gamesindustrynormal

[gamesindustrynormal]

Disclaimer: I like Anita Sarkeesian.

But also, I just saw a writeup of a Youtuber whose content has come a long way from his Gamergate days, and to explain that, the wiki says, "Anita Sarkeesian is a radical feminist who created a webseries about sexist tropes in video games"

AHAHAHAHAHA ANITA SARKEESIAN, RADICAL FEMINIST

HOO HEE EXCUSE ME THAT'S A GOOD ONE

Radical feminist. Feminist extremist. Anita Sarkeesian.

Anita Sarkeesian did her Master's Thesis in Social and Political Thought in 2010 on the trope of the "Strong Woman" in fantasy and science fiction TV shows, and produced Tropes vs Women, a series of online videos breaking down her work in a way that was accessible to a lay audience. She found a ready audience in geek feminist circles, since this was exactly the kind of thing we wanted and needed right then.

Tropes vs Women was extremely bog-standard cultural critique, what you'd find expressed in discussion between scholars of literary theory or media analysis anywhere, and exactly what 99% of feminists were saying at the time. It certainly talked about patriarchy as the complex system of sexism fused into our cultural matrix, so it's not like it wasn't radical feminism from that viewpoint, but it wasn't "radical" by way of being especially militant. Sarkeesian frequently pointed out how individual occurrences of a trope weren't harmful in themselves, but that a media landscape completely saturated with only that trope and nothing but that trope is, in the aggregate, a big feminist issue.

And the internet

HAAAAAAAATED

her for it.

Like, geek feminists got flak a lot anyway, especially when we wanted things like properly enforced policies against sexual harassment at science fiction conventions. And yeah, there totally were toxic keyboard warriors who said stuff about all men being scum - but Sarkeesian wasn't one of them.

It's probably because of her succinct, matter-of-fact, "this is not a debated issue, feminists have decades of theory and research to back this point up, sources abound if you google for thirty seconds so I won't stop to baby you through all the fundamental concepts" approach that she got such a big reach. She was calm, concise, coherent, and rational, everything feminists are told we need to be.

Unfortunately that just made her seem... attackable, I think. A good target, not actually scary or impassioned, unlikely to respond to violence with violence. The perfect kind of person to play five seconds of, and then spend the next five minutes yelling into your mic because IF ANITA IS RIGHT ABOUT VIDEO GAME SEXIST YOU MIGHT AS WELL SAY THAT EVERYTHING IS SEXIST AND SEXISM IS SYSTEMIC AND ENDEMIC TO ALL OF WESTERN CULTURE AND OTHER CULTURES TOO, WHICH IS CLEARLY RIDICULOUS, ANITA LADY BAD.

She literally spent five solid years as Enemy #1 in online geek spaces. It was completely insane. I am so sorry she had to take the brunt of it, and yet grateful that she did. She held the line and took the shit and kept doing good decent feminist work for years after, though she did admit to burnout and closed up shop on her nonprofit org Feminist Frequency in 2023. I hope to hell she's having a good day.

But even now, more than a decade later, dudes talk about her as though she were Geek Feminist Godzilla, the biggest baddest woman in the universe, off to lay waste to downtown Video Games and cut everybody's balls off.

When people (mostly dudes, but not all) talk like this, it's just very funny and unintentionally revealing because of the absolute averageness of her third-wave, trans-inclusive, western-centric, intersectional feminism. It makes them look absolutely pathetic.

Because it just makes it clear that she is probably the first and last self-described feminist the speaker has ever paid attention to.

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[gamesindustrynormal]

Today I learned that Van Halen have that rider in their contract about “a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed” in order to know at a glance if the promoter read the entire contract.  And the reason they do THAT is because they once had a stage collapse because a promoter hadn’t read the proper way to set up all the specific technical stuff.

So if the band goes in the dressing room or catering and sees brown M&Ms, they know they have to double-check the stage setup for safety.

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[gamesindustrynormal]

Metaphor: ReFantazio, Atlus 2024

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Best Student Game

A Dual Ascent (Mountain Toad Entertainment /  Rubika Supinfogame) DisplaceMen (Eversea Club / leafaleaves) Growth Spurt: A Meandering Intermission into the Afterhours of a Miscalculation (Games for my Computer) Slot Waste (Vinny Roca / pickpanpuck productions) The WereCleaner (Howlin' Hugs / USC Games) Year Unknown (Julian Heuser)

Honorable Mentions: Cards of Heart (GoodMind Games), Duck Paradox (Magic Games / Midwest Games), Lost Garden (​​Ori Shany, Yoni Pushett, Ramon Zerem), Perfect World (Michael Overton Brown), Timeworks (Starworks Studios) 

Excellence in Audio

Anger Foot (Free Lives / Devolver Digital)  Despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena / Panic)  INDIKA (Odd Meter / 11 bit studios) ODDADA (Sven Ahlgrimm, Mathilde Hoffmann, Bastian Clausdorff) Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper / Panic) Utopia Must Fall (Pixeljam)

Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode), Mouthwashing (Wrong Organ / CRITICAL REFLEX),  Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios / Kepler Interactive),  Rise of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games / Playstack), UFO 50 (Mossmouth)

Excellence in Design

Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack) Blue Prince (Dogubomb / Raw Fury)  Caves of Qud (Freehold Games / Kitfox Games)  Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder)  Pacific Drive (Ironwood Studios / Kepler Interactive) Tactical Breach Wizards (Suspicious Developments)

Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode), No Case Should Remain Unsolved (Somi), UFO 50 (Mossmouth), LOK Digital (Letibus Design, Icedrop Games / Draknek and Friends), Eigengrau (Martin Mauersics), The Rise of the Golden Idol (Color Gray Games / Playstack)

Excellence in Narrative

Caves of Qud (Freehold Games / Kitfox Games)  Closer the Distance (Osmotic Studios / Skybound Games)   Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder)  Despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena / Panic)  INDIKA (Odd Meter / 11 bit studios) No Case Should Remain Unsolved (Somi)

Honorable Mentions: Blue Prince (Dogubomb / Raw Fury), Miniatures (Other Tales Interactive), Mouthwashing (Wrong Organ / CRITICAL REFLEX), Tactical Breach Wizards (Suspicious Developments), Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper / Panic),��The Thaumaturge (Fool's Theory / 11 bit studios)

Excellence in Visual Arts

Children of the Sun (René Rother / Devolver Digital)  Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder)  Hauntii (Moonloop Games / Firestoke)  Judero (Talha and Jack Co, J. King-Spooner, Talha Kaya)  Nine Sols (RedCandleGames)  Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper / Panic)

Honorable Mentions: Crow Country (SFB Games), Death of the Reprobate (Joe Richardson), Miniatures (Other Tales Interactive), Tiny Glade (Pounce Light), Ultros (Hadoque / Kepler Interactive)  

Nuovo Award

Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder)  Despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena / Panic)  Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity (Sam Atlas)  Ginger (Kevin Du / lizu ktap) individualism in the dead-internet age: an anti-big tech asset flip shovelware rant manifesto (alienmelon)  Starship Home (Creature)  tapeçaria (tapestry) (mut/moochi (with help from plunderludics working group)) The Exit 8 (KOTAKE CREATE / Active Gaming Media Inc)

Honorable Mentions: Arctic Eggs (The Water Museum, cockydoody, abmarnie, Cameron Ginex / CRITICAL REFLEX) , Judero (Talha and Jack Co, J. King-Spooner, Talha Kaya), Onto Maizilind Unto Infinity (Kas Ghobadi, Julián Palacios Gechtman / Kasrah Ghobadi), Price of Flight (WATERBOX), Project Y (Project_Y Production Committee), Refind Self: The Personality TestGame (Lizardry / PLAYISM) 

Seumas McNally Grand Prize

Caves of Qud (Freehold Games / Kitfox Games)  Consume Me (Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder)  Despelote (Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena / Panic)  INDIKA (Odd Meter / 11 bit studios) Thank Goodness You're Here! (Coal Supper / Panic) UFO 50 (Mossmouth)

Honorable Mentions: Animal Well (Billy Basso / Bigmode), Balatro (LocalThunk / Playstack),Blue Prince (Dogubomb / Raw Fury), Mouthwashing (Wrong Organ / CRITICAL REFLEX), Nine Sols (RedCandleGames) ,Tactical Breach Wizards (Suspicious Developments)

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to those of you who are moving here from tiktok, from someone whos used both tiktok and tumbr for years...

1. DO NOT censor your posts

dont censor sex, abuse, suicide, dont censor it. we dont have censors like tiktok does, you wont be banned for talking about these things and tagging them properly helps people avoid them (also, we dont have shadowbanning here)

2. we dont really have an algorithm

you follow who you follow, and you see posts from who you follow or what you search. the 'for you page' is basically useless here. this also brings me to my next two points

3. dont crosstag

we get it, on tiktok you have to crosstag for reach, but thats not really a thing here. just tag your posts properly (also posters often leave more info about the post in the tags!! and when you reblog stuff you can leave your own notes in the tags, kind of like the old "repost comments" on tiktok)

4. dont expect to go viral/be famous

"viral" isnt really a thing on here (at least not for the average blogger). your posts will probably get 2-10 likes and you wont get nearly as many followers than on tiktok. thats just how tumblr is

5. blocking is your best friend

tiktok is VERY discussion based, and while tumblr is much more discussion based than other social medias, its still not a good place for ragebait/discourse. dont interact, itll make your experience worse in the end, just block and move on

6. you cant go into someone elses house and start rearranging their furniture

this is tumblr, not tiktok. dont diss old tumblr users for how they use the site or try to change them, thats like going into someone elses house and trying to rearrange their furniture. we've been here longer and we're familiar with the site and its culture, either find your niche, adapt, or find a different app

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The one thing that I would change about the wicked movie is I would have included a detail from the Wizard of Oz book that was referenced but not explicitly stuck to in the stage musical. The movie didn’t keep it but I wish they did because it lowkey makes no one looking twice at Elphaba in the Emerald City make more sense

In the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy’s little posse gets to the gates of the Emerald City and a guard gives them these special glasses and locks them onto their faces, because supposedly the glasses protect them from the bright sunlight that reflects off the emerald buildings in the Emerald City, which would blind them otherwise.

They later find out that these glasses are a total sham. They’re just glasses with green lenses. Dorothy buys a green dress while they’re there that magically turns white the second she steps outside the city? It was never green in the first place. The Emerald City itself is not actually green. The Wizard just started mandating these glasses, told everyone the city was green, and they believed him. It really establishes just how much power the Wizard has, even after they realize he has no real magic.

If everyone was wearing these in the Emerald City in Wicked, I just think it would have added another layer to the whole scene when they visit. Elphaba would think everyone in the city is so much more openminded, and it’s actually that they can’t really see her at all. She’d think she’s in a safe place where for the first time in her life she can blend into a crowd, but it’s all an illusion. She and Glinda could get out on that balcony and look down and realize the city is not actually green. This is the one detail I would have changed about the movie.

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I don’t think I posted this here oml

enjoy this doodle from may

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Blue lake - Remembrance from Hollow Knight

I'm quite proud of this artwork! I used many photos as references for the water and caverns. The pink flower is the one from Emilitia's house (in game character in City of tears). The cave visible in the distance leads to crossroads, so to give this impression I used the colors black and cobalt, the main palette of that area. While there are no bio-luminescent organisms on the walls in-game, I liked the green light they give.

[gamesindustrynormal]

In general, understanding radical feminism for what it is and why it appeals to many people requires an understanding that the greatest strength of radical feminism as a tool for understanding misogyny and sexism is also its greatest faultline.

See, radical feminism is a second wave position in feminist thought and development. It is a reaction to what we sometimes call first wave feminism, which was so focused on specific legal freedoms that we usually refer to the activists who focused on it as suffragists or suffragettes: that is, first wave feminists were thinking about explicit laws that said "women cannot do this thing, and if they try, the law of the state and of other powerful institutions will forcibly evict them." Women of that era were very focused on explicit and obvious barriers to full participation in public and civil life, because there were a lot of them: you could not vote, you could not access education, you could not be trained in certain crucial professions, you could not earn your own pay even if you decided you wanted to.

And so these activists began to try to dig into the implicit beliefs and cultural structures that served to trap women asking designated paths, even if they did wish to do other things. Why is it that woman are pressured not to go into certain high prestige fields, even if in theory no one is stopping them? How do our ideas and attitudes about sex and gender create assumptions and patterns and constrictions that leave us trapped even when the explicit chains have been removed?

The second wave of feminism, then, is what happened when the daughters of this first wave--and their opponents--looked around and said to themselves: hold on, the explicit barriers are gone. The laws that treat us as a different and lesser class of people are gone. Why doesn't it feel like I have full access to freedoms that I see the men around me enjoying? What are the unspoken laws that keep us here?

And so these activists focused on the implicit ideas that create behavioral outcomes. They looked inward to interrogate both their own beliefs and the beliefs of other people around them. They discovered many things that were real and illuminated barriers that people hadn't thought of, especially around sexual violence and rape and trauma and harassment. In particular, these activists became known for exercises like consciousness-raising, in which everyday people were encouraged to sit down and consider the ways in which their own unspoken, implicit beliefs contributed to general societal problems of sexism and misogyny.

Introspection can be so intoxicating, though, because it allows us to place ourselves at the center of the social problems that we see around us. We are all naturally a little self centered, after all. When your work is so directly tied to digging up implications and resonances from unspoken beliefs, you start getting really into drawing lines of connection from your own point of interest to other related marginalizations--and for this generation of thinkers, often people who only experienced one major marginalization got the center of attention. Compounding this is the reality that it is easier to see the impacts of marginalization when they apply directly to you, and things that apply to you seem more important.

So some of this generation of thinkers thought to themselves, hang on. Hang on. Misogyny has its fingers in so many pies that we don't see, and I can see misogyny echoing through so many other marginalizations too--homophobia especially but also racism and ableism and classism. These echoes must be because there is one central oppression that underlies all the others, and while theoretically you could have a society with no class distinctions and no race distinctions, just biologically you always have sex and gender distinctions, right? So: perhaps misogyny is the original sin of culture, the well from which all the rest of it springs. Perhaps there's really no differences in gender, only in sex, and perhaps we can reach equality if only we can figure out how to eradicate gender entirely. Perhaps misogyny is the root from which all other oppressions stem: and this group of feminists called themselves radical feminists, after that root, because radix is the Latin word for root.

Very few of this generation of thinkers, you may be unsurprised to note, actually lived under a second marginalization that was not directly entangled with sexism and gender; queerness was pretty common, but queerness is also so very hard to distinguish from gender politics anyway. It's perhaps not surprising that at this time several Black women who were interested in gender oppression became openly annoyed and frustrated by the notion that if only we can fix gender oppression, we can fix everything: they understood racism much more clearly, they were used to considering and interrogating racism and thinking deeply about it, and they thought that collapsing racism into just a facet of misogyny cheapened both things and failed to let you understand either very well. These thinkers said: no, actually, there isn't one original sin that corrupted us all, there are a host of sins humans are prone to, and hey, isn't the concept of original sin just a little bit Christianocentric anyway?

And from these thinkers we see intersectional feminists appearing. These are the third wave, and from this point much mainstream feminist throughout moves to asking: okay, so how do the intersections of misogyny make it appear differently in all these different marginalized contexts? What does misogyny do in response to racial oppression? What does it look like against this background, or that one?

But the radical feminists remained, because seeing your own problems and your own thought processes as the center of the entire world and the answer to the entire problem of justice is very seductive indeed. And they felt left behind and got quite angry about this, and cast about for ways to feel relevant without having to decenter themselves. And, well, trans women were right there, and they made such a convenient target...

That's what a TERF is.

Now you know.

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"After days of grifters and con men at CES we stumbled upon the booth for VLC. they were all dressed as wizards and told us, "we have nothing to sell, we just decided to show up". i told them I'd been using their software to pirate media for 15 years and they said "keep doing that"

sometimes it's worthwhile to meet your heroes"

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The whole anti trans talking point about saving women's sports for #feminism is crazy to me, it's so obvious none of these people know the history of women's sports. They literally exist because men felt upset and emasculated when women would beat them in co-ed sports. So women were banned from sports and only allowed to participate in their own sectioned off teams and events. Upholding that isn't all that feminist honestly.

The physical ability of athletes is not as dependent on sex traits as anyone in these discussions thinks it is, men are just encouraged to participate in sports far more so than women are. Many decades ago, male athletes did not perform nearly as good as the ones competing today; to the point your average modern professional female athlete could blow their numbers out of the water. Were these men just "biologically inferior"? No, that's stupid. They just weren't training the same way. The nature of professional sports is to Do Better Than The Last Guy. So yeah obviously, modern athletes that beat these records are going to be more physically capable than the ones of decades & centuries past. Female athletes are the same way, women have just been at this professional sports thing for much less time in comparison to men, and in smaller numbers, due to differing social pressures.

And every "biological advantage" that can be attributed to biological differences linked to sex traits shouldn't be considered differently from "biological advantages" between people with similar sex traits. Michael Phelps definitely has a biological advantage over other men but nobody's pissed off about him succeeding. The point of professional sports like this is to see what the human body is capable of. I dunno how to tell this to TERFs but sports are inherently unfair because of that. Some people just got lucky genetics and have crazy potential to be good at physically intensive activities, regardless of their sex traits.

It is not trans & intersex people's fault TERFs view being strong and fast and fit as inherently unfeminine.

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Monster by JIN LH

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Autumn makes me think of you 🥀

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Art by Khushi Chauhan

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I’d divorce him too lmao