CuriousCat Archive Page 202 of 202

  1. Do you have an ETA for your next video for non-patreon backers? Super excited to see more of your work :)

    Should be by the end of the month! Also hoping to get footage online this month from a talk I gave, but that depends on other people delivering it to me.

  2. Thoughts on Super Smash Bros. Brawl and SUper Smash Bros. For Wii U?

    As a ride-or-die competitive Melee fan, I kind of love Smash 4 because I play it the way Nintendo wants it to be played: like a fun party game. I'll never be tournament-level at Melee, but I do at least TRY to practice dash dancing and L-canceling. So it's nice to play Smash 4 from time to time and just get silly with it.

    I confess I've yet to have much fun with Brawl.

  3. Didn’t know you were such a Riven fan! Thanks for the podcast the other day.

    When will we see an Innuendo Studios video on the Myst series?

    When I first started the channel, I wanted to do a short series talking about adventure game design, where I looked at three puzzles/sequences from three different adventure games and talk about why they worked and how they experimented with the genre. In my ongoing desire to see the adventure game evolve, these were sequences that I felt we could learn from. I wanted to do the opening section with Rume in Blue Lacuna, the briefcase handoff sequence in The Last Express, and the fire marble puzzle from Riven.

    By the time I was making videos on the regular, though, adventure games actually did get a lot more experimental, and getting really inside-baseball about three specific sequences seemed kind of unnecessary. And after doing that episode of Blast from the Past (https://soundcloud.com/blastfromthepastpodcast/riven-1997-cyan-worlds-guest-ian-danskin) I kind of feel like I've said all the interesting stuff I have to say about the Myst series.

    I did just nab a copy of Myst IV, though, so we'll see if I come out of that with something to say.

  4. What's your favorite game soundtrack?

    Chrono Trigger.

  5. Okay, decided to link my Twitter account to reduce confusion. Same person from the previous two questions. I think most of your critique is valid, but there's some nuance that I left out, for the sake of brevity, in describing the local communities in question. While there are some things I disagree on, I would rather not draw out a long winded tangent on what's supposed to be a basic Q&A forum, so I'll just say that for the most part I concede.

    However, one thing I feel inclined to respond to is that I'm not proposing we "reach across the aisle". I disagree with the premise that this topic is comparable to an aisle with two sides. I can say confidently from many conversations I've had that I have seen a noticeable a gradient. I know many otherwise reasonable people who are only familiar with the most basic, traditional notions of gender identity, and their only further experiences with the subject happened to be negative, either from being exposed to biased media representation, or only having encountered people with aggressive attitudes towards anyone who didn't acknowledge their cause before they could even be educated about it. I believe that this is what causes their ideological opposition to the movement, albeit a "softer" and mostly unspoken one. I think this is a valid distinction to make, because I have had conversations with a few of my friends holding these biases with whom I elaborated my own gender-agnosticism, and probed by their curiosity, I explained some things about gender identity in general. After that, they pretty quickly became more sympathetic to the movement - at least passively for it instead of passively against it, and more accepting of non-cis people. Obviously, I don't see this as a ubiquitous solution, since they were very close friends who already respected me; I just brought it up as an indication that there is at least one camp between the extremes. I really did intend to keep this shorter, but I think this is an important distinction to bring up, as it underlies the question of how to handle people who don't acknowledge certain genders and sexualities.

    That's an interesting study that you mentioned. And it brings up an actual question in my wall of text. Do you think that disdainfully excluding "soft" transphobes and homophobes from communities and gatherings with non-binary and non-straight members can prevent scenarios like the study from naturally occurring? Having them effectively segregated from each other actually seems a little counter-intuitive to the idea of expanding representation. Of course, this question excludes trying to force interaction with belligerent transphobes and homophobes; no one should be subjected to that.

    I feel all I can do is reiterate: in a community, you can have bigotry, or you can have marginalized people. You can't have both. So you have to pick one. I'm not disputing that there is a distinction between "hard" bigotry and "soft" bigotry - I said as much. But if there are trans* people in your community, and there are people who, even passively, even through ignorance, do not recognize trans* people's identities, then there is a divide. And if we're saying that both those people should stay in community with each other because they are unified in other areas, we are saying they should bridge that divide.

    Yes, some people on the left will get overzealous. Yes, some will refuse to see a distinction between hate and simple ignorance. But at that point we're just quibbling about how the policy gets implemented - if the question is "whom do we choose, ignorant people or marginalized people?" the answer SHOULD be the marginalized. By all means, push your community to have greater nuance when discussing the problem, but this seems like a lot of words on how hard it must be for homophobes to be treated as more homophobic than they are and very few on how hard it must be for queer people to share space with homophobes.

    Speaking of which, yes, Altemeyer's study would imply that staying in the community would be good for the homophobes. It also implies that it would be bad for the queer folks. I'm not down for making members of my community sacrificial lambs for the spiritual growth of ignorant folks.

  6. To what extent do you think the media you've used so far (youtube, twitter, tumblr) undermine your message?

    Note that I don't mean that just in the McLuhan sense (although that's certainly important). Also concerned about how the medium's presentation to the viewer determines what appears as significant (followers, likes, personal image, site aesthetics). Or how the imposed structure and affordances shape the resulting discussion.

    PS. This is not intended as criticism. I'm asking because, for the things I like to talk about, I feel most such media would subvert the message and, what's more, that people do perceive this contradiction and value the message accordingly.

    I don't know that social media undermines my message so much as it won't let me share mine without sharing its own.

  7. Why are you a communist?

    must be all the loud music

  8. To follow up on your answer regarding whether or not to confront those who believe in gender binarism, etc., what do you believe is an effective means of achieving social acceptance for people with non-traditional sexualities and gender identities? I'm interested because I live in a college town where many leftists simply ostracize people who don't understand their standpoint, and totally condemn everyone who associates with them (even if those associates themselves DO acknowledge their struggle), excluding them from all social gatherings (music/art events, etc), literally resulting in factions. I find that all this does is alienate potentially sympathetic people from the cause, and only ends up serving to self-assure the subset of people who already do acknowledge non-binary. This doesn't appear to increase general acceptance. Maybe it's the case that direct engagement with them doesn't, either. So my new question is, what do you think is effective? Sorry for the lengthy question, maybe this isn't the best channel for a discussion like this :P

    OK, let's back up a second. Obviously the thoughts of a cis dude on the gender binary are in no way authoritative, but if I'm going to answer your question I need to pick apart your premise.

    First up, when we're talking about people who have trouble accepting "people with non-traditional sexualities and gender identities," we are talking about homophobes and transphobes. Probably not the explicit, belligerent, "you are destroying the nuclear family" kind, but soft homophobia is still homophobia, and ditto transphobia. And I think it's shortsighted to say that ostracizing those people does nothing but "self-assure the subset of people who already do acknowledge non-binary." It is making a choice, saying you'd rather have queer and trans* people in your community that homophobes and transphobes.

    The reality is, if you ally with people who are, on some axis, intolerant, you will membership drop for the people who are not tolerated. You can preach about how we should reach across the aisle all you want, but a lot of trans* and queer people will leave a space that makes itself hospitable to homophobes and transphobes. So when someone outs themselves as an intolerant member of your community, you have to make a choice: do you want to keep them, or the people they don't tolerate? Because you likely can't have both.

    This is not to deny that there can be a lot of moral absolutism and grandstanding on the left - I've dealt with it - and sometimes the practice gets taken too far. But it often comes from a place of advocating for the most vulnerable in your community, and that too often gets lumped in with "purity politics."

    That was a long preamble. What works? I'm not sure there's a silver bullet, but I'm currently reading The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, and he talks about some research he did with a few different college classes where he gave students routine surveys that measured, among other things, how they felt about gay men. For one population, he told the students he was gay, and for the other he let them assume he was straight (he was, in fact, straight, which might make this experiment a little... questionable). Anyway, he found that, over the course of the class, the surveys showed that homophobic students who thought he was gay maintained a lower-than-average opinion of him as a person, but had a slowly rising opinion of gay men as a whole as the year went on. As in: contact with the thing you are not tolerant of tends to decrease your intolerance of that thing, even if it does not mean embracing the individual you have contact with.

    Representation matters, basically. If people aren't ready to accept non-traditional individuals, keep elevating the voices and stories of those individuals until they don't seem so non-traditional anymore. And maybe when people have acclimated to the idea, they will have an easier time sharing a community with them.

  9. Well, the idea was to do a video using American History X as a jumping off point to talk about how white nationalists prey upon the weak and the vulnerable.
    So like, everything bad that happens in the film is because Edward Norton is mad that his father was killed, and the neo-nazis take that sense of hurt and point it at their enemies specifically.

    That's a solid pitch.

  10. I've been mulling over doing a few videos on white nationalism for the last while, and what stops me is the fear of suddenly being attacked.
    Does that make me a coward? Because I certainly feel like I am being cowardly :(

    A friend of mine once told me, "be a social justice warrior; don't be a social justice martyr." If you have something you want to say, you are not honor-bound to say it in the way that puts you at the most risk. But, if you do find a way to say it without sacrificing your health or safety, I'd love to hear it!

  11. I appreciate what you're trying to do, with the Alt-Right focused videos, but I've long since had it with these people. A debate where only one side is using logic and facts is not a debate. I believe, firmly, that violence is the only solution for these people. The harm they do to others, without consequence, is too far; they do not deserve second chances. The world would be better without them. Convince me I am wrong.

    I'm not quite sure what you're arguing against, since those videos are not directed at the Alt-Right and keep explicitly saying not to debate with them. I don't even condemn violence - I never pass up an opportunity to laugh at Richard Spencer for getting clocked on camera.

    I would disagree that violence is the ONLY solution. I think violence, even when defensible, is at best suboptimal. The Alt-Right is the result of deeply systemic failings in our society, and you don't generally make those better simply by punching them. To hit Richard Spencer on camera you have to be in a place culturally where someone like Richard Spencer is being interviewed by the press in the first place. Getting to the point where we need to punch people means we failed at all the points where we should have outnumbered them, rejected them, investigated them, taken away their microphones, and shut down their websites.

    I don't think things are going to get better without more Nazis getting punched, but we have to get back to doing all those other things as well, or we are going nowhere.

  12. What do you think about that review of Witcher 3 on Polygon, where the game was critisized for it's lack of characters of color? Do you think that was a valid point? Even though It obviously benefited Polygon in a big way, it brought a lot of traffic to Polygon and traffic is the most important thing for site like this. And the tweet by the author of this review about "historical records of poc in Poland" seemed like a very lazy defend, which doesn't really make any sense to me as a person from Poland.

    I'm always going to come out in favor of more POC in games, sorry.

  13. What are your thoughts on critiques of the left along the lines of "neglecting or refusing to debate, and publicly denouncing, people who have conflicting views [on gender/sexuality] as opposed to trying to persuade them is not an effective praxis for achieving acceptance and equality"?

    Is there a time in history when acceptance and equality were achieved primarily by having debates with people who don't think your struggle is real? Because I can't think of one.

  14. I have personal theories myself, but why do you think so many alt-right people are STEMlords?

    The Alt-Right is going to try to get footholds into ANY community that is disproportionately white and male, especially those that don't have much tradition of feminist or racial discourse. I don't know that there's much unifying gaming, comics, and STEM other than being "shit rich white boys like."

  15. Do you think it can ever be productive to engage with far-right people if we already know them on a personal basis? Like, I recently blocked an old friend on Facebook who was using some pretty scary rhetoric. Did I do the right thing, or should I have tried harder to change his mind? Sorry if that got too personal.

    I know that the three best ways to reach a person are a) knowing them personally, b) being someone they admire, and c) having authority over them. You pass at least one of those tests, so it's possible you could have reached them. That said, I don't know if it's really a "did I do the right thing" situation. You did a valid thing - engaging with someone you can affect is valid; backing away from someone who's freaking you out is also valid.

    I think we should try not to inflate our own importance. Changing a person's mind is no easy thing, and it usually takes a lot of effort and patience from many different people. I think it's worthwhile to engage when you think it can be effective, but I don't think it's mission-critical to do it literally every time the opportunity presents itself. If it seems risky, or like a longshot, or just exhausting, backing off is valid.

    I try to focus on doing the work when I think it has the best shot of being useful and not sacrificing too much of my happiness and sanity in the process.

  16. How much would it cost for you to come deliver a live PowerPoint presentation of “This Is Phil Fish” at my birthday party?

    More than it would be worth.

  17. What do you think of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith?

    I don't think it's very good.

  18. Alright, let's start off with the REAL questions: chocolate or peanut butter?

    -deletes account-

  19. What, in retrospect, do you think your favorite video essay that you've made has been?

    We Don't Talk About Kenny for best video.
    Things of Beauty for most enjoyable to make.
    The Artist is Absent for personal favorite.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: