hanoi mornings
seeing everyone just mindlessly sign up for threads despite all the clear warning signs feels like I’m living in Sailor Moon or a magical girl anime episode where the Monster of the Day just set up shop over night and their product is literally draining your lifeforce for the Dark Kingdom but people keep going there
the thing that really gets me is the multiple levels of retconning of reality that have to happen for the moral defense of barbie stanning (and mattel bootlicking) to make any sense at all
there’s the sarcastic rhetorical “did you do this for other IP/merchandising-based franchises as well or is this something you only do for things that are pink and she/her-coded” when like.. yes we literally do this for other franchises all the time??? we do this for disney and marvel and we talk about product placement (and ESPECIALLY we do this for military propaganda in ~he/him-coded~ media) and how all of this fits into the direction of hollywood as an industry relying more and more on big tentpoles
and we talk about how a lot of these studios will prop up a female director or a director of color and a Diverse cast as a shield against any criticism of either 1) the deeper issues in the story that only actually perpetuates systems of inequality but with a “colorblind/racebent” superficially “feminist” veneer or 2) their really really fucked up business practices and what this means for the industry from a broader standpoint. this IS absolutely part of a larger discussion that has been happening literally constantly for YEARS at this point about nostalgiabait and the increasing reliance on existing IP and “brand recognition” and singular massive tentpole blockbusters that have to make a billion dollars to be considered successful which leaves less and less room for anything that doesn’t fit that business model
as i’ve said, the criticism of barbie probably just seems more extreme to some people because 1) this is something that actually affects them personally because they feel personal attachment to this particular nostalgiabait IP, while they somehow don’t remember the constant mcu- and disney-bashing that happens on this website because they never really had any personal desire to engage with those things, 2) the added Feminism and pinkwashing (which i know is usually about public facing support for gay people but like, come on, it’s literal pinkwashing) of this IP in particular, and 3) the naked corporate cashgrab of mattel films and the brand partnerships and product placement and the cynicism of it all etc etc IS imo genuinely at a whole different level with barbie and the imminent mattel extended cinematic universe featuring gritty barney the dinosaur and gritty hot wheels and lena dunham polly pocket and over 40 other projects in development to build the empire of a ceo who has been described as a modern-day medici
AND THEN there’s the retconning of “barbie is the universal little girls’ toy that all little girls loved growing up” and the invention of A World Where Girls Who Loved Pink And Barbies Were The Oppressed Minority And Girls Who Did Not Like And/Or Own Barbies Growing Up Were The Norm (And The Oppressors)
AND the retconning of barbie as something that was always on the forefront of feminism and progressive ideas and beloved as a feminist icon when like ???? that literally was not true??? barbie has always been controversial and feminists have been protesting barbie for a whole myriad of reasons from the very start?? to the point where barbie as a toy had a moment i think in the late 2000s or the 2010s when it was losing popularity and seen as a misogynistic relic of its time that we had moved past as a society UNTIL mattel was like actually we don’t want to let go of the profit potential of this IP so we’re gonna revive it and that’s how we got here and it went from on the brink of losing relevance to the once again the top-selling toy model???? LIKE???? this did not happen accidentally or organically because of public demand or because it is genuinely a Feminist Icon and grew in popularity due to its merits, this was literally a corporate push from mattel inc HELLO
this is all just so insane to me that we’re pretending that this version of reality that people have concocted in their heads is what actually happened in order to claim that barbie was always a progressive feminist icon beyond any kind of moral reproach EXCEPT from misogynists who only criticized it because they hated women and things that women and girls enjoy… literally the lindsay ellis i’m sorry stephenie meyer video arguing that the only reason anyone criticized twilight was because it was popular with teen girls… HELLO. FUCKING HELLO???? god. the amount of damage that video did to discussions about twilight. i’m gonna fucking lose it
also in case people accuse me of only doing this to pink-colored she/her-coded things… another thing that is a personal pet peeve of mine is that this is ALSO tolkien stans trying to claim that the because many people hated the black elves in the amazon series for racist reasons, the way to combat that is by arguing that ACTUALLY the original books and world were incredibly progressive (or at least neutral) on race and it was written For Everyone…… no my dude are you fucking kidding me jolkien “orcs are swarthy, squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes, degraded and repulsive versions of the (to europeans) least lovely mongol types” tolkien would not have supported any of this and it’s very much a cynical superficial move on amazon’s part to get people to have this exact defensive reaction to it (AND many people do hate the racebent elves for racist reasons! multiple things can be true at once)
literally many such cases. people do this all the fucking time and it’s all so so insane to me. honestly truly just mass delusion and retconning of actual real world history in order to make sure that this thing they love is clean of any hint of Moral Offense and can be held up as a pure irreproachable thing. fucking hate it here for REAL
Shilda winery in Kakheti, Georgia is the example of architecture integrating nature - dubbed ‘the greenest winery’, it is embedded within the landscape and energy-efficient. Designed by X-architecture. [1050 x 700]
I guess what really bothers me about holding “story over rules” as a guiding principle in tabletop RPGs is that it’s misidentifying the actual problem.
In tabletop RPGs, rules produce stories. That’s kind of the medium’s whole thing. Any given set of rules is going to encode certain assumptions about how the game ought to be played, and obviously the kind of stories the rules want to produce and the kind of stories you want to tell are never going to be in perfect agreement unless you designed the whole system from scratch (and generally not even then!), but if you find yourself disagreeing with the story the rules want to produce often enough and severely enough that it makes sense to adopt “story over rules” as a guiding principle, what that means is that you’re using the wrong set of rules for the kind of game that you want to play.
Any time I see somebody talking like telling a story and playing a game are intrinsically opposing priorities and it’s the GM’s job to negotiate that fundamental opposition, what that tells me is that this person has spent their whole life running and playing systems that are just wildly unsuited for their preferred mode of play
#literally... obv this is partly bc wotc does try to market d&d as 'the jack of all trades' (bc lbr it's usually d&d whenever this comes up)#but the reality is that d&d is fundamentally a war game and the non-combat rules are flimsy and restrictive#which like. is fine. there's other rpgs for that kind of thing. ppl just seem to be allergic to trying them#and on the other hand like the post says more 'crunchy' systems aren't bad for storytelling bc sometimes#the act of having to colour within specific lines is what brings out incredible creativity and you lose that if u just go 'rule of cool lol'#like i'm not against bending rules here and there to pull an idea off in an existing game... just. u know. [gestures emphatically]
.Where’s the option to eat Takemura’s… yakitori… ¬ v ¬.
"bUt i tHiNk mAKeUp is fUn" that's nice. i would like to be allowed to exist without it without being socioeconomically punished for that choice but what's important to focus on here is that you're just having the funnest time ever
[woman who’s never maintained eye contact with a gay person before]: This is for the girls and the gays ☺️
[woman who’s scared of lesbians]: this is for the gays and the girlies 😌
this actually is rewiring my brain as we speak
The inner workings of a Godzilla head, possibly from 1985's Gojira (aka Return of Godzilla).
(From Reddit)
loving you
had my blood stolen today and they did a blood pressure test beforehand. delighted to announce to everyone that my adhd meds did indeed drastically raise my blood pressure-- to a normal human level instead of one that prompts doctors and nurses to ask me how i'm even still conscious
#amazingly it was also way easier to draw blood for the nurse and i did not have to be stabbed multiple times like usual#funny how that works#had to fast until 2PM and i feel ready to murder somebody fr#i had to get myself a literal juice box and kok at the greek bakery as a reward... because i am five#txt
Anonymous asked:
Can you play Like a Dragon without knowing stuff about the rest of the Yakuza games? Your p5 comparison post made me curious
yeah!! i've never played any of the other games, i only happened to play this one because my flatmate has a psn subscription and it was one of the free games at some point lmao.
there's apparently some returning characters but more in a "oh look it's that guy, neat" way than anything plot relevant and the story is completely self-contained
i recommend it! it's great fun, and a really great example of an actually good open world game filled with actual shit to do. like, full on entire optional games within it like a management simulator and a mariokart spin-off lol.
two warnings though: the beginning is basically a cut scene simulators lmao. like, genuinely multiple hours of mostly cut scenes with very little gameplay... the story is interesting and the characters are fun, and as a persona fan i'm more immune to this phenomenon than most lol but even i was like "hey do i get to play the game at some point?" if you stick with it, it really opens up though.
aaand... it's really guilty of "for a dollar, name a woman". there is a female party member but you don't get her until way into the game and it's a total sausagefest before that. also very guilty of like. men get to have varied interesting faces and designs and women are all sameface generic pretty and feminine. i do really like the two major female characters in it but yeah... something to keep in mind
i'd still recommend it despite those drawbacks because it's so fun and goofy and legitimately some of the most i've genuinely laughed at a video game in ages. as well as the aforementioned reasons in the p5 comparison post :^)
currently playing yakuza: like a dragon for the first time and it's hard not to draw parallels to persona 5 for various reasons and man, persona 5 really comes out not looking great with most of those comparisons
like, even within the same franchise p5 is markedly less strong than its predecessor in so many ways, and in fact just outright (badly) rehashes so many things p4 did first and did better (the whole teddie/morgana thing is a perfect example and worth a whole separate rant lol).
but one of the things that always really annoyed me about p5 in particular is the lack of specificity, the fact that they chose broad general appeal and the more "widely relatable" options over riskier but more interesting ones. and that's partly about the more superficial choices like environmental design (i've already written a lot of words about why the art direction for p4 is goated with the sauce because it drills down on such a specific period in time and space so so so efficiently), but a lot of it is also about the messages in the narrative.
like: shido in p5 is a nothing villain. they explicitly go out of their way to avoid assigning any actual politics to him so players can project whatever their idea of a "corrupt politician" is on him, whether that's left wing or right wing. which is boring and cowardly.
compared to yakuza: like a dragon, where the "bad guys" are explicitly conservatives and the heroes are explicitly people usually fucked over and derided by those conservatives, that's so much more interesting than a generic "teenagers rebelling against idk, adults i guess?" plot lol. especially because yakuza also goes out of its way to lay bare the conservative playbook of picking some sort of hot button issue to performatively care about, couched in leading and manipulative language, to swing voters... despite doing the exact same stuff behind closed doors at the same time as they're fucking over the lives of people who don't have as much money and power as them to get away with that same illegal behaviour. which gives the story more depth and appeal than a generic narrative even if it alienates conservative audiences.
idk. i don't think p5 is a bad game per se, there's just so many things that are shallow and disappointing about it, especially knowing that they are perfectly capable of doing better and did so with p4 and p2.
it's so so so true that men, especially middle aged white men, are the most likely demographic to throw a tantrum at customer service workers, especially if those workers are women. and it's also so so so true that their tantrums are often actually dangerous and violent rather than just annoying. and even when they are miraculously happy with the service, they'll still sexually harass you or otherwise act inappropriately so often. but when men act out of pocket people just shrug their shoulders and tell you to accept that "this is just how they are", or blame you for it.
in every single customer service job i've worked, the vast majority of problem customers were men, despite how invested the internet is in pretending otherwise. but women are a much easier target for a lot of reasons, especially if it involves a convenient excuse for bogstandard misogyny, so g-d forbid we ever actually talk about it. :)))))
delilah, she who girlbossed too close to the sun
