.  And in fact the effect media has is pretty small.  

let's do a little thought experiment say a film is made that is unabashed Nazi propaganda let's call it Lubin'sLubin

You obviously dont speak German, but okay.  

every moment in this film conveys an anonymous and an explicit hatred of Jews let's say that this film is so horrendously racist that nobody in society can possibly be influenced by it to become Nazis the vast majority of people watch it critically tear it apart maybe even reflect on how silly and gross Nazism is

So you’re saying this film may, unintentionally, have a net positive effect on society.  Go on.

now if what's argon and Thunderfoot says is true if the only way to say a work of art is toxic is to look at its literal impact on society then we would be unable to condemn Lubin sh Lubin since the film has no tangible effect on anyone's behavior

Oh we could absolutely condemn the film, say its gross or bad or stupid or whatever.  What could not do is say its harmful.  Because it isnt.  

everybody with a brain knows that this movie is bad politically not in a way that means we should ban it but in a way that is worthy of our scorn and disgust

Sure such a film would be disgusting.  But disgust isnt harm.  And to conflate the two is not only disingenuous as fuck, but potentially dangerous.  

By this logic, Anita Sarkeesian’s videos are harmful, because lots of people are disgusted by them.  

watching Anita sarkeesian's videos she does site cultivation Theory a few times says there's a causal relationship between video games being the way they are and people being sexist and to be honest I kinda wish she hadn't said those things

Do I even need to comment?  

you can see that she means something very similar to what we described in our thought experiment we can see this whenever she talks about games it's pretty obvious

Indeed.  Her main reason for condemning video games is that they offend her feminist sensibilities.  So non-feminists have no reason to accept her criticism.  

she didn't wait for the Double Dragon studies to come in and prove that the game causes regressive behaviors and of course she didn't do that because she doesn't have to she is a person who experienced this work of art and she's claiming here that what she saw in it

Or in other words:

it stipulates that violence against women can be understood as erotic

Again, who is the bigger sex symbol: Marion or Bayonetta?  hint: its NOT the one who is passive recipient of violence.  

it just doesn't make sense to reserve our judgments of media to only those things that the work is actively calling for we also have to look at subtext and coding

And the subtext here is ‘kidnapping and beating up women is bad.  And real manly badasses protect and care for the ones they love.’  

keeping with our Nazi propaganda theme which I guess we have here let's use let's use this boy as an example:

image posted for reference.

this image obviously sucks because in the society it was used in it conveyed terrible ideas it serves to implicitly justify racial hierarchy and to normalize the idea that Jewish people were subhuman it

The difference here is the image in question was used in explicit anti-semitic propaganda.  There is a history here that directly links this imagery to Nazism and anti-semitism more broadly.  

Video games dont have such a history.  Even the tropes anita discusses that pre-date video games, such as the damsel in distress dont really have such a history.  The story of Saint George and the dragon(one of the earliest DiD stories, and the oldest anita cites) was about faith and knightly duty, not gender relations.  Hell Double Dragon isnt ABOUT how helpless your grlfriend, but about being the hero who is willing and capable to protect her.  

Skipping some more, because I dont care:

what he[thunderf00t] seems to have forgotten is that you can buy cigarettes under capitalism and you can buy an apple under capitalism cigarettes kill 400,000 people every year but apples they don't do nearly that much damage it's actually said that they keep the doctors away you might think that cigarettes should remain legal and I'm sympathetic to that idea but you'd have a hard time convincing me that they're not harmful to the people who use them

The difference is that we have loads of evidence that cigarettes cause real, tangible harm.  The same cannot be said for media.  Even cultivation theory says that media tends to reinforce existing beliefs than implant new ones.  And its not always clear that those beliefs translate into tangible actions.  

And I’m gonna say it again before anybody brings it up:  disgust is not harm.  

you may think that you can talk about the worth of art from a political or moral perspective but in fact that's just a mirage anything you say about media is just an unverified and likely unsupportable position and you should probably forget about

I would phrase it differently:  You can talk about media from a moral or political perspective all you want.  However, anybody who doesnt share your perspective would then be perfectly justified in simply dismissing what you have to say.  

hate Anita sarkeesian not because of what she says but because of who she is and the damage she causes

More precisely the damage we thought she might potentially cause.  Which admittedly in hindsight was an overreaction.  

they talk about how she sucks because she released her video slowly

Usually its less about her being slow, and more about she failed to keep her kickstarter promises.  I dont really go in for that because because I frankly dont think its that big a deal.  

didn't like being harassed on the Internet

Look, what she has shown as harassment is no worse than what most people(men and women) experience.  The vast majority of it wasnt even harassment but responses and criticisms.  

I guess you could say that online harassment shouldnt be a thing at all.  But I also dont think thats very realistic.  

talk about how she's a fraudulent grifter who gets her lackeys to phony bomb threats so she can make more money

I dont know about the bomb threat thing specifically.  I DO know that she used the harassment she received(real or not) to get attention and money.  

about how she's a fake gamer and so she shouldn't be talking about games

Thats a perfectly valid criticism though.  Media criticism is best done by people who actually have knowledge of the media in question.  

these guys are unapologetically anti-feminist and because of that they see no reason to change media to make it more feminist

So you DO get it!  

and they don't criticize and Anita sarkeesian's work because of cultivation theory I mean where are the studies that show that these videos are causing murder rates to increase

I honestly dont know what you’re getting at here.  The only reason anybody ever brought up cultivation theory is because Anita did first.  

And they dont criticize Anita  Sarkeesian's work because she explicitly calls for immoral actions

Nobody said she did?  Although I think if you read between the lines she has some really negative views towards men.  

and they don't criticize Anita sarkeesian's videos because they exist outside some benevolent capitalist structure I've got some hot news for you Anita sarkeesian's work is actually facilitated by capitalism

I’m not sure what you’re getting at here.  But it does make Anita a massive fucking hypocrite.  

no they hate Anita sarkeesian's work mostly because she says stuff they think is bad she's a feminist who wants various things about games to change and they disagree with her vehemently about it

And more importantly, that with all the attention she was getting at the time we thought the kind of changes she wants might actually start to happen.  Not that her videos would turn game developers into feminists(because lets face it, theres basically zero chance of her videos turning anybody feminist).  But because they might become convinced that there is an audience for the kind of games she wants.  

Like I said multiple times:  We were mostly mistaken about that.  

Theres not really much else here.  he just repeats himself.  so thats all for now.  

[solvethisproblemattic-blog]

I spent some time on a forum where someone recently said this. It was part of a discussion about increasingly fragmented and absurd LGBT flags, such as “ecosexual” and “deerkin” 

So i have this theory that increasingly compartmentalized idpol subcultures are like mining bitcoin. Whereas in the beginning, identity politics was more about tangible things, now...its like this: the more specific detailed and obscure your identity politics are, the more cool you seem. Its like mining bitcoin because it gets harder and harder over time, until you have to spent enormous energy and resources and get very little back, but some people feel compelled to do it anyway. This doesnt mean i think idpol never is about real identities. often it is. often there are valid concerns at work. But many (not all, but a good amount) of the identities people are building identities around now....are actually just personal quirks. Aromantic actually just means that you arent a romantic person. Its not the same as being gay...because people dont get beat up in the street for being aromantic....and there isnt mountains of legislation constantly designed to make the lives of aromantic people miserable.

So...many people believe that a common pattern is one of more privileged groups finding ways to enter into the subcultures of the less privileged, in order to feel better about themselves. This is a common tendency with many types of cultural appropriation. And yet it doesnt occur to many of the people in question that this may be happening right now with cis and straight people. If you say that cis hetero people are 'queerplatonic' because they have queer friends but dont fuck them....im sorry thats not worthy of a flag. 

There are reasons why flags mean something. the rainbow flag has been burned, spattered with blood, and ripped up countless times. people have died because of that flag. Same with the transgender flag, the lesbian flag, and though its new, im sure it is already becoming true of the genderqueer flag. But all this other microlabelling bullshit? im sorry but believing you are a unicorn or a satyr is not something that is going to be on par with the kind of oppression and struggle that someone with gender dysphoria or queer desires is going to face

In order to fairly critique what this group is designed to critique, we all need to be sure we arent just feeding into meme loops. The question should be...first...is this content we are critiquing, something that its creators literally believe in? the best way to start , in my opinion, is to talk to the owner of the page.

The person who posted this, (who im not naming, and who i know almost nothing about) had some interesting points, i think. for context, they were in part critiquing these blogs. 

https://beyond-mogai-pride-flags.tumblr.com

http://beyondlgbt.deviantart.com/gallery/

http://hiddensexualities.tumblr.com/

I want to make it clear that I have nothing against the creators of these blogs personally, and am only posting the links for clarity and context. I also want to make it sure that whereas i found hiddensexualities outright disturbing (due to its inclusion of attraction to objects and zoophilia in its master list) i find the other blogs more ....confusing. Because it includes things like “ecosexual” “deerkin” and “angelkin”.

    Confusing, by the way, doesnt necessarily prove anything. It may not at all be their fault that I am confused.there are probably a lot of cis people who find my gender confusing, and that isnt my fault. 

   That being said, There are a few ways to look at it. Im a 30 year old trans woman, and this may be a generational thing. The job of youth is innovation and experimentation, after all, and its possible that people my age need to just trust them. Not all of the experiments of queer teenagers always make sense to queer 30 year olds. That being said...I feel like that doesnt explain it either. If that theory explained it all...i could just delete this blog and move on. 

   Theres two main issues, as I see it. 

 The first is that there is a reason words like gay, LGBT, and queer have always meant a specific thing. Because resources and services for us are limited. If you can move to portland oregon where theres a trans health center or a lgbt friendly youth shelter, you are extremely lucky. In most cities those things are unheard of. If you are a trans woman who cant afford the cost of a name change during a time like this..you are really lucky if TAP has the time and resources to handle your case....they are extremely overwhelmed right now with their case load. There are also spaces, workshops, conferences, and groups which are made for, made by, and centered on these groups. it gets harder to prioritize who should or shouldnt have access to these things. Because if mildly dissatisfied tumblr-literate cis people flood into these groups/ spaces and use up limited services so they can “find themselves”...its less for the people who face discrimination, abuse, assault, and trauma every day because of our bodies and desires. In other words, I could be murdered for being a trans woman. No one is going to be murdered for talking about being an angelkin on the internet. If you run a youth shelter focused on LGBT youth...and you have to prioritize services for an asexual or for a gay person...you have no choice but to make that decision based on how much tangible oppression you actually see day after day. I have talked to these people and it is very clear what decisions they have made, and theres nothing fucked up or wrong about it. 

I myself have worked with street youth several times throughout my career, and though i have met many endangered queer, gay, and lgbt street youth, i have never met a street kid who was angelkin, deerkin, or ecosexual. because its not sustainable outside of internet filter bubbles. 

The other issue is that...i have seen and heard of many of these groups exerting actual influence in queer and LGBT politics. I will explain why this bothers me. 

   if this was merely a matter of youth subcultures making fun experiments and building magickal inner worlds, thats fine. theres nothing wrong with that. I have been part of pronoun contests before, and there is certainly a playful element to all queer circles. Theres nothing wrong with creating elaborate inner worlds...or subcultures based on very specific ideas. But its not queer. Because you cant fuck a deer (or shouldnt?), you cant fuck a demon, you cant fuck an angel, you cant fuck the earth, and otherkin is largely a fantasy. Theres a limit to what you can queer. Eventually it stops being queer or queering, and just becomes absurd. 

    I actually support transhumanism...but transhumanist ideas are far from being actually realized, and never will be unless they find a way to find a purpose in every day life. Its only when trans humanism becomes pragmatic or functional that it will begin to be sustainable or anything other than a fantasy. That will eventually happen, i think, but right now, this is ridiculous. bisexuality is a real desire, gay, lesbian, queer, pan, poly, these are real desires (and for the love of god dont jump down my throat because i only listed 99 out of the 100 labels. they are honestly and literally hard to remember) but once you start listing your sexual attraction to fictional characters, you arent describing real life. 

  I once had a conversation with a queer person (AMAB and androgynous presenting) who had recently gotten into a fight on tumblr because she believed that otherkin should be officially included in the LGBT acronym (LGBTO?). She then talked about wishing she had fur. If she faced oppression, it wouldnt be because she wished she had fur, it would be because she was androgynous and her anatomy didnt fit into the cisgender mold. In other words, what is assumed to be otherkin discrimination, is actually just regular queerphobia and transphobia. Maybe theres a little extra vileness added because you have a clip on tail, but i guarantee that if a cisgender straight woman was wearing that clip on tail and wished she ‘had fur’ they would be left completely alone. because no one cares.

By the way, asexuality is valid too...but my thoughts on it are complicated.