eCrusader

I'm going to force the term "eCrusader" into common parlance, I've decided. There's nothing as humorous, douchey or pretentious as an eCrusader. Here's someone who takes a stand for shit and, because she told all her cunt friends on Twitter about it, she actually thinks she did her part in fighting the evils of the world.
This is the exact same misstep of logic that pussy sensitivity made: "raising awareness" is just a soft way of saying "I did fuck all but was vaguely aware of the issue."
Anyway, let your weapon hang and give your sword arm a rest, sister of the cross.

Join us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Planned Parenthood, the organization that delivers reproductive health care, sex education and information to millions of people worldwide, has come under fire in the U.S.

This is a common copy pastey thing that's going around.
Not even two entries in and already I'm barraged by the crusade line.

If you're from the UK and you believe in freedom of speech and an uncensored interenet, you really need to sign this petition. 

EAAAAAASY THERE, SISTER.
Hone your zeal.
If you let your anger burn too brightly it's liable to consume itself in the conflagration of hate.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information conducted a study on social conditions for Oregon teens and how they affected suicide rates. They found that 21.5% of the queer kids had attempted to commit suicide, whereas their straight counterparts had a percentage of 4.2.

"The archer who aims for too many targets is liable to miss them all," a Zen monk said once.
But my my, aren't you aware of the issues.
Personally I question why the National Center for Biotechnology Information is researching suicide rates in teens but that's just me.

A typical day for a queer teen in an unfriendly environment involves constantly hiding pieces of themselves from friends and family, and often listening to their classmates use their orientation as if it were somehow an insult. 9 out of 10 queer teens have reported being bullied, and out of this number, half added that this included physical harassment, and another quarter were physically attacked.

Sounds like high school in general to me.
Not to make light of this issue but seriously, aren't we all hiding parts of ourselves at any given time?
There's this thing that people don't learn anymore and it's called speaking to an audience and I won't go into great lengths to describe it but suffice it to say it's a thing you can do.
For example, you wouldn't say "fuck" around your grandmother.
Or maybe you would, I don't know you, but I might consider saying another word.
So do you talk about things other than the issues you aren't facing?

Okay, so I don't usually do this, but this is an issue near and dear to me and this is getting very little no attention in the mainstream media.

You don't do this very often?
Every single post has been this.

Mississippi is voting on November 8th on whether to pass Amendment 26, the "Personhood Amendment". This amendment would grant fertilized eggs and fetuses personhood status.

But thankfully the fetuses seem unlikely to turn out in record numbers to vote for this and they're only 3/8ths of a person anyway--
Wait no that's something else. My mistake.

Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages. This is not a good thing. 

Criminalize women for miscarriages in the same way it criminalizes mothers who have lost children to cancer, maybe.
I mean it's a bullshit law don't get me wrong but it doesn't need your help in sounding more ridiculous.

The reason I'm posting this here is because I made a meager donation to the Jackson Women's Health Organization this morning, and I received a personal email back hours later - on a Sunday - thanking me and noting that I'm one of the first "outside" people to contribute.

Well if they're going under I'd want my donation back.
That's 15 dollars in drinks at the local drug store I'll never be able to buy. WHO ELSE WILL TRY ALL THAT CRAP NO ONE HAS EVER TRIED BEFORE?

So if you sometimes pass on political action because you figure that enough other people will do something to make a difference, make an exception on this one. My RSS reader is near silent on this amendment. I only found out about it through a feminist blog.

Feminist blogs, man. It sure has been a while since I've done one of those.

- If you can afford it, you can donate at the site's link.

 Oh I'd be more than happy to donate--
but I just got Diablo III you see and well--
I figured stemming the forces of the Burning Hells was more important than some clinic in Mississippi. I look at the big picture, see.
And you may argue that the Burning Hells are fictional to which I would respond "has anyone been attacked by a demon today?"
I think not. I think I got this shit.

Since I just had some revealing discussions that both ended in my conversational partner all but saying "I am a douchebag", I've had an interesting opportunity to vent my spleen. 

Gee wonder why that would happen?

Background: some genius at Inception Kink requested fic of Joseph Gordon-Levitt paired with a hitRECorder. Some other genius wrote it, citing hitRECord chat interactions as part of their basis for canon. 

Inception Kink.
Joseph Gordon--
Words.
We haven't even reached the issue yet and already I'm prepared to call you a douchebag.

That particular hitRECorder and other hitRECords in general are understandably freaked the fuck out, and contacted the mods. The mods, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it is the right of random creepers on the internet to write fiction about real people, even when said real people feel uncomfortable and violated.

People, especially women, like it when you write creepy things to them.
That's what Twilight has taught me.
That's why I make sure to write daily love letters to Namie Amuro.
She's just playing coy now.
I don't even know what this is about and I don't care. It all seems very silly and I'm sure I don't have time for it.

Would you be upset if a long-term partner confessed that s/he'd committed a serious crime before you met? How do you think it would affect your relationship?

I think I'd be more upset if she hadn't committed a serious crime.
As long as it was something sexy and not "DWI that lead into a low speed police chase through Dallas" or something.
Also when I signed into Diablo III today this greeted me:

Ouph, that's harsh.
I thought you were the lord of terror, Diablo, not the lord of depression and existential angst.
Anyway I reached the beginning of this blog so I'm going to go do something the fuck else.

LET'S DO THIS

Sorry my updates Friday have been pretty sporadic. I'll do better about it. I've been really busy is the thing.
Anyway I found this blog through ONTD_Political, my usual go-to.
I know I said before I wouldn't spoil my source but fuck it.
Frankly I'd be happy if they closed shop.
Anyway I found this through a cunt posting some article about women making less money (in certain sectors) and everyone was butthurt.
Even though the article outright says the reason for this is largely due to the fact a woman's income is easier to lose than a man's and parenting is still a full time job for women.
I guess you cunts won't be happy until you're completely not raising the things you spawn.
How's this?
How about if it's such a bother for your career you don't have them?
I used to see this logic a lot when I was student teaching and it made even less sense there. "I'm really committed to educating the next generation..." but apparently not the next generation you had a hand in creating, huh?
Like I get you're busy and this school sucks but why are you here until 8 PM?
You're just avoiding your kids at that point.
Anyway on to the blog.
The first entry is entitled "Should I Be Worried?" and the answer is DEEPLY.

Okay.

Okay.
Why do cunts start entries like this?

So I know that historically speaking, it's much easier for the current President to run for and get a second term than it is for the opposition to win things back. I think 2004 with Bush showed us that, even though from the rage on my flist, I would have thought that he'd be voted out on a landslide.

So today President Obama stated that he is in favour of same sex couples to get married. And the reaction has been... mixed. 

PREPARE FOR CONCERN.

On Twitter and Facebook (now, I'm Canadian, so keep that in mind - same sex marriage is already legal up here and I don't have a lot of Americans on my page) reaction has been mostly positive. 'Mr. President' was trending on Twitter earlier, and everyone seems happy. 

So you're Canadian-- why are you concerned about the American president, exactly?
Your whole cultural identity seems to be based more or less around the fact you aren't American. Prove it by fucking out of American politics.

I've noticed a lot of this lately in terms of general political issues when it comes to Obama, and I know that I'm Canadian and I don't need to care, but I do care. Because I have a lot of friends who are affected by who is in office in the US - women, people who need good healthcare, people who are gay/lesbian, people who are affected by the economy. 

Me it's me I'm affected by the economy.
AWWW SHE'S CONCERNED ABOUT ME.

So the cynicism and negativity that I see among Democrats here on LJ worries me. It worries me a lot, because I wonder how widespread it is, how many people who voted in the last election are feeling disengaged and cynical and negative... Because that is a dangerous state of being in an election year. People who are disengaged, cynical and negative quite often don't vote, they don't urge their friends and families to vote, they don't get into passionate arguments that might sway minds - and that would play into the hands of Republicans in ways that I don't want to think about. 

Yes because the Democrats are so much better than Republicans.
And different, let me also say.

I've seen a lot of comments about how this is only to win votes, that there's no risk, etc, etc. Uh. Proposition 8 and what happened in North Carolina yesterday should remind us (and I say us because I feel that not nearly enough liberal Canadians voted in our last election) that the right is very good at something, and that something is called mobilizing. 

Watch out we have a crusader here.
The ruined economy?
The wars in the Middle East?
The mounting (and predatory) Chinese economy?
NOT A CONCERN.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYS ARE THE CONCERN.

So, caveat: I haven't seen Avengers yet. I'm thinking I'm going to have to leave it for a bit until the hype dies down, because between that and what I'm about to write about, I've kind of lost the desire to. 

Save the effort. I can review it in three words:
Mediocre Hollywood Shlock 

Anyway, first of all - there are spoilers in this entry and the one I'm linking to for a line from the movie, so if you haven't seen it and you care about that sort of thing, don't keep reading!

**spoilers for the line past here**

Christ knows I wouldn't want the shitty super hero movie with the lamest fucking aliens ever to be spoiled!
Why are the aliens such a threat in the first place? Entire squads of them are dominated by a man wielding a bow and arrow.
That's right: a species capable of intergalactic conquest, a species that mastered laser and teleporter technology is dominated by neolithic technology.
Okay, Iron Man, you can put away the power armor: we went to Sports Authority and bought about 15 reflex bows.

Basically, the line 'mewling quim' made it into the movie (and I stand by my opinion that it shouldn't have), and now it seems that Joss Whedon is proud of that.

NOT MEWLING QUIM!
It did? I didn't hear it.
What does that even mean? I'm the unequivocal master of the English language and I've never even heard this word before.
Oh. It means cunt.
In the 1950s.
Who gives a shit?

But seriously, Mr. Whedon? This? This is completely garbage. This is garbage that has just stripped away a lot of my respect for you - respect that's not going to come back, after the scene with Spike in Buffy, after the problems in Dollhouse... It's like you're on a slippery slope and you think you're a feminist, but as Katie said to me today - you slip and your fanboy shows through and so does your misogyny and your sexism.

And who cares if you don't see it? It's a mediocre super hero movie and it already made 150 billion dollars or some shit. You really think the loss of 8 (Canadian) dollars is going to be felt that acutely by the producers?

The line shouldn't be in the movie and you shouldn't be proud of it. Period.

Edit: I just want to add here that I know that there are arguments both for and against using problematic languages in media, and I sometimes come down on one side and sometimes I come down on the other. I know that there are reasons for a villain to say something like this, and that's really not my main problem at the moment - my main problem is with Joss Whedon's remarks about it.

So don't see it. You're missing exactly nothing anyway.

Wandering around Good Reads, I've had to pause and wonder how many parents and adults out there actually take the time to try and look at kids books from a child's perspective.

I'm talking young books, like Love You Forever, by Robert Munsch.  

Wow you must lead a great life if this is your major concern for March 21, 2012.
Even I, on a Monday off, had more adversity in my life today than this. I was playing TERA so I was in several "kill or be killed" situations in the span of 45 minutes.
I'm still a little kill crazy, honestly.

*shakes head* Idk. It just seemed like a lot of the reviewers thought that it made sense to review every aspect of the book as though it was intended for adults, and that's...so not how you should look at a book for kids.

*VERBS* because you know kids do a ton of research on the next book they're going to read on the internet.

Oh! And in other news, I have approval to use an ereader at work, now!! After being told no by my last TM, I then found out that some of my friends were using theirs at work -

Originally I was going to make some sort of comment about it being easier to ask forgiveness than permission but man I wish I could bring my ereader to work.
But unfortunately I have to do work when I go to work.
Sucks.

Lately I find myself wishing I could turn this little train of mine around, go back a few years to have a better chance of figuring my life out.

Here I am, 31, and while I support myself and pay the bills and all that good stuff (which I'm proud of!), it's not precisely the fulfilling work that I thought that I would be doing when I was this age. 

PUTTING SALAD
ON A SHELF
AT 6 AM
I'm going to time myself tomorrow. I want to know the exact minute salad hits shelf and my day is officially off with a bang.

I don't regret my decision not to teach. Hearing about the trials and struggles that Katie goes through, I just don't think that it's for me. I mean - I got my degree, if I really wanted to, I could take the steps and do whatever refresher training I need, get my license. It's not what I want to do, though.

Since starting at my current job, I have to admit, I kind of thought that eventually I would move up. I did it so quickly at West, I thought it would happen here, too. But it hasn't, and recent events at work and in the industry is making me think that it may not be likely, either. They're condensing and trimming the roles that I'd thought that I would maybe move in to, and that means fewer job opportunities in the future, and more uncertainty. 

Faced with the grim reality that your entire existence is unnecessary and redundant.
Faced with the ever-darkening twilight of your miserable existence that for every single solitary proud moment in your life there are dozens upon dozens riding the same solar winds over accomplishes much grander and vaunted than yours.

The choice now becomes... What to do? And that brings along a whole lot of uncertainty.

I thought about getting my degree in Library Science, and that's still something I have in mind. I could go into Early Childhood Education. Or I could pursue Child Psychology, which is something that I've considered since I was back in highschool.

These will all involve money and time, of course. And in the back of my head is the small, niggling voice that eventually, that 30+ number is going to count against me - though perhaps not? I really don't know. But anyway, first I have to make a DECISION, and that is so, so hard. 

Truly, nothing has held you back more than yourself.
Wracked with indecision at every turn. A decisive person would have seen this through faster than a thousand times a thousand computer processes.

I always thought that a field would just sort of jump out and scream my name, but that hasn't really happened. I still have uncertainties about the jobs I listed above.. ECE: challenging enough? Salary high enough? Library Science: enough job opportunities? I'm not as wary about job love, here, because my love of literacy is something that will never, ever leave me. And finally Child Psychology: too challenging? Too expensive to do? Is it something I'd be good at, or just something I'd like to do?

And then there's the lingering, never-ceasing desire to write, of course. I don't think that will ever leave me. 

You don't need a degree to write, do you?

Self doubt tends to be my Achilles' heel - it has been since I was a teenager, actually. I spend so much time thinking about the what-ifs that sometimes it stops me from doing anything, and that's definitely a bad thing. 

Ever read Hamlet?
Oh well.
Anyway that was a nice detour into emo land. I HOPE THE NEXT POST IS ABOUT FEMALE PROBLEMS!
Jesus Christ it is.
Am I psychic?
I seriously had to pause for thought when I saw the title: Misogyny and Slash Fandom
I am so good at this bullshit.

So today this happened: Lucy Liu was announced for the role of Watson in the new Sherlock Holmes reboot, Elementary.

... Watson, the crippled British doctor in Sherlock Holmes?
All right.
So be on the look out for my updated version of the Odyssey playing on CBS. Starring Kelly Clarkson as a girl about to enter her first year of college. Because apparently when you reboot something it doesn't actually have to be about what it's about.

My first reaction: Awesome!! I am so there.

I feel kind of bad, because I've never been able to stomach the BBC Sherlock. I have a somewhat irrational dislike for the show, given that I've never watched it.

The only thing that it's done wrong is be introduced/announced right when I was highly, highly sick of SPN and the rampant misogyny on the show and among the fans.

SPN. YOU KNOW, SPN?
THAT SHOW?
I LOVE SPN.
What the fuck is SPN?
Oh. Supernatural.
Acronyms work however the fuck you want them to work. Don't worry about it.
When my reboot of the Odyssey is realized I'd like all of you to use the acronym TDS.
The oDysSey, of course.

Arguing until I was blue in the face about how female characters were being treated was not fun for me, and I will never, ever forget the way that Jo, Ellen and Ruby died. Nor will I forget the incredible, positive welcome that Misha received, and I've taken note of the way his character arc has been handled so far, in comparison to the female characters.

And I just couldn't stomach fandom's instant enthusiastic reaction to a show that had m/m possibility. The same thing has happened with Suits, and White Collar... Though the distaste and dislike in the SGA fandom bothered me too, when fans were tearing apart a wonderful character like Keller just because she was matched up with a character they wanted to slash.

Guess I better hate Final Fantasy now because all of the fans of that series are rampant douchebags.
You know you can dislike people who like stuff and still like stuff, right?

And it BOTHERS me that I feel this way. I want to be happy and excited when a new show comes out. I don't want to have to stick my fingers in my ears and go 'la la la' as I ignore fandom or the problematic aspects of the show. 

I know you're a resplendent child lightly aglow with the soft golden light of your own personal halo but meanwhile back in reality everything has problems and you kind of have to overlook them if you want to enjoy anything in life you miserable cunt. 
Also people are complete idiots who miss the point of everything. I can't believe you hold the fans of a show against the show.
I mean, after all, you like shows and you're a complete insufferable twat and I can't imagine liking anything you  like and yet I'm sure there's a book or something we might agree on.

Of course, I'm very aware of the problems with this idea - they're taking a show that is well known for its m/m tension and turning it hetero-normative, and that's a problem.

Am I the only person aware Sherlock Holmes was a series of stories written in the 19th century?
Sherlock Holmes was basically an autist who did manage one female romantic interest and as far as I recall Holmes also had a female companion at one point.
There was absolutely 0 homosexual tension between the two and this is coming from someone who has overapplied the term "fag" so much the term "gayfag" is required to describe gay people.

There's at least some chance that the studio did this because they don't want their audience slashing the main two characters, and that's a problem. 

The problem, then, is the writers of the show are regarding their audience with anything more than disdain. 
This isn't writing by committee, dipshits. There's a reason I'm paid to do this and you're drooling idiots who write gay sex fanfiction.

Just once I'd like a show to come out that isn't like that. I don't want to have to worry that m/m tension is going to come along with rampant misogyny. I don't want to have to worry that hetero-centric show is going to come along with homophobia. I just want shows that make me happy. Like Lost Girl and Rizzoli and Isles and Doctor Who. But I'm not really in the fandom for those, so. 

This is why I want women excluded from video games. They apparently feel the need to fraternize to enjoy something and video games are primarily a solitary activity. I don't need Facebook integration in TERA.
KILLED ANOTHER ARCHER LOL!

Idk. Maybe someday I'll give BBC Sherlock a try. But I'm still curious about the new one and willing to give it a shot, even if at the beginning I was pissed off that the US networks were so obviously copying the BBC. But a show with a main minority female lead? 

GOOD WRITING AND CASTING?
WHO CARES!
ASIAN BITCH IS IN THE LEAD!
Somehow for all your feminist and gay pride posturings we manage to conclude the same thing about what makes good TV.
Scantily clad Asian women.
Of course I wouldn't watch a show with Lucy Liu in it but the conclusion is the same and that's what counts.

I'm sure most of you have heard of this already, but there is an awesome short story making the rounds: ILU-486. It is well written and bleak and powerful and makes you think - it put me near crying, if I'm honest. Maybe because it hits a little bit too close to home when I am thinking about the goings on in the US. 

ILU-486.
Man the 486 was a great processor.
I haven't heard of this. What's it about?

Summary: In the not-so-distant future of Virginia, the Personhood Act has outlawed abortion and chemical birth control. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, though.

Nope don't care.
If this is supposed to make me feel grimdark then I've read stories where people can no longer form unique sentences and the entirety of language is reduced to quoting state-approved quotes so you're going to have to do a fuck ton better to stir.

 ILU-486

 for Evil Dr. Em and the twitter brigade

Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? James 2:25

Oh God you started with a Bible quote
Are you trying to piss me off?

“No one’s making you take any,” Carla said, her face making an expression that looked like this: O_o.

Oh yeah.
No, great writing.
I'm moved to tears at this characterization.

Ahh, I just love the smell of misogyny in the morning, don't you? Or not.

Seanan McGuire is the author of Feed and many other wonderful books, and she has a new book coming out on March 6th.

Feed was a great book.

I've no doubt that Steve Jobs was just as difficult, arrogant and tempermental as they say he was, but he was truly brilliant - he saw doors where other people saw dead ends.

Rest in peace, Steve. The world owes you a very big thank you.

Thanks for iTunes, asshole. Why did reinstalling an entire operating system take less time than restoring a music folder?
Ohhhh goodness. I guess it's my own fault. When I find out a Canadian broad has a Livejournal I should just walk the fuck away because I know what's coming.
My blood pressure is what's coming.

Great

Glad I paid 60 dollars for TERA. Corrupted download so I missed the open beta?
Good.
Shitty blogs.

Today, I bought a bento box. Then right after, I got a "Just Bento" cookbook.

LET'S DO THIS.

Eta: Lol when I get good at bento I'll make MLP:FiM themed bentos.

WOOOW BENTO BOXES AND MY LITTLE PONY IN THE SAME POST.
You just earned so many cool points right now, holy fuck.
Everyone knows only children and Japanese men carry bento boxes. And for some reason the adults are ashamed of the food their OCD wives prepare.
Personally I'd be showing it off like it's some sort of achievement but that's just me.
CHECK OUT WHAT MY WAIFU MADE FOR ME YOU GUYS SUCK HOLY SHIT

I go to deviantart.

I google "women warcraft."

...
Okay?
I guess I'll do this.
"The women of warcraft show off impressive cosplay skills" is link one to the surprise of absolutely no one. Of course the first thing someone would point about a girls and video games is something basically unrelated to video games.
Apparently this is a show on Youtube or something--
It's a podcast I guess?
Why would you watch this?
Last update from Women of Warcraft podcast: 1 year ago.
Guess they jumped ship when all sane people did.

There are days when I say to myself "if I ever have children, they will be home-schooled. I will not have to deal with stupid fucking parents and their bullying children and their money grubbing school administration (well, where I live anyway). I will be teh best teacher evar because by the time public school kids learn to spell their names my children will be discussing Sherlock Holmes and speaking French.

And 100% well adjusted and proficient in subjects you yourself are unfamiliar with.
Because as we all know most people are well rounded enough to teach all subjects proficiently and you definitely don't need a 4 year education to teach one subject.

We will have teh best field trips evar at the aquarium and botanical gardens and old libraries and culture spots in L.A.

The fact you've intentionally misspelled "the" as 'teh' twice for "humorous" effect proves you should not only not mother children but should probably be banned from interacting with any children ever.
I used to do that kinda shit.
Then I turned 16.

Plus I will work extra hard to teach my kids that history is not colorblind and that the human body is full of interesting organs."

History:
Mesopotamia
Greece
Rome
Christers murdering brown people in the desert
Renaissance
Plague sores
Enlightenment
Slave away in a factory 18 hours a day until you drop dead at 40 (like people in trades live longer today)
World War fucking II
Douchebag Generation
Douchebag  Generation II
Self-Entitled Twat Generation
APOKALYPSIS
Welcome... TO OBLIVION.
Sorry I guess my version of history is pretty COLOR SEEING.

Two things may stop my master plan, however:
1) I'm shit at math

 That's okay. Math definitely isn't considered one of the big four subjects.
Math, science, English, history.
I MEAN SHERLOCK HOLMES, FRENCH, UNDERWATER BASKET WEAVING AND SOCIAL MALADJUSTMENT are the big 4. You're golden.

2) Trolling parents is soooo tempting. I can just imagine the phone call now: "Ms. Myrna, your Hell-Spawn has been telling other children that babies do not, in fact, come out of the cabbage patch." or "Ms. Myrna, other parents do not appreciate it when your children tell their children to stop proselytizing them. The other children and parents don't know what that means."

You've never been to a public school, have you?
Now she's bitching about an exposed midriff on some slut's armor in a video game I haven't even heard of--
Let me tell you, kid, if slutty armor flash boils your piss you might want to avoid TERA.
Speaking of:
Glad I couldn't get the name "Edie" thanks to the corrupted download.
Glad I paid 73 dollars for this.

I think the problem is a lot of people don't get sexual objectification a lot of the time. I'm a firm proponent of people being able to dress themselves and their characters up in whatever they like, but in many cases, particularly in games like WoW, they dress men for utility and women to titillate.

Yep.
That's exactly right.
Shut up.
Also:
glad there was a 60 minute queue for Valley of the Titans then the game promptly crashed when it was nearly my turn.
Glad I paid 89 dollars for this.

 Yeah, but whenever this subject is brought up that's when the floodgates of misogynistic d-bags come in wailing "OMG HDU THAT'S NOT SEXIST MEN ARE OBJECTIFIED TOO DAMN YOU AND YOUR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IT'S JUST FANTASY" blah blah blah.

I was just surfing through wowpedia and when I found that picture, it was like all my annoyance exploded.

The subsequent queue was 157 minutes and the server went down for 3 hours 15 minutes I got in. Glad I paid 126 dollars for this.

So next month I'm going to write my book (which I'm saying is for all ages right now), not only to try to kick start my writing but to have something I'm not ashamed of showing for my MFA application (you have to submit 20-30 pages of either short stories or a section of a novel). So to make sure I don't get lazy, I'm challenging myself to write 100k words in 30 days, or 3,333 words per day. Meaning I can't skip a couple of days like I did during NaNoWriMo (barely finished that one). 

Oh of course.
Livejournal user writing a book, how shocking.
Bet it's a fantasy/steampunk setting with a really strong female protagonist and page upon page of frivolous description, bad dialogue and exposition.  
Glad my GPU heated up so much while I was sitting at the fucking queue screen (of course) in TERA I had to close the game.
Glad I paid 259 dollars for this.
Seriously, it's a fucking glorified loading screen. How the fuck is anything heating up enough to cook an egg at that?
And I know I'm using an NVIDIA and due to the glorious Russian design of my case the power supply is seated upside down so its fan is literally blowing into the fan of my GPU so I'm basically asking for my house to burn down but I have never in my fucking life run into this problem until this game.

Right now I'm just calling it "Six Queens of the Crown" (I know it makes no sense but this is a temp title so I don't care), and is an action-adventure story of a young woman (still need to come up with a name XD) who is out to find the treasure of the first six queens of the world that combine to create the crown of the first king of the world. Much fun to be had with this one.

Oh gee didn't see that coming.
Glad I couldn't make my character brown, too, due to the way TERA renders its in game textures. All brown girls end up looking like dirty white girls.
Glad I paid 492 dollars for this.

Then again, what did I expect when I started with 12 main characters? XD Right now I'm just writing whatever scenes I want to write since the deadline is coming up and I'm only at 31k words right now. Trying so hard to not do the chair mambo right now.

12 main characters.
Great.
Finally (somehow) manage to get to Lumbertown then promptly get murdered by a level 38. DEEP PVP SHIT GOING ON HERE.
Then the servers went down for maintenance and are still down to this very minute.
Sure glad I got to partake in this head start I paid for between the maintenance and queues.
Fuck you that'll be 653 dollars.

So in my NaNoWriMo WoW novel, there's a part when the character has the opportunity of not only touching an orc pregnant with twins's belly, but watches the belly move. So I was curious as to how that would look like.

Cue 5 hour moral debate about murdering pregnant Orcs because Orcs are inherently evil and the babies will grow up to murder babies themselves.
Fuck Dungeons and Dragons on my God.
WILL THE BABIES INHERENTLY EVIL ARE THEY RAISED THIS WAY?
Well gee let's raise them ourselves and find out, idiot.
Said me, the lawful good crusader.
LAWFUL "good" as I had written it.

Yes, you've read correctly. I am masochistic enough to want an MFA (and one of their spiffy hoods too). Partly it's because I want to challenge myself into getting an MFA, partly because I know I'll get to essentially mold my studies to focus on Fantasy so I can teach a Fantasy college course, and partially because there's an itty bitty part of myself that's an attention whore and will love to be the only member of my living and dead family to earn a Masters.

Master of student debt you'll never pay off because you'll be working at a grocery store the rest of your fucking life, more like.
Speaking of it's TIME TO INQUIRE ABOUT THE TEACHING JOB I APPLIED FOR HURRAY.
Call back in an hour hurray~

The only problem I might encounter (besides procrastination heheheh) is that during admissions, I may face some prejudice for writing fantasy/fairy tales/sci fi. Although the English Dept. is becoming much more open with the idea that genre fiction is actually *gasp* literature, there's still those stubborn few who think that genre fiction should not be a part of academia. 

It can be as long as it's Starship Troopers, Foundation or Armor and not whatever schlock you're cranking out.
IT'S 1 PM, EN MASSE. WHERE'S MY TERA?
YOU SAID
1 PM.
IT'S 1:01.
Oh my fucking Christ they extended it until 1PM PDT.
That's another 3 fucking hours. Are you kidding me?
No that's awesome. Pay 10 bucks for a lion mount you'll probably never use and a head start on the other retards playing.
Glad I'm really getting to take full advantage of this head start with all of the TIME I GET TO PLAY THIS FUCKING GAME.
Head start ends tomorrow, you know, and I gotta go to work from 7-3. Who wants to bet there will be maintenance at 3 until bedtime or some fuck?
You got a head start. It's not our fault there were so many of you and we mobilized exactly 5 servers to handle literally hundreds of thousands of people.
CLOUD SERVERS SO ADVANCED.
And like an idiot I'm just refreshing the client in the vain hope that they're joking.
Cloud servers is marketing speak for "complete bullshit" incidentally.
OUR SERVERS CAN HOLD SO MANY PEOPLE YOU'LL PROBABLY NEVER ENCOUNTER A QUEUE!
Except that 7 hours I spent in queue, you know.

So, I'm finally knuckling down in this whole "need to find a full time job so I can pay off the student loans as quickly as possible." And I swear to the flying spaghetti monster that if I hear one more "it's a bad job scene" or "there's nothing out there" I am going to punch something into next week.

Harris Teeter is looking for someone in the dairy department I think.
Don't talk to me, though You seem annoying. I'll be that guy who looks unhappy to see you.

  I am fully aware of how bad the economic scene is, and I don't need to hear about it from people that don't even know me. I'm not one of these people who go "herp durp I'mma gonna find a job lickety split because I just got my college degree!" so please do not assume that I am. Also quit with that pitying look when I tell you, "Well, I'll find something, even if it takes awhile." How do these people expect me to react? "OMG IT'S SO HARRRRD I'LL NEVER FIND ANYTHING, ANYTHING! I SHOULDN'T EVEN TRY." 

UPWARDLY MOBILE WHITE WOMAN WOOOOOO~
Post about how she attention whores on a forum then gets unwanted attention--
Anyway this is boring. Time to never play TERA again.

I thirst

FFXIV patch is now.
Can't wait for that Garuda fight. I thirst for blood.
That fight is going to be fucking
sweet
speaking of unrelated things, check this shit out.
Pleasingly the Garuda fight music seems to be a knock off of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor so that'll be great.
Really baroque music fits some giant magical bird bitch scaring the shit out of you I think.

Okay, so...I'm considering getting a Mumble (like Ventrilo) server mostly because of Mom.

You see, as of the moment, most of our attempts to play TOR go like this:

Playing TOR with your mom, wow.
Actually I could just end that thought with "playing TOR".

So Vector finally broke down and gave me presents (despite my fail!attempt to break up with him.  I swear, game, if you make my character get pregnant, she is so getting an abortion.

My character was so malevolent no one loved her.
That's how you show Bioware what for.

You have been warned.  No babies if I say no. NONE!)  And not just one!  Three!  With little vaguely cryptic, strangely weird, and kind of sweet notes.

Any option that was basically "shut up and let's get down to murder" was the one I picked. NO TIME FOR YOUR BULLSHIT, ANYONE. YOU ARE HERE TO PROP ME UP DURING MURDER.
Don't care that the blue bitch is some kind of kinky sex slave, don't care that some guy is something with his career, don't care that some Jedi bitch is doing the so edgy and deep goth thing in her 20s, don't care that some Irish guy is some sort of elite black ops dude--
Then I quit the game.
Great.

The presents don't make much sense, but that's okay.  I don't care. They're presents.  And I'm sure that Vector really thought he was being romantic when he sent me notes where he:

No one gave my character presents.

3.  Some odd ball stuff about the smell and taste of my character being all he knows about her, which would probably come off as creepy if this wasn't being delivered by bug!Sheldon. 

Yeah some yahoo tried that with my character.
Then she force choked him to death.
I was never prouder.

So, I have a new favorite class in TOR.  This would be the Jedi Counselor. Why, you may ask.  Well, because somehow Bioware managed to get a pretty, pretty Jedi Princess into an MMO, and it is awesome.

There are many amazing things about this class.  The first is that I can be so freaking bitchy in virtually all dialogue options.

Nope don't care time for killing.
Glad I picked Sith Warrior because I don't think I could have handled dialogue very well otherwise.
Mostly because her sarcastic expression neatly mirrors my own at every single hamfisted attempt at witty dialogue on Bioware's part.

There is almost always the opportunity to explain that someone is stupid, that they're an idiot or that I hate them.

What a great game.
Really a great game for women because the game play only gets in the way of shopping at the mall, talking on the cellphone and talking to boys once in a while.

There are also ample opportunities to explain why I had to slaughter tribes of small children or leave villagers to perish in flames

My character killed someone for even asking her why she executed an entire tribe of natives.
You'd think he would have been smart enough to not question why the murder machine murdered someone.

But even better is my first love interest. You see, he's this totally smarmy guy who has a thing for his droid assistant. Yes.  He is a guy who, despite that I can flirt with him (and I suspect sleep with him as he'll become a companion), would really rather be playing WoW and sleeping with the avatar of some guy pretending to be a girl. 

And yet my character also had this problem. Everyone, man or woman, flung themselves at her.
I guess people just like psychotic-level killing instinct mixed with sorcerous powers.
I guess she had a hot accent and was a brown girl so people could overlook the obvious personality flaws.

For instance, by the end of my game, my character had been physically tortured at least three times, threatened with sexual assault, and had at least two sexual encounters (one reasonably graphic) that appeared to disgust her. 

I didn't even know your character could get tortured. Mine was always doing that.
Can you suck at an MMO?
I guess so.

This is in addition to having her allies tortured, killed, and threatened, having her own side betray her multiple times (and worked to betray them a few times), and quite literally lost her mind and free will for a third of the game. 

Wow.
Robbed of your free will for a third of the game, so just like playing an MMO.
FUCKING ZING.

It is OMG grimdark on an epic scale. It’s one of the few games that I had to turn off and step away from.

That's grimdark?
A little torture and some sex?
You really don't know the meaning of grimdark, do you?

So...my now second highest character is a Jedi Counselor. I'm kind of annoyed, in that I imagined her as all evil and Machievellian, yet the game is still making her wander around the galaxy, sacrificing her own life to heal other people.

Evil and Machiavellian?
ONLY A JEDI COULD BE LIKE THIS!
Idiot.
You know when you first made a character you had the blue swirly army and the red hexagon army?
Guess which one visually looked evil and Machiavellian?
The one you didn't pick, dipshit.
Here's a post entitled "affection in SWTOR is weird" and I'm tired of talking about this game now.
I don't know what affection is like in that game, actually.

Anyway, so Nano, as some of us are aware of, is short for "National Write a Novel Month".  Which inherently isn't a horrible thing.  I mean, sometimes you need to force yourself to write and not edit to get anything done. I get that, and honestly think that good stuff can come out of it, provided the author is willing to edit a lot.

No it can't.
Invariably shitty fanfiction and worse derivative shlock comes from national suck a cock month.

Let me throw out that the last words are key to the success of this project.

Anyway, I wandered over to the forums today and saw "find beta readers", which made me think, "Oh, yay! People get that novels need to be edited before they're worth reading!"

Most of the best writers didn't really need editors or proofreaders. They did all that themselves.

It took me 6,500 words to get my protagonist laid for the first time in the story.  (He had to make his dramatic exit first, fend off the wiles of his betrothed, and escape the evil clutches of his antagonist!)  I'm wondering if that's too long or just right.  Huh.

Took me two entire paragraphs before the violence started so I'm guessing that's a bit long.
Then again I'm not one for fucking around in writing so I guess that's par for the course.
Another reason I'm the best alive.
Anyway back. Fucked off and did other stuff then I tried the new FFXIV patch.
Beat Garuda easy mode literally 10 seconds before the entire game went down for 5 hours of emergency maintenance.
Those servers sure are fucked up, man.
Hope they don't roll back my Garuda victory.
It's a cool fight, too. Similar to Ifrit and Moogle but less frantic which is interesting because they played up how frantic Garuda was and how she's MADE OF WIND and shit. You have to hide behind rocks though which is an interesting mechanic.
Not sure she's different enough from the last two to warrant the "hardest boss we've ever had in this game" tag, though. She's pretty much straight damage with a big explosive move followed by increased damage.
I guess the plumage move that blows up the rocks you use to hide is pretty original but then again everyone I was with knew instantly what those were about.
I guess Garuda feels more defensive than Ifrit, which was basically an evasion fight and the Moogles, which was 100% offense.
Oh right, blogs.
... Man this blog is all about cosplaying. I guess I should be thankful it isn't fanfiction but come on.
Oooooh nope. Going to sleep.
Goodbye.

Skimming

I just skimmed this crap.
Let's see if my spider senses were right.
This is Jon Reid. Presumably that's the blogger's name and he isn't just naming is blog.

Yo Mac users!

My co-worker Sean Christman has put up his very first app on the Mac App Store: Space Gremlin, an app that helps visualize the files on your hard drive.

Wow an app that lets me visualized my hard drive! ONLY ON A MAC!
No just kidding I don't even need to visualize it. It's a mix of video games, naked Asian women, "hilarious" pictures and a bunch of junk I can't be bothered to delete.
Why do I need to download an app to tell me this? It's my hard drive. I know what's on it.

It's way cool, and there's even a free demo available. If you get it and have feedback or questions, Sean sits like ten feet away from me. Well, when he's not in Ireland, that is, which he is about 30% of the time. Yes, he's that cool.

In other news, Sean and I will be working together on a project in a couple of weeks. He'll be working on an iPhone demo app, while I'll be retooling the client's current mobile web app using jQuery Mobile. Exciting stuff.

I'll just have to take your word for it.
Here's a post entitled "Because I don't know a loosing battle when I see it" and I know a losing battle is explaining to people the difference between lose and loose.
These must be the same people who call my FFXIV character Eddie Hart when clearly Edie and Eddie would be pronounced differently by the virtue of there being more letters involved.
AKA I think I've only heard one person pronounce it right.
Although at least three of them say it wrong on purpose because they know it'll push my buttons.

Looks like I was wrong in my previous post. I said that there wasn't enough science to back up worries that the radiation exposure from the new full-body airport scanners is harmful. And I tried to put things into perspective by talking about relative radiation doses. Where I was wrong is that there is evidence and study about the harm that these scanners can cause.

I liked it when they started shouting for everyone to stop moving like serious shit was going down then thanked us for our time and it was a successful test.
The entire purpose of an airport is just to fuck with people and I, for one, won't stand for it.
 Which is why the biggest thing I fear about becoming president of anime isn't moving 2000 miles away to a foreign land but instead the 18 hour plane flight beforehand.

Apropos other conversations I'm having online and IRL, here's a little information about skepticism.

Apropos is a word you should be scourged for using seriously.

In a nutshell, skepticism is a methodology, a way of searching for knowlege. It involves suspending judgement on the topic at hand and applying reason and logic to examine the claims and evidence. Only after examining the evidence will a skeptic make a provisional conclusion. 

Great so--
end of post.

Now, there's a lot of meaning encompassed in these two sentences, so let's deconstruct.

No really we don't--
Okay.

Suspension of Judgement

Skeptics use constructive doubt. They do not use doubt to refute, they use it to take a provisional stance that is as neutral as possible while they are evaluating the claims at hand. The goal is to avoid accepting or rejecting claims and evidence prematurely.

Yeah.
Cool.
Cool.
COOL.

This suspension of judgement is, needless to say, difficult. But it is a key step in the skeptical process. If you do not follow this step, everything you learn and reason will be tainted. This is the difference between skepticism and justification.

I'm just skipping this post. I couldn't suspend judgment long enough.

Here’s the thing. When you learn how to handle firearms, one of the things you’re supposed to learn is that they are tremendously powerful tools which are quite dangerous and should be handled with great care and respect. They have a couple of very specific purposes (self-defense and sport) and THAT’S IT. Any other use constitutes misuse.

Only a woman would need a ranged weapon at all times on her person to successfully defend herself.
Real men should be either unarmed (preferably) or armed with a suitably manly weapon like a sword or warhammer.

Open-carrying for the sole purpose of making a political point is misuse of your firearm. These people should have their weapons taken away from them by their grandfathers, be swatted with a hickory switch on the behind, and be sent to bed without supper. Once they grow back up and promise to treat their firearms with respect, they could have them back. In other words, if you’re going to behave like a petulant three-year-old, you should be treated like one.

Can you imagine King Leonidas having this conversation about weapon control?
Whenever it comes to the topic of weaponry and what should be done I just stop and think "can I imagine the King of the Spartans saying this?" And if the answer is no then I kindly shut up about it.

Seriously, folks. Open-carrying to make a point is disrespectful to your firearms and it’s disrespectful to your fellow citizens.

But only the citizens are allowed to carry weapons and--
nope not getting into this. On the other hand, the Usability Prime Directive does not mean the users are automatically relevant.

True, the users should determine how you will design, build, and offer your service, but only as long as that input is productive. Users are greedy, and just because they say (for a wild example) they want a telepathic interface doesn't mean you should invest all of your resources into research and development of online telepathy. In other words, it's important to separate usability issues from entitlement issues.

That's a buzzword in the video game community lately. Apparently Bioware (or EA, or someone) said that gamers had entitlement issues because they expected a product they paid for to be good.
Which is a great point. It really is your own fault for buying Mass Effect 3 and expecting it to be anything more than complete and utter shit. In fact, you're lucky the entire game wasn't one long gay porno with a giant middle finger watermark in the middle of the screen.

4-year aged Gouda cheese (rather like a very friendly and mellow aged cheddar; if it were a person it would be the sort who would come over and help you pack your bookshelves. You know how really good aged cheeses will have that very faint crunchy texture due to crystallized proteins? Yeah.)

Wow, dude.

My new 2 Gb USB thumb drive ($65 at Costco, thanks to a cupon)

65 bucks for a 2 GB USB drive?
How fucking old is this?
And that's after a coupon.
Or, no, my mistake: a "cupon"
and this entry is from 2006.
Fucking Livejournal.

Go here, and keep hitting “refresh” until you’ve found a total of five quotations that are meaningful to you, or mean something about you, or you agree with them, or whatever criteria you choose, I guess. Then post those five. 

What a great time wasting exercise in bullshit this'll be.

LET'S COMPARE QUOTES.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC), The Lion and the Mouse

Yeah that's pretty gay but I got:

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

    -William Ellery Channing (1780 - 1842)

I like it, actually. Maybe this won't be such bullshit after all.

Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

I was never a fan of The Three Stooges but perhaps I was mistaken:

Only fools are positive.

    -Moe Howard (1897 - 1975)

Does he mean think positively or only fools are ever sure of what they're doing?
It works both ways.

 If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918 - ), The Gulag Archipelago

Notice how my quotes are like one sentence and his are entire paragraphs?

Further proof of a discerning reader in my opinion.

The best way to get approval is not to need it.

   -Hugh Macleod

This nicca.

Hugh Macleod, Highlander.

Reminds me a lot of a (better) Machiavelli quote: "it is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)

SO RANDUM xP

Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.

    -Antisthenes (445 BC - 365 BC) 

Man how can I be getting such awesome quotes and you're stuck with garbage, friend?

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?
Carl Sagan

Then you whip out Carl Sagan at me.

Still I'm not really feeling that one.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

    -Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

I had no idea Albert Camus was that hardcore.

In fact from what I've read I always assumed he was a pussy.

The farm is an organic fruit farm in Pallisade, which is over on the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains here in Colorado.

Oh, speaking of. Things I'm not allowed to call the stuff at my job:

non-organic apples "poison apples"

the water I drain from the tables "plague water"

this job is no fun at all, man.

"might give the customers the wrong idea" the manager told me.
Yeah and if someone is fucking stupid enough to take "plague water" seriously maybe they should starve out.

It's not like I announced it to customers, either. I was joking in the back with one of the other guys working there.

He really doesn't want to hear the nickname I devised for the seven layer bean dip then, no sir.

Cholesterol-laden health department nightmare shit log.

Aaaaaaaand here's where the guy claims to be a huge scifi fan but hasn't read Neuromancer of Starship Troopers.

What a loser.

Or, excuse me, "looser". To tie this back into a previous comment.

Anyway outside of the brief minute where I had fun comparing quotes this shit is fucking boring and I'm going to go do something else now.

Oh boy.

A lifelong girl gamer writes a blog with a cynical point of view.
This is in her own words, of course.
... I don't know why she feels the need to explain this because I've seen hundreds of blogs exactly like this one.
 I believe the only thing this one has going for it in terms of originality is her incredibly ugly face on the banner in different "thoughtful" or "interesting" poses and in black in white because that's arty.
Great.
Anyway nothing further to say about this so let's just dive right in.
Here's where she posts some Dungeons and Dragons character quiz.
The only thing that sticks out is how low her stats are. I took the same quiz just to see and even though it concluded I'd be an Elf (thanks for that, assholes) my average stat total was 16.5.
I answered honestly, too~
Her average is like 13.
Also a sorcerer. So, you know, a bullshit wizard.
Man D&D is stupid.

I really hope this doesn’t turn into a tl;dr for some people. 

Always promising when your opening sentence is hoping it's not too long for people to read.

As a female gamer I’m constantly aware of the way women are presented in games. 

Remember when video games were just about having fun and doing things?
I miss that.

One of my favorite panels at PAX East 2011 was about the portrayal of women in games, whether it’s as the helpless damsel in distress or the kickass heroine; the taut and toned adventure-seeker or the super-sexy femme fatale.

Just like real life.
Wait, no--
I mean, exactly like how most men fantasize about how real life should be.
Because damsels in distress and sexy adventurers are way more interesting than this whining. I can't even begin to compare the two states.
An industry dominated by men. This is going to happen.
Just like how the whining chick lit industry is dominated by whining and bizarrely creepy romance.

It was interesting, and brought up a whole lot of food for thought.  The year passed, and then this year’s PAX East got me thinking more, particularly with the aftermath of some photos posted by BioWare.  So many comments came up about how many “fatties” were at the convention, and how all the “fat gamers” needed to get off their asses or at least get a Wii Fit or something.  And it got me thinking more.

Waiting for realistic portrayal of women in gaming.
No one wants to play a fat ugly chick.
Just like no one wants to play a normal nerd in a game. You want to be exceptional because it's supposed to be a departure from reality. If I wanted to be a guy who put salad on a shelf  I'd just go to work.

I openly admit that I’m overweight.  I’d be lying to myself and doing myself a disservice to say otherwise and pretend I’m someone or something I’m not.  But as an overweight individual I’m subjected to criticisms spoken and unspoken from people I know and people I don’t know.  I can’t eat anything without it looking like something it’s not: if it’s a hamburger, I’m fat so no wonder I’m eating it; if it’s a salad, I must be trying to lose weight.

I read an argument that says paranoia must be a wonderfully refreshing state of mind because you've deluded yourself into thinking you're important.
I believe I'm witnessing that quote first hand.

I can’t ever eat something just because it’s what I feel like eating.  But it’s the way of humans to overthink things, both on their end and on mine, so I try not to let it bother me; I work with my shape, dressing in well-fitting, nicely made clean clothes that compliment how I’m built.  My clothes are neither too tight nor are they overly baggy.  I’m an educated professional, sing well, and have a good sense of humor, and I’m kind and caring.

And you think people are paying attention to you and not themselves.
Also if you have all this shit going for you--
being an educated professional, singing well, having a sense of humor and being kind and caring--
why are you posting all this whining bullshit?
Shouldn't you say "well I may be overweight but I have all this shit going for me so I don't need to post this"?
Unless someone is overcompensating~

But from what I see and have experienced in society: I am overweight, so none of those things matter.  I am fat and therefore I should be ashamed.

Well--
yeah--

Here’s the thing: when you’re like me no one listens to anything you say about yourself.  Everything is assumed to be an excuse, and you’re just “not working hard enough” or you just “don’t care enough” to do anything about your situation.

Right, right. Got it. You have a magical thyroid condition that can't be treated even though they can take the fucking thing out of your fat throat and give you (inexpensive, especially for an educated professional) pills that'll work infinitely better than your malfunctioning thyroid.
Or you're incredibly happy being obese despite this entire bitching post.
No, really. Here's me believing you.

It’s easy to lose weight, so if you’re overweight, you must be lazy, messy, and slovenly.  That I have health issues that screw with my metabolism is just an excuse.  And because I made an excuse, and I am fat, I should be ashamed of myself and who I am.

Here it coooomes~

Maybe I’m just projecting, but sometimes that’s the vibe I get.  And moreover, because I am a fat female gamer, I need to just stop gaming and go to the gym.  Well… here’s the thing.  I admit that I hate exercise; when I did belong to a gym and worked at running, I had to pretend there were zombies after me and I was just using Rule 1: Cardio.  If I want to lose weight I have to obsessively measure and count everything; I have to work out at least five days a week for at least an hour each day, and if I deviate from any of that it undoes days of work in an instant.

Idiot: just take whatever you are eating and eat a fourth of it.
So when you eat a gallon of ice cream just eat a quart.
Slowly cut back.
I eat basically junk food 5 minutes before bed but I never eat enough of anything so I'm actually underweight.
You don't actually have to count calories or measure shit. Look at Africa: almost an entire continent of skinny people and I doubt seriously people in mud brick huts are measuring pasta.

I’m going to obsess about food and my body whether I’m dieting/exercising or not.  So I made the decision to live my life; obsessing over every aspect of what I did or didn’t eat did not feel like living, at least not to me.  My medical care professionals have never expressed worry, because my blood pressure, breathing, heart rate, etc. is normal.  It will surprise many people when I say I’m happy with my life.

Who rules?
Me. I called this bullshit half a post ago.
No one has this many "here's the thing" clauses in their posts and is really that fucking happy with what they're talking about.

I’m not skinny; I’m not even average.  I’m plus-sized, but I’m happy with my life and with who I am.  But by some standards I shouldn’t be, nay, I don’t deserve to be.

What does this have to do with video games, again?
 If you're going to say you need fat sliders in MMOs--
even if I had the chance to make Edie fat I definitely wouldn't have taken that option.

The point of shaming people is to point out where they are in the wrong so they may feel badly about it and correct their faults, while the shamer feels morally superior.  The issue here is that being overweight isn’t based in morality (unless you belong to some sect, or obscure religion that views eating as a moral/ethical issue).

Some obscure religion or sect that views gluttony as a moral issue.
You know, so like:
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Buddhism
Sikhism
old Greek religions
old Etruscan religions
old Roman religions
Hinduism
Shintoism 
But, really, these are just obscure and don't constitute a majority of all people on earth.
So to vaguely tie this back into video games she mentions Bioware.
Because a girl isn't going to be that familiar with other gaming companies.

Recently I’ve been giving some thought to the concept of M-rated.  Most of the games I own are M-rated.  It’s more of a coincidence than anything else. 

Okay I haven't read the rest of this post yet but I will bet a thousand dollars this becomes exclusively about Dragon Age.

Most of the games explain why they’re rated M for mature audiences.  Usually it’s because of violence, other times due to nudity and/or sexual situations.  But after some conversation that’s been going on in my Dragon Age writing forum, I’ve begun to wonder if mature audiences means only those situations such as gore, violence, sex, nudity, and/or drugs. 

Because she owns two games. They're Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 and they're both M.
Possibly Mass Effect 2 and 3 (but not 1 because that one was almost halfway decent [also no gay romance unless it's a lesbian thing which won't be flying for a grrrrrl gamer]) because they're Bioware games.

As a writer and literature lover I tend to approach video games from the perspective of story, character, and most of all, themes. 

Am I the only person that approaches games with the perspective that they should be fun and if it's telling me a good story that counts as fun but also if it has good game play it's fun?

And it happens that the themes of such games as BioShock, Dragon Age, and Gears of War transcend the levels of violence and sexuality as far as maturity is concerned.

Not that you played Bioshock or Gears of War but whatever.

In those games and many others there is far more going on that I would almost call subtext that isn’t always meant for young audiences.

Pretext is the term I'd use but whatever.

began to think about this when a new forum member on the younger side said she disliked Anders and dared us to change her mind.  A forum member who loves Andes (and has analyzed him extensively and writes him beautifully) took up the challenge and wrote up a very mature, eloquent post explaining her analysis of his character as it related to the situation in Kirkwall in DA2.

Man I sure love video games. I especially love writing fanfiction about video games.
But I hate playing video games. Is there a community for me?
OH YEAH. DOZENS.

So is understanding what’s beneath the surface of Dragon Age 2, and even Dragon Age Origins.

Not a complete thought.
Jesus Christ. Know what she concludes?
Complex villains are more interesting than mindlessly evil villains.
Thank you, Aristotle.
People were seriously concluding this in the B.C.s. Where have you been for 2000 years of recorded history?

Some of the things it had to say were right on, and some things tended to pertain to a small portion of the gamer demographic.  But it had some interesting things to say about female gamers.  I know this issue is talked to death, and I know I’ll probably offend some people, and probably miss some points of discussion.

YAAAAY CAN'T WAIT.

But 1.)it’s my blog and I haven’t talked it to death, 2.)if you’re offended at least you think about things (and give me the opportunity to learn more about others’ perspectives) and 3.)this is such a huge topic that I’m bound to miss things, and accept that.  So: what does it mean for me pesonally to be a female gamer, and what do I think about women in games?

This is a huge issue, male gamers, and as a male gamer want to know what I think about male gamers?
Fuck who cares?
Why do I need to know about your gender in relation to your hobbies?

Interestingly enough, current statistics show that nearly 2/3 of online gamers are women.  Normally I like to defy the statistics in my ongoing quest for individuality.  However, this is one case where I’m proud to be part of the statistics, and a member of the majority.  I’ve been gaming in earnest since I was young, and owe much of that to Samus Aran of Metroid fame.  Growing up I was used to the idea that the Princess was in another castle.  So imagine my delight when the end of Metroid revealed that the badass bounty hunter I’d taken all over Zebes was a woman!

For someone who claims to love literature and themes as much as you you'd think you'd have spotted the context of that.
You go the entire game not knowing your character's gender then it's revealed that incidentally she's a woman.
So, you know, let's follow Metroid's example and not give a fuck about gender.
If you can kill the filthy aliens you're okay. Shut up.

 But what was troubling to me was that I recently read that many women prefer to play online as males.

NO NOT THAT!

Granted the study is nearly four years old, but conversely, I was having a conversation with a friend once about males and females online and he said that sometimes he intentionally plays as a female character because people underestimate him.

Am I the only person--
no fuck it these past few months have proven I am the only person.
I'm not reading the rest of it because it's boring.
And I accidentally closed the tab.
Freudian slip.

Who says video games and sci-fi/fantasy are a waste of time?  Who says you can’t learn anything from them?  For those that do, I present 10 lessons learned from my gaming and sci-fi/fantasy career:

Oh great.

4. We make our own luck. – Master Chief, Halo

Yes, truly Halo coined that concept.
Well according to some people Halo invented the notion of dual wielding in video games so why the fuck not?

Luck is described in many ways: blind, dumb, a lady… luck is fickle and changeable.  We can’t always rely on it, and must do our part to help ourselves along.  What some people would call luck, others would call the result of training, hard work, and perseverance.  In the Halo universe Master Chief is known for his luck, but if you look deeper into his backstory you’ll also see that in spite of the fact that he was considered lucky, he still worked his arse off.

Oh so only incompetent people would ascribe success to luck?
Yes, truly Halo coined such notions and--

Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.
- Lady Murasaki
'Tis man's to fight, but Heaven's to give success.
- Homer
Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.
- Ignazio Silone
The champion makes his own luck.
- Red Blaik

All people here dead before 1990 and in some cases dead before the year 1000.
SO YOU KNOW, ORIGINAL CONCEPT DO NOT STEAL.

  He knew what he needed to do to win, and didn’t rely on his ‘luck’, preferring instead to make his own luck.  In short, his actions paid off because he was willing to work for it; when the moment of truth came he had what it took to follow through.

SOOOO DEEEEEP.
There are complex issues explored in video games with surprising originality but this isn't an example.

I started out my Skyrim game wanting to join the Imperial Legion.  But the more I played and saw of them, and the more I heard and saw of Ulfric Stormcloak, the more I lean toward the Stormcloak rebellion.

Basically resigning Tamriel to slow subjugation at the hands of the Thalmor but whatever, girl gamer's first Elder Scrolls game was Oblivion so she doesn't know about any of this shit.

I’m an MFA who writes fanfiction; that sounds like the opening to a support-group/twelve-step introduction, but it’s who I am.

Master of fine arts who drops semicolons like they're about to be outlawed.
You may be a master of fine arts but I've got nerves of steel.

I’m a high school English teacher, so the fact that I game instantly gives me +50 approval with a lot of students.  Suddenly I’m not so alien.

UNTIL YOU SHOW THEM THE FURY OF THE ANCIENTS IN CALL OF DUTY.
No 14 year old can beat me at video games. I've been shooting Nazis since before you were born, son.

But am I really a gamer?

No.

From what I've seen you've played a few video games and let that define you.
We’re now in the dawn of 2012, and so far the only game I want is Mass Effect 3, which is coming out in just under two months.  I’ve never played Portal or Portal 2; never played Assassin’s Creed or any of the Final Fantasy games, and ironically, I know a great deal about Call of Duty Black Ops without ever having played it.  My gamerscore isn’t in the tens of thousands; heck, I was just happy to break four digits!

The fact you think gamerscore defines someone as a gamer proves you aren't.
I remember a time before gamerscore and still consider the notion of achievements as rather quaint.
If you can claim that then maybe you can define yourself as a gamer.
Not that I would because who gives a fuck?

By some standards I have large gaps in my gaming background.  And of course, when talking about games with my students the question comes up: “JayRain, are you going to get insertepicnewgamehere when it comes out??”

My next PC game will be Dishonored and it's already looking to be game of the year--

But I didn’t get Battlefield 3.

My best friend claims to like that game and yet I've never once heard him say anything positive about it so I'm not sure you're missing much there.
I haven't played that game either because frankly I'd just finished up playing Black Ops online like 2 months prior and wasn't quite ready for yet another FPS.

Even Dante’s Inferno, based on a work of literature I love, didn’t sear my wallet begging to be bought.

An English teacher who plays video games didn't get Dante's Inferno?
Why?
I preordered that fucker.
I never preorder games anymore.
Also you haven't played a Final Fantasy?
Seriously?
Even people who hate RPGs have been known to play Final Fantasy 5 or 6 or 7 or 9.
Oh good up to the first entry time to quit and pretend this never happened.

Compromise is the last bastion of defeat

I tried to update Friday but no one was posting shit. I think it's safe to say blogging is almost (finally) dead.
But as long as there are blogs like this I'll be vigilant.
I'm skipping the first entry because I can't bring my eyes to focus long enough to read it.
The second post caught my attention because it's entitled "hate speaks for itself" and I almost considered using that as the title of this entry but she means it in a negative way and I was thinking it sounded like a Warhammer quote.

On the internet we read a lot of homophobic hate speech but I think it is often not treated as severely as it should be.

It's the fucking internet. Trying to stem the tide of the shit wave that is the internet is impossible.
I'm still here, aren't I? Still trying to stop blogging. It's futile.

Ok I have finished Mass Effect 3 and I am going to have to squee. There is so much good here.

Mass Effect 3, the game universally panned by almost everyone not a professional reviewer getting paid to turn out a 10/10?

ME 2 and ME3 I don’t think the whole “clips” concept worked. They had a nice idea with ammo in the first game – and I don’t think the whole “heat sink” idea made a whole lot of sense the way it was implemented.

Really, the heat system in 1 didn't make sense?
So firing superheated gas at enemies wouldn't cause the gun to heat up?
Genius.

And, besides, you never ran out of ammo so why bother?

Yes, why bother with things like balance and logic?

On inclusion – lots of it and I loved it. And I loved my romance with Estevan (Kaidan, alas, died in ME1 for me) but more than anything what impressed me is that Estevan is gay. I mean, even if my Shepherd is straight as straight can be, Estevan is still gay. He isn’t the gay option thrown in to placate me and hidden away if you don’t want him. He’s gay, he’s mourning his husband and he will talk about it.

Don't care. Busy killing.
Don't care about that blue bitch's quest for knowledge and I don't care about that bitch in the hazmat suit's peoples' plight.
Don't care about that fag's whining or that other bitch's racism.
It's just me, Wrex and that weird alien guy.
Yeah, the three fucking guys killing shit and saving the galaxy.
When this is all over we're going to have so many blue bitches, holy shit.
And then I never played any of the sequels.
What a great game.

 Similarly you can walk through the Citadel and hear a woman talk about her wife. While romancing these character is an option, there existence is not. They are there. And that impressed me.

Whatever out of the way I'm going to the gun store.
Blue bitches won't ride my super tech cock if I can't beat these assholes in some bullshit lab doing illegal cloning research.
Too many targets. Can't solve this diplomatically because I chose to sink points into firing guns instead of whining so my only option is murder.
Your plight doesn't interest me. Stand back and let me save you from alien collectivisms bent on killing all life.

And to describe how much I loved this? I’m tempted to do a play through of the whole series, one after the other. Yes yes I am.

I seem to recall getting that game a few days after Christmas a few years ago then beating it before break ended. That's not really a feat.

So, I was talking about how Beloved’s parents aren’t exactly super-duper thrilled about be, or mine about him for that matter – and I was quickly informed by an empathetic person that they totally understood, they didn’t get on well with their in-laws either. See, they understood what it was to be rejected by your loved one’s family.

Great.
Don't care.

But it’s not a matter of my in-laws not liking me or my parents not liking Beloved. Even if Beloved or I were completely different men, our parents would still be hostile. 

Oh this is a guy.
Of course.
I'm just glad I can keep score for once.

We cannot have a relationship that would possibly meet their approval. Every potential relationship is wrong. It would actually be better for us not to have relationships, in their eyes, than have any of the relationships open to us. Our very capacity to love is flawed in their eyes. They weren’t just rejecting our partners, they were rejecting us. And that is so extremely different from your in-laws not liking you very much. 

K.
You're right. We are completely unalike.
ANYWAY ALIENS TO KILL.
Or because I'm still playing Deus Ex it's FEMA and other government assholes to kill.
OH NO ADAM! FEMA!
Who gives a shit, Frank? Unless FEMA is code for "I can't snap their necks" I'll solve this somehow.
Then one of them caught me hacking one of their computers.
Fuck it time to escalate this motherfucker.
Have you seen my armor piercing assault rifle yet?
No?
Let me acquaint your spine with it.
MMMMMMMMMMMM YEAH.

*deep breaths* my temper is frayed on this one. I’ve just come across a blog post by a straight person who is most displeased that the GBLT community is not more up in arms and outraged by the group beating of Brandon White in Atlanta. She wanted to see more outpouring of… I don’t even know what. Outrage, grief, anger, shock? She judges us for not reacting more forcefully to the gay bashing and not paying more attention to it.

Oh look it's some Russian bitch who can turn invisible.
Real fucking neato, super spy. Hope you're a fan of Dirty Harry, Natasha, because I have a 44 mag you can suck on.
All the invisibility in the world sure didn't stop that hot lead, huh?
Now that was a great fucking game.
Know how many romance options there are in Deus Ex?
Fucking none. Not a single one. Too busy being future Dirty Harry.

So, I just saw a wonderful whine about the new Mass Effect 3 and apparently, of the new love interests, there are no EXCLUSIVE heterosexuals (i.e. they’re all gay or bi). Note, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have an opposite sex pairing – there are bisexual love interests and your straight love interests from the last 2 games which, in case you have forgotten, included ZERO same-sex relationships (oh you could have female bisexual flings, but no relationships).

I'm currently reliving every act of violence I've ever committed in a video game right now. Are you still whining about fictional relationships?
K, glad to see I haven't missed anything.
Seriously you're playing a game where you're a space soldier with optional robot eyes and you're charged with stopping an alien collective from eradicating all life in the galaxy and your concern is whether you can fuck other dudes?
If it's that fucking important to you, your imaginary gay life, you can save the galaxy and I imagine every ass in the galaxy would be yours because YOU SAVED THE FUCKING GALAXY.
All the waifu options in Mass Effect were underwhelming from the start so I just focused on being as hardcore as possible because I imagined Shepard would have a million waifus if he succeeded in the mayhem I was contemplating.
Am I the only person who still plays video games to have fun?

But but but shouldn’t heterosexuals be equally represented?! Equality should be equal!!!

Yes, equality should be equal. This is correct.

I just want to kill aliens with advanced weaponry. I don't care about heterosexuality or homosexuality or dualspirited furry transgenders in my games.
I want to sneak up on cybernetically enhanced gangbangers and kill them with my sword hands. I don't give a fuck about any of this other bullshit.
If you're going to tell a good story fucking do it and make it like Lost Odyssey or Persona 3. Make me feel interested about these characters as individuals and not fucking platforms for your misguided sociology nonsense.
If you're going the societal issues route you better make it like Deus Ex and make it an issue I care about otherwise I'll just focus on everything not that.

So Janet W. Hardy is writing a book that she has a kickstarter page to announce. And the book is called Girlf@g. (I am not linking to it, the last thing I won’t is for even one link from me to add so much as a penny into having this homophobic book put on the shelves)

Kickstart is basically institutionalized begging where you can tell people to give you money and you'll make this thing for them.
Lots of video games are being developed like this now and they'll all universally suck because you're paying for something before it even exists.
Fuck it, I made 2 million before I even started this shitty game. You can eat shit and like it, idiots.

Yes Girlf@g. Though Hardy, of course, doesn’t remotely have the respect to disemvowel the slur –if she did she wouldn’t have used the slur in the first place. And this book is about? Women who are sexually attracted to gay men. No, let's not even be that respectful. A book for women who fetishise f@gs, since that's the term this woman uses. Oh yay there’s a book about the fetishists now.

How to count the many things wrong with this?

Fuck it I made my cool thirteen million by being controversial. Peace, bitches.

So over in the US the Violence against Women Act has become partisan because it contains inclusive clauses for GBLT people, undocumented migrants and Native Americans

Which means, for these over-privileged arseholes, they were willing to scupper this bill – and throw all those women who desperately need this out because their hatred is more important than saving women’s lives.

If the government really wants to protect women from scumbags they should give me some cybernetics because I think I've successfully demonstrated that in test environments I am utterly lethal to scumbags.
Here's a post entitled "another rant about my labels"
MY LABELS I MUST AFFIX THEM TO MY BODY--
I AM HEMORRHAGING LABELS!
HELP I AM DYING OF LABEL LOSS--
FAREWELL.

Yes it’s time to say it again. Not particularly because I think it’ll stop people calling me it, but at least it lets me vent, and why have a blog if you can’t vent when you need it?

Do not call me queer. Yes I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it 100 times more. Do not call me Queer. I don’t care what the word means to you or how you identify or why – that’s your identity and your label, not mine. Do not use it to refer to me.

How about asshole?
Can I refer to you as an asshole?

And don’t try to poke or police me into accepting the label. Don’t make assumptions about me because I refuse to use your preferred terms.

My using the word gay doesn’t make me conformist. It doesn’t mean I’m not an activist. It doesn’t mean I secretly want to be straight. It doesn’t mean I’m not REALLY fighting for equality. It doesn’t mean I’m not a real gay man. It doesn’t mean I don’t REALLY face discrimination or that I don’t know what prejudice and bigotry really means. Pack up your shaming and get the fuck out if you think these things because I am beyond sick of it.

I've created a handy list of labels you can use when addressing me:
The Bane of Kings
The Red Wake
Uncontested Slaughter Master
The Last True Scion of Zeus
The Baleful Fire
If you're going to affix labels to your body you better pick some fucking labels, man.

To me that word is attached to my bones that ache because they’ve been broken. That word is attached to the scars on my arms and my back.

Hey man I know some chicks are into kinky shit like that but I don't really want to hear about it unless you're brown or Asian. And hot.

That is a word of my nightmares and memories that still haunt me. I take a cocktail of pills to keep my brain working because of the echoes of that word.

 HEH GOT HIM.
I added the boldface, if that wasn't apparent.

You have no right to decide I should use and claim this word. You have no right to demand I just swallow that and “get over it” and move on so I can follow your word choice.

My life. My being. My labels. Respect them or get out, simple as.

I prefer the first two titles, incidentally.
Respect them or get out.

So, Louis C. K. has joined the legions of those downplaying Tracy Morgan’s bigotry and chiding gay people for our reaction to blatant homophobia

So let’s address some things here, Louis.

Louis C.K. is probably the best comedian alive--
If he says something is funny I'm inclined to agree.

You found it hilarious. Really? A joke about stabbing a gay child you found hilarious? You know why we can’t laugh at this shit? Because it happens, Louis.

 He also makes jokes about rape and killing elderly people. I'm pretty sure he's not serious.

He is on a comedy stage – do you think that makes it better?

Yes.
It literally does.

You know nothing. You understand nothing and you’re choking on your privilege.
Don’t tell us what would be more effective, straight man. Don’t tell us how we should react.

K got it.

I've been putting it off for months, but this wreck is way past its useby date. I have a blank desktop and 101 broken start menu links, in fact broken files all over the shop, it keeps freezing on me, half the programmes don't work the other half are unreliable at best.

computer programs are always spelled the American way.
Yeah that's right I'm correcting a British man about British spelling.
That's how top fucking pro at English I am.
Also time to reinstall Windows dipshit no need to buy a new computer.

So another bigoted arsehole has decided to open his mouth to defend poor oppressed Christians in the UK Who are being crushed under the “pink jackboot” and he needs to oppose the “Gaystapo”

Christfags sure do love playing that persecution card. I don't even understand how you can pretend to be persecuted when you're 80% of the industrialized nations' population.
When my people, the Romans, (allegedly) fed your people to lions that was persecution. You people are just whining about some bullshit I don't care about.

Yes, Nazi analogies. I'm putting aside the malicious vileness of claiming GBLT people are oppressing Christians when Christianity is pushing so much homophobic and transphobic hatred because it's eclipsed by the sheer nauseating evil of comparing GBLT people to Nazis.

There's an ironclad defense if I've ever heard it. "It's okay because Christians are the Nazis!"

So I've quit WoW. 

WOW MASS EFFECT AND WORLD OF WARCRAFT!?
Sure you're not a girl?

Partly because I wanted the time, partly because even with 6/7 hc bosses progress before nerf still didn't seem fun and partly, with our guild going from transition with our server dying, it was looking like I'd have to go to other places with other guilds aaaand... that sounded as much fun as putting my foot in a blender.

Oh yeah gotta rush through the boring leveling to get to the boring end game raids--
can't wait to play this gringo motherfuck in a heroic, fuck yes.
SO MUCH FUUUUUUN WoW REVOLUTIONIZED VIDEO GAMES.
I will bet a thousand dollars right fucking now that this'll some how wrap around to gay shit.
I mean goddamn. I play an MMO (FFXIV) and yet I don't somehow tie this into how fucking straight I am, do I?

I've been lucky in my guild. S & I have been GM of it since raiding Gruuls lair back in the day. We were insular, kept to our own and had a very strict policy – your fuckery will not be tolerated here. 

That's one of my rules in my linkshell, too.
No meme spouting
No general faggotry
No bullshit whining
I hate you
You're going to hell.

No boss will be “raped”, nothing was “gay” unless they were actually homosexual and no racial abuse was remotely tolerated.

I don't know if there are any gays in my LS but I know I'm a minority as a white man and the racial slurs fly like fucking mad regardless.
No one gives a single fuck.
You know that's the thing about being cool as hell. You don't give a shit about this nonsense because you're too busy having a job and doing shit to worry about nonsense.
And no one there is actually racist. Hell, the core of this group agrees we'd probably be friends in real life if it had come to that.

If you didn't like it we weren't going to argue or debate with you – we'd kick you. Get out.

I've never kicked a single person.
Your presence might not be tolerated, but if I have to kick you for your bullshit I'd have to kick at least three other people for the same reason.

Because, ultimately, I'm quitting WoW because I don't want a hobby that involves so much homophobia dodging.

Outside of FPSs, MMOs are probably one of the more homophobic communities in gaming.
They're not outright hostile about it but the anti-gay terminology is pretty much rooted in the lexicon of these games. You picked a really shitty thing to involve yourself with if that's what offends you.
I can't even recall the number of times I've heard something called a cocksucker in FFXIV alone.

Oh and all you straight cis people “you're offended because they insulted the alliance” really? Really you privileged arseholes? Someone sings a rant full of anti-gay slurs and you think we give a shit about the freaking FACTION insults?! Get a clue, get some perspective and wake up. 

What kind of fag picks a Lalafell anyway?
AM I RIGHT?
And I'd never call a gay man a fag.
Unless he was acting like one.
Anyway this is fucking boring. I'm going to go play the video games.