four posts in one
Grosspost: Yesterday kyrryn and ilyeana's FRAKKING CAT threw up in both a) my shoes and b) my ukulele. It was just water both times, but still, a ukulele? What could possess her to think that this was an awesome barfing spot? So I'm doing the responsible thing and giving my ukulele into freeimprov's custody. I did clean it off first, at least.
OMFGWHATpost: Check out the images in this post from ioianthe and tell me that doesn't look photoshopped. Unfortunately for all of us, Wikipedia says it's real. Never before have I been so glad to live somewhere that freezes solid in the winter, where CRUSTACEANS SIX FEET ACROSS can't go, holy balls.
Seriouspost: Recently I've had several experiences of unwittingly violating the unwritten social norms of an online community and having moderators/community members ream me out for it. No naming names because that's not the point here, but I'll just say it's happened about 4-5 times in the past month. This has really bothered me on a couple of levels. First of all I wonder at what point I became so boorish netiquette-wise because this sort of thing seriously never used to happen to me (in fact these 4-5 callings-out have actually been the first such modly scoldings I have ever experienced in 10 years of being on the Internet) - but then I think about how a) these norms were indeed unwritten (but in some cases inferrable from context at the very least) and b) in my earlier internet/USENET days I used to say things that were much more trollish or inflammatory than the IMO relatively innocuous comments I made in the relevant situations. So I wonder how much of it is me being rude and unthinking, and how much of it is the nature of online interaction changing at least in the communities that I frequent.
There's a part of me that's starting to feel as though internet users are retreating to two separate corners. In one corner we have the group that is currently having its consciousness raised, where careful construction of posts and extremely cautious use of language is key, and where any slip-ups of language use or etiquette (no matter how innocent) are punishable by a firm calling-out and a strict talking-to and a ban in the cases deemed most severe. And in the other corner is a bunch of teenagers and mouthbreathers who just want to point and laugh at tentacle porn and guro and ask each other if they liek mudkips. I wonder how many people online are like me, in the middle of those two extremes. I certainly don't want to offend anybody by being unwittingly racist or transphobic or ableist or hurtful in any other way, and I'm certainly willing to learn how to diminish those tendencies in my speech and writing. But more and more I wonder if those desires are incompatible with my equally strong desires to read SA and be amused by the foolishness of the sites and individuals they dig up, or occasionally describe a fictional character or public figure with a creative torrent of insults, or even to express any strong opinion without first placing an army of disclaimers in front of it. I don't know how much longer I can have it both ways and try to please everyone, as I tend to do. This is not anybody's fault and I certainly don't blame those whose feelings I'm trying not to hurt - no one's saying I have to frame the conversation in these terms except for me - but the minefield is so broad and the way is so perilous, and sometimes it's the things that seem most innocent to me that cause the greatest offense. It's enough to make me understand why so many people on the internet decide not to use it to what I'd consider its fullest potential, and remain in the "longcat is loooooooooooooooooooooong" echo chamber instead - less risk there and less chance to get hurt, as long as you can stay on the right side of Anonymous of course.
And on a sidenote: since when do I care so much anyway?! I think back to when I was in high school and much of college and how I literally did not give a good goddamn what anybody thought of me. I lived my life for me and for those closest to me, and anybody who might disapprove got told where they could shove it. These days, what other people think of me is a near-constant preoccupation. It can be anything from a thought as cliche as my weight or how my clothes/hair looks, to whether the people in the audience at my gig think I'm behaving like a rock star or just a tool, or whether I'm offending my friends who don't share my religion if I speak favorably or even neutrally about things I know their religion (or lack thereof) disapproves of, or if the gaming story I'm telling is actually not funny and just revealing my latent racism/homophobia/whatever, or if that kind of curt response my friend gave me means that the quip I just made offended her somehow and she's just too polite to mention that it did so should I ask whether it did or would that be weird? so maybe I should just stop trying to be witty altogether because almost every sort of humor has the possibility to offend and I don't want to do that, or whether the game I run is perpetuating negative stereotypes of oppressed groups and really what kind of message am I sending by making all those criminals Chinese and even though I know my players don't notice or care don't you think it's my responsibility to make them notice?, and so on. I'm not sure whether this is a bad thing or whether it shows maturity. And again I'm caught between two extremes. "Speak your mind! Don't be a doormat!" everyone says, so I do. And when I've spoken they scowl and say, "No one wants to hear that. It was very rude of you. You should really think before you speak." And I try to do better but it's never better so I just stop, and then they ask me why I don't speak up when I should and it begins all over again...I really need to work on this shit don't I?
Sidenote to the sidenote: Another thing I'm thinking about a lot is how anybody enjoys media and entertainment once their consciousness has been raised regarding various -isms. I look at things I used to enjoy now and all I see is the stuff that's problematic instead of the stuff that I really do enjoy about them. And if I don't see something problematic that someone else points out, it makes me upset because I wasn't able to see the problematic thing. Seeing as how it's pretty much impossible in our culture to find any sort of entertainment that isn't an unwitting product of that same sort of ick, the only solution short of giving up all entertainment altogether (which I am not prepared to do) is to learn how to shut the seeing-isms-o-meter off and just enjoy what I can, when I can. But then I feel bad about needing to shut that off and blah. I think I am probably just feeling sorry for myself. So I could really do for some posts on my friends list that are just all squee and capslock all the time about fandoms I enjoy so that I can remember how to do that again. If you've read this far, a) you deserve a medal, and b) you now have your marching orders. For example, if someone could make me happy and squeeful about, say, Star Trek again, I'd be grateful. (I'd ask for Supernatural but I think that's a tall order for anyone!)
Anyway, videogamepost: As I mentioned before, I beat Mass Effect on Saturday and I absolutely loved the game from beginning to end. Female Shepard, Soldier/Shock Trooper, mostly Paragon with occasional attacks of punching reporters, running over space monkeys (and Wrex said "Good one" ahahahahaha awesome), acting like a dick to the council but then saving them in the end, and shooting colonists (they got in my way and I had no grenades okay? and then the dude made me feel bad about it too). I am so grateful to kleenestar for giving it to me way back when and I really hope she is still reading LJ so she sees this. Actually this reminds me that I should email her too. 'Scuse me.
Okay now I'm back. My thoughts on Mass Effect, let me show you them. I've posted a bit about this before so I'll endeavor not to repeat myself. For the most part I seem to agree with general consensus on this game in the sense that I thought the universe and storyline were great (even if they did steal from every bit of classic SF under the sun!), but the sidequests didn't have enough variety and driving the Mako was exceptionally tedious. And if I never ride another elevator it will be too soon. Yadda yadda, tons of people have been over this so I won't belabor the point.
That said, Mass Effect had one of the most truly satisfying endings I have every experienced in a video game. Sure, the door is wide open for the inevitable sequel (which I will gladly play!), but all the most important plot points were resolved and resolved well with a great sense of emotional closure. What's more, there were some great twists along the way, such as which party member you sacrifice on Virmire (correct answer: Ashley the space racist, yes I saved Carth, what of it), and the final confrontation/conversation with Saren. I think my thought process there was like, "yeah whatever, bought all this Persuade, might as well use it, not like he's gonna just lie down and let cop out of this battle or anything though - HOLY SHIT HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT." I was not expecting that in the slightest and it was awesome.
I was also astonished that this was a Bioware game and none of the primary NPCs got on my nerves! I particularly liked both Wrex and Garrus and I really enjoyed doing their sidequests and conversing with them - I just wish the conversation trees hadn't dead-ended halfway into the game, I would have liked to talk more with them! As mentioned before I pursued the Liara romance even though I thought the way it was presented was kind of juvenile - though the relationship and its development was handled fairly tastefully, the asari as a whole just seem like something a teenage boy would have dreamed up. Unsurprisingly the vaunted cut scene was not nearly as explicit as it was made out (hurrrrrrrrr) to be, though I must admit the whole thing was a little embarrassing. (Though probably part of that is because as the scene was starting I thought, "Wow, this would be really hard to explain if anybody walked in right now," and at that exact moment dayzdark came home. So of course the only thing I could say to him then was "Welcome home! You're just in time for gay sex.") Overall I thought the whole thing was a slight step back for Bioware in terms of their depiction of non-heterosexual characters - Jade Empire did a much better job of giving the player a variety of (and an almost equal number of!) straight and gay relationship plot options and treating them more or less respectfully and equally - though even that game had its problems. Though I guess in a strange way it's nice that the "reward" for the f/f relationship is as explicit as the one for the m/f relationships - in Jade Empire you only got a kiss for the straight relationships, though I guess it's something to at least have some freedom with your character.
Holy crap this entry got long so I think I'll stop there for now. Anyway, trust me that Mass Effect is awesome and that you should totally play it. Hell I may actually play it again once eustacio and Noel have had their chance...
OMFGWHATpost: Check out the images in this post from ioianthe and tell me that doesn't look photoshopped. Unfortunately for all of us, Wikipedia says it's real. Never before have I been so glad to live somewhere that freezes solid in the winter, where CRUSTACEANS SIX FEET ACROSS can't go, holy balls.
Seriouspost: Recently I've had several experiences of unwittingly violating the unwritten social norms of an online community and having moderators/community members ream me out for it. No naming names because that's not the point here, but I'll just say it's happened about 4-5 times in the past month. This has really bothered me on a couple of levels. First of all I wonder at what point I became so boorish netiquette-wise because this sort of thing seriously never used to happen to me (in fact these 4-5 callings-out have actually been the first such modly scoldings I have ever experienced in 10 years of being on the Internet) - but then I think about how a) these norms were indeed unwritten (but in some cases inferrable from context at the very least) and b) in my earlier internet/USENET days I used to say things that were much more trollish or inflammatory than the IMO relatively innocuous comments I made in the relevant situations. So I wonder how much of it is me being rude and unthinking, and how much of it is the nature of online interaction changing at least in the communities that I frequent.
There's a part of me that's starting to feel as though internet users are retreating to two separate corners. In one corner we have the group that is currently having its consciousness raised, where careful construction of posts and extremely cautious use of language is key, and where any slip-ups of language use or etiquette (no matter how innocent) are punishable by a firm calling-out and a strict talking-to and a ban in the cases deemed most severe. And in the other corner is a bunch of teenagers and mouthbreathers who just want to point and laugh at tentacle porn and guro and ask each other if they liek mudkips. I wonder how many people online are like me, in the middle of those two extremes. I certainly don't want to offend anybody by being unwittingly racist or transphobic or ableist or hurtful in any other way, and I'm certainly willing to learn how to diminish those tendencies in my speech and writing. But more and more I wonder if those desires are incompatible with my equally strong desires to read SA and be amused by the foolishness of the sites and individuals they dig up, or occasionally describe a fictional character or public figure with a creative torrent of insults, or even to express any strong opinion without first placing an army of disclaimers in front of it. I don't know how much longer I can have it both ways and try to please everyone, as I tend to do. This is not anybody's fault and I certainly don't blame those whose feelings I'm trying not to hurt - no one's saying I have to frame the conversation in these terms except for me - but the minefield is so broad and the way is so perilous, and sometimes it's the things that seem most innocent to me that cause the greatest offense. It's enough to make me understand why so many people on the internet decide not to use it to what I'd consider its fullest potential, and remain in the "longcat is loooooooooooooooooooooong" echo chamber instead - less risk there and less chance to get hurt, as long as you can stay on the right side of Anonymous of course.
And on a sidenote: since when do I care so much anyway?! I think back to when I was in high school and much of college and how I literally did not give a good goddamn what anybody thought of me. I lived my life for me and for those closest to me, and anybody who might disapprove got told where they could shove it. These days, what other people think of me is a near-constant preoccupation. It can be anything from a thought as cliche as my weight or how my clothes/hair looks, to whether the people in the audience at my gig think I'm behaving like a rock star or just a tool, or whether I'm offending my friends who don't share my religion if I speak favorably or even neutrally about things I know their religion (or lack thereof) disapproves of, or if the gaming story I'm telling is actually not funny and just revealing my latent racism/homophobia/whatever, or if that kind of curt response my friend gave me means that the quip I just made offended her somehow and she's just too polite to mention that it did so should I ask whether it did or would that be weird? so maybe I should just stop trying to be witty altogether because almost every sort of humor has the possibility to offend and I don't want to do that, or whether the game I run is perpetuating negative stereotypes of oppressed groups and really what kind of message am I sending by making all those criminals Chinese and even though I know my players don't notice or care don't you think it's my responsibility to make them notice?, and so on. I'm not sure whether this is a bad thing or whether it shows maturity. And again I'm caught between two extremes. "Speak your mind! Don't be a doormat!" everyone says, so I do. And when I've spoken they scowl and say, "No one wants to hear that. It was very rude of you. You should really think before you speak." And I try to do better but it's never better so I just stop, and then they ask me why I don't speak up when I should and it begins all over again...I really need to work on this shit don't I?
Sidenote to the sidenote: Another thing I'm thinking about a lot is how anybody enjoys media and entertainment once their consciousness has been raised regarding various -isms. I look at things I used to enjoy now and all I see is the stuff that's problematic instead of the stuff that I really do enjoy about them. And if I don't see something problematic that someone else points out, it makes me upset because I wasn't able to see the problematic thing. Seeing as how it's pretty much impossible in our culture to find any sort of entertainment that isn't an unwitting product of that same sort of ick, the only solution short of giving up all entertainment altogether (which I am not prepared to do) is to learn how to shut the seeing-isms-o-meter off and just enjoy what I can, when I can. But then I feel bad about needing to shut that off and blah. I think I am probably just feeling sorry for myself. So I could really do for some posts on my friends list that are just all squee and capslock all the time about fandoms I enjoy so that I can remember how to do that again. If you've read this far, a) you deserve a medal, and b) you now have your marching orders. For example, if someone could make me happy and squeeful about, say, Star Trek again, I'd be grateful. (I'd ask for Supernatural but I think that's a tall order for anyone!)
Anyway, videogamepost: As I mentioned before, I beat Mass Effect on Saturday and I absolutely loved the game from beginning to end. Female Shepard, Soldier/Shock Trooper, mostly Paragon with occasional attacks of punching reporters, running over space monkeys (and Wrex said "Good one" ahahahahaha awesome), acting like a dick to the council but then saving them in the end, and shooting colonists (they got in my way and I had no grenades okay? and then the dude made me feel bad about it too). I am so grateful to kleenestar for giving it to me way back when and I really hope she is still reading LJ so she sees this. Actually this reminds me that I should email her too. 'Scuse me.
Okay now I'm back. My thoughts on Mass Effect, let me show you them. I've posted a bit about this before so I'll endeavor not to repeat myself. For the most part I seem to agree with general consensus on this game in the sense that I thought the universe and storyline were great (even if they did steal from every bit of classic SF under the sun!), but the sidequests didn't have enough variety and driving the Mako was exceptionally tedious. And if I never ride another elevator it will be too soon. Yadda yadda, tons of people have been over this so I won't belabor the point.
That said, Mass Effect had one of the most truly satisfying endings I have every experienced in a video game. Sure, the door is wide open for the inevitable sequel (which I will gladly play!), but all the most important plot points were resolved and resolved well with a great sense of emotional closure. What's more, there were some great twists along the way, such as which party member you sacrifice on Virmire (correct answer: Ashley the space racist, yes I saved Carth, what of it), and the final confrontation/conversation with Saren. I think my thought process there was like, "yeah whatever, bought all this Persuade, might as well use it, not like he's gonna just lie down and let cop out of this battle or anything though - HOLY SHIT HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT." I was not expecting that in the slightest and it was awesome.
I was also astonished that this was a Bioware game and none of the primary NPCs got on my nerves! I particularly liked both Wrex and Garrus and I really enjoyed doing their sidequests and conversing with them - I just wish the conversation trees hadn't dead-ended halfway into the game, I would have liked to talk more with them! As mentioned before I pursued the Liara romance even though I thought the way it was presented was kind of juvenile - though the relationship and its development was handled fairly tastefully, the asari as a whole just seem like something a teenage boy would have dreamed up. Unsurprisingly the vaunted cut scene was not nearly as explicit as it was made out (hurrrrrrrrr) to be, though I must admit the whole thing was a little embarrassing. (Though probably part of that is because as the scene was starting I thought, "Wow, this would be really hard to explain if anybody walked in right now," and at that exact moment dayzdark came home. So of course the only thing I could say to him then was "Welcome home! You're just in time for gay sex.") Overall I thought the whole thing was a slight step back for Bioware in terms of their depiction of non-heterosexual characters - Jade Empire did a much better job of giving the player a variety of (and an almost equal number of!) straight and gay relationship plot options and treating them more or less respectfully and equally - though even that game had its problems. Though I guess in a strange way it's nice that the "reward" for the f/f relationship is as explicit as the one for the m/f relationships - in Jade Empire you only got a kiss for the straight relationships, though I guess it's something to at least have some freedom with your character.
Holy crap this entry got long so I think I'll stop there for now. Anyway, trust me that Mass Effect is awesome and that you should totally play it. Hell I may actually play it again once eustacio and Noel have had their chance...