It’s not often I type a blog post anymore. These days I’ve become a cam whore and prefer to speak into the lens and upload my stream-of-conscious blatherings to youtube. But these past few days I’ve been sick and upon recovering, well, I found myself just wanting to type. The written word is in some ways better than a spoken message. For one thing its much easier to write and edit a post than to record and edit a video, and it takes seconds–even my vlogs take at least an hour. In fact, I may go back to doing blog posts predominantly and using my youtube channel only for videos with actual content.
One thing to mention, I’m bad about not advertising videos on this blog. I know I really should do that, but there’s a reason I don’t: Laziness. More precisely, often I’m impatient and in a hurry when I upload videos (my internet situation is in general kinda screwed up) and so I need things to be as convenient as possible. WordPress though sometimes deletes the cookie that holds my auto-login data, which means I have to look up my password (I use a different password for each site and my WP one is particularly hard to remember) and input it and log in successfully and, well, that’s sometimes more than I have time to or even want to do. Not to mention how I have to preview each post to make sure it’s not gonna look all skewered or anything like that. So its actually just easier for me to not update the blog.
It really does just come down to me being lazy, I guess.
So, here’s some thoughts that went through my head during days while I was sick.
Thought The First – I’ve noticed this weird phenomenon when reading books. The phenom is thus: Sometimes I’ll swear that the spaces between words are forming a picture or a letter. Then I try to look more closely and it both clears up in some respects but then becomes more vague in others–“I can definitely see the top of an ‘A’ here but the lower right corner is a blur to me”–that kind of deal. Am I the only person this happens to? This also sometimes happens to me with the grain textures of walls and ceilings.
Thought the Second – There’s actually a reason I came to be a camwhore: see, the comp I use for the internet is actually kind of a bitch to type on. The keyboard is uncomfortable and thanks to a kid spilling her drink on it, some of the keys have become unresponsive (in particular the A key sometimes won’t register that it’s been pressed even when I press it several times in a row. This gets very annoying). So I prefer writing on Mazinkaiser, which is a desktop… and is also a Windows 98SE machine built for older games. My laptop runs Windows 7. For awhile this wasn’t much of a problem because I would just use rewritable CDs to transfer documents over, but then the built-in drive on my laptop failed and it happens to be a brand that’s tough to replace. I have an external drive, but its the kind that requires an AC Adapter rather than just plugging straight into the USB, so its a case where what should be a simple activity is really inconvenient. (Sometimes I skip the CD-ROM crap entirely and load an old version of Linux up on Mazinkaiser, enabling me to just put files on a USB thumbdrive. Weirdly, I had heard that Windows 98 is supposed to support USB devices but in my experience, it doesn’t). When I record a video I’m recording to the laptop directly, thus a huge middleman is skipped.
Thought the Third – I’ve been watching a lot of HBomberguy videos. Now, I have mixed feelings about the guy (particularly after his terribly misinformed episode on Pewdiepie) but in general I agree with at least one thing: Video game feminism is ultimately a force for good. Except, my reasons for saying that have nothing to do with gender equality or representation. It has to do with, simply speaking, that gender used to seemingly not matter in games.
Seriously, did anyone ever say “I refuse to play King’s Quest IV because it stars a girl?” I’ve never heard any cases or accounts of the game being received poorly or selling low numbers in connection to the gender of its protagonist. Likewise though I never hear Rosella’s starring role being raised on the pillar of female representation either, at least not from publications of the time. Its almost like a girl being the star was so normal it wasn’t even worth commenting on. The same goes for the Laura Bow mysteries, Plundered Hearts, the first Phantasy Star, Ms. Pac-Man or any other game of the era which starred (or at least featured) a female protagonist. It’s only nowadays that the issue of gender has become worth commenting on. Also note that NONE of the examples I just name wore sexualized clothing, they actually dressed realistically with regards to their individual settings or roles: Rosella is a princess but she puts on a more rugged dress for her journey, Laura Bow dresses in fashion 1920s southern girls would actually wear, and Alis Landale sports boots, thick pants and a thick coat–which is actually practical attire for an adventure across three planets (one of which is an ice world)! That’s a far cry from Lara “wearing a bathing suit in below-zero temperatures” Croft, wouldn’t you say?
So gaming… what HAPPENED? Actually, I know what happened…
Thought the Fourth – I’ve come to realize that the true source of all evil is Politics. Think about the above: Games starring girls used to be normal (if still uncommon), but then it became a political issue and that caused it to polarize.
Politics does that. It takes things that should be normal, or at least comprehensible among standard moral and logic compasses, and makes them “issues”–then confuses things further by making your decision cast you in a specific lot. Like okay, I’m sure I’m gonna be called a liberal cuck bastard virtue signaller for being in favor of more Alis Landales instead of Lara Crofts (who, personally, I never thought was all that sexy–even at sixteen I had higher standards than just “big boobies”).
I’m not giving the opposing team a free pass either though: I’ve several times been accused of being a rape apologist or “reinforcing the patriarchy” or “defending male privilege” simply for (and this is a true story) not understanding some girl’s thesis that anime like Sailor Moon somehow promote the oppression of women. I mean, Sailor Moon does? I could see that argument for Demon Beast Invasion or maybe even Dragon Ball Z, but Sailor Moon? To be honest, I think that person just hated Japan and was using feminism as a shield to justify her irrational hate.
But that’s what I mean right there. If there were no politics involved, then we would all see logic and quickly come to some sort of an agreement.
But the problem then is, how do we get rid of politics? I mean, you really can’t, because all governments (even anarchy will basically result in hundreds of mini-governments) are run by humans and politics is the oil that makes governments work. So we’re stuck with it.
Maybe next time I’m sick I’ll divine a solution to this whole thing….
