Obligatory New Years Day Post... 15 Days Late

First and foremost, I want to mention the end of the lifespan of a blog I've read for about five years now, if memory serves me correctly. I believe there will be no more mentioning of the blog Cardiac Outbursts, and I hope it has served my good friend Lexa well. Through my time, I've come to see a blog as not just the self-centered ravings of an egoist (as I once believed), but more the public, and yet somehow private and personal, journal of a person that has the need to express their ideas, ideals, and thoughts to the world, even if the world doesn't read it. Just a shame the blog shut down before I was able to read the final post.

Now, on to the self-centered ravings of this egoist, ha. I had an odd year last year. Not bad, just different. Next to no stress, looking back I spent the whole year in leisure. And you know what? I'm not sure I like it. I got next to nothing accomplished. School? That's expected. Better at guitar? I expect that of myself too. Other than that, I am no more proficient in anything that is of much consequence. I wonder if this is how most office workers feel. In their spare time, not accomplishing much, and in their professional lives just trudging through. I certainly hope that's not what's in store for all of us when we move on to our careers, we'd go insane. I've long believed the majority of my generation has no real drive, dreams, ambitions. I've heard it said that success will only be yours when you want it more than you want to breathe. I, for one, don't know if I want it that badly. There are very few things I do want that much, and success isn't one of them. I wonder if that's a good thing. Wonder if that's what has made this past year feel so empty. If I'm ok with that. And, sometimes, if I'm the only one I know that bothers to think about these things. Surely I must not be, after all, although minds don't think alike they certainly call to each other in such a way that is immensely interesting. Do we seek out other people with similar thinking processes, or do we just discard all others in our minds? What shapes our circle of influence? Our personality certainly, but is that all? Is there some unknown that pulls people together, are we in contact with all those we are in contact with for a reason? I have some ideas, but as with all things I find interesting, no matter what I think about it it still makes an interesting thought to paw at in your mind, or out loud with another mind that also finds these things interesting (or at least will humor you by joining in your desire to suss this out for a short while).

Hm. This post went differently than I had planned. That's ok. Just think about it. I think self-reflection is important. You have to know yourself, and to know yourself you have to think about yourself. Why do you make the decisions you make? Think the thoughts you think? Do the things you do? Or, perhaps more importantly (and on the other side of the coin), why do you NOT do or think certain things? It's ok if you don't answer questions like this at first, but I've found it opens your mind. Leaves you freer to express, and more easygoing and calm when you come across a conflicting situation. Knowing yourself leaves you free to act (or restrain yourself from acting) when life requires an immediate response. Maybe sometime soon I'll reveal how some of that inward thinking shaped me last year, or perhaps I'll keep that to myself for a while yet. I'll go see what I want, a kind of (amusing) consultation with oneself.

This year, I think we must look in to gain a clear view on what we're constantly looking out at. Think. Please.

Paradigm Shift

Argh! Just read this article http://kotaku.com/5868595/nerds-and-male-privilege and it infuriated me, submitted this as a comment (might not even make it past the moderators) so I decided to post it here. Read the article, then this response:

I apologize for the TL;DR-ness, but your article was also quite long, so bear with me:

So while I appreciate the underlying ideas behind this article, I do (and I fully understand that this will cause my argument to become moot in the minds of some others) take offense at certain other points raised. Will I deny that seeing this portrayal of women in the mainstream of games is fine by me? No. Why? Because, wait for it: I am a male. That gender filter you claim has no validity for males is partially true. In the world, most of the time women are put through their gender filter. But you narrowed your scope to the gaming world, and, I believe, to hardcore gamers (or even more specifically, to games with a comic book/anime tie). If we widen the scope of this article to all life, we would be sitting around talking about how the masses assign others attributes based solely on outward appearances, so let's just stick with the gaming world.

Will I “acknowledge that a one-sided (and one-dimensional) portrayal of women is the dominant paradigm in gaming”? Yes. It is the dominant paradigm. We'll cover that later. Before I say what I have to say on that, we have to erase your idea that anything a straight male gamer says is invalid because he is a straight male gamer. According to you, if you are a male, then your argument is invalid because you are a male. What? You fiat that most male gamers are either horny twits or white-knight idolaters (thereby still being horny twits, because they are idolizing this dominant portrayal of women in games). In doing so you have built an iron-clad reason for yourself to not listen to any opposing ideas. This reason is fallacious, but that hasn't stopped many others throughout history from holding similar ideas of different topics.

All gamers, and I do mean all (males, females, and yes, even you who is taking the “side” of the female gamer group) gamers need to approach this with openness to ideas. Does that mean we all have to drop our old ideas? Not necessarily. Does this mean we need to be unbiased? Yes and no. It does us no good if (as you desire) only the male group drops their bias towards this paradigm. Then we lose all ground we might already have, we are walking into battle with no counter-arguments. You also need to drop your bias, and until then we will be locked into this debate until developers stop desiring fast money (fat chance) or female gamers accept the status quo (which, we can agree, is just a little messed up). Now, with that out of the way:

"Women are represented like this because you're a male!" you scream. This is true. And why? Because the developers want to cash in on that. However, you do seem to dismiss franchises that don't objectify the women in it. Dismissing a counter-argument simply because it is a common argument is not a good way to go about debating. You must listen, and must address, otherwise there can be no constructive change.

Now, the point I made above about this being an article about hardcore gamers holds. I know very few female hardcore gamers. Why is that? Because other female gamers I know disagree with the portrayal of women in these games? No. It is because (as far as I have discerned) they quite simply don't enjoy the games. WoW? Starcraft? TRPG's? Gears of war? God of war? Assassin's Creed? Metal Gear? The elder scrolls? Uncharted? Portal? Half Life? Mass Effect? All major money makers, considered to be the huge hits (and aside from portal, all considered to be hardcore games). Is it because of their lack of objectified women? No. Look at Miranda or Liara from Mass Effect, or Chloe from Uncharted. Even the overly-buxom characters in Japanese TRPG's like Disgaea. Shining examples of your point if I ever saw one. Heck, even the female deck hand in ME2 makes herself an object. Is it because of the characters obvious sex appeal that female gamers stay away? I think not. CoD or BF or Halo or CS? Hardcore, but male dominated. Why is that? Most female gamers I know don't find sitting around shooting people over and over fun, and I'm talking about gameplay, not harassment. It is gameplay thatt drives what games are played. If females found the game fun, I believe they'd play the game and just mute the chat, not stay away from games. On your point about the verbal harassment of the female players that do: I agree, that should stop. The “offers for sex, threats of rape, sounds of simulated masturbation or demands that [s]he blow the other players” is rude and offensive, and we as gamers need to be courteous and not do that. Chalk that up to being a dominantly male thing for so long, as well as those men lacking the sense to remember that's a human being on the other end of the headset. Those gamers need some tact and taste, but then again, those are also the insufferable alpha's in real life, not the beta's your article starts off mentioning. As an aside: your girlfriend was “decidedly not nerd curious” and yet you dragged her along to comic book stores? Nice.

Onward to two more examples: Metroid (but the zero suit! Pfft. Not core gameplay, just fanservice). Zelda. But wait, Zelda is all about Link, right? No. The entire point is that Link must go save Zelda (it just so happens in order to do that he must save the world). But wait, isn't it sexist to say that the man must go save the woman in these games? Maybe, if you don't take into account that this story type has been around for ages, and the majority of women are just fine with it when it's not in a game. That oh-so-common knight in shining armor fantasy comes to mind. Accepted as a book or movie but not as a game? That makes no sense. Also to be included in this list are many other RPG's, as well as many of the games listed in other comments here (let's not tread the same ground too much, yeah?). Is all fanservice then inherently wrong? No. Why? Because without fanservice, we wouldn't have good followups to IP's, or most innovation (note: by fanservice I mean all catering to the fanbase, not just the scantily clad females to cater to the male demographic you point out).

Look at the casual gaming market: it has exploded with a multitude of fun games that people of all ages and genders play. Is that because of no blatant objectification of women? No. It is because those games are FUN. I don't know a single person that has played Angry Birds that doesn't like it. Am I saying that hardcore console/pc games aren't fun? To me they're loads of fun. To others? They're not. Why? Personal taste. You're arguing at once a paradigm shift and a thought change, which puts you into a bind. In order for that paradigm shift to be accepted, you need to change the minds that drive the current paradigm. Forcing that change will do nothing. I think, that as long as developers keep making fun games, all demographics will stop caring what women are portrayed as, simply because we game for fun, not to look at scantily-clad women. Will that keep those types of characters out of games? Probably not. It doesn't matter, because as long as it's fun, people will buy it. But riddle me this: if men are so responsible for this idolatry, why do women strive to look like supermodels? Because women idolize that concept of “beauty” or “sex appeal” or whatever you want to call it as well. The entire game market is driven by the fans, who purchase based on what is fun, not based on how many half-naked women are in it. If developers didn't give fans what they wanted, they wouldn't be developing for very long. Developers need to cater to an audience (and then make money to keep themselves alive), and they can't continue to make that money without satisfying that audience. So, how do we change this common (not really, most games cleanly avoid your “pitfall” of objectifying women) objectification thread in video games? By changing the way people think about women? Well that's quite a novel idea. I think, at your arguments core, that's what you're getting at too. However, that change will happen slowly, over time, and it most definitely will not happen by claiming moral superiority (your “my ideals of what gaming should be” and if you disagree you're wrong) on one hand and trying to beat your “opponent” into submission on the other.

♫ It's The Holiday Season ♫

My deepest of apologies for not posting in so long, but you see, my time has been sucked up like jello by Bill Cosby. First it was nanowrimo (which I did... kind of. I didn't finish, but I did write some!), and then it was/is that great killer of social lives... SKYRIM. Still playing it, and Rocksmith, the VGA's, all that jazz. BUT! I'm posting now, so that's all that matters, right?

Anywho, I got this great fountain pen in November, a lamy safari. I loved that pen so much, I spent three days handwriting stuff and changing the way I write just to have it look nice. I say loved because *sniff* I lost it thanksgiving night at my grandmothers house. Now, the reason I bought that specific pen is because I can use my bottled ink with it, and it is relatively cheap so if I lost it it would be NBD, right? Right. Except I only had that pen for three days before it disappeared in a room full of people. I'll have to buy a new one, but I have it on pretty good authority that I'm getting the slightly better model as a Christmas gift, so I'll wait a little bit to see. Once I get my new pen, I'll up a scan of my new (for lack of a better word) font.

On that same thread, I really need to start writing this years Christmas cards, I've got a whole stack and haven't even started -_-

Enjoy this Christmas season! Look forward to another post soon, but right now I'm off to try my hand at making fresh pasta.

Social Norms

So if you remember my last post, I mentioned that I had to paint my toenails because I lost a bet. To be honest, at first I hated it. Now? I don't think it looks that bad. Plus, I still thinks it's awesome that they glow in the dark. Just why exactly is it that it's socially unacceptable for a straight male to wear nail polish unless it's black and they're a rocker/emo? The same could be said for a lot of things, really. I don't want to (doesn't seem comfortable/movement is greatly reduced) but heels used to be worn by men (renaissance era boots and such). Why no more? I hate dress shirts and usually stick to tee's, but they're all the same splatterings of color. Why is it so hard to find good, colorful artwork on a shirt (aside from a threadless one)? Because it doesn't look manly or something? Come on, seriously? If you attribute your manliness to the color clothes you wear, you need a new definition of manliness, stat. Just my random observation of the week there.

Next, ANIPLEX & FUNIMATION, Y U NO MAKE MORE EPISODES OF MY FAVOURITE ANIME'S? (Side note, why does my spelling of favourite show up as incorrect?) Seriously, you end them all after like one season, when the mainstream (and less interesting in my opinion) ones like naruto get 50 bazillion episodes and spinoff's. Shame on you guys.

I had something else to say, but I forgot it. Oh well. Until next time!

Uhhh... Yeah

So, I have a few things to say tonight. I'll go in chronological order, yeah?

First: I lost a bet. Not a huge like 50 bazillion dollar bet, but I had to paint my toenails. Like neon green. And I have to wait for it to chip off. The only cool thing about it is that they glow in the dark. Now, with that out of the way, we can go on to the second thing.

Second: NaNo is coming up, and No matter what it is, I've resolved to write. I'll try not to nitpick too much, because things like that are usually what keep me from writing in the first place. So, NaNo, here I come.

Third: ROCKSMITH. ZOMG, amazingness. I played it for six hours today, then went to a two hour guitar practice, and all I want to do is play even more rocksmith. It is super fun, and lived up to all my expectations. A video game where you actually learn how to play the guitar? WIN. What else? It has free bird. DOUBLE WIN. By the end of the week My fingers will be toast, and I'll still be playing. I love this game. Plus, the mechanic for difficulty progression is really good, and could make even the suckiest person feel like a rockstar. I know I do while I'm playing.

Fourth: My ATH AD-700's. Burn in period is over, and they sound amazing. If there was such a thing as an eargasm, these headphones would be the ones delivering each and every time.

Aaaand I think that's it. I'll keep you posted.

One more thing! I learned how to play Blackbird too (on my own, not with rocksmith). Awesomness.