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About ozyfrantz
Ozy Frantz is a student at a well-respected Hippie College in the United States. Zie bases most of zir life decisions on Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and identifies more closely with Pinkie Pie than is probably necessary. Ozy can be contacted at [email protected] or on Twitter as @ozyfrantz. Writing is presently Ozy's primary means of support, so to tip the blogger, click here.
@Schala: You’re talking about the “strong independent Nord woman” (to reference another of her lines) in Whiterun (I think it was), right? I found her irritating, but that probably had to do with everyone having ~5 basic one liners (and a bunch of story/character/gear dependent ones that she seemed to be missing) when you got close to them, and her consistently being in my path when I was in Whiterun (there was a point where I thought she was intended to be like the cat in KQ3 and intentionally always in the way). I’d murdered for less (if only the… Read more »
@ Schala Je sui desole, mon amie! I didn’t mean to sound dismissive or combatative about it, not about an opion on computer RPG’s from someone actually named Schala, especially. Respect! It’s just an instance where the throw away line really only makes sense for me the way it is presented. (Particularly in the less scripted, open-ended, sandbox style of western RPG’s) Not all RPG’s are populated with obviously poor people, but it’s less the level of wealth anyway. They’re all peasantry, or sommat, so the status is shared. ( And you can’t really convince me that an innkeeper is… Read more »
“And yet the NPC’s, save for a couple of romantic interests and one or two highly visible authority figures, seem to all be bar wenches, prostitutes, mom’s with lost kids, housewives and female nobles.”
And poor salespeople, poor innkeepers, poor artisans, poor thieves – probably half or more male.
It’s great to have a penis, it lets poverty roll off your back – you don’t complain to random adventurers about it, so you must have it made.
@ Schala I bought Skyrim but haven’t had the oppurtunity to start it yet. (I don’t have the most free time to play games anymore. I bought Fallout: New Vegas last February and only started it about three weeks ago. ) So, I’m not at expert but that sounds like a throwaway line to me, anyway. Since the same commenter goes on to say that he doesn’t notice any difference when he actually plays a female, maybe it’s just a nod to all the eglatarianism only seeming to apply to PC’s? I noticed in some RPG’s nobody bats an eye… Read more »
“Two graceful Sith Inquisitors bowed towards me — the female lithe and sleek, the male broad and beefy. The character my brother wanted to create was a stealthy assassin, the kind of person you send in to quietly solve problems. In his eyes, the smaller female character was the obvious fit. I had to admit, it was hard to picture Darth Barrel Chest sneaking through windows.” Skyrim is a tough place to be a woman…because one female NPC said so. Male NPCs said nothing at all (at least, according to this person) about the difficulty of being a man in… Read more »
@ f
I want to make a joke about prefering to play with black balls so bad…. Gah! What a maroon (sic) that guy is. I used to love the colored bowling balls. My alley had a swirly white-pink-red one that I used all the time as a kid, because red’s my favorite color. They don’t have them as much in the larger sizes or I’d still use ’em. :/
@daelyte I do that *all* the time. I’m so tired of looking at the backs of shaved heads on top of monster shoulders. I’m 6’2 and I like to think I have (or at least, once had) a nice set of shoulders on me, but the friggin’ elves in WoW look like they could snap me over their knee. With the humans you have to get the ‘slimmest’ form of the model just to go from shaved sasquatch/cartoon caveman to humanly possible but with freakish roided out limbs. When I want to play an orc, troll, dwarf, or ogre I’ll… Read more »
Gender Everywhere:
http://www.hrc.org/press-releases/entry/rick-santorum-tells-boy-not-to-use-pink-bowling-ball
Oh Rick Santorum, you insufferable asshole.
@Fnord:
I had a reply in mind but lost it when scrolling past the pretty thai ladies.
Oh yes! I was going to point out that many women gamers play male characters, and many men who often play females, for many different reasons.
http://www.themarysue.com/for-they-are-weary-of-space-marines-why-some-men-are-playing-women-and-why-game-developers-should-take-note/
@Fnord Thanks for sharing that link. It was relevant to a lot of my interests. There are a lot of weird gender false equivalencies in fantasy and video-gaming that wind up amounting to some pretty blatant sexism. I’d be the first person to argue that there’s a time and a place for your high-heel wearing, metal bikini clad, elven battle goddesses (except that I don’t typically like elf women); but it’s going to be a hard sell for what’s probably going to be a 3rd-person dungeon crawler; and the fact that it’s a default generic fantasy elf warrior female is… Read more »
“Thailand have beauty contests for transgenders and queers :”
I’m not fond of people who use transgender as a noun. It’s an adjective, like tall, white, straight. Not a noun.
And such a pageant only perpetuates the othering like Fnord said. Did you know that trans women (aka ladyboys) in Thailand cannot EVER change their legal sex? Regardless of what surgery they have, what treatment they follow. The government basically thinks they’re feminine men gone too far – but never ever women. Must be nice for employment right?
@daelyte :
Thailand have beauty contests for transgenders and queers :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQL5HXOsrS0
This is old, but I found it interesting, about an indie video game designer lamenting that “it’s actually very hard for indies to not be sexist in a gaming culture that assumes sexism is mandatory.”
http://www.eldergame.com/2011/07/alpha-art-woes-sex-crazed-elves/
Being an indie, they (it’s a husband/wife team, though this post is by the husband) don’t have much of a budget, so they need to use “cheap prefabricated” art rather than hiring a custom designer where ever possible, especially for the placeholder art in the prerelease version. So that means using what’s available, and what’s available for female models tends towards “ridiculous sexualization.”
@daelyte:
The problem I have with something like a Miss Trans Canada is that it basically perpetuates the othering. Also, it sounds like a highway ;).
Better than nothing? Probably, especially if it grabs advertisers and results in a change in policy. But not ideal.
Nice duck. Maybe there should be a Miss Trans Canada pageant. When it starts to pulls serious advertising money, watch how fast the other guys change their tune. I could totally see Maybelline as a sponsor.
So, Jenna Talackova was MAAB, and disqualified from the Miss Universe Canada pageant for that. There was plenty wrong with beauty pageants anyway, but I guess we can add transphobia to the list.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/jenna-talackova-miss-universe-canada-disqualified/
h/t:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/03/29/if-it-looks-like-a-duck-walks-like-a-duck-and-thinks-its-a-duck
“And this was written by a guy??? If that’s what he thinks is normal, he should get himself checked before his libido overwhelms him.” David Wong…this is the guy who wrote John Dies At The End “John Dies at the End is a comedic horror novel written by Jason Pargin (published under the pseudonym David Wong) that was first published online as a webserial beginning in 2001, then as an edited manuscript in 2004 and printed paperback in 2007 via Permuted Press. An estimated 70,000 people read the free online versions before they were removed in September 2008. Thomas Dunne… Read more »
@Invictus: “Frodo gets Sam”? That article is full of both misandry and misogyny at the same time. How he can juggle that is beyond me. “It’s why every Nice Guy is shocked to find that buying gifts for a girl and doing her favors won’t win him sex.” Either that or the Nice Guy has been called a “loser” and a “creep” so many times, he just assumes that his gifts and favors weren’t grand enough for her. “What more does she want?” he moans, “I’ve already given her everything I could!”. “There are actual occasions where women aren’t thinking… Read more »
@Danny
That’s awesome. Here’s hoping that it’ll make it through the trials.
*struck oopsie haha
Sexual activity be damned I want RISUG (in the States it will be called VASGEL) not now but right now. VASGEL 1. One contraceptive shot that can either last nearly 10 years or be counteracted with a second second. 2. Its about as expensive as the syringe used to inject it. 3. Its been 100% in human trials in India for about 15 years. 4. It will give men even more control over their reproductive rights. 5. If brought to the States it could make to to human trials in the next few years (probably thanks to those trailblazing Indian… Read more »
That product is amazing. I read through all the material and signed the petition. What really sruck me is that, on top of being 100% effective (at least in trials), it’s also easily reversible should the man and his partner decide that they want to have children together.
Did anyone else see this? http://www.cracked.com/article_19785_5-ways-modern-men-are-trained-to-hate-women.html
Oh yeah, open thread, meant to link the obituary of Peter Bergman. A GREAT MAN whom you should all know.
“There was something fishy about the butler, probably a Pisces, working for scale.”
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2012/03/peter-bergman-1939-2012.html
AGBirch you are welcome and thank you! daelyte, I think churches of atheism are a great idea… really, my mother was an atheist forever, but bingo is bingo! 😉 She never left the Catholic church (all while calling it bullshit), free counseling for your taxes, thrift stores, fellowship, bingo, some guy from Catholic Charities came over to change her locks after a break-in while somebody else fixed her roof, old ladies visited her in the hospital and brought pound cakes. DO NOT underestimate all of that stuff!!! She said leaving the church would be like moving out of the USA,… Read more »
Oh god not SRS… here is there FAQ, this is linked in the side bar.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/comments/o0pdv/meta_srs_faq/
In it they realize people will ask about the blatant bigotry
Q: Doesn’t all the hate towards white, straight men make SRS just as bigoted?
Then then proceed to claim its okay to be bigoted as long as its against the right target. …
That place is seriously not okay.