djpretzel

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What did you think? I thought it was dope...

While I confess to initially starting The Way of Kings because of Brandon's name popping up in relation to OC ReMix, and while it took me 200 or so pages to really start getting into, I just finished it and WOW... I'm definitely a big fan now, anxiously awaiting the second book, and it makes it all the cooler that OCR has helped Brandon, in any small way, create these amazing & unforgettable worlds!

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No he's not

Mr. The Bronx Rican uses Sony Vegas.

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STEVO BORTZ IS GREAT PEOPLE. Happy birthday, man

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Right well the semantic meaning of any "-ist" is normally asserting the superiority of something, and not the equality. At least that's how it usually works. I think the majority of feminists believe in equal rights, though, and the primary goal of third wave feminism seems to be a meaningful equality of a very concrete, pragmatic nature. That doesn't mean there aren't also those individuals whose identification under the label comes closer to the meaning I articulated above, i.e. primarily as an airing of one-sided grievances, demonizing of men, etc. Personally, if someone describes themselves as a feminist to me, I usually assume they mean the larger, egalitarian movement that I myself identify with and NOT the extremities, and I'm usually (and fortunately) right. Individuals like Anita confuse things a bit because they embed vitriol and hyperbole and ideology inside an otherwise reasonable presentation, which hooks people in without realizing they've blurred their own compass a bit... (for better or worse)

If this were simply an issue of awareness and nothing more, Anita would be doing a superlative job getting the message out - can't argue on that point at all, because as Pascal mentioned, she's been very effective in reaching & energizing people. That *is* definitely important, don't get me wrong, but I think this is really an issue of BOTH awareness AND persuasion, and that failing to do the latter - or even doing more harm than good and pushing people further into their cultural trenches - seems insufficient, even if you're reaching a lot of eyes...

So instead of pulling gamers together to rally around what should be a relatively agreeable goal - more variety & depth for female characters in games - you're saying her work is having a splintering, polarizing effect? You see what I did there...

Sex sells... not necessarily relevant to the damsel-in-distress trope (but not unrelated, either) is the notion she articulates about "male power fantasies"... She's trying to argue against art that caters to them on any level, whereas I think the responsible thing to do is calibrate them and offer plentiful counterexamples. If you think "male power fantasies" are completely cultural and can be sanitized out of the human consciousness by way of art/culture/society, well then... you agree with her. If you think that sex sells for a number of reasons, not all of them harmful, and that it's more important to foster a general consciousness than it is to set up a litmus test for whether something is sexist or not (with no allowance for matters-of-degree), well then... you agree with me. And I agree with you. Friends and pies. As an added bonus, my way jives better with Capitalism, which happens to be the economy du jour...

Gotcha. Yeah, this is actually the opposite of what I would view as meaningful progress, in some sense. Meaningful progress to me would be games that actually consider these issues at the outset, and bake them into the design. This, instead, is a piece of minor surgery emanating from what we can only hope was actually a sense of complete and utter agreement, as opposed to concern over the fallout of NOT taking action to address the complaint, i.e. made under duress... or simply taking the path of least resistance, which electricity - and human beings - have been known to do. I can't be sure, and I don't presume to know, but the model/pattern of that dynamic would probably be vulnerable to it occurring. Maybe that's just my glass-half-empty view of things... such a pessimist... You could also argue that Anita was simply very persuasive and that Derek made a decision informed entirely by reasonable consideration of her arguments, which he found to be sound, thus resulting in a decision to remove a callous and subconsciously-poisoning artifact of patriarchy that should be entirely forgotten about, justifying its objection and removal in all instances. I dunno, that second one doesn't sound a little scary to anyone? Just me? Okay... I guess my favorite version is this: He made a game he thought was cool, she took offense at the damsel, he checked out her videos, it seemed like she had a point, she had a lot of people "on her side," and he decided since it wasn't a huge deal to him to just make the change. I guess I think this version's fine; everyone's exercising free will, more or less autonomous of external forces... I personally wouldn't have been persuaded by her arguments if it were my game, but I can't fault someone for having a different take on things. Hopefully, other game developers might feel less compelled by any one argument from any one group, and we'll still end up with a diverse variety of games with varying influences, as opposed to games crafted to universally avoid offense.

Awesome show, best yet, plentiful moments of serious asskickery! Great photo, too.

Thanks, that's a very helpful explanation with an excellent example. I wasn't aware he was completely in agreement that the damsel was hurtful and that its inclusion was definitely a mistake. In that case, he's not respectfully disagreeing with her at all, he's respectfully agreeing with her, right? Interesting that it wasn't framed that way... am I missing something?

Interesting recap. I think he's being very reasonable and respectful. My only "two cents" would be that she herself, in her videos, is not being particularly respectful when she says things like: I don't view that quote as respectful, or particularly deserving of respect itself, because it fails to distinguish between conscious "clinging" as opposed to unconscious instinct (or cultural conditioning), fails to distinguish between wanting to protect women you love as opposed to feeling that ALL women need to be protected, and fails to distinguish between stereotypes about women being weaker as opposed to fears about men being more violent. It's not the type of statement that earns my respect, but it is still nevertheless important to be respectful & civil by default. Some people feel like common courtesy will give off the appearance of agreement or endorsement, and I'm glad Derek doesn't fall into that trap. Nevertheless, the Storify recap does vaguely imply that no reasonable critiques of Anita's stances even exist, as NJ pointed out.The most interesting quote to me was: Because I'm not entirely sure what to make of it... I strongly identify with the first half; the second half kinda hinges on the concept of "no reason"... when does that even apply, in art? That would be the question... when does any one artistic decision or ingredient unilaterally lack "reason"? And the implication is that "hurting people" without reason (arbitrarily) is "dumb," but if you've actually GOT a reason, then it's... not as dumb? It seems like equivocation & a bit of pandering to both sides, perhaps, designed to make everyone happy as long as they don't pick it apart? In which case, bravo from a PR perspective - a very politically savvy way to sidestep things.

This is a perplexing statement, because MOST of her videos involve identifying the tropes themselves. Plenty of folk have pointed out the instances where she's ignoring context or getting the facts wrong here and there, but in many cases I'd agree that she's correctly identifying the trope. Her "arguments" beyond that are formed of one or two sentences of outdated feminist dogma... I've done a quote-for-quote analysis earlier in the thread and pointed out how these statements are flawed. At this juncture, I'd even contend that I've put more effort & thought into my responses here than she has into the specific parts of her videos that DO form something resembling an argument... that's like 5% of each video, at most. In other words, since her "argument" appears to consist of a few polarizing, oversimplifying quotes peppered throughout identification of the tropes, I'm confused why you think any meaningful counterargument has SO much more onus to get things right, and also why you feel you haven't seen one. I don't wanna pat my own back, but I kinda thought that's what I've been doing, and I've even taken a couple occasions to provide summaries/breakdowns of my counterarguments... Unless, that is, you consider her argument to simply be that certain tropes are overused... I don't think that's what we've been debating, though, so I'm assuming that's not what you're talking about...

I guess it might be controversial, but even if dubstep has sub-genres in and of itself, I still don't consider it an umbrella genre the way I do hip-hop, jazz, etc. - I view it as decidedly more specific. The overall umbrella genre for dubstep in my mind would be "electronic," although Andy informs me that people are now using "EDM" as a high-level genre that could also have a similar, wider scope. This is what gets tricky about genres... people clearly view them differently, trying to pin them down can cause friction and hurt feelings, words are subjective, they can jump and cross-pollinate across categories, etc. I still think you try, because I still think that talking about music is a lot more convenient when you've actually got words for certain patterns and trends and concepts, but it's also an exercise in appreciating the limitations of those words to facilitate agreeable definitions. Oh, and I still like dubstep, if that wasn't clear when I said it before...

I can see that; I do think some % of her supporters may be motivated by an animus for men, or might view gender equality from the (in my opinion) unreasonable perspective of 50-50 compositional parity for every single profession, or support actual censorship of sexual objectification, or believe in the most extreme, conspiratorial version of patriarchy, etc. - you can "suppose" some reasonable suspicions for her supporters as well, can you not? Although admittedly, it wasn't abundantly clear from the initial kickstarter itself just how flagrant & unreasonable some of the ideology would be... I would have expected more of her initial supporters to be disappointed by the approach she's taking than seems to be the case, but I feel like people can't (or don't want to) separate supporting her specific arguments from supporting the overall notion of getting better & varied representation for female characters in games. Ah, okay, you basically addressed my question above. And thanks... I've certainly been trying.

Well, first off... I like it. I confess that I don't usually LOVE it, and I do prefer it in small doses, but it seems pretty cool to me. My favorite aspect is that brings synths front and center in a very aggressive way that has previously been reserved more for guitars & vocals. I'm sympathetic to anything that achieves that feat, almost by default... I'm not personally comfortable equating the innovation & impact of what I view as an electronic sub-genre with the watershed musical breakthroughs involved in any of those larger, umbrella genres. That's just me... I do draw a line between sub-genres that primarily revolve around a couple key aspects of rhythm & sound design as compared to larger umbrella genres that, as they came into existence, radically changed music. I do agree though that the "new, too loud" or "the devil's music" knee-jerk reaction is quite similar, and it's definitely still something new & substantial in its own right. While I do think that almost any musical genre has something to offer, I don't think all genres are identically flexible across all characteristics. For example, if you were to quantify "self-similarity" - the tendency of songs in a given genre to strongly resemble each other, I think dubstep would have a relatively high value. This is just one way of looking at things, and a strong counterargument can be posed that it's the variation within a more limited set of parameters that makes all the difference in the world and is even the primary appeal. However, I do think the average human being probably has an easier time remembering & telling songs apart that have more "obvious" distinctions in tempo, vocals, melodic content, etc. This really isn't a value judgment, just an observation. Strongly agreed, of course! I don't know about "worse," as that's a holistic & conclusive label, but there ARE genres that allow for more overall variety, surely... and there are genres that are more specific in their criteria. I think it's rather important to think of umbrella genres differently than sub-genres, as they're really quite distinct in how specifically (or generally) they describe a set of shared characteristics.