brkl

He gets all kind of right wing crazy. I read one of his later works and it's constantly interrupted by rants about how Obama brought on the Apocalypse.

Huh, that's interesting. I had no idea of the timeline. I gave him the benefit of the doubt which evaporated while watching the second video, but apparently I was too rash.

This is a complex issue that ought not be discussed here. I'll just point out I was talking about buying sex. Whedon constructed his fictional world to remove the moral quandaries from buying sex. Your friend's and her clients' situations are pretty rare when it comes to the history of the sex trade.

Isn't that exactly the point... It's not a throw-away detail when it comes to Miranda either. The characters were written by starting with the sexualization and filling in other details later.

I dunno, the video posted by Justin shows he doesn't exactly get what Sarkeesian's videos are about.

I can't play the demo because Steam is too busy. Makes me sad

Dollhouse most obviously, but Firefly has a character whose backstory is constructed entirely to create circumstances in the fiction in which buying sex is not morally suspect but taking part in some noble tradition. Sci-Fi is full of these well-adjusted prostitutes for whom offering sex to timid males is a service provided with a smile, as if turning your body into a commodity is of no consequence.

Those Mass Effect examples made me feel really skeezy when I played the game. I would include all the different ways Joss Wheddon invents to include totally happy and content or brainless prostitutes in his shows.

It would be lovely if the fiction supplied by the game supported such an explanation, which could be as simple as thick clouds that carry something that won't let any scans penetrate. They would need to go into how vegetation survives with thick all-year clouds, but that's just spice. Even so, it wouldn't be as exciting as making a change to the formula instead of keeping as much as possible the same. All that mentioned, I'm still very excited about this game. The sole reason I don't own it yet is finances.

If Civ had no qualities of a simulation, we couldn't relate it to our experience and sense of history at all. As a simulation, it's rather crude but is pretty adept in presenting its take on how history developed. The black map at the start is simulating how little information cultures used to have of the surrounding world. It's also quite good at presenting the unknown frontier as both something scary and dangerous as well as a potential source of bounty and useful information. Having Beyond Earth begin with a black map fails very badly as a simulation and does not relate the players' experience to the experience of a settler of a new planet at all.

GG are not the gaming audience and do not represent anyone apart from themselves. Their numbers are miniscule and they have no influence in terms of which games will sell and which will not. If they had, they wouldn't be so angry. All we really need is protection for their targets. We need it because people haven't really realised how dangerous the Internet can be in this regard, but that's changing. AFAIK Britain made new legislation to control Internet harassment very recently. If law enforcement and companies such as Twitter start taking harassment seriously, much of the harm these movements can inflict will disappear.

Uuugh, that's horrible.

These are fantastic.

I had forgotten the name of that show, so I couldn't rewatch it. Great show. Utterly bonkers.

Allowing people to buy indulgences opens up a huge can of worms. It's been tried and the results weren't great.

I remember when that song first appeared a few years ago I didn't think it was at all realistic that Shia LeBeouf would do any of those things. So naive.

Reboot:

The science centre I worked at had these basketball playing rats. They were awesome and really cute.

That's in line with the numbers given in the link: from around 4000 active GG members up to a maximum of 10,000. Those are small numbers considering the total audience or even Sarkeesian's followers.

GG only grew louder and louder, not more numerous. If they weren't a small group of people they would have trended on Twitter at some point. Their numbers appear larger because of duplicate accounts and such methods, which makes one think there has to be some honest people among so many. If there were, they would have managed to do the things they claim their movement is about at some point, but they never have.

In terms of interpretations I don't think the film left a lot of room for anything other than a straight reading. If I had known more about the film I wouldn't have gone to see it. Difficult to enjoy it after reading about GG for months.

Yup, pretty incredible. I haven't been optimistic enough in years to believe such stories. Would be rather nice to avoid all the death and destruction the coming century will bring, though.

Squinky's tweet is a joke that points out the irony in the position of people harassing women in the game industry. This irony is painful to people who align with the harassers. That does not constitute a problem.

That's not aggression.

Which people?