audaxdreik

We were so aggrieved by the lack of communication that we decided to proceed with our incredibly drastic reaction without communicating to anyone ...

History from someone who moved to the platform early on:

A lot of the early adopters were the queer and trans community, first to leave Twitter after Musk's meddling and most sensitive to the changes he was making. (In this context I don't mean sensitive as in "snowflake", I mean sensitive as in "aware of inevitable changes and resultant catastrophe" - when someone shits in the pool you don't wait wait for the water to turn brown). They took the gross out humor and used it as a ward to keep some of the other elements from following over. Now they defend the term as history.

I don't particularly agree, I understand the basis for it but ugh, it's still gross. I keep advocating for "bleats" which kind of works as "Bluesky tweet" and leans into us all being sheep; something I find cute and take no offense at because it's a toothless insult wielded by deeply unserious people. Alternatively, I think we should've just straight stolen tweet since the trademark or whatever has been abandoned at this point (???). Failing that, I'll probably resort to just calling them posts, there's no point in fighting momentum like this and I imagine it'll probably settle down onto something else once the platform gets over its first wave of serious growing pains ... if it lives that long.

Of course you'll still meet individuals with a wide range of beliefs and I don't think you can boil a complex group down to a simple answer; but yes.

A few years back now it came out that Violent J's daughter was a furry, and like a good dad he supported her and at least tangentially got into the furry community which is very LGBTQ+. This opened up a really weird friendship between the groups, but from what I understand the Juggalos also have a history of being very anti-fascist which also jived with the progressive furries.

While I haven't met many myself, I fully accept the alliance. They're both alternative cultures which can look odd from the outside, but as you pointed out I think they both heavily focus on acceptance, respect, and support. It's a good unifying thread! Juggalos and furries will show you who they are without shame, I trust and respect that.

With the Switch 2 announcement, it's kind of clear that they aren't even trying to be a tech company anymore. While not every last one of their consoles released was a true innovation, it did feel like something that was built into part of their brand. Now we just have the Switch 2 which is mostly what you'd expect with some decent QoL upgrades.

Nintendo is pursuing the walled garden approach. You're barely even buying a console anymore, a lot of this hardware has more or less converged. What you're buying is access to the cultivated ecosystem. Like everything else these days, they entice you in with the big, recognizable brands and hope there's enough else to keep you there. Emulators straight pierce that veil and it's why they went so hard on them.

I'm not criticizing (too heavily) the people that choose to hold on to the franchises they love, but once you step outside and choose alternatives, there's very little to bring you back. Pokemon lost me a few gens ago, honestly not the biggest Zelda fan, and Mario alone won't do it for me. Metroid and Starfox are scattershot ... Personally I'll stick with the Steam Deck and wait for Switch 2 emulation to roll around. And if it doesn't, there are just so many other games to play these days.

This is the book that introduced me to the Chinese Room thought experiment and is the first thing I began to think of when the recent AI trend started to make a splash.

Peter Watts is great and though it's not related to the topic at hand, I cannot recommend Starfish enough. Dark, haunting, and psychological. (It's apparently part of a series but I never carried on)

See response ^

Last post and I'm done here, but let me explain the post and my response:

Someone is going to make a long post about how women is being portrayed as sexual objects in games and will absolutely refuse to acknowledge this post.

Poster is implying that someone (leftist, feminist, anyone they don't agree with) will come in here and complain about how sexual this is. Rather than expressing any genuine sentiment or opinion of their own, they assumed one for someone else, a strawman to bat at. It's a dogwhistle, an attempt to bait out and rehash old Gamergate shit. I mean, I do have to assume because again, I cannot overstate how lazy and insincere it is to make a post like this that does not express your own opinion and implies someone else's.

The primary point I was trying to make with the overall post is that it's not sex or sexuality that is the problem. Didn't Larian release a mainstream game where you could have sex as a bear? Look, the ORIGINAL Twitter post is the model indicating how proud she is, I think we can very confidently say she does not feel like she's being treated as a sexual object in this context and most people can see that. OP cannot distinguish the difference between sexuality in videogames and treating women as sexual objects. That's gross and they need to sit and think on that for a LONG while, preferably before ever talking to a woman again.

EDIT: Just listen to women. If a woman says, "I feel like I'm being objectified", you stop. If a woman says, "Damn, I look sexy!" you say, "Hell yeah!"

You know, fair enough, you caught me in a "think of the children" argument and I never expected to be the one here. But I stand by my point. And wash my hands of the matter.

Returning to the queer games I mentioned earlier, those are by and large indie games. And quite adult/NSFW. Not strictly by nature of being queer to be clear, simply having LGBTQ+ representation doesn't make it adult. Just being in that space, those are the themes they choose to explore. Do you see the nuance here?

We're mammals, we stand at the pinnacle of human technology and evolution, man and woman hand-in-hand shouting, "Boobs! Boobs! Boobs! Boobs! Boobs!" (or butt, whatever, I've made my stance known). The boobs and butts belong in specific times/places and when that lines up properly, let us exalt them. But can we at least agree that the time/place is at a bare minimum NOT everywhere all the time?

Bringing up these tired arguments forfeits your place at the table. But even further, these are all mainstream corporate interests regarding Marvel and Disney and property/brand characters. Let it go. Fuck them into a hole in the ground, fill it with cement, and leave the grave unmarked. These arguments exist because we choose to exalt these properties instead, of which there are limited spaces in a roster, dying for "mainstream" representation of everyone's preferred "thing". Just go play an indie that suits you. You'll find weirder ones that hyper focus your own fetishes and fixations to a point where it's almost terrifying.

I remember we used to house a bunch of balls together, just when they were young and didn't mind as much. My favorite thing about them was any time you'd touch one and it would panic, they'd all tense up, so you ended up with this snake ball with 5 heads and 5 tails. I love them, they're adorable.

I was brought up on this harsh truth by my parents just like a lot of people, I assume, but I no longer believe it.

Sure, I believe we all owe it to ourselves and others to put hard work into the system, but there should be an inherent sense of fairness (or call it equality if you will, I don't want to get bogged down in the tedium of definitions right now). If the system is unfair, we should be working to make it more fair. It's not satisfactory to simply leave it as it is, broken, and tell everyone else to deal with it when they may not have the resources to do so.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I say I refuse. I do not believe.

If you haven't played Sorry We're Closed yet, it's a fantastic queer horror survival RPG. Features music from Okumura Music Group, checked them out and this one has been going in my head all week, https://okumuramusicgroup.bandcamp.com/track/basic-human-rights