tangledndark

[tangledndark]

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

[tangledndark]

Positive Examples: Hades 2 (and Hades)

A little unusual positive post here, to signal that while realistic armor on women is always welcome, there are more ways to give female characters decent representation. We’re trusting our regular readers to infer from the Saturday post that we don’t consider depiction of female characters in Hades games, no matter how stylized and impractical their costumes (or lack of thereof), among regular negative BABD material. And that’s because of a couple simple reasons.

The game as a whole is quite stylized and maximalistic in terms of character and costume design. Strict realism (aside from really good grasp on anatomy) is not what we’re expecting from images of those larger than life deities and demigods who express their domains via extravagant appearance.

Not all of the characters, regardless of gender, are engaged in direct combat. The dudebro-made false equivalence between Eve from Stellar Blade and Aphrodite in Hades 2 was especially baffling, considering there’s actual female protagonist in the latter, Melinoë. But of course it’s harder to pretend outrage over the princess of Underworld fighting in a short dress than a love goddess handling you buffs while naked when you’re trying to make a vacuum-sealed suit and high heels on a futuristic soldier look reasonable.

Most importantly, Hades provides equal opportunity fanservice and it seems like sequel will keep delivering on that. The first game’s memetic legacy is how popular it is among the bisexual and pansexual gamers, considering basically every character provides eye candy for somebody’s preference, and, depending on the way player leads him, Zagreus can finish the story while in a happy polyamorous relationship with a man and a woman (going platonic all around is also allowed).

Here’s a selection of male Hades & Hades 2 characters, often with their tits pecs out and generally glad to present as very approachable for people who are into men:

Shoutout for Hephaestus delivering myth-accurate disability rep AND having a big belly, which fans are already very happy about (the issue of somewhat lacking body diversity was brought up since the first game).

And of course there’s primordial god, Chaos, who encompasses all and none genders and uses they/them pronouns:

So yeah, we’re pretty cool with Hades.

As reader @relto replied to our previous post:

literally the point isnt even “never make a female character look sexy ever”, its “put your characters into outfits informed by their personality/circumstances/the setting theyre in”.

The mere concept of a sexy female character never offended us, it’s just shoving (very limited, cishet male gaze version of) sexyness onto fictional women in otherwise non-sexy setting that we’re criticizing, especially when it’s combat-oriented. And Supergiant Games is pretty consistent (and surprisingly tasteful) about how horny everything and everyone in Hades is. Take notes from them, not from Creepy Marketing Guy.

~Ozzie

[tangledndark]

Peculiar Mushrooms // Layla Ashtar

[tangledndark]

Diné (Navajo) Girl Wearing Silver And Turquoise Squash Blossom Jewelry, 1950

[tangledndark]

should i post this

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Let us suppose that the "average" horse would have equal proportions of all these parts. The degree to which each part in this poll deviates from the "average" size (20% of total) will determine how large or small that part of our horse will be (i.e a horse with only 10% in Legs will have legs half the size of the average horse).

I will draw a picture of the horse we make!

[tangledndark]

Also hey, cultural history time: The reason why cats are associated with women wasn't ultimately and originally about women as sly, cruel, or capricious creatures, but about cats as mothers to their kittens. And yes, sure, reducing womanhood to motherhood and a woman's worth to her fertility is Much Bad, but nonetheless I want to stress that the reason cats became the symbol animal of so many goddesses and were associated with women from thereon wasn't over some "cats and women are sly and selfish, dogs and men are straightforward and loyal uwu" dichtonomy.

It was about cats' tendency to go "I am 4kg of whoop-ass and if you try to touch my eight beautiful children I will fucking kill you."

[tangledndark]

DOLLY PARTON | The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) dir. Colin Higgins

[tangledndark]

Someone was just telling me how the real reason people hate pineapple pizza is probably that most restaurants just sprinkle the pizza with blocky wet pineapple chunks when the original style recipe called for paper thin slices that quickly caramelize in the oven, giving the pizza a gooey sweetness that blends smoothly into the tangier acidity of the tomatoes. They are after all both fruit.

And I actually did like pineapple on pizza, but I only ever had it served to me as the chunks, and NOW that looks gross in comparison to that description.

[tangledndark]

the simplicity of lactase supplements is so funny to me. it costs like $4 to circumvent evolutionary biology. want to eat dairy but your body doesn’t produce the enzyme necessary to digest lactose? the devs haven’t patched that yet but you can download a mod

[tangledndark]

Starting to think a cooler headcanon for Clark’s upbringing might just be that the entire town of Smallville collectively decided to just go with it and accept that Martha and John's kid has superpowers, but we don't talk about it.

Someone's tractor gets stuck and nothing can get it out? "Be a dear and run down to the Kents, would you? Ask for Clark?"

"Why Clark, we need a machine--"

"Run along now."

Or if he kicks too hard and the football vanishes into the upper stratosphere, no it didn't, we all collectively saw it land over there *vague hand movements*

[tangledndark]

no but actually sarah iles johnston arguing that ancient people had a parasocial relationship with mythological characters resulting in strenghtened belief in them and the perpetuation of hero cults is so true but also so so hilarious. alexander achilleskinning real actually. athenian teenage girls roleplaying as artemis and callisto at brauron real too. the helen of troy discourse must've been crazyyyy

[tangledndark]

thingy

[tangledndark]

I made this with oil pastels for a middle school art assignment like 20 years ago and still have it, and I think that's neat.

[tangledndark]

Brief definitions:

Ad Hominem: Trying to undermine the opponent's arguments by using personal attacks rather than logical argument

False Dilemma: Presenting two alternative states as the only possibilities when more possibilities may exist

Bandwagon: Presuming that a proposition must be true because many believe it to be true/everyone else is doing or saying it

Incomplete Comparison: Comparing two things that aren't really related, in order to make something more appealing than it would be otherwise

Strawman: Misrepresenting an argument so that it becomes easier to attack

False Cause: Citing sequential events as evidence that the first event caused the second

Slippery Slope: Claiming that a single event will lead to a series of events that would lead to one major event, or that event A will lead to event B which must lead to event C and so on until event Z

False Analogy: Assuming that if two things or events have similarities in one or more respects, they are similar in other properties too

Guilt by Association: Connecting an opponent to a demonized group of people or to a bad person in order to discredit their argument

Hasty Generalization: Making a claim based on evidence that is too small to prove the claim

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We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[tangledndark]

There are currently ~2300 works in AO3 tagged with "Created Using Generative AI"

I'll be upfront with my opinion, which mirrors my opinion in regards to my field: using AI will only hasten your own obsolescence. The point of fanfiction is not to crank out fics, but rather to enjoy the hobby and communities of writing and fandom.

[tangledndark]

ursula k le guin was right