http://www.squidoo.com/cullenabuse

You know, I could appreciate at first the concern people had - it's never good for popular things to be modelling abusive relationships, after all, and if there's a possibility that it's happening, that needs to be addressed.

That said, read that list.

Tell me the examples are not weak and/or ridiculous.

I don't have the context for Edward wrecking her car and trying to keep her from seeing her friends, but I am willing to believe that they willfully excluded dimensions of the story - such as, idk, the legitimate danger that comes from hanging around vampires and werewolves?

Nevermind that there's a difference between patterns of abuse and single behaviours and it drives me batshit when people don't bother to differentiate between the two.

EXAMPLE OF OVERPOWERING/OVERRIDING AND MAKING ALL DECISIONS:

In what strange parallel dimension would I ever have gone to prom of my own free will? If you weren't a thousand times stronger than me, I would never have let you get away with this.

SERIOUSLY WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT

Ganked from gargantsurprise, this is what pokemon my OCs would use. I, uh, actually did this before I even saw gargantsurprise doing it, so that was weird. There's some pokeoverlap which makes me vaguely handwringy about my characters. Also apparently I have difficulty building teams that aren't at least a teensy bit competitively viable unless I have two separate teams. And I can't choose less than 6 pokemon. And I like them fully evolved most of the time. um. don't judge me.

D!KIDS, I EXPECT YOU TO FILL THIS ONE OUT.

( Clicky! )

I did teams for other characters as well, so I might do a "part 2!" later on, but this is it for now.

Hey guys! I think I found some blogs I actually like! In particular:

http://blog.shrub.com/

I suspect I'm once again very behind the times with this discovery.

Also good:

http://cerise.theirisnetwork.org

http://theirisnetwork.org

http://girlinthemachine.blogspot.com/

http://www.gamepolitics.com/

http://tokenminorities.wordpress.com/

I'm still clicking through their link lists for things I like, but I thought I should pass these on in case anyone is interested.

Might edit this later with some article links... But for now, I'll just leave this here, since I found it especially interesting and didn't link the whole blog upthread:
http://www.feministgamers.com/?p=493#more-493

The word manpain has entered my lexicon.

This is a tremendously overdue addition and I foresee it being exceedingly useful.

Icon relevant.

So lately I've been thinking about starting up a blog or a website or something. Like, a bona-fide thing. This time, though, my chronic laziness isn't the only problem.

Okay, stepping back a bit:

I think all the websites out there for women gamers kind of stink.

There's good things about a lot of them and it's nice to have a space, but honestly, I would sort of like to throw MY THOUGHTZ ON VIDEO GAMEZ AND LADIEZ out into the ether and have it collected and coherent in one place. One place that does not also contain lots of really stupid analysis and unexamined bias.

Of course, there is the fact that I probably do not play enough video games to do this. I mean, I play plenty, I guess, for a reasonable person, but gamers in general are not reasonable people and I tend to be very picky about my games to begin with. I'm also worried that I am still too stupid. I'm the kind of person who is very adamant about opinions that I may or may not grow out of or further refine in a year or two, so I can never be sure I won't just be making an ass of myself.

Maybe just throwing up a section on my site about it? Once I overhaul my site? Again? For the millionth time?

I think it would be a cool project though, even if I would inevitably get flamed to death.

Also, hilarious and marginally relevant (Except that I mostly like this blog): http://tokenminorities.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/race-mods-for-popular-games-9-17-2009/

I absolutely, utterly and completely loathe derivative, but original-setting games that encourage you to pick up canon characters because any OC is going to automatically be a second-class citizen. My hate for these communities increases exponentially when the mods profess "wariness" towards OCs.

In fact, I think I hate the majority of conventional wisdom about OCs. And I find that the people most willing to propogate it are the people who never freaking learned how to play 'em. The majority of it is useless anyway - you can say "don't make a mary sue" all you want but it isn't going to help much in the end and it certainly won't help if you've already resolved in your mind that all OCs = Mary Sues forever and always.

I also think the taboo against playing people who have ever known or had any kind of relationship (general, not romantic sense) with a canon character is bullshit. People meet a lot of people in their life. They have relationships. It's just how it works. If you're not fucking with the timeline, what is the harm? It's just another example of putting canon characters on a pedastal, which is doubly infuriating because half of them didn't exactly earn their place there in the first place.

I guess the stigma is just getting really, really irritating.

Watched the Prince of Persia trailer... um... It looks less awful than anticipated, though the whitewashing really bugs me. At least I don't want to tear Gemma Arteron's face off until I'm subjected to her shortbangs.

God, I hate shortbangs.

Is it wrong to want to pick up a boy character so that I don't have to deal with the struggle of working with a girl one and having to consider social context, stereotyping, and endless implication?

I just lost my whole Video file.

Which includes every AMV I didn't upload to A-M-V.org (which includes my most recent videos, and all my avatar ones, including the ones that got taken off of youtube and are completely unrecoverable), as well as every half-finished AMV.

Lovely.

I might have made a post to this effect before but I am just sick to death of all the contragulatory ass-pats that occur every time someone says something disparaging about Twilight. There are only so many times I can see these dipshits circlejerking about how horrible and abusive Bella/Edward is and what kind of model is this setting for young girls and blah blah blah pearlclutch. I mean, if these people were actually so concerned for the emotional well-being of these girls, maybe they wouldn't go out of their way constantly to make them look like tasteless, singleminded idiots incapable of rational thought. Because it's not like people who like Twilight could ever think, right? Hell, they can't even do their jobs: If you get a C it's not because your paper sucked, it's because your prof is Team Edward!

The whole thing is about maintaining a fucking superiority complex anyway, and it's completely hypocritical and narrowsighted. As if this isn't another drop in the bucket of unhealthy relationship models? Not that anyone bats an eye at dysfunctional relationships in other shows. There ain't nothing wrong with Sam/Dean or House/Wilson or House/Cuddy or Buffy/Spike or on and on and on, and if you like any of those, well who really cares because Fantasy != Reality duh you guyz and that's why we should never judge anyone for their ship unless it's from Twilight. And of course we can assume that Twilight and Twilight fans earned their place as the whipping boy du jour because by beating out all other trashy teen fiction and it's widely hated, discredited, disparaged fanbase has nothing to do with the fact that it's icky girl romance ruining real nerd things and vampires!

The internet came to the collective conclusion that Twilight Sucks ages ago. Can we fucking move on or at least stop congratulating eachother for sharing the same goddamn opinion that practically everyone has?

Goddamn, House has been... actually good this season.

I mean, with the obvious exception of the Foreman/Thirteen tedium that I hope to god they start speeding past. On the whole it just seems like they're stepping up their game.

I like Nu-House. I want him to get better. He's way more interesting this way. Not misanthropic, just usually right.

The House/Wilson scenes are highly amusing, their living together was a great move for the show. I like the shrink, it's especially nice to see a big, soft-spoken authority figure who doesn't wind up being a jerkass and instead is right, and is it just me or did Chase get suddenly tolerable?

Anyway, just watched the last episode. I'm really quite surprised that they dealt with that issue with as much grace as could be expected from primetime television as opposed to bungling it horribly and leaving it off with monologues. I mean, the real-world equivalent would obviously be a great deal more complex as killing the Tyrant certainly isn't going to kill the ideas that power him, but hey, at least they achieved something resembling a moral gray?

I finally feel like I'm actually learning things at school.

Since somebody asked, I took a look at the Tokyo Game Show FFXIII trailer (viewable here with minor subtitle errors) and am now posting my thoughts on it!

I am... slightly disappointed, to be honest.

( The following reaction will be kind of scatterbrained (just like the trailer itself, zing!) )

If the prospect intrigues you (or if you like GinRan, or laughter), check out Fourth Division's Pregnancy and Child Rearing Guide for the Unwed Shinigami Mother.

Fandom: Bleach
Title: Something Left to Save
Subject: Gin/Rangiku
Warnings: Spoilers for Soul Society arc


( the west can be a desperate place )

I don't even play Aion yet and I find I'm already invested in the Elyos v. Asmodian "culture war," or whatever you want to call it. Barriers between Alliance and Horde broke down as WoW went on, but they feel pretty fresh in Aion, and I've once again chosen the smaller side to align myself with.

I've barely played past 10 on Elyos, and while I do feel like they could use more flavour text (an Asmo quest that was an adaptation of Robin Hood and that other fairy tale about throwing things in the lake was, in my opinion, really nice), I'm sticking quite determinedly with Elyos for a few reasons, the most overarching of which being that complaining Asmodian players instantly gets my back up and so I've already got team spirit.

Maybe it's just that some of the statements are just things I find really obnoxious, obtuse, or blithely naive. This article wonders aloud why Asmodians are more popular... Um, isn't it obvious why they're more popular...? Maybe these people have just never hit the RP scene and acquainted themselves with the favourite character type du jour, but "dark" and "pretty" are not exactly unpopular combinations.

The other thing that bugs me is the mantra that Asmodians are the homey, well-integrated underdogs who Didn't Really Do Anything Wrong, Honest, whereas the Elyos are those rich kids who presumeably teased you in high school. For those unfamiliar with the lore, Elyos called a peace treaty to end a thousand year war, and the Asmodians responded by attempting to assassinate the leader of the opposition once he was inside the Tower of Eternity, causing the world to fracture in two. Elyos pick up a lot of flack for believing they're favoured by Aion, but honestly, it's pretty believable. I mean, let's say you're in a world in which God is an absolute fact, and also occasionally interventionalist. The world splits in half and your race winds up in a beautiful, sunny paradise while the other guy rots on the sunless bottom half of the world and starts to look more like your mutual enemy with each passing day. Drawing conclusions about favouritism seems pretty natural to me.

Thus far, Asmodians just kind of strike me as being similar to that guy who always plays elves and is annoyed at the persecution he faces for his elf-playing habits and so continuously brings up defenses for elves at the slightest brush of what could be interpreted as criticism in any way, shape or form.

My own character's dungeon gave me nightmares. What the hell.

Video: Final Fantasy VII, Before Crisis, Crisis Core, Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus.
Audio: Flobots - Handlebars
Canon: OGC-centric
About: Shinra's collective evil, the lives they destroy. Features Zack, Cloud, Sephiroth and Rufus most heavily in the sense of actual characters, but the video is about Shinra as a whole, really.

Spoilers for most Shinra-related things in the OGC timeline (meaning, also the end of Crisis Core, in case anybody in the world doesn't know by now).

Watch the Video!

x-posted numerous places.

So here I am all geared up for the first day of school and lugging my laptop and bags onto the bus like a goddamn pack mule (I need new bags. And a haircut would probably help, too) and I get to my class and there, posted on the blackboard? "CLASS TODAY IS CANCELLED."

Those bastards.

This has cut into my Aion beta time, since I don't think the school wireless quota would be able to handle it if I booted up the game here and now (could be wrong, but I doubt it), but I am far too grouchy and cheap to use more bus fare, head home, and head back for my later class. Plus I would probably never come back when tempted by my bed's warm embrace.

ANYWAY, I have chosen to (very wisely) use this not-playing-Aion time to talk about playing Aion.

( THOUGHTS ON AION! )

( Pictures of some of my chars, with special guests Gin Ichimaru and Elwen Fairbrook! )

( MOAR THOUGHTS ON AION )

Anyway, if anyone wants to ask questions or anything about something specific, I can answer, but I have said everything I could think of. For those who haven't sorted out the main thrust of my post yet: this game is awesome.

So.

( I think I'm a casual. )

So, moving on, I'm playing Aion.

I do not know what to say about it yet, other than that I love it, fileplanet is giving out free keys, and it would be pretty sweet if anybody else I know is playing? I am going to buy the game and when it launches I'm going to go Elyos, on the grounds that I feel that Asmodians are kind of douchebags, and also share a lot of negative traits with gamers as a collective body, now that I think about it.

Tying back into above: I'm am probably also a casual MMO player? I mean, call me a casual, but I was about as tickled pink by blue drops as I was by purples, doubly so if the drops were attractive on equip. I don't think I've EVER cared about having better gear than other people or whatever, even though I liked to keep my gear reasonably decent, and the way I played was not all that achievement-oriented. Lots of people complain about MMOs being work. I'd say it only felt like work when the content got old and boring (at which point I'd usually get shadowsilt to level my characters until I was to a point that I could take over and do something new and fun). But then, I never raided, I never grinded for mats... Uh, I don't think I ever grinded for anything, at least not unless I was in a group of reasonably entertaining people who were happy to assist me. I do not like grinding. Perhaps mysteriously, I have no problem whatsoever with killing 10 wolves and reporting back to kill 10 more, which maybe dodges feeling like grinding because it's task-oriented or something like that, IDK. I spent a lot of time on WoW, but I don't regret the vast majority of it and I don't feel that it ever interfered with my life/schoool/whatever, except for this one awful, awful LBRS run which was definitely the low point of my WoW career and which shall be spoken of no more.