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theorynexus · 4 years

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As we reach 49, we near the half-way mark in the century of posts. My word, how many of these will there be?

Oh, and we are at Page 25 of Meat, which means that if the prologue were not included, this would represent a near perfect, “Two posts per page” ratio. Buuuut... things haven’t quite worked out that way, I guess.

... This all seems very ominous. Her speaking about trolls in such a way does not bode well for her mental state, I think. Hard to be certain, but... hmm. The implications of these generalizations about human nature suggest that she is either having great difficulty with the challenges Dirk is presenting to her, or that her aforementioned ascension is causing continued challenges to her mental stability. The scrutiny mention makes me lean further toward the former, but I don’t believe I can support either wholeheartedly, at the moment.

While in broad strokes I can certainly embrace this idea, no, it certainly is not sinful or dysfunctional to question it. This is because human beings are both social creatures demanding intimacy and belonging and individuals demanding singularity and personal excellence. To fully abandon one or the other is in fact to renounce humanity. In particular, to pour one’s self into a collectivist mentality that would seek to obtain a higher being via the blurring of thoughts and personae together to the exclusion of such matters as the love and concern one might feel for one’s wife is absolutely anathema to humanity, and should be repulsive to anyone who truly understands what it means to be human-- ... even if they have personally obtained a state already that sets them up as being more than human in the sense of capability and mortality.

Grrrrrr...! You’re taking her agency from her, Narrator! To take away from her choice as you suppress her powers and seemingly use them to expand your own is just... horrendous. I struggle now to properly express it, but the suppression of agency is a threat to her identity and undermines any important decisions, consent, or beliefs that she might come to express in the near future. Choosing what is or is not important for someone to know, especially when it is taking advantage of someone who’s in as vulnerable a situation as she is, is reprehensible, and absolutely sickens me, because it flies right in the face of her Classpect, as well. She should be able to understand and see the importance of what’s going on around her, and sense the information he’s suppressing, darnit!

Hmmm. ***scratches my head*** I do wonder, though. This paragraph makes it seem as if she might be in a better position than she seems to be in. To ask who is calling is not necessarily to suggest you do not know, in a technical sense, I suppose. Her hiding her actual face alludes to deception, and the ghostly image of herself seeming to speak, yet leaving the Narrator uncertain, could imply a certain degree of growing capacity to fool him, in general. I suppose this goes back to the statement that both of them think they are acting as puppet masters in their own little games. There certainly could be a sense of competition that is actively going on between them. A lack of information as far as Rose has been concerned, previously, along with the way that the previous last encounter we were able to have with her before the Kanaya calls made it seem like her body had slipped into unconsciousness, so this sudden contradictory information makes it hard to judge things.

I am sorry to see Rose react that way. That said: I now see that her earlier statements (at the beginning of the page) were largely meant as ground work in an argument that suggests she does not buy what Dirk’s trying to sell. I am very much glad to see that realization hit me, and quite obviously appreciate her point of contention. On the other hand, from a philosopher’s perspective, I also very much enjoy the fact that Dirk quite rightly brings that sort of question to the table, which is indeed necessary to answering that sort of question without doing so in a manner that is quite emotionally-based, biased based on deeply-ingrained preconceptions, or otherwise faulty in nature.

HEY, KIERKEGAARD IS GREAT!!! Also: I do in fact know that Rose is dealing with a severe migraine, and that it is likely that she might otherwise be more amicable to such discussions... albeit to what degree, it’s impossible to say.

I really do appreciate the fact that the lack of academic studies on the Kids’ parts is being actively integrated into the story. I would like to suggest that I very much do believe that many of them are quite intelligent, and have developed their minds in such a way that with time, the seeds of great philosophers might sprout inside many of them; however, I do in fact remain skeptical that Dirk has had anywhere near the life experience to be properly judging the issues he’s attempting to tackle, right now. Certainly, if their time in their universe had left the group in their later 20s or early 30s, I could see him being in a better position to make the sorts of weighty arguments and decisions he is apparently making (those of pursuing unity of consciousness and greater godhood of being, alongside the others, it would seem). Even the example of Kierkegaard, who began publishing important works relatively early in his life for a philosopher, was nearing 30 at that time.

I was quite surprised that Dirk is playful enough to admit the silliness of his prior statement of credentials, for a moment, but honestly, that is quite in-character. Whether or not this actually causes him to pause and think about things differently is an entirely different matter. I most certainly don’t think it shall do so.

This entire sequence is absolutely beautiful and hilarious. Also, Hegel’s pretty hilarious to bring up, at least to me. Specifically: Kierkegaard was an absolutely vehement opponent of Hegelian branches of philosophy, so his name coming up from Dirk shortly afterward is quite ironic, which I’m sure was quite intentional on Hussie’s part. The fact that this is all being argued via shorthand makes this all surprisingly humorous. As for the last bit he’s bringing up: that’s a nice segue into the actual argument/discussion.

Indeed, he brings up a somewhat valid point. This is part of the Ultimate Riddle. However, he fails to realize one greatly important thing: Free will is totally a thing in Homestuck. It’s just that certain timelines are important to the integrity of reality. Thus, they have to be pushed for, and the collective will of all life to persist nudges things in that direction, via interactions of Light, Void, Hope, and DOOM. It should also be particularly noted and emphasized that the decisions of individuals determine their fates, as shown especially via the death mechanics of godhood. Beyond this, there theoretically should be quite a bit of wiggle room allowed in getting from point A to point B on the “necessary stuff needs to happen” list, as shown via the fact that the Kids dawdled so bloody long in the first place before giving John their own version of The Choice, and essentially booting his butt out to face LE, in this timeline.

Yes, your flexing of narrative control in your limited, likely temporary fashion most certainly shows a lack of free will, especially in light of the feats of defiance that people have shown to your commands, and how closely your level of influence resembles that of other such writer figures in your position. My mind particularly turns to Andrew Hussie’s ghost influencing Caliborn, as well as the resulting shaking of the website as he attempted to crowbar its stability out of existence in retribution for Hussie’s mockery. Of course, that author seemed to be closer to omniscient--- or at least better at managing loose threads ---than the current ego taking up the Narrator’s seat. He certainly didn’t seem to be quite so cocky, and seemed a bit more performative in his role than the current one. Perhaps that’s because of the fact that he purposefully secluded himself from the main action of the story, unlike you.

***laughs hysterically at the irony of this amateurish lack of self-control, and the surprisingly go-with-the-flow sort of modus operandi that someone who projects such Machiavellian capacities has embraced*** This whimsical little break from the serious analysis and following of the story that I generally do has compelled a thought, a question, and an idea into my mind, it would seem. Namely: of course Dirk’s growing understanding and mastery over Heart will naturally have afforded him an understanding of the narrative nature of the world of Homestuck. After all, Heart, very similar to Light, deals with the true nature of things: while Light deals with broad categories of knowledge, information, data, code (overlapping with DOOM), luck, relevance, and fate, Heart deals with the true nature of things in a simple, core-oriented fashion-- it looks at what a person’s soul is, and what that makes them; the nature of love and of social bonds associated with them (which partially overlaps with Blood), and the core nature of Reality, Truth, and the Aspects which relate to them. Given this nature for Heart, his deepening connection with it would naturally cause him to tend toward a wider understanding of the world around them-- and specifically, the Narrative. Given his awakened awareness of this, it is logical for him to then become jaded concerning free will, and likewise, given his particular Classpect (Prince of Heart), it is natural for him to attempt to use his heightened capacities to interface and tinker with the story. The fact that his Class, which would traditionally be interpreted as a Destroyer, can be used to subvert its aspect (read: transforming the way it develops by partial destruction in the same way that a gardener pruning a plant manipulates the development of the plant in their care) can be evidenced in numerous ways. Most prominently: Dirk destroyed Caliborn’s core identity as Caliborn by fusing his soul with three others, thus forming Lord English; Brain Ghost!Dirk attempted to destroy Aranea’s identity as a living soul, not by fully rending her spirit, but by removing it from its place in contact with the Ring of Life; finally, Dirk-as-Bro radically altered Dave’s identity over the course of his lifetime, but most clearly and impactfully via the rending of his katana and the scratching of his shirt’s disk (which were both highly symbolic of Dave’s soul, if the fact that the Scratch taking place on just such a disk or his sword[s] later being able to transform from broken to whole via time magic [also an expression of Dave’s soul, and its resilience+destined transformation] didn’t clue you in). To the point: It is something of a wonder that Dirk has not yet begun to realize his limitations via the constraints that his manipulation of Narrative have placed upon them. My suspicion is that while his interface with Rose(? the way the story presents the aftermath is confusing, considering her continued seeming consciousness+own thoughts) may have increased his capacity to See Light, depending on how precisely it works, he has (as of yet) not such command over relevance and agency as he’d like us to believe. Furthermore, he is still not quite at the point that he has fully realized his understanding of Heart, either. The fact that he is questioning Free Will certainly shows that he is on the brink of an epiphany, but he seems to have become a bit lost in the reeds, as it were. Many characters have fallen at this point because they have attempted to egotistically promote their own will and desire to the subversion of others and the needs of the wider world. Aranea and Vriska come to mind, but also Lord English, assuming that he has indeed perished as the Narration would have us believe. This is a natural part of Fate, and I am quite certain that if Dirk remains on this path, he will fall afoul of that same Just end. Even if he does have the capacity to control the influence of one of the four Aspects which seem to deal most with Fate/ (which are Time [for obvious reasons of timing and timeline mechanics {including the Scratch}], Light [via Relevance, Canonicity, Luck, coherence, and Necessity], Heart [with regards to Classpects and their relation to key world interactions/expressions of self, entangling of individuals with one another, and through the reflections of Self across timelines {see Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff persisting on the Alpha Kids’ side of the Scratch, for example}], and DOOM [via most of what the aspect has to offer: rules, inevitability, factors {especially disasters} outside of one’s control, et cetera]), this does not mean that Dirk truthfully has wider control over Fate, generally, nor does it mean that he can avoid the consequences to his actions. I should also at this point randomly insert a statement suggesting that the other 8 Aspects can be split into two camps: Choice/Freedom --- Mind, Hope, Breath, Life and Mixed/Paradoxical --- Space, Void, Blood, and Rage The former of these two categorizations should be mostly obvious: Mind represents personal choice (both in the way you present yourself, and in your course of actions), Hope represents belief transcending the mundane and Possibility beyond the restrictions of what should be Real and/or opportunities beyond what would seemingly be available to you given the constraints that present themselves; Breath is all about freedom from constraints (up to and including the constraints of physical being) and the ability to fly off in various directions (often beyond the expected/normally available paths); and finally, Life, being the antithesis of DOOM, allows for the breaking of rules (see the sugary explosion of rulebreaking that was Trickster Mode) and the extension of possibility beyond what would be something’s inevitable end (healing, revival, prototyping, et cetera). As for the latter set: Space has a associations with birth, potentiality, and the breaking of barriers, but Space itself is as much a curse as a boon-- yes, it does allow for the interaction of beings with the physicality of the world, and it allows for the continuation of life; yet Homestuck is a Gnostic text, and that means that one must also take Space to be one of the principle forces which constrains action by allowing the defining and regulating of the world; and it imposes corruption upon things by allowing for a stage wherein the Aspects can mix and form more complex concepts. (Mind you, this is of course quite important for human life, and those of us who live in the material world could argue that it is therefore a “good”, from our perspective. Nonetheless, that fact-- that it enables such “corruption” demonstrates in and of itself that this belongs in a “mixed” category.) Void is a bit simpler: It is the Aspect of the unknowable, uncertain, and so on; but most importantly, these barriers which tend toward the production of impossibility do at the same time hide a very important flip-side of the coin --- that is, Void also presides over imagination, which is the force which brings forth possibility from fantasy and drags ideas into physical reality. As such, this slippery element of existence very clearly exists in a liminal state worthy of this group. Blood’s binding capacity ties one to the physical world, but it simultaneously entrenches one in the subtleties of social existence, which is above/beyond the bestial sort of being that Blood’s carnal title would suggest. Furthermore, while blood is by its nature a binding, restrictive force, it is one which allows for one to be given purpose. Binding yourself to a group of friends to cooperate with one another and find higher purpose is at the very heart of what Homestuck is. This allows for greater possibilities than what would be able to be accomplished alone-- and this is the nature of many (perhaps most) contracts and bonds that can/should be made: they allow for the formation of restrictions, but those are in exchange for other benefits. This is why Karkat would make a great leader: Blood is the Aspect that is closest to the Social Contract which underlies political life. A player who deeply relates to/embodies this Aspect in a well-fulfilled manner therefore is a natural fit for political power. Rage: ... Don’t even get me started with Rage. I’m a Capricorn and I don’t understand that nonsense. It narrows your mind, blocks out your thoughts, and skews your brain. Despite the fact that it should be the Aspect that focuses you and makes sure your head doesn’t hang out in the clouds all the fricking time, it’s like banging your head on a cinder block every single time you try to wrap your thoughts around it. Don’t bother with considering such double-edged Tragi-Comic garbage Aspect. Just... waste your time and focus your thoughts on something else. Now what the heck was I talking about...?

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Theory #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #Homestuck Aspects

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

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The Dark Side of Viral Stories Meant to “Restore Your Faith in Humanity”

https://fashion-trendin.com/the-dark-side-of-viral-stories-meant-to-restore-your-faith-in-humanity/

The Dark Side of Viral Stories Meant to “Restore Your Faith in Humanity”

rom the dancing Eid boy, to photos documenting the growth of Fiona the hippo, to dogs rejoicing at their owners returning from war, wholesome memes are supposed to be a source of guilt-free pleasure. It makes sense that your average social media user would develop an appetite for “pure” content in the era of multi-level irony, fake news and alt-right trolling; it’s a pleasant palette-cleanser. And it can feel inspiring to read that specific genre of viral news story in which people overcome extraordinary odds or extend random acts of kindness to their fellow human beings. (Eli Pariser built an entire business model around demand for this content when he founded Upworthy.)

Like many others, I was moved by the recent story of Tasia, the Walmart cashier who took time out of her lunch break to give Angela, a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy, a manicure after she was turned away from a nail bar. It was an act of unsolicited kindness that granted a woman the dignity she deserved — but it was one fueled by injustice on the part of a world that likely has and will continue to exclude Angela on the grounds of her ability. Tasia rightfully called out Da Vi Nails in a Facebook post for denying Angela service, asserting that she has the right to the same beauty treatments and pampering experiences as everybody else, especially considering disabled people spend so much of their lives being infantilized or dehumanised.

Tasia and Angela’s story is just one example of a wider trend. Look closely at the touching true life stories which spread across social media and you’ll find that, while they are presented as positive, they actually reveal some pretty ugly truths. Take the video of the Alabama teacher who cried tears of joy when she was gifted a car by the mother of one of her students after years of taking the bus to work. Courtney Adelaye, the parent in question, is the CEO of a successful hair care product company. Of all the coverage of this story online, few outlets if any addressed the fact that teachers are grossly underpaid, and not all of them are lucky enough to have the child of a generous business owner in their class.

Then there is the story of Walter Carr, who walked for almost 20 miles to his first day of work at a moving company, embarking on the eight-hour journey at midnight, walking beside busy highways and encountering stray dogs along the way. He was aided by police officers who drove him some of the way and was, in the end, rewarded with a car. Jenny Lamey, the customer whose house he walked all night to reach, started a GoFundMe to help Carr with his transport troubles, and raised more than $44,000. Of his ordeal, she said: “I think God helped him through.” It is far more likely he was motivated by sheer economic desperation.

It is understandable that The Washington Post and other news outlets would latch onto Carr’s extraordinary story, but it is also necessary to examine the structural problems that forced him to take such drastic action, including a lack of public transportation and a dearth of jobs with sufficient pay in his local area. We’re applauding the generosity and self-sacrifice of ordinary people like Lamey and Adelaye instead of holding the institutions at fault accountable.

Another warm-and-fuzzy news story details how a pregnant woman was “very humbled” when her co-workers donated their vacation days so she could spend more time with her new baby. The federal government gives workers the option to voluntarily transfer their paid leave days to another person — a particularly precious baby shower gift, considering the average worker in the U.S. can only expect ten days of paid leave per year, and maternity leave is not mandated. As an outsider, this is bizarre to me. Here in the UK, 28 days of paid leave per year is considered the baseline, and maternity pay is a statutory right.

What many of these “heartwarming” tales have in common is a working culture which places inordinate pressure on individuals

What many of these “heartwarming” tales have in common is a working culture which places inordinate pressure on individuals, coupled with a failure on the part of organizations to pay a living wage and offer sufficient parental or sick leave (not to mention a broader lack of transport infrastructure) which make it essentially impossible for workers to meet these demands without the assistance of a benevolent interloper.

According to Esquire’s Joanna Rothkopf, we love these viral moments because “they’re rare stories of compassion—because we see someone crying with joy, for once, and we cry, too… But they’re also inherently stories of a collective failure to make sure Americans have easy access to transportation and healthcare and maternity leave. They’re stories of how we neglect, and then happily weep when that neglect is temporarily sated.”

Another heartstring-tugging sub-genre of this phenomenon involves communities coming together to crowdfund an individual’s healthcare bill. This was touched on in an episode of Queer Eye’s second season; makeover recipient Skyler Jay, a trans man, had successfully crowdfunded his top surgery but still owed thousands of dollars in additional unexpected medical bills. This was swiftly glossed over in the episode, perhaps unsurprisingly; Queer Eye is wonderful in its focus on empathy and human connection, but it is also essentially a reality show about consumerism-as-self-care, and acknowledging that Skyler’s life remained full of financial obstacles at the end of the week-long shoot would have made for a less tidy, TV-friendly narrative.

Again, as somebody who is fortunate enough to live in a country with a National Health Service (albeit one which is woefully under-resourced by our own government), it makes me uncomfortable to think of somebody’s access to healthcare depending on the efficacy of their GoFundMe campaign, with the burden falling to marginalized people to prove that they are “worthy” of strangers’ generosity.

It’s understandable to seek out the positive in a negative situation, but to go “aww” at random acts of kindness without remaining critical of the social problems which necessitate them is to be willfully naïve. When a media outlet catches wind of a noble oppressed person being rewarded for their hardship, it will likely skew the story in the manner most likely to evoke an emotional response and therefore make it more shareable. I worry that the popularity of poverty-related stories which have been repackaged as fluffy human-interest pieces is damaging our collective ability to discern propaganda from real news in our feeds.

The government can feel free to make all the funding cuts it wants if there is a popular delusion that good old regular folks will step in to pick up the slack.

This trend also helps to perpetuate disturbing new social norms, such as relying on the kindness of strangers in lieu of any institutional support. The government can feel free to make all the funding cuts it wants if there is a popular delusion that good old regular folks will step in to pick up the slack. No need to invest in transportation infrastructure when workers can just walk 20 miles to “earn” a car — and why would you want socialized medicine when you can just ask random people online to cough up the money you need to cover exorbitant healthcare expenses?

When media outlets give these people the puff-piece treatment, they often fail to illuminate that such instances represent the tip of the poverty iceberg. What if you don’t have the kind of inspirational story that would make a great Hallmark Channel movie? What if you’re just one of the many ordinary people out there who’s struggling to make ends meet every single day without the help of a generous fundraising campaign? For every Walter Carr, there are countless people whose toil and suffering doesn’t go viral, who aren’t rewarded with a new car or financial assistance.

Today, as I write this, media outlets are praising school employees for donating their sick days so that a teacher who is battling cancer can attend chemotherapy. The story is getting the usual comments like “this just restored my faith in humanity” and “people are awesome.” And it’s true; every time an ordinary person goes above and beyond to help somebody else, it is worth commending. But they shouldn’t have to. We can’t rely on chance encounters or altruistic co-workers to help us work around fundamental institutional problems. We need solutions, not Band-Aids with smiley face on them.

Philip Ellis is a freelance writer and journalist from the U.K. You can follow him on Twitter @Philip_Ellis

Photo by Susan Wood via Getty Images.

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victoryliononline · 7 years

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South Park Has a Donald Trump Problem

The President Trump maniacs who reside on The_Donald subreddit rejoiced this week in response to some big bulletin about South Park ‘ s upcoming 21 st season. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times , Trey Parker was indicated that he and his co-creator Matt Stone will be laying off the Trump jokes.

” We fell into the same trap that Saturday Night Live fell into, where it was like,’ Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now ,‘” Parker replied.” We’re becoming:’ Tune in to realize what we’re going to say about Trump .’ Matt and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow .” He computed,” We possibly could put up billboards –‘ Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week !’ — and get crazy ratings. But I time don’t care .”

” TREY PARKER AND MATT STONE UNDERSTAND WHAT CNN AND MSM CANT ABOUT TRUMP! South Park to no longer places great importance on Trump in next season and create real humor again !” one Reddit post ejaculated.” South Park bends the knee on their fake-news-fueled portrait of President Trump ,” another speak. Lots of same posts followed.

This outsized enthusiasm revealed the uncomfortable overlap between the same 18 -3 4-year-old males who facilitate drive South Park ‘ s stellar ratings and those who voted for Trump in 2016. While Parker and Stone may very well find Trump-based irony “boring,” they too likely is understood that if they double-faced down on the anti-Trump drill, they will turn off many of their most loyal viewers.

That may help explain why the establish has never truly made a standing in the five presidential elections that have occurred because it represented its premiere in the summer of 1997. Just before the 2004 poll, South Park aired an occurrence designation” Douche and Turd” that parodied what Parker and Stone seemed to believe was a” lesser of two misfortunes” pick between George W. Bush and John Kerry.

The pair decided to revive this topic for the 2016 poll, as they previewed for The Daily Beast in early September of last year once it became clear that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would be the two major party nominees. Parker laughter that if he remembered Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson had” any risk in hell” of acquiring, he are more likely to vote for him over” the giant douche and the turd sandwich .”

By the time the season 20 premiere aired two weeks later, this point of view had become manifest, with the orange-faced Mr. Garrison — who became the show’s replacement for Trump — representing the” beings douche .” As Mr. Garrison comes increasingly worried that his joke candidacy may shift him into a real presidency, he queries himself,” Why did the Democrat have to elect such a turd sandwich ?”

While South Park certainly showed its Trump as an incapable asshole in acces over his head, it stamped Hillary Clinton as similarly unpalatable. An chapter eventually last season that focused on the general election ponders noted Mr. Garrison straight-up trying to lose the election. But Clinton immediately squandered her occasion at win.

” I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing ,” Garrison said from the dialogue place.” I had no idea I would get this far, but the fact of the matter is, I should not be president, OK? I will fuck this country up beyond reparation. I am a sick, furious little follower. Please, if you care at all about the future of home countries, vote for her. She’s the one who at least has some know. She’s not as bad as you think, I promise. And unlike me, she’s actually capable of rolling this country .”

Hillary’s robot-like response?” My opponent is a liar and he cannot be trusted .”

Still, like the rest of the two countries, Parker and Stone were so sure that Clinton would prevail on Election Day that they had no back-up plan for what they would air on their Wednesday night show if she lost. As they told The Ringer’s Bill Simmons on a podcast earlier this year, they considered” get pitch-black” instead of demonstrating the episode they had planned or starting from scratch with less than 24 hours to find a solution.

” Everyone was so shell-shocked and it was like you didn’t want to see that the world had changed ,” Parker alleged.” You wanted to be like,’ OK, this terrible happening has happened, and[ Trump] has been elected president,[ but] South Park ‘ s still on the breeze. The sun’s still rising. Water’s still clear .’”

The episode they resolved up airing only one light after the election showed the striving of that last-minute rejiggering. It was just as disjointed and unsure about the future as much of the two countries was on November 9th. Parker and Stone clearly did not want to be talking about presidential politics anymore, and it proved.

The show’s most potent Trump parody came in the fall of 2015, long before anyone was making him severely as a presidential challenger. At that spot, they cast him as a vengeful Canadian director who builds a wall to keep Americans out.

That episode — named” Where My Country Gone ?” — contains a brilliantly written oration from a Canadian gentleman, please explain how our own countries pointed up with such a horrendous president.” There were various nominees during the Canadian elections ,” he inaugurated.” One of them was this impetuous asshole who precisely pronounced his psyche. He didn’t really volunteer any mixtures; he just said outrageous occasions. We thought it was funny. Nothing genuinely thought he’d ever become president. It was a laughter !”

” But we just let the parody go on for too long ,” he persisted.” He saved gaining impetu, and by the time we were ready to say, OK, let’s get serious now, who should really become president? he was already being attested into place. We weren’t paying attention … We weren’t paying attention !”

And then they proved a graphic incident of Mr. Garrison literally “fucking” Donald Trump to extinction.

Parker and Stone could not imagine that Trump would still be part of the conversation when they returned the following September and as such had no plans to continue parodying him.” That was pretty hardcore ,” Stone admitted to us of the assault background ahead of season 20.” Yeah, I don’t know what else we could do ,” Parker added.

Now, with Trump in the White House, they are faced with the same quandary over again. Despite Parker’s recent comments, many viewers will still tune in to the premiere this fall to see how the evidence commentaries on Trump’s first nine months in office. Yet just as “theyre using” 2004′ s Team America: World Police to skewer Hollywood liberals like Sean Penn and Matt Damon, it’s easier to dream them get after the Women’s March and Trump’s CNN connoisseurs than it is to see them targeting the president immediately.

While late-night multitudes like Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee and Stephen Colbert ought to have targeted and strong in their slapstick about the Trump administration, what they are doing on a nightly and weekly basis isn’t really satire. As Parker mentioned, Saturday Night Live ‘ s practise of simply recreating the dumbest happening Trump did that week has started to grow stale. Arguably, only Comedy Central’s The President Show , which has been surprisingly strong in its initial operate of episodes, was very successful at hammering the true absurdity of Donald Trump “the mens”.

Matt Stone summing-up up the essential points Trump dilemma better in that same podcast interview with Bill Simmons.” If I throw off the principal and the principal snaps me off back, that’s really funny, but I actually don’t know where to extend from there, you know what I signify ?” he told.” I moon him and he moons me back. If he moons first,[ it’s] like,’ Oh fuck, that chap shouldn’t be the principal .’”

In the end, The_Donald redditors have good reason to celebrate. Trump is not simply won the presidency, he managed to troll two of this century’s two greatest trolls into submission. When the president is boasting about grabbing “pussy” and complaining about fake cruel “face-lifts,” what more can a group of curse-happy Colorado fourth graders say about him?

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include videos on the making of Raw Data & the surprise debut of Scanner Sombre, plus the history of seminal NES emulator NESticle.

A quick and early newsletter this week, since we're in Texas for a few days visiting friends game-centric & non game-centric - among them Venus Patrol/ex-IGF supremo Brandon Boyer (& world's cutest megadog Scout), as well as Gamasutra publisher/EIC Kris Graft.

One thing I did find interesting from the links I still managed to excavate, though - the recent GDC video linked below about the making of VR standout Raw Data has a fairly high dislike-to-like ratio compared to other GDC videos (more dislikes than normal).

Why? Well, partly because the game dared to hit Early Access at $40 USD with a fairly linear story, by the look of it. If the hope was that VR would ensnare the 'core gamer', I'm starting to wonder whether VR experiences are even core gamer-compatible in terms of narrative, linearity & replayability. Which would be a pretty big stumbling block, if true... Anyhow, until next time?

- Simon, curator.]

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The future of dialogue in games (Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer) "Getting to discover the politics and personalities of a new location should feel like a reward, but the same formulaic text dump from city to city can make you feel awfully weary. Being NPCsplained at with screeds of exposition and feeling you’re taking little meaningful part in it all, game dialogue can make you want to run back into the hills."

[Game] Story - What Is It Good For? (Thomas Grip / Gamasutra Blogs) "This "go write a book instead" attitude isn't new. One of my favorite articles on the subject is Jesper Juul's "Games Telling Stories?". Interestingly, I pretty much agree with all of the points that Juul raises, but reject most of his conclusions. I think that video games are very well suited for telling stories and that there is no inherent conflict. [SIMON'S NOTE: another response to that Bogost article, of course!]"

Early Access Lessons From Raw Data (Chris Hewish & Mike McTyre / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 VRDC at GDC session, Survios' Chris Hewish and Mike McTyre break down the technological and artistic challenges, insights, and decisions that continue to influence and evolve the development of Raw Data and helped it climb the Steam charts while still in Early Access. "

When Fans Take Their Love For Twitch Streamers Too Far (Cecilia D'Anastasio / Kotaku) "It was one in the morning when the Twitch streamer Ellohime heard a knock at his front door. He had been grinding away at a PC game that night in December 2015 while his infant daughter and fiancée slept. His 22-year-old brother was crashing in the central Florida home, too, and it wasn’t unheard of for him to invite friends over at odd hours. Ellohime left his desk and went downstairs to the door."

Analysis: 'Scanner Sombre' (Errant Signal / YouTube) "Scanner Sombre is the latest game by Introversion Software, the team that brought you Uplink, Darwinia, DEFCON, and Prison Architect. It's definitely pretty, but what if anything is going on beneath the surface?"

Inside Marvel vs Capcom Infinite: an in-depth interview about accessibility, combos, ditching cross-platform play and sweat equity (Alex Donaldson / VG247) "I sat down with producer Mike Evans and associate producer Peter ‘combofiend’ Rosas to talk about these challenges and chat about Infinite’s gameplay systems in-depth. Rosas in particular is a voice that carries some weight with the fans – he’s a community hire of Capcom’s, and is famous in the fighting game tournament world for performing one of the greatest fighting game comebacks of all time with a lone, vulnerable Spencer in MVC3. He knows his Marvel. Here’s our chat."

Epic, near-EVE-worthy troll sabotages Elite: Dangerous community event (Lee Hutchinson / Ars Technica) "In the vast simulated galaxy of Elite: Dangerous, a years-old mystery concerning an unknown region of space called the Formidine Rift was poised to take a dramatic leap forward on Saturday. An NPC going by the name of Salomé was preparing for a frantic, fast return to the main inhabited core worlds with information that would advance the mystery’s plot. Eliteplayers could choose to try to escort Salomé to safety, or could try to gun her down."

Gamasutra Plays Playerunknown's Battlegrounds with Brendan Greene (Gamasutra Team / Twitch / YouTube) "The Gamasutra crew sits down with Playerunknown, aka Brendan Greene, to talk about the success of Bluehole's latest game Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. [SIMON'S NOTE: the Gamasutra crew are doing more and more live Twitch chats with devs, & here's a particularly notable recent one - more archived on YouTube here.]"

Tumbleseed and the obscure mechanical arcade machine that inspired it (Andrew Webster / Verge) "It never went on to become a huge hit, but for game designer Greg Wohlwend, Ice Cold Beer proved inspirational. So much so that he, along with a small team, set about taking the core mechanic and expanding on it for the new video game Tumbleseed. “We’ve got to be true to the source material,” says Wohlwend of the development process, “out of love and respect for this awesome game that not a lot of people know about.”"

Boom, Headshot! (Martin Annander / Gamasutra Blogs) "However, let’s not rail against violence. That’s not what this is about. Violence can be thrilling, its narrative exciting, and the skills required to master the gameplay can be quite rewarding to attain. We’ve played first-person shooters for decades for reasons other than murder. [SIMON'S NOTE: from a couple of weeks back, but only just spotted it - a powerful partner to Ste Curran's 'Double Tap' GDC 2017 talk?]"

How the Mixed Reality Game 'Bad News' Brings Towns Like 'Twin Peaks' to Life (Steven T. Wright / Glixel) "We were inside a sprawling exhibition hall at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,where a trio of PhD students from the University of California, Santa Cruz are showing off their project, Bad News – an interactive experience that, much like a play, incorporates aspects of real-world performance."

The Story of NESticle, the Ambitious Emulator That Redefined Retro Gaming (Ernie Smith / Motherboard) "The product of a talented programmer who designed a hit shareware game while he was still in high school, NESticle was so good that everyone looked past the fact its name was basically a dick joke."

In Gacha We Trust: The Appeal of Japanese Free to Play Games (Allen Kwan / Medium) "Richard Garfield recently penned a manifesto on free to play (F2P) games that encourage spending, or what he calls “skinnerware”. While there is perhaps a little bit of irony in the fact that the person responsible for creating one of the bigger “skinnerware” games, Magic the Gathering, writing a manifesto decrying the exploitative nature of these types of games, reading his post made me reflect on the F2P games that I play. [SIMON'S NOTE: this editorial is a little old, but popped up on social media recently & is well worth revisiting!]"

Faithfully updating the art of a classic in Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (Joel Couture / Gamasutra) "Ben Fiquet spent a great deal of time playing the 1989 Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap as a child, wandering around its wondrous worlds. The game made a strong impression on him. These feelings would well up again, years later, when Fiquet found himself working on the recently-released remake, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap."

Rock and Roll Days of StarCraft: a Development Retrospective (StarCraft: Remastered / Blizzard Entertainment) "The year was 1997, and Blizzard art director Samwise Didier’s ’65 Mustang was producing an alarming amount of smoke. The ancient vehicle was held together by little more than duct tape and prayer, and by the time Didier pulled into his garage one sunny Southern California afternoon, it was clear that neither countermeasure would suffice for long."

Interview: The creator of the Conquests adventures on what made them special (GOG.com) "During the steady stream of Quest and Larry games that established [Sierra's] legacy, a couple of less-known but no less-loved titles came along: Conquests of Camelot and Conquests of the Longbow. To celebrate their long-awaited arrival on GOG.com we've approached their creator, Christy Marx, for a chat on what made them so special to her and to so many adventure game fans."

'Hearthstone' Director Ben Brode Talks Surprise Success and Tough Choices (Joshua Calixto / Glixel) "As Hearthstone’s director, Ben Brode has a firm understanding of how much is riding on the game’s complex design. If he and his team tune things to be too random, the competitive scene suffers. Nerf a card too much, and players start to feel like their monetary investments are losing value."

Tom Hall: 5 key design lessons I learned directing Wolfenstein 3D (Jon Irwin / Gamasutra) "Wolfenstein 3D came out exactly 25 years ago, on May 5th, 1992. Nothing was the same after that day. “We knew it was new and special, but we were pretty blown away by the reception,” says Tom Hall, the director and co-designer of the game."

A three-year-old Elite Dangerous mystery is finally unravelling (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer) "Elite Dangerous players have taken a significant step in solving a mystery that has befuddled its most rabid secret-hunters ever since the game came out. The Formidine Rift mystery, as it's known, kicked off back in 2014 with the release of Drew Wagar's novel Elite Reclamation. Since then players have searched for clues in an attempt to solve this mystery. This week, a major discovery was made that suggests a solution is near."

Lessons from Escape Rooms: Designing for the Real World and VR (Laura E. Hall / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 GDC session, escape room designer Laura E. Hall discusses the design fundamentals and structures necessary for creating real-world experiences that offer not only entertainment, but create immersion and transportation for players in order to understand how "physical play" can be a foundation for virtual reality design and beyond. "

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victoryliononline · 7 years

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South Park Has a Donald Trump Problem

” We fell into the same trap that Saturday Night Live fell into, where it was like,’ Dude, we’re just becoming CNN now ,'” Parker replied.” We’re becoming:’ Tune in to realize what we’re going to say about Trump .’ Matt and I hated it but we got stuck in it somehow .” He computed,” We possibly could put up billboards –‘ Look what we’re going to do to Trump next week !’ — and get crazy ratings. But I time don’t care .”

Hillary’s robot-like response?” My opponent is a liar and he cannot be trusted .”

And then they proved a graphic incident of Mr. Garrison literally “fucking” Donald Trump to extinction.

Read more: http :// http://ift.tt/mBKekP why-is-south-park-really-laying-off-trump-in-season-2 1

The post South Park Has a Donald Trump Problem appeared first on Victory Lion.

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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