Kaz' Bolthole

On gamergate and intimidation

I was recently sharing posts on the need for both sides to calm down in the Sad Puppies 3 thing going on with the Hugo, and one of my friends on the site replied to me about how they recently had a run-in with someone whose twitter feed was full of Gamergate and SadPuppies tagged retweets, and how it made them feel unsafe, given that gamergate people will, if you push them too hard, sometimes dogpile on you, dox you, and attack all of your friends. I went and tracked the tweets down and looked at them. Since I had been posting about civility, I figured I should lecture those who are theoretically on my side about how it hurts the image of the Sad Puppies 3 campaign to go around insulting and intimidating people while having the sad puppies name splashed all over their feed. He asked what he did wrong and how he was intimidating people… 

I wasn’t entirely happy with my reply, so I spent the next few hours mulling it over while playing Axiom Verge. Ultimately, the best I could come up with was “because you’re associated with gamergate, people will prejudge you about it. Thus, if you want to be taken seriously you need to do all you can to distance yourself from their prejudices.” 

But then, I realized where I had heard that line of thought before, and why I was thinking about it now. Earlier in the day, I had read an article about how black students were more likely to be suspended when talking back to the teacher in class, because it was interpreted as being more aggressive than when a white student talked back, and this had me thinking about a documentary I had watched 4-5 years ago about the “black code” which fathers would teach their sons, about how to behave so that you break people’s preconceptions and in the long run change people’s minds. 

The argument just didn’t sit right with me anymore.

I still think it’s pointless to insult people on the internet and the person I was talking to obviously took their bait hook, line, and sinker, but I’m not going to tell people to be quiet about it anymore unless they’re doing actual intimidation. It’s just not a valid enough reason that they’re intimidating people by their association with gamergate, especially with the associations that I’ve now dredged up in my own mind about it.

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February 2015 Multimedia Completion

Games:

• 11. Mii Force (3DS) 2/13. I don’t recommend this one. it’s my least favorite of all of the 3DS Mii Streetpass games.
  
• 12. Valkyria Chronicles (PS3) 2/18. I enjoyed this game, but I was really ready for it to be done.
• 13. Suikoden 2 (PS1) 2/22. A pretty good game, though not my favorite from the series.
• 14. Pathpix Boo (Android) 2/28. Pathpix is always a good timewaster.

Videos:

Apparently, I forgot to watch anything in February.

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January 2015 Multimedia Completion

Games:

• 1. Nano Assault Neo (PS4) 1/5. Not the best game. It wants to be Super Stardust, but isn’t quite as good.
  
• 2. Fat Dragons (PSVita) 1/11. Essentially, it’s Joust.
• 3. Lone Survivor: Directors Cut (PSVita) 1/13. Trippy game. Worth playing at least once.
• 4. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (PS1) 1/17. Finished this, and later finished the epilogue. One of the more expensive games that I’ve ever played. I had to buy a new set of the game to finish it because the second disc was scratched.
• 5. Velocity Ultra (PSVita) 1/18. Fun game, kind of tricky to finish the last level.
• 6. Far Cry: Blood Dragon (PS3) 1/18. (100% trophies, 1/19)
• 7. Infamous 2: Festival of Blood (PS3) 1/21. A vampire story set in the Infamous universe.
• 8. Pixbox Puzzle Pack #1 (PSVita) 1/21. I really like the interface for this, my favorite interface for nonograms.
• 9. Tales from the Borderlands: Zer0 Sum (PS4) 1/24. My favorite thing from Telltale since Sam and Max.
• 10. Borderlands 1 (PS3) 1/31. Tales from the Borderlands inspired me to go back and finish this. Now that they’ve revived multiplayer, I think I’ll go platinum it too.

Videos:

• 1. Bubblegum Crisis 2040. So retro and throwback… Watched this because it was about to fall off of netflix.
  
• 2. The Tick (Live Action) Fun, but more like a Seinfeld series than a comic book show. Patrick Warburton is good, as usual.

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Best of the year 2014, things I’ve finished.

Books:

1. The Martian
2. Sunrise Alley
3. The Mistborn series
4. The Quantum Vibe series
5. A Mad Tea Party

Games: 

I finished so many games, that I couldn’t cut it down to a top 5…

1. Danganronpa 1 & 2
2. Xenoblade Chronicles
3. Odin Sphere
4. Factorio
5. South Park: Stick of Truth
6. Transistor
7. Valiant Hearts
8. Broken Age 1
9. Fez
10. Rogue Galaxy

Videos:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy
2. Adventure Time (S1-3)
3. Madoka Magica
4. South Park S18
5. Sword Art Online

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December 2014 Multimedia Completion

Books: Nada

Games:

• 80. Fantasy Life (3DS) 12/1 Like a little offline FF14 game. I completed it without ever going to a combat oriented class. Tough playing it this way, but the game is good, mindless fun. A good one to veg out to.
• 81. Rollers of the Realm (PSVita) 12/22 Great game. Worth playing. I’d only change a few things I think. 1. Losing all of the exp and gold from a level is a bit too punitive. Makes you feel like you completely wasted your time. Now, I understand they don’t want you scumming it and getting all the gold from the chest over and over, but if they made it so you kept maybe 10% of what you earned in a level that would probably make it feel a lot less like a waste when you lose. Also, they’ve addressed this in the Steam version, but in the first version of the game the last level was absurdly punishing and it took 15-30 minutes to get to it. It would be better if they broke it into 3 separate levels.
• 82. Candy, Please! (PSVita) 12/23 Another cute little NoStatic adventure game. Worth playing for the price.
• 83. Rogue Galaxy (PS2) 12/24 A really fun game, but you have to play it on its terms. If you go in expecting an RPG with healing magic and attacks that don’t take huge chunks off your health, you’ll be disappointed. This thing is brutal, and expects you to learn to avoid attacks and defend, and it expects you to use your abilities. A LOT. you have about the same amount of healing items as you do AP recovery items, so you should be using several skills per recovery item.
• 84. Murasaki Baby (PSVita) 12/25 I wouldn’t call this cute, but it is interesting. The controls are frustrating at times, but very clever.

Videos:

• 20. South Park Season 18. Really good, and with a continuous thread that goes through the whole thing.

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Schlock Mercenary, paying attention to the backgrounds

Look at this series of comics…

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-05-25

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-06-05

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-06-19

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-08-10

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-11-23

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2014-12-02

http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2015-01-07

8 months, 7 comics, all one continuous story being told in the background.

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September-November 2014 Multimedia Completion

Wow, I spaced this thing out for 3 months. Guess I was too busy.

Books:

N/a

Games:

September:

• 61. Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PS3) Very interesting game, worth playing.
• 62. Infamous: First Light (PS4) A worthy addition to the series. I enjoyed it however brief it was.
• 63. Hohokum (PS4) Very interesting. Very little storyline, but interesting.
• 64. Serena (Linux) Also for PC. About an hour long adventure game where you mostly just poke around trying to find new dialog on all the random objects around you. I can’t say much more or it’ll spoil it.
• 65. Stacking: The Lost Hobo King. (Linux) Eh, it’s not bad.
• 66. Curse of Monkey Island (Linux) Another game down, only Escape remains.
• 67. Destiny (PS4) Great game with a lackluster storyline and a bit repetitive mission structure.
• 68. Danganronpa: Trigger happy havoc (PSVita) Buy it. Buy it now.
• 69. Lego Chima: Laval’s Journey (PSVita) I’m not sure who the audience is for this, but it’s not me. I wonder how many kids are into the whole Chima world?
• 70. Flying Hamster HD (PSVita) Cute game, though I would have enjoyed it more with more continues.

October:

• 71. Legend of Legaia (PS1) I was really ready for this to end when I finished it.
• 72. Escape from Monkey Island (PS2) Another great monkey island game. Really enjoyed it.
• 73. Brave Fencer Musashi (PS1) Resurrected from my old save game pile and finished. Another game that I was really happy to finish and not have to play anymore.
• 74. Danganronpa 2 (PSVita) Buy this one too!

November:

• 75. Suikoden 4 (PS2) Not the best Suikoden game, but not awful.
• 76. 1000 Tiny Claws (PSP Mini) Fun, but gets frustrating when you’re so close to winning, and you get tossed off
• 77. King of Fighters 13 (PS3) I hate this game. It’s really annoying.
• 78. A Ride into the Mountains (Android) Short, might be worth playing a little. I was glad it was over though. Hate the controls, would have been better on Vita.
• 79. Costume Quest 2 (PS4) More of everything that made the first game fun.

Videos:

• 18. Doctor Who: Season 7. Pretty good.
• 19. Gamers: The Hands of Fate. A really impressive movie for something crowd funded. The green screen effects had some glitches, but other than that quite well done.

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August 2014 Multimedia Completion

Books:
Didn’t do much reading this month, aside from RSS feeds.

Games:

• 53. Tiny and Big: Grampa’s Leftovers (Linux) Finished. it was pretty short, but entertaining. Though, I kept thinking it was the last battle, then being disappointed when there was more to play.
• 54. Gone Home (Linux) A bit buggy, though new drivers helped this a bit. interesting to explore and listen to music.
• 55. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii). Will probably end up on my top 10 rpgs ever.
• 56. Half Minute Hero (PSP). Hero 30 is great, the rest are a little lackluster, at least until Hero 300, which is really tough and time consuming. 5 minutes per try…
• 57. Ys: Memories of Celceta (PSVita). The bosses aren’t quite as good as Seven, but the storyline is pretty solid.
• 58. Metrico (PSVita). Interesting game, a bit tricky.
• 59. Pixel Miner. (Pebble) Not that interesting. A test of battery life more than anything
• 60. Megaman X: Command Mission. My new least favorite megaman game.

Videos:

• 16. Guardians of the Galaxy. Entertaining.
• 17. Ender’s game. Interesting deviations, the most interesting of which might be the implications that the ansibles have a range limit, and that FTL travel exists in this universe. The entire book series kind of hinges on the opposite of these two things being true.

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July 2014 Multimedia Completion

Books:

• 13. Quantum Vibe Volume 1. and
• 14. Quantum Vibe Volume 2. This is just a great book all around. It’s a bit on the preachy side, but still a great old-fashioned scifi romp.
• 15. The Hook. I’m not sure what the point of this was.
• 16. Roswell, Texas. A bit of a wish fulfillment nightmare scenario.
• 17. Escape from Terra. Really good, even though it kind of ends in the middle.

Games:

• 49. Mortal Kombat. Strange game…
• 50. Rocketmen: It Came from Uranus. I forgot how long it’s been since I played this game, but I finally went back and finished the DLC… And it ended on a cliff hanger for another episode that will never come out. Bah.
• 51. Another World. Fun old 1990’s Amiga game. Not particularly long, but tricky.
• 52. Valiant Hearts. Go play it.

Videos:

None

Something else:

• 2. Facade. It’s another one of those things that can’t be categorized into one of the above categories. It’s too short to be a book, not interactive enough to be a game, and not visually interesting enough to be a video. It only qualifies as a short story because of the existence of Arthur C Clarke’s story “Quarantine.” and that one was dealing with much more interesting issues than this. 

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June 2014 Multimedia Completion

Books:

• 12. A Mad Tea Party. Kickstarter is like Christmas scattered throughout the year. You get a random package without remembering that you ordered it months ago on kickstarter. In any case, this one was really quite good. 

Games:

• 45. Walking Dead S1E4. Seemed really long, but was interesting. The ending was pretty brutal.
• 46. Entwined. Short, a bit challenging.
• 47. Walking Dead S1E5. So few survivors, especially from the initial group… Next up is 400 days I guess.
• 48. Walking Dead 400 Days. This one was pretty brutal.

Videos:

• 11. Baka & Test. After the last two really heavy series, I was looking for something light and stupid. I was not disappointed. Funny, but still a fairly dumb show.
• 12. Sherlock Series 3. Very, very interesting.
• 13. Venture Brothers Season 5. A short season, but full of interesting content. You can’t say this show keeps threads dangling forever, this thing closed off a whole lot of old threads, and opened some new ones in only 8 episodes.
• 14. Sekirei S1 & S2. After those really two excellent anime series, I needed a sort of inverse pallet cleanser. Something really crummy to remind me of how bad anime can get. Baka and Test was a little bit that, but not enough. Sekirei, on the other hand, fully fits the bill. It has every sort of weird fetishy fan service you might normally get from a show. Attacks that do little aside from shredding clothes, idiotic camera angles just meant to expose and nothing else, and a whole cast of one-dimensional stereotypical harem characters. A lousy premise and a lousy show. 
• 15. The Lego Movie. Somewhat entertaining.

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