seiberwing | Entries tagged with rant

Oh, for god's sake. I love the PW kink meme, I really do, but by law of averages it can bring some very dramatic fail.

Yes, but Japan is perfectly capable of drawing people who look Japanese. They chose to portray "themselves" as un-Asian.

Where do I even begin with these two sentences? It's rather notable in the wake of the racebending scandal around the The Last Airbender where that same argument was used to annoyingly bad ends, but in the Phoenix Wright fandom it is even stupider. The Ace Attorney series was made in Japan, by Japanese people, and original set in Japan. This isn't even a racism issue, this is a 'how stupid are you' issue.

Good grief. I mean, let's look at some of these un-Asian people.

( Cut for pictures. )

For additional interest, I dug up an interview with one of the localizers for Justice For All.

Lost: Conversely, what sorts of stuff do you add to give the Phoenix Wright dialogue a bit more of a Western flavor? Can you give an example of that?

JH: I think what makes the dialogue more Western are things like colloquial phrases, sayings, and even the odd reference to a Western movie or show. The dialogue for the most part, in my opinion, is not really country-specific, so I think what lends the feeling of where a game takes place are the little things, such as Maya liking hamburgers instead of ramen, and using American law terms, such as “pleading the 5th”. Also, the inclusion of characters of different races makes it feel more like America to me, since Japan is pretty homogeneous.

Bolding mine. The bulk of the Ace Attorney characters were drawn, originally, as Asian. They're not all Asian in the localization and some of them aren't even from countries that actually exist, but they weren't drawn specifically un-Asian. How you could so badly miss that in a series where Japanese-style spirit mediums are core to the plot is completely beyond me.

I've been going through more internet-psychology-research papers and I'm starting to see a pattern. They have the notion of people bringing their cultural backgrounds and demographics into the internet. They lack, or almost entirely lack, the concept of internet culture as a separate entity.

For example:

Bloggers are typically cautious about engaging in self-disclosure because of concerns that what they post may have negative consequences. This article examines the relationship between anonymity (both visual and discursive) and self-disclosure on weblogs through an online survey. The results suggest that increased visual anonymity is not associated with greater self-disclosure, and the findings about the role of discursive anonymity are mixed. Bloggers whose target audience does not include people they know offline report a higher degree of anonymity than those whose audience does. Future studies need to explore the reasons why bloggers visually and discursively identify themselves in particular ways.

It's framed in the context of a person residing in a vacuum, talking to a faceless, unresponsive entity. On blogs with the commenting off, yes, I suppose this is how it works, but I've never understood the point of those anyway, they're newspaper columns pasted onto the internet and not really the same thing.

This is probably a symptom of not spending enough time steeped in the internet community on a casual, social basis as opposed to a mostly research basis. The vast majority of the peopleworking on this sort of thing didn't grow up intimately tied to the internet, although the number's growing. They lack the perspective of the internet-as-world, the internet as a collective rather than a series of tubes through which messages are passed back and forth devoid of context or the forming of bonds between individuals.

Now, I don't think the researchers are actually seeing internet actions as isolated, but that's the mindset that seems to be there. It's like...I don't really know what it is like, I think that's really the problem. It's not something we've had a precedent for.

Por ejemplo, there's a lot of studying the internet regarding a specific demographic--Muslims, Koreans, teenagers, people with depression, etc. While this is a reasonable and noble research task it doesn't really gain the whole picture. IRL people of the same cultural background and age group tend to hang out together, the internet a little less so. There's people on my flist as old as my parents, people from different countries, people with different gender identities and sexual preferences, people whose religious or political beliefs are far different from mine, and I should probably stop with the diversity before that little "the more you know" star comes charging at my head.

(I would like to note at this point I went to look up the origins of the "the more you know" star and spent fifteen minutes wandering Wikipedia before I got back here)

Point is, we can't assume this is just a wider scale version of people sending letters back and forth to each other. That way lies inaccurate information and cat macros. The evolution of cultures and subcultures, the construction of social roles and unwritten rules in ways unthinkable IRL because it's just not a medium where that would work, the maintenance of group unity and dissident chastisement, the spread of information at a ludicrous speed...it's there, it's just that you don't see it. It's like looking at a bunch of wandering ants and assuming each is acting alone rather than realizing they're all a unified group with a specific structure to their behaviors. Which I guess makes sockpuppets Myrmarachne.

There are some people who actually seem to get it, but the number is so small as to mildly irritate me every time I try to dig into a pile of papers on the subject. It's not that they're incompetent or lazy, it's just that no one's gotten their heads around the concept yet.

And if I weren't trying to get my PhD in it, I might actually see it as a bad thing. ^_^

Dear internet and everyone else going flail over Disney buying Marvel:

These are the same people who owned Dimension Films at the time it produced the Sin City movie. Yes, the one with the hookers and the guns and the swearing and the decapitations and Frank Miller's sticky fingerprints all over it. I very much doubt they're going to try castrating the Punisher to make him more kid friendly.

Chill out and go play some Kingdom Hearts or something.

Sincerely,

Someone who should be doing her homework.

P.S.: You can keep going with the crossover fanart, though.

So I have returned from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, having tried to ignore pretty much everyone ever saying it sucks. They obviously had not understood Bay's art, and by art I mean having a loose plot to explain why things are blowing up.

...my head hurts. That is not hyperbole, my head actually physically hurts from the sheer amount of "what the fuck is this what the fuckery" that went into this movie.

( Bitty spoilers for good parts and bad parts. )

I'm sorry, Michael Bay. The fighting robots just weren't enough to win me over. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going over to

beexsam to comfort myself with some soothing interspecies slash, because the scenes featuring the affirmation of the Bee/Sam/Mikaela OT3 were probably the best part of this movie.

So while wandering the comments of the most recent Slacktivist post, I came up with this particular nugget of idiocy that required a bit of Jew rage.

Delivered with very little context.

Along the lines of prohibited foods, in the 9th LB book, Desecration, Nicky defiles the Temple in Jerusalem by riding atop an enormous pig. One of the thousands of onlookers wonders why.

"I don't get it," a man in front of Buck said, his accent German. "What's he doing?"

"Putting all previous religions in their places, Freidrich!" his wife said, her eyes glued to the scene. "Even Christianity. Especially Christianity."

"But what's with the pig?"

"Christianity has Jewish roots," she said, still not looking at him. "What's more offensive to a Jew than an animal he's not allowed to eat?"

As a Jew who observes the prohibition against eating pork, I don't find pigs or any other traif animals to be offensive. And I don't know any Jews who do. Among the things that I do find offensive false stereotypes of Jews -- especially by Christian religious leaders who think they have the slightest clue about what Jews actually think and believe.

In addition to the above, let me tally up what is wrong with this idiocy.

1. The Antichrist is riding on a pig. There is no way Mr. Carpathia can make that look dignified. I'm not sure anyone can make riding on a pig dignified, I don't care what kind of magic mind control powers they have.
2. We don't find pigs offensive because we can't eat them. In fact, we don't find the concept of 'pig' offensive at all, any more than most people would find the concept of 'cockroach' or 'rattlesnake' offensive just because they find eating them distasteful. We're forbidden from eating them or having much to do with them in general because they're unclean, much like shrimp, carrion birds, menstruating women, and people with skin diseases. Legion aside, pigs are not demonic entities.
2a. I've seen the word 'offensive' misused before in Christian propaganda before, usually in the context of nonChristian/atheist calling some tenet of the Christian religion (or in one case, some weird guy being a vampire until he was redeemed by Jesus) offensive. I don't think they quite understand that being offended is a far different thing than disagreeing or finding the idea completely idiotic. But since the word brings up images of people's delicate sensibilities being injured for no good reason, they keep using it.
3. Once again, although I shouldn't find it surprising in either this series or this section of the religion, everything comes back to Christianity. Defiling the Temple Antiochus-style? Totally a jab against the people who have no religious prohibition against pork or doctrinal tie to the Temple in Jerusalem. In these things, the Jews are never there just to be Jews. We're there to be the chosen people, to be the people God originally touched and therefore put on a pedestal or used to get themselves closer to God. It's like going to your boyfriend's ex for sex tips.
4. Ugh. I admit to not having the closest of emotional connections to Judaism, but I absolutely hate when people appropriate it for their own purposes, even in the most positive of senses. Yes, go ahead and support Israel all you like, but don't do it because enough Jews there will cast 'Summon Jesus' or because you have some kind of Jew fetish that means its existance is a universal positive no matter the consequences. The same goes for the Jews for Jesus dickwads who go around proclaiming themselves as Jews (but better!) despite the entirety of the actual Jewish race knowing that they're bloody posers.

*pauses for breath* Peh. So it's a hot button for me, I'm sorry. But it was a necessary rant. Here, have some entertainment.

A bit of education:

(Useless trivia of the day: The rabbis have already ruled on this subject. If the amount of traif is less than 1/60th of the total amount of food, then it's still considered kosher.)

And lulz:

One of my favorite podcasts is Best of the Left (http://www.bestoftheleftpodcast.com/). Their latest show, #265, features a segment from "This American Life" entitled "Trying to Kill Your Father." A young Jewish boy is told in Hebrew school that his sins may be visited on his father and may even cause his death. Since his father likes to get drunk and hit his kids, this sounds like a good deal to the kid, who goes out of his way to offend God by flipping light switches on the Sabbath and eating dairy with meat. (The kid is also preparing for a "Blessings Bee" where the students have to match the food to the proper blessing.)

Thoughts on Endgame, Part 2.

( Warning: This will get kinda violent )

I'm going to go do something perfectly dignified and mundane. Please ignore the muffled sniffling in the bathroom, as I certainly never cry at series finales.

So...yeah. Endgame Part 1 made me imitate Thrust in my icon.

( Cut for spoilers and flail. )

Current Music: Siuil a run - Celtic Woman

"Why I Hate Machines" continues our good-episode-streak with much win and awesome.

( Cut for your pleasure. )

Current Music: Dulaman -- Celtic Woman

And we're back to the wtf territory, albeit not as bad as Five Servos of Doom. Great episode, mind, but still very wtf.

( Spoilers, obviously. )

I'm calling it now: Human Error is the best episode we've had all season.

( Ramblerambleramble. )

IMing me with your first statement being "wasn't it cool when that one thing happened which would have been of great emotional impact had it been a surprise" when you know I'm in Britain and won't have seen the item in question and you know that I get really pissed over spoilers on items of an emotionally significant nature? And you've done this before?

Good way to get blocked from my buddy list until the end of the season.

EDIT: Okay, so there was still lots of squee even without the Big Squee. But you are not forgiven.

Now look, I don't expect much from Transformers: Return of the Fallen. It'll be just another Bay smashfest with robots with little personality that I can barely tell apart and a lot of focus on Mikaela's most notable traits while Sam acts like a doof. That's okay, I can deal with that, just don't expect me to get excited even if you release exclusive footage of...interesting scenes...from the movie...um...

Godamnit, Michael Bay, don't make me get excited about this again. YOU BROKE MY HEART ONCE, I WILL NOT FALL FOR YOUR TRICKS AGAIN oh god Bumblebee and Sam are so adorable and there are shiny action sequences and he's got an actual cane and aaaagh.

Why must I be so weak?

You know, I've finally figured it out. The writers got annoyed that Transformers: Animated got canceled, so they set out to purposefully give a generation of children perpetual nightmares.

( spoilercut )

AND WHERE THE FUCK IS SARI. IT HAS BEEN FOUR EPISODES. WHERE IS OUR SPUNKY NOT-SO-HUMAN SIDEKICK. I start to wonder whether they realized they'd written themselves into a corner by powering her up and simply responded by writing her out of the series entirely.

So, my brother's exposed me to the Ice Age 3 trailer, further convincing me of the fact that they really, really should have stopped after the first one because it looks like utter tripe. Also they're throwing in another love interest, for Scrat of all people. Scrat does not need a love interest, especially of the "male character but with longer eyelashes" flavor, we already went through this with Ellie.

On the other hand, it does seem to reinforce my theory that Sid is as gay as a treeful of aye-ayes on fermented grapes. Possibly with Diego, although I'm not sure if Diego completely reciprocates the affection or merely tolerates it, but either way he's a very gay sloth.

Current Location: Home!
Current Music: Flute and String Quartet

Through the magic of the internets someone got "Where Is Thy Sting" on up on YouTube a few days early. I think we can safely say "Three's A Crowd" was the fluffy breather episode because they got right back on the WHAT THE HELL with this one.

( Cut for spoilers )

Also, more Prowl plz. Everyone else has complex backstory and motivation (sort of), can we get some for the mysterious ninja?

So. TFA season three. Yeah. What the fuck, man.

( Cut for spoilers, unlike half the people on my damn flist. Long post is long. )

Current Location: Cold.
Current Music: Not sure.

Snagged this link off a comment on

shortpacked and I have to admit, it's bothering me a little bit. Here's the disclaimer.

Imagine if you will. Girls that get just as upset as you do when that boss battle just isn't going well and you you've been hacking away at the bastard for hours! A Girl that can counter your obscure science fiction movie reference with one of her own. A Girl who can hand you your ass at Mario Kart. A Girl that, when you suggest watching a movie, will choose that kung fu flick or something rife with gun violence and explosions hands down every time. A Girl who thinks your obsession with giant robots is perfectly normal. A Girl who thinks sword fights are sexy. A Girl with opinions about console games. A Girl who spends more time in the graphic novel section of Barnes and Nobel than you do. A Girl who owns her own RPG dice...and thinks they're pretty.

They're out there. Fangirls.

Thats right lads, hands off your joysticks...We bring the best (and sometimes the worst) of our favorite fandoms to you with a refreshing (sometimes terrifying) female perspective.

I'm all for girls transcending traditional gender roles through fandom, but they make it out like this somehow makes them unique. On LJ alone there's dozens of comms for all of the above and I'm betting more than half of them are female dominated. I'm not even getting into the whole capital letter on Girl thing because I have no idea what that's about, but it bugs me anyway. A small disclaimer on your personal nature and identity is the norm for most bloggers, but

I prefer action movies to romantic comedies, think sword fights are intensely sexy and usually full of lovely sexual tension, get pissed off at that one boss that I can't seem to beat (I hate you Metroid: Fusion spider boss, I hate you so fucking much), and I'm pretty certain the girls writing the blog don't even know the depths of giant robot obsession that I have descended to. None of this makes me special. In the ranks of girl geeks, I'm actually pretty mediocre. If you're going to make your gender a selling point, I want to see you bring something new to the table instead of going "hey, boys! We like what you do and think you're cool, do you like us now?".

I took a quick skim of the content on the first page (after getting past the formatting and font, which is nigh unreadable), and bar a few offhanded references to their gender and a bit of gushing over Twilight, the entire thing could just have easily been written by a guy. There is no "female perspective", or at least not one that's noticeably female, there's just yet another fan perspective on which video games are good and how Frank Miller has lost his whore-loving mind. Girl-wonder.org, this is not. I'm not even sure it's

girl_gamers or

scans_daily. Definitely not

mecha_erotica, although I don't think that's the kind of fangirling they're looking for. It's just gender-neutral commenting, and I'm not sure why they think that's a bad thing.

Ladies? I'm sorry, but you're not the geekiest girls I know. Not by a long shot.

Current Location: Bed
Current Music: Lordi- Would You Love a Monsterman?

Yes, I'm complaining about TF:Mosaic again, although at least this time it isn't gender perceptions or homophobia.

As you may have noticed, the dialogue is winceworthy ("everything I touch is food for my hunger"?) and completely OOC. I initially chalked this up to simply being on the low end of the already mediocre writing quality that's about three quarters of all of TF: Mosaic's output. However, apparently it's copypasta from a scene in G1.

What the hell.

I mean, first off it's lame. TF Animated is already a giant homage, I'd like to think the fandom wouldn't keep pushing it. Secondly, this is nothing like what TFA Megatron and Optimus would say. Megatron is a lot less pompous and overdramatic, and Optimus tends to restrain his corniness to his morale speeches--battle dialogue is more snappy for him, usually sarcastic. They also don't speak on an equal level, as instead of being eons-old rivals Optimus is barely a blip on Megatron's radar most days. All things being equal Megatron could mop the floor with him and usually does until someone else interferes.

I'd especially like to draw your attention to this interchange:

Nachtsider: I'm sorry, but this one just doesn't do it for me. The art's okay, for sure, but the dialog seems almost corny, and there doesn't seem to be any real story to speak of... :(

MagusTheLofty: The dialogue is word for word from the G1 pilot episode where Optimus and Megatron are fighting on Sherman Damn. (lol typos)

Nachtsider: Darn. Now that you tell me the dialog was meant to be a homage, I feel quite guilty over the harsh judgment I handed out in my initial comment. The reason I didn't catch the reference you pointed out is because I'm a guy who grew up with the G1 Marvel comics, and never really paid much attention to the Sunbow cartoon. If the artist is listening, I'd like him to know I'm terribly sorry...

Suddenly narmtastic dialogue becomes reasonable because it's part of the sacred G1. I mean, I'm hardly saying that one can't enjoy the utter cheese that is G1, but that doesn't make it anything that a sane person would actually say.

...also, the art just sucks.

EDIT: And the artist weighs in, because the artist always weighs in to ignore most of the comments and give an excuse for being subpar.

dpfghela: Hi all...

once again, thanks for all your comments. I did this peice as a tester, so that I could get used to drawing TFAnimated. I ended up doing a full page so decided to forward it to TFMosiac. Hence the odd mix of old and new. To be honest...I've always wanted to see a rematch of this battle from MTMTE Ep2.

You don't submit testers to contests, you submit decent polished work. Your interest in a Megatron/Optimus rematch is not something you need to inflict on poor TFA. Go back to your room.

Am I the only one who gets pissed off at this sort of thing? Putting aside the fact that The Gay is not allowed in the TF:Mosaic project (with, apparently, exceptions made for humor), I find it rather insulting to continually insinuate that the sudden discovery that the object of your lusts is actually a male is horrifying. Double points if they turn around and start hitting on you. It's an incredibly stale joke that has overtones of homophobia that I'm just not comfortable with. Note the comments below the comic as well--this situation is regarded as awkward or just flat-out wrong. There's even a few crossdresser jokes thrown in for good measure.

Does that mean the writer and artist of this comic are homophobic? Certainly not. They're just going with a lowest common denominator joke, much like like the guy who did the Erector penis size joke last week. But stop for a moment and think about exactly why it's funny. You have one or more males participating in a manly heterosexual activity, lusting over or trying to attract a female. Then the "trap" is exposed, revealing that the male(s) have actually been participating in a homosexual activity by catcalling another male. This is found to be hilarious to the audience and humiliating to the male(s) involved. I'm not sure if it even works the same way for a reverse-trap, a female mistaken for a male by another female, but if it is the degree of humiliation is far less.

In short, the Transformers fandom really needs to get its act together.

EDIT: Seems the ones responsible have posted in their thoughts on the comic.

Josh van Reyk, writer: Definitely not the case here. I just thought it would be funny if the Constructicons were hitting on a car, that; A) Was actually a Transformer, and B) Was a male Transformer.

Those good ‘ole boys would surely freak-out if that ever happened.

The Stunticons are just giving them a little grief, there are no hidden under-tones here.

Apologies if anyone took offence to this, it certainly wasn’t intended.

Ninjha, artist: Definitely! After reading all the comments and stuff, we had no idea this would be so controversial. Even while drawing it I thought of it as just a gag. I made sure the guns were powering up and stuff. The Stunticons were just supposed to scare them off, THATS IT. There is no reading into this, no hidden message, it is what you see.

Yes, well, while I see an alternative explanation that the Stunticon's violent approach could have been the trigger as opposed to their revealed gender, Mr. van Reyk seems to indicate otherwise. I honestly can't be arsed to go in and argue with them, but I'd say the intent on the writer's part is pretty obvious. Accidental gay is terrifying.