CuriousCat Archive Page 181 of 202

  1. Games whose for lack of a better term "aesthetic" you like? Like the hyper-card-inspired graphics from the Obra-Dinn video you talked about a while back.

    Here's what comes to mind:

    Return of the Obra Dinn
    Iconoclasts
    else Heart.Break()
    Gamma Bros
    Kentucky Route Zero
    Riven
    Grim Fandango
    Thirty Flights of Loving
    The Lion's Song
    Alone with You
    Street Fighter 3

    I also have a soft spot for a particular kind of action sidescroller aesthetic? Like, not the actual Giger-meets-Robocop visuals of Contra, but the particular mix of motion and bombast and regular explosions the series featured. Noitu Love and Gunstar Heroes have very different visuals compared with Contra but have similar aesthetics of motion.

    I'm also a sucker for aesthetics that hearken back to older visual styles but use them to different ends, like the way Teleglitch evokes Quake for a much moodier experience.

    I feel like there are probably a lot of classic 16-bit games that are slipping my mind right now and also a lot of newer things I never got to play but appreciated the look of regardless. So ask me later and you might get a different list.

  3. these are anonymous so i just wanted to let you know that the "can i get a hug and a kiss" person is not me, but does type like how i've typed a lot of my messages, iirc. Jsyk.

    plausible

  4. Shaun, Natalie, Cuck

    marry, fuck, kill

    I guess I should start watching Cuck Philosophy since I may need to kill or fuck the guy...

  6. i have a very dumb question, but i'm not american and it's hard for me to get you guy's relationship with race? Example: my friend "who's prodz?" me "oh you've seen his video, he's that korean guy who's crazy good with voices!" Racist or not racist? (the fact that a qualifier to understand immediatly who prozd is it's his race and then his skill)

    I mean, it's not the most racist thing ProZD has to deal with, and if you're trying to remind your friend of a video they've seen, I can see why you'd specify that it's a Korean guy. But, yeah, I think in a non-racist society we wouldn't rely on those kinds of signifiers, since they're far less relevant to ProZD's work than his deep voice or even his love of One Piece.

  7. did you watch The OA, on netflix? It's premium garbo and i LOVE it. They can jump realities thru interpretative dancing. I can't wait for season 2.

    I do not

  8. i can't believe............ i wrote who's........... instead of whose............................................................. i feel like any argument ill make from now on will be invalid, somehow

    in response to I must say, you don't make anywhere near as many innuendos for a guys who's youtube channel is InnuendoStudios.

    my 3rd most popular video has a typo in the content warning, i.e. the first words, spoken or written, in the entire video

    that typo has been viewed over 800,000 times

    we're cool, fam

  9. I want to go into therapy for the first time. How do I go about finding the right therapist for myself?

    The three main factors are:

    -what kind of therapy you're looking for (my best results have been with cognitive behavioral and psychodynamic)
    -who's covered by your insurance (or, if you don't have insurance, who's got sliding scale pricing for the uninsured)
    -who's got good word of mouth (preferably from someone you know who's gone there)

    I usually find what I need by asking on Facebook and cross-referencing the suggestions I get with my network and then asking the group over the phone what therapy styles they use. If that comes up short, you can usually get a referral from your primary care physician.

  10. Have you watched Hilda? You should watch Hilda!

    I just saw a clip of it on Twitter this morning and thought the same thing!

  11. I must say, you don't make anywhere near as many innuendos for a guys who's youtube channel is InnuendoStudios.

    Maybe you just don't pick up on the ones I make.

  12. On twitter recently you implied that you were making not all that much considering you were residing in a city with a high cost of living. Would you consider just moving to a city with a lower cost of living?

    I have these pesky things called friends and loved ones in the city I currently live in.

  13. Hi Ian,

    Have you seen The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, both from Joshua Oppenheimer? It's about the mass killings in Indonesia back in 1965.

    I want to know, based on these 2 documentaries, whether world politics (and political elections) are after all rigged to suit the status quo and the most privileged and that in politics, both sides are part of the same coin and that democracy is just an illusion (that includes the US and Great Britain for that matter)

    I fear that anyone above the hierarchy, even if it's communism or royalty, will be susceptible to corruption & dishonesty at the expense of us commoners

    I know about both movies and plan to watch them someday, but haven't yet.

    Proper communism is not a hierarchy. I know that it's hard to imagine a non-hierarchical system when we've lived under capitalism all our lives, but that's the point: abolish hierarchies to abolish the corrupting influence of having power over others.

  14. can i get a hug and a kiss?

    who the eff are you?

  15. Do you think it's fair to expect Ds to impeach Kav, since they'll need a supermajority to actually remove him?

    It may not work but it's pretty reasonable to expect your representatives to do their fucking jobs.

  16. How much do you think celebrity endorsement matters in a political race? (And yes, I’m talking about lovely T-Swizzle openly supporting the Democrats, to which the right’s reaction has been quite entertaining to see)

    I can't quantify how much. But in a culture of celebrity I can't pretend it doesn't matter at all.

  17. You seem pretty left wing so I can imagine your anwser but what is your opinion on americas gun laws?

    I don't like guns and would rather not live in a country with high gun-ownership. However, I don't see gun bans nor repossessions as particularly likely, and some countries have high gun ownership without having even a fraction of the shootings the US has, so it's clearly possible to pass laws that make the country safer without taking guns away from the people who use them safely, so that's where I focus my efforts.

    The primary issue with gun crimes is how criminals get guns in the first place. Republican dogma is that illegal guns are stolen, which is bunk. (As if the entire black market gun industry could be sustained through petty theft.) I'm reciting this from memory and haven't checked the statistics recently, but I BELIEVE, according to the ATF, that about 50% of illegal gun ownership comes from a person who can't pass a background check having a friend buy the gun for them. Another 40ish% comes from people posing as gun dealerships buy shipments of guns from wholesalers and then sell them on the black market. Only about 10% come from theft. This isn't accounting for guns that are purchased "legally" at gun shows where background checks aren't enforced.

    In the vast majority of cases, the people selling the guns know that a decent percentage of their sales are going towards criminal activity, and steps could be taken to make sales that are going to end up in the hands of criminals one step down the line much harder. But there's a lot of money to be made in selling guns to people who will resell them to criminals, and the gun lobby automatically and emphatically opposes any and all gun legislation, and Republicans are in the pocket of the gun lobby. So nothing improves.

  18. How bad do you think Kavanaugh getting confirmed is for abortion rights in America? His judicial record suggests he'll uphold precedent on RvW on legality, but maybe not on fair availablility, of abortion.
    There's also the possibility he'll not get a case regarding abortion to rule on before Democrats pack the court.
    It still makes me sick to my stomach that he's been confirmed, but maybe it's not as bad as I thought it'd be before I checked the actual damage?

    I'm fairly confident he was selected in large part because Republicans believe he will overturn Roe v Wade. That doesn't mean he will, but that's what they expect him to do. There is absolutely no reason Republicans would nominate someone who was at all soft on abortion when they knew the Dems didn't have the votes to block the confirmation.

    However, Kavanaugh can be impeached, and if the supposed Blue Wave happens, and the Democrats aren't completely useless, they might impeach him before an abortion case comes to the court.

    I can't tell right now how much of a longshot that is.

  19. What I don't know might/would kill me...

    True?

    I'm standing right behind you with a knife.

  20. do you consider yourself utilitarian?

    What I know of utlitarianism resonates, but I haven't researched much moral philosophy. So I'm more likely to comment that I'm making a utilitarian argument than adopt utilitarianism it as a label.

  21. Where is the point where catering to fans instead of doing your own things that may cause a harsh reaction by the community can hurt a piece of media?

    To put it another way. Say the Last Jedi did give the fans what they wanted. Luke still being Luke, Akbar being the captain, Rey being another skywaker/another Jedi by bloodline. Would the movie become a very inferior product then the one we got to the point where the people that begged for those changes to be in the movie we got. Who In an alternative universe where they did get what they wanted ends with them slowly turning they backs against the Last Jedi?

    I think it's clear at this point you can't *actually* make Star Wars fans happy.

  22. You think the Trump administration will leave America's political topology a bigger wasteland than Reagan's did?

    I suppose, if only because Trump's is cumulative with Reagan's.

  23. Is it over man? It feels over. I want to cry at the thought of being in my 50s and 60s still trying to fight for basic women’s rights. I genuinely don’t know what anyone is supposed to do. I guess I may die before then, that seems like a far preferable outcome at the moment. That’s not really a question, but fuck everything is is rotten and there is no way to fix any of it.

    We're going to fight this, and we're going to make them pay in November. But it's going to be a long fight and it's going to involve a lot of screaming into pillows.

  25. I disagree. The number of times that she's done crap outweighs anything that she's done good. If anything goes by, someone needs to give her a reality check... I know that ain't a question. But that's all from me now

    in response to Is Amy Schumer trying to expunge her fake-feminism with some faux-protesting?

    We don't need to balance the scales. The idea that a thing someone does "negates" or "outweighs" anything else they've done is wrong. The only thing at stake when you compare her good deeds against her bad is "do I trust Amy Schumer?" You shouldn't even be asking that question.

    Amy Schumer is a celebrity who doesn't even know any of us exist. The impacts of her actions are all that matter to us. So don't forget the misdeeds when you celebrate the positive actions, but stop trying to weigh them against each other. It accomplishes nothing.

  26. Straight guys definitely understand consent when a gay guy tries to touch them, right?

    I reject the premise that gay guys are just going around touching straight guys, and the premise that homophobia implies some understanding of consent culture. The kinds of straight guys who get upset when a gay man touches them don't think, "He should have asked first," they think, "He should know his place."

  27. "They don't think they can find an anti-feminist judge who isn't shitty to women"

    How about Brett Kavanaugh for starters. There's no evidentiary
    basis to believe he is shitty to women to begin with.

    What do YOU think "evidence" means?

  28. (Some super vague will-not-actually-spoil-anything spoiler for Life is Strange 2 and spoilers for Detroit: Become Human) In LiS 2, the protagonist is Mexican-American and has to deal with some overtly racist stuff ("ICE" and "the wall" are said aloud) and people have been quick to call it "unrealistic" (as a lot of fans have responded, it's really not), "cringey" and "preachy", yet I don't see that same level of criticism aimed at D:BH, a game where there's a literal concentration camp with gas chambers, But For Androids As Stand-ins For Black Slaves (not exaggerating). I see all of this and I'm wondering if games can ever be taken seriously as a medium, since apparently, to a lot of Gamers, the only acceptable form of racism in games is the one targeted at fictional creatures (yes, that includes androids). Any thoughts? Are we doomed to have Orc-Cops-like game forever?

    No, we're not doomed, we just need more games that engage explicitly with politics and fewer that engage through wishy-washy metaphors so that gamers get acclimated. The primary reason gamers are as shitty and entitled as they are is because their shitty entitlement has always been pandered to.

  29. why is it important to republicans to choose brett howyouspellhisname and not any other conservative judge which probably isn't a Sexual assaulter?

    Likely a mix of things:

    1) Withdrawing a judge would mean making a concession to the Left, and they compulsively need to show the Left who is in control. "We said Kavanugh, so fuck you, it's Kavanaugh."

    2) If they withdraw Kavanaugh and start the nomination process over, the new Congress might be in session before the next vote, and they are very rightly worried that the new Congress will have considerably more Democrats on it they won't be able to confirm an anti-abortion judge, which is their top priority here.

    3) They don't think they can find an anti-feminist judge who isn't shitty to women, because, you know, those things are pretty tightly correlated.

  30. Jimmy John's?

    Slippin' Jimmy?

  31. Hey anon asking about Bowsette, actual trans person here to answer your question about trans stuff!!

    Going to start this off with a statement that I don't speak for every trans person. This has been my experience and it seems to be shared with a large part of my community, but if a trans person disagrees with me don't invalidate their opinion!

    But I don't think of Bowsette as transphobic. Rather, generally I've seen Bowsette as something of an aspiration; the idea that deep down Bowser just wants to be a princess is a *very* relatable trans feeling.

  32. Is Bowsette transphobic?

    I see we're still playing Ask A Cis Dude

  33. Are you still indecisive about LIS?

    I was never indecisive about LiS, I just have a complex opinion.

  34. Is Amy Schumer trying to expunge her fake-feminism with some faux-protesting?

    Her intent doesn't matter. She has done a bunch of crappy things and just did a good thing. All these things are true. Let's deal with the complexity of that.

  35. thanks for the reply to the long anonymous ask... hope i didn't give you feelings that were too bad...

    nah, it's cool

  36. Why make ight individual videos rather than just one big one?

    I did both but the big one got blocked.

  37. hi. as a sexual assault survivor, I still often find there is something in the word 'survivor' that makes me uncomfortable, but I don't know what it is. but I also know the word alone brings many people considerable strength, so when it is aimed at me by someone who has known what I have. do you have any thoughts on how to survive without being a survivor?

    We define labels, labels don't define us. If the word doesn't resonate with you, don't use it for yourself, and tell others that you'd rather not be called it.

    However: In my experience, sometimes a person is reluctant to call themselves a survivor because they feel their experience wasn't "bad enough" to qualify them as one. That so many people who've used the term have been through so much worse, it feels presumptuous to use it for oneself. This can be a reflexive minimizing of one's own experience.

    If what I said in the last paragraph doesn't apply to you, OK. And even if it does, don't use any word that you don't want to use. But, if it does, maybe it's worth reflecting on why the term is uncomfortable. Surviving is surviving. It's never a competition. Your pain is valid.

  38. Merit or nonsense? "Trump acquired an imperviousness to scandals because the corporate media tripped over their heels to report every salacious detail for ad dollars and people grew bored and numb."

    I mean, it's true. I don't think that's the sum total of Trump's resilience to scandals. We'll also find out if he's actually resilient come November.

  39. Thanks for the amazing series on the Avenging Feminine! Do you have any thoughts what archetype Wonder Woman in her 2017 movie most closely aligns with? Is she a Final Girl? Or is she a version of the Avenging Feminine in a story that isn't focused on fighting patriarchy?

    I didn't talk about every trope and not every character is a trope. Wonder Woman contains a few elements of a few tropes I'm familiar with, but none strongly enough that I'd consider her a good fit.

  40. Fart

    i just did

  41. I've often taken for it granted that gender archetypes in film are "what the people want," though that certainly comes with some pretentious baggage. However, watching your new video series has made me question that supposition a bit. Mad Max: Fury Road was a critical and commercial success, and every dude that I know who has seen it has loved it. It's clear that these archetypes aren't required, or even desired, and that films without them can be huge successes. At what point does this problem become less about cultural grievances and more about studio execs (who are old, rich, white dudes) being completely out of touch with what people in the actual audience will "accept"?

    I think a lot of movie producers - really, men in power in all kinds of fields - don't act on what they *think* is true so much as what they *want* to be true. The assumption that gender archetypes are "what people want" is a desirable state of affairs because it's predictable. Your job as a producer is much easier if age-old tropes just happen to be the most guaranteed way to make money. If the people want something other than what you've spent decades getting efficient at producing - or, worse, the public isn't a monolith and there *are* no tropes that are guaranteed sellers - then, yeah, producers have to admit to themselves that they don't actually know what the fuck they should do. And who wants to admit that?

    Also, gender and racial stereotypes are what the loudest subset of straight white men want, and, sadly, straight white men are also the wealthiest subset of the population.

  42. In my feminist philosophy class last week we read bits of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex", so it was on my mind while I was watching the video and it gave me a thought that I thought was interesting. Beauvoir talks about women "not saying "we"" in reference to the fact that, unlike other marginalized groups like racial/religious minorities, the working class, etc., women often struggle to collectivize around womanhood because their position in society in proximitiy to men forces them into a more submissive, passive role. In many ways, I think this phenomenon could be viewed as a theft of power by patriarchy acted on women, where it's not simply that women don't say we, but that their ability to say we has been actively robbed from them by the existing power structures, not unlike the way violence in action films, as a representation of power, has historically been robbed from women/femininity.

    All of this to say, the thought I had was that Mad Max: Fury Road is a film in which women say "we", and doing so saves the world.

    I liked your video a lot, and I absolutely love Mad Max: Fury Road. (Also I shared your videos with my classmates through the class discussion board on the like, grade updating website/app, so hopefully others will take the time to watch them and appreciate them).

    <3

  43. Do you agree with this? Regarding about Benedict's casting as Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness

    https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1864702520291525&id=657050767723379

    it's an extremely White Guy opinion

  44. Is there such a thing as "acceptable objectification" (if there is a better name for it please let me know). What I mean is: I am a guy, and I like the idea of just being seen as "a piece of meat" by some women sometimes. Obviously that wouldn't work in any kind of real friendship/romantic relationship but as a first level attraction? I think it's hot. I've met some women who have told me they feel the same so I think gawking at attractive people is something we all like to to sometimes.
    I get why things like Barbed Wire or Dead or Alive are problematic, of course. But do you think in 20 years or so, when we've moved along and real men can treat real women better and media is not dominated by these portrayals meant to arouse men these depictions would be fine? Is there a context where they can be fine? Or is it always fundamentally wrong to want to stare at hot people just to sate your urges?

    In narrative terms, a "subject" is a character you can identify with. Using the framing I employed in my Handmaiden video, a character most reliably gets subjectivized when the audience a) understands what the character wants, and b) the character's actions impact the plot. Speaking really loosely and reductively, a character is an "object" when they lack one or both of these traits - their desires are either unknown or are important only inasmuch as they affect the protagonists, and they are impacted BY the plot rather than impacting it. They are objects in the sense that they are less relatable humans and more dramatic or aesthetic devices.

    The reality is, most every story contains subjects and objects. Except in stories with very small casts, there will be characters who simply aren't important enough to be subjects. And that's not, in and of itself, a bad thing.

    SEXUAL objectification gets trickier, because once a person becomes a focus of sexual desire, we get into some really dodgy consent areas. Like, they're a fictional character, obviously they can't *actually* consent to anything, but they provide a fantasy of looking at or desiring or having sex with someone, and providing that fantasy in a context of not having to think about the other person's desires and their actions having no real ability to stop you from doing anything is pretty screwed up. We have to ask, why should that be a desirable fantasy?

    In *real life*, objectification can still involve consent. Exotic dancers are there to be looked at; the audience is not expected to consider their desires and they're not going to take any action that the desiring audience doesn't want them to take. But this is not, on its own, unethical, because it exists by mutual consent. The exotic dancer is providing a service: She has agreed to suspend her subjectivity for a specific length of time in exchange for money. She does not cease to be a person, and the moment the dance is over, the pretense that she is an object ends.

    Some major problem with objectification are that a) it is so overwhelmingly women who are objectified, and b) far, far too many men try to assert this objectification in contexts where the women haven't opted into it, and c) fictional characters don't turn back into humans when the movie's over, they simply cease to exist.

    If you like being seen as a piece of meat, that's great! I'm sure many people are willing to indulge that feeling for you. But you also get to insist on being treated as a human when the need arises, and there probably aren't many women in your experience who will refuse to do so. I don't think objectification is innately unethical, provided people are away that it is a fantasy and that everyone is a human, even when their humanity isn't relevant to you.

    I don't know if there's a way to enforce that perspective in fiction.

  45. A server I'm on that gets money to lgbtqiapn people who need it is trying to help everyone but accepts that's impossible.

    What they're doing right now is helping people who immediately need help. They're low on funds, a lot of people are falling through the cracks, all the money having been spent on other people.

    Maybe by focusing on an impossible goal they set themselves up for failure not only on this goal but on other goals, like helping as many people as they can, trying to stop as many concentrations of suffering from existing as they can. . .

    I was one of them and it was bad.

    Judging by the feelings I was left in this situation, I think the moral thing to do would be to help future people not have to deal with that. to let more people fall through the cracks in the short term, hard as that is,

    redirecting much of the little money they have now into someone who might be able to help them get more money by getting people outside the server to donate, maybe a crowdfunding consultant.

    and thusly have more money with which to help people after a brief period of less help, overall long term gain.

    The returns on investment are not guarunteed, but I think it's a risk worth taking.

    The people I'm talking to see a potential period of being unable to provide for people as unacceptable, and don't think it's worth the investment.
    (I think they also think it likelier that it won't work, or can't/refuse to see a the difference between risks that have an uncertain/overall postive outcome and risks that have overall negative outcomes, since they used the crude example of going to a casino and donating their winnings as a parallel thing that wasn't worth doing.)

    They're either totally risk-averse, which I don't get. . . or they don't want to create a concentration of suffering, which I get. I'm also fighting against concentrations of suffering, and trying to stop them, but. . .

    They hate the game *and* the player *and* the moves the player takes, namely business strategies by crony businessmen who don't share it. . .
    i too hate the game, but only some of the players, and i think sometimes some of the same action can be taken by opposing parties to different ends. If they are an evil, they're a necessary one.

    When I said most of what i'd included here to them, they told me to make my own thing. I told them I couldn't, I wasn't able to provide reasons for this at the time but they are a.) I have no organizational experience and b.) I haven't any money. After hearing that I couldn't they just shrugged and went away.

    I've been negatively affected by the residual effect of not being able to get the help i felt i needed and the image of the suffering of the people that are bound to experience something similar, bound to not get helped because the server doesn't have the money to help them and refuses to try and change their situation to try and get them more donations.

    This seems like a really thorny and complex situation, and I'm not sure what the solution would be. I know the experience of feeling like I'm stuck on a treadmill because I have too many demands on what little money I have to invest in things that would help me in the long-term, and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if I was a lifeline for other people. It sounds like they may need more help rather than a change in tactics - a collaborator who DOES know how to organize and invest, someone who's doing their own thing but can ally with them.

    But I don't have much experience with any of this. Maybe, if the experience you had with them was negative, the best thing you can do is find better resources for the community they're trying to serve, so those people have a better experience than you had. I know resources for marginalized communities are scarce, but maybe trying to find an alternate lifeline is a better place to put your energy.

    But that's just a thought. I don't think I know an answer on this one. :-/

  46. I just want you to know that both I and a friend watched the last video first because we thought it was a version with every video stitched together, and then realised and had to go back.

    We did this SEPARATELY!

    However, the topics felt like different videos, and neither of us felt spoiled whatsoever. No question here so feel free to not post this - just wanted you to see it!

    Rad

  47. My friends are all centrist (the both-sides kind) to right, but are all good people that I feel confident can have their minds changed. The problem is most of them have made it known they don't want to engage in ANY political discussions, so I know if I engage I'd most likely be met with an overwhelming "I don't want to have this talk," or worse "why are you trying to push your politics on me?" Do you have any advice on how to work around this obstacle?

    My best advice is the same thing I tell everyone: Talk about your politics outside the context of a political discussion. Your politics are not separate from your life, so talk about your life and don't shy away from the political aspects of it. If you like queer media, talk about it. If your family is suffering because of economic exploitation, talk about it. Just BE progressive in their lives and talk frankly about your experience. People''s minds change more from caring about the other side's struggle than from losing debates.

  48. I liked how you mentioned the various female character types have overlap and are fuzzy at the periphery. Do you think Ripley is at least in part a Vasquez too? She's not a musclebound space marine, no, but she's shown to be "one of the guys" who pals around with her fellow space truckers in the first movie.

    You would not believe the sheer VOLUME of feminist discourse that has been written trying to decide whether Ripley is symbolically a man or not. There never really was consensus on the issue. For my part, I don't think so, at least not very much. I don't see Ripley (or Lambert) socializing with the other crewmembers as making them "one of the guys," since their behavior is pretty gender-neutral. Like, all they do is eat, work, and smoke cigarettes. That's just being coworkers. The working-class "space trucker" aspect of their work is somewhat male-coded, but the film seems to suggest that this is less true in the future.

    Anyway, if you want to wade into The Discourse, read From Figurative Males to Action Heroines by Elizabeth Hills, it's my favorite perspective on Ripley.

  49. Not OP, but can I rephrase the Fury Road setting question?

    Do you feel like the fact that Fury Road is set in the Mad Max franchise is a net boon or net bane for the reading supported in your essay?
    How much of the boon part is tied up in the opportunity to subvert the problematic conventions from the other movies in the franchise?

    There are some aspects of it being part of the franchise that make the experience richer. There's a lot less that needs to be explained about the setting. It serves as the best realization of what George Miller had been trying to do with the premise since the second movie. Some of the beats - like watching Max's car get destroyed - serve as commentary on the series' more masculine-worshipping origins and the various Manly Man In The Wasteland movies the series has inspired, and represents a willingness to let go of those symbols and that legacy.

    But you can also make a case that it being in the Mad Max franchise fundamentally detracts from Furiosa's story, which is an issue that's hard to get past.

    "Net gain vs. net loss" isn't an interesting question to me. There are gains. There are losses. Let's talk about them. Movies contain multitudes. We don't need to balance the scales.

  50. Do you split your videos into numbered parts in part because needing to upload them chopped up due to youtube weirdness is common? It turned out quite nicely in pieces regardless.

    When I came up with the structure of talking about Fury Road by discussing 6 different female tropes, the it just naturally fit an 8 part structure. I was originally planning on it being a single video, just with 8 chapters, but then felt weird about how long it was. I went back and forth on whether or not I should break it into 8 videos or keep it as one 57-minute, and finally decided I'd just do both.

    Then YouTube put a worldwide block on the long one so that answered that question.

  51. Do you feel that Fury Road would have a notably different impact if it were NOT a Mad Max movie?

    Hold on, let me check the multiverse to see what happens in that timeline.

    ...

    No, wait, that's impossible.

  52. just watched your recent video (videos?) about fury road, loved them, just wanna know if you intend to release them again as just the one video instead of 8 short ones. thanks!

    I tried. YouTube gave it a worldwide ban and glitched when I tried to dispute it. I may try again later but, for now, folks will have to get by with the playlist.

  53. I was so happy when I saw you use that clip from Transporter 2, because I love how eye-rollingly dumb that movie is xD xD

    Transporter 2 is by a long way the best Transporter. The bit with the firehose is one of my favorite actions scenes ever.

  54. Are you done with the alt right playbook? I was going to recommend the series to a friend but was waiting until you were finished

    Oh no, I'm far from done. But you shouldn't wait to recommend it, I'm going to be working on this series for ~2 more years.

  55. Hi there. Following on from the eugenics question, I think the average person would disagree that correcting for things like cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy would be a win for the world. I lost a friend at 19 to MD, and if I could still have him here but as a different person, I feel like I (and his parents) would take that.

    Even if things wouldn't have gone the same, and I might never have known him, a long life without pain and deteriorating faculties just sounds better to me than what we had. And what we had was really special, and I miss him so much.

    I wouldn't be against removing illnesses like that from the genepool if we could. The arguments against it are "If we start with MD, what's the end result? You want to remove autism? Or ugly people Or being gay? Or other things which just aren't normal because they aren't normal [yet]?"

    But it feels like using slippery slope fallacy to prevent some people being born with a lot of pain. Huntington's occurs to me also.

    I'm fully up for having my opinion changed on this, but the 'pedestrian' concerns override my total lack of other reading*.

    * My only experience with this is speaking with my friend who had MD. His name was David, and he really, really wished things were different for him. I wish they could've been. I know there are people out there with MD who are living their lives, but the world is just so shit for these people. David's parents still struggle with money issues, because they were totally unwilling to take out life insurance on him, and wouldn't let him talk about that with them.

    Would really appreciate some guidance/any perspective you have.

    Well, none of that is to do with what the previous anon was asking? They were saying, "If we don't remove MD from the gene pool, won't everyone eventually have it?" Which is incorrect. Absolutely no one is saying we should preserve mutations that cause people pain or shorten their lives.

  56. Sorry if this is too personal but do you ever plan to have kids?

    That is, indeed, too personal.

  58. Touchy question here but it's something that genuinely troubles me.
    I get why eugenics can go immediately wrong from the first second. But I am also worried about genetic anomalies. Fundamentally evolution is a process that just sticks with the bare minimum that works right? Whoever's left alive after a long process. It doesn't matter if our pinky is useful, nothing happens to people born without it at large enough rates to eliminate the gene that does so so we'll lose it. But then doesn't that actually mean that mutations, deformations and mental disabilities will become more common too? Usually my retort to eugenicists is "we combat these things with our own means, such as modern medicine and therapy" and I do believe that. But as these things advance won't there eventually reach a point where they're just TOO common to deal with? Would evolutionary factors kick in and actually reduce these populations down again after that proved too big of a stress to our modern mechanisms and everything would go back to normal?

    Please explain why I'm wrong, or why this would not matter. It is a genuine concern. Promise I'm not trying to advocate for eugenics or anything.

    Nnnnnnnooooo, that's not how genetics works.

    You are correct that, if not having a pinky doesn't meaningfully disadvantage you, that gene will not be weeded out of the gene pool. But if pinkylessness doesn't give you some sort of life-extending or sexually-selecting edge, it will not proliferate in the gene pool, either. It will just be an odd feature some people have. Genes don't become the norm that everyone has unless there's some evolutionary reason why it would out-compete all the other genes.

    I find it very odd that you'd bring up physical and mental disabilities, because those are things that *are* disadvantageous. No matter how well society treats people with handicaps, they do tend to make living in the modern world harder, make one less sexually desirable, and often shorten the lifespan. These are all things that keep disadvantageous genes from out-competing more typical ones.

    The idea that we need to fear or control people with disabilities is infinitely more dangerous to society than anything their genes are ever going to do. Even if we could guarantee that everyone with cerebral palsy lived just as long and just as sexually actively as people without, there'd be no *reason* for their genes to become more common than anyone else's. Why would they advance? That's like saying people with one blue eye and one brown eye are going to become the norm simply because they exist.

    It's a framing that things of "normal" genes as somehow fragile and "mutations" as viruses that sweep through the population if not combated, and it's just not true. Genes are genes. They spread when they're useful, they die out when they're not, they just kind of exist in some people when they're neither.

    Also these are processes that take tens of thousands of years to play out so I dunno why anyone living would worry about this stuff.

  59. Do you think the final girl trope is still culturally relevant? The virgin part in Particular. It seems that since scream poke fun at it movies are hesitant to play it straight.

    Dunno! She was a staple of the slasher genre which mostly only exists as self-referential deconstructions these days. I think it's significant that the slasher and the rape revenge film are the two genres I pointed out that have violent women as the default protagonists and they both petered out as genres in the 80s.

    I'm not super familiar with modern horror tropes, so I can't comment on them.

  60. One thing that has always distinguished your videos, from others, is clarity of structure and conciseness (and I mean this unironically even after you just posted your longest project). So what I'm wondering is, what do you think is unique about your video editing / writing process that gives your work such punchy, structured, and straight to the point ideas?

    That's very kind of you, but I don't think my work is concise at all. Every single video is longer and more digressive than I mean it to be. I'm glad it comes off that way, but I can't really explain a feature of my work that I don't even see.

  62. Nicely executed essay. Apologies if I missed it, but I feel like part 8 did not fully engage two of its questions:

    "What is your violence in service of?". Isn't the violence in FR clearly meant to be exhilarating? I feel that taking the existence for granted (even in an action film!) and interrogating its justification is leaving a large part of the question on the table.

    I'm sure you're at least aware of the view (picking one expression of it here) "Sometimes violence may be necessary for liberation from oppression, but it's always tragic. Fury Road frames it as totally fun and awesome." (https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/600779232805986305). I think your video gets close to it around 03:32 but then veers off to violence <-? -> femininity? I mean, that's what you wanted to talk about, but not talking about things also makes a statement, I guess?

    Similarly for "Can movie violence ever truly be feminine?". That part brought to mind the "drone pilots from quadruply marginalized groups" cliche. Maybe it was just me though?

    Thanks a bunch for the essay - I only wish patreon/paypal would allow me to chip in even though I don't own a credit card :/

    Having established that the core of the action film is solving your problems with violence, "What is your violence in service of?" is asked within that fictional context: Furiosa's violence is in service of community and liberation. Taken on its own terms, action movie violence is pretty much always meant to be exhilarating, and whether or not that is a good thing was beyond the scope of the series.

    I don't really think "is enjoying movie violence bad?" is a gendered question, or one I'm prepared to weigh in on. There is a lot of research I'd need to do about the history of ritualized violence. The trend of societies becoming increasingly interested in violence-as-spectacle - through ceremonies, sport, and entertainment - as they become less materially violent is a thing I'm vaguely aware of but haven't studied. And I've heard the argument that humans *need* this vicarious thrill of ritualized violence if they're not going to enact violence, but I find that research unconvincing; it is true that there is a long history of cultures enjoying ritualized violence, but I doubt it's true that *all* cultures have this history. Possibly a topic for a future video.

    "Can violence ever truly be feminine?" is, again, in reference to its codification in films, and not whether we should have more women bombing foreign nations. I think the narrative about violence being A Guy Thing is bullshit, and if we want to be completely consequentialist about it: The action movie is probably here to stay, and IF we're going to have movies where violence is portrayed as both a viable way to solve problems and awesome to look at, then AT THE VERY LEAST we should stop pretending it's only believable when men do it.

  63. Sweet or salty?

    por que no los dos

  64. Society naturally amplifies voices from privileged groups. What is the best way (as a member of these privileged groups) to speak on social issues in a way that supports, and doesn't shout over, disadvantaged people?

    Disadvantaged groups have been writing about what they need from us since before any of us were born, so mostly you have to seek out what they've said and do what they suggest.

  65. I feel like there’s a name for the female protag trope Nausicaa falls into but I can’t figure it out.
    Because I’ve seen others like her before but she doesn’t seem to fit into the others you highlighted but she is also definitely a specific kind.

    The Miyazaki Special?

  66. What resources do you suggest I use to learn how to be better at rhetoric?

    Maybe take a class at your local community college? Or online?

    I dunno, fam, I have an art degree.

  67. Hey! Just watched your Fury Road Octology, wich I loved (both the movie and the videos). Where is the best place to send you a no- too-long-but-longer-than-a-tweet message as appreciation, and also some thoughts on the topic? ( the acceptance of masculinity and femininity in each of us and not separating/secluding on of these)
    Keep up the good work!

    Twitlonger, I guess?

  68. i know this is a rather personal question (don't answer if you want to) but since you're polyamorous and polygamy isn't legal in the united states, do you plan on ever settling down, or will you just maintain the status quo?

    I mean, I can have a wedding ceremony as many times as I want, live with as many partners as I want, have kids with as many people as I want. Only one marriage can be legally recognized, and that's frustrating, but it wouldn't stop me from having multiple lifetime commitments if that's what I wanted to do.

  69. Concerning the six tropes of women in action movies, do you think those extend to video games? What do you think about Quiet from the MGS series?

    She's pretty well covered by Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and I haven't played MGS 5 so I can't personally weigh in.

  70. would video games be better without capitalism?

    duh

  71. do you think people who don't live in the US should care about Kavanaugh? I know more about him and the circus around him (I watched Dr Ford's entire interview), and I think I know more about him than I do about any politician in my own country (the UK).

    the people I follow on Twitter are mostly American content creators and it just feels like US politics is so ubiquitous that my own politics don't matter.

    I don't know. Of the three branches of government, the Supreme Court has the least direct influence on the outside world. But how the Court shapes policy has a trickle down effect on how the US as a whole behaves, and how the world's largest superpower behaves has a trickle down effect on the rest of the world. So, like, yes, it affects you, but probably your local politicians affect you more? And you have more direct influence over them.

  72. thoughts on Kanye?

    none whatsoever

  73. Do you have any advice for talking to close family members that have reactionary views/behaviors that you think they have the potential to be led away from?

    Not knowing your family members' specific needs and proclivities, I can give you my broad answer: Be sure to talk about your beliefs outside the context of an argument, build a foundation on the points of commonality you do have, demystify how a person can live and be moral and happy while drawing different conclusions from those points of commonality, and have like a shitload of patience.

    Change is a process, not an event, and it rarely comes from a single argument.

  74. how many of the questions you get go unanswered? and are you as approachable in real life as you are on this anonymous platform? (... not that i have intention of approaching you with the same questions i would ask here lol. I would probably stay in my corner cus I can't imagine being approached by complete strangers who want to impress you Very Badly is that much fun)

    I just delete questions I don't want to answer, so I don't actually know how many I get. If I take a guess, I'd say maybe 25% get deleted? But it could seriously be 10% or 50%, I have no idea.

    I think I'm generally approachable? I'm a marginal introvert, so being around strangers drains my batteries but slowly. If I'm in a decent mood to begin with, I can hang with crowds of new people for hours before I need alone time. But I've only been recognized like three times, not counting events where people knew I would be there.

    Getting recognized can be a little weird. Jonathan Coulton described taking a selfie with a celebrity as like taking a selfie with the Eiffel Tower. And if you happen to be a celebrity - at at least, to this person - you're trying to be a good Eiffel Tower. You're trying to live up to their expectations of this moment, and you don't actually know what they are. I think I'm at the point now where I've been around fans enough times that I'm getting good at it? Like, I'm mostly able to put all that out of mind and act like a normal person. But I feel like, if I got recognized more often, it might become overwhelming. It's a weird thing, trying to grow your audience without growing your notoriety.

    Anyway: If we ever meet, understand that, on some level, I'm trying to impress you, too, and we'll hopefully both manage to hide it.

  75. I want to watch a video but i'm afraid the act of watching will somehow have repercussions for the video's maker.

    I'm afraid of asking questions. . .

    I think the only guaranteed repercussion of watching a video is that the video will get one view.

Anon commented:
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