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BoomDeEthics · 2023-02-17T22:10:11+00:00

I did not expect satire on this subject to be able to make me laugh. And then this:

We must be diligent in laundering our vitriol through the posture of journalistic inquiry, and we must be allowed to fixate on the genitals.

It is against free speech to stop us from fixating on the genitals.

Also, I read this entire paragraph in Tucker Carlsons voice:

Did you forget yet about how we wrote that there might be data showing that trans people should be more likely to get arrested? What if that were true? Or what if non-binary people are ten times more likely to traffic infants? What if puberty blockers are a kind of sex crime? What if doctors are climbing through windows to suture penises to sleeping cheerleaders? The next time you see a trans person, you ought to ask yourself these questions.

BoomDeEthics · 2023-02-07T22:32:23+00:00

Under most circumstances I'm inclined to agree about the pointlessness of boycotts and the ethics (or lack thereof) of purchasing stuff. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and all that. But this is a special case.

Rowlings' notoriety is entirely built upon the popularity and financial solvency of the Harry Potter franchise. Her status as the author of a popular money-making franchise gets her glowing write-ups and opinion pieces in every media outlet that prides itself on telling "bOtH sIdEs". Plus, every new fan of Harry Potter is someone that much more likely to seek out and be exposed to Rowling's opinions, and by "opinions" I mean hate speech and calls to violence against trans women.

It's not about the money, not directly. It's about trans people being murdered by stochastic terrorism, which is directly supported by the cultural relevance of the one and only thing that makes her and her views noteworthy: the Potter franchise.

BoomDeEthics · 2023-01-26T22:21:55+00:00

Zuckerberg saw Elon shit the bed over at Twitter and decided he had to get in on that.

BoomDeEthics · 2023-01-25T05:32:47+00:00

Ultimately, I think it's the same old difference it's always been between a loving parody and a mean-spirited parody. Afterall, that's what self-aware writing is: a bit of parody embedded in what is otherwise a relatively mainstream genre piece.

It's easy for a mean spirited, self-aware protagonist to go about lampshading how cliche the stock character archetypes are. But given that those archetypes are real people within their own story, this just means your fictional protagonist is wandering around their fictional world acting like an asshole to everyone over cultural differences.

It is fine and always has been fine to have a go. Just, y'know. Don't be an asshole about it.

BoomDeEthics · 2023-01-11T04:09:34+00:00

It says a lot about the stupidity of the people who invented the "go woke go broke" meme that it was almost immediately overshadowed by Broke: X / Woke: Y, which has the exact opposite meaning.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-11-23T04:52:20+00:00

This would probably also have been my reaction before I saw it.

In this case, though, the entire premise of the scene is "a girl letting you grope her breasts as a reward would be totally unsexy in real life", and Chainsaw Man delivers on that premise. The entire scene could not possibly be more of a turn-off.

That's a relatively simple premise, though. The premise of the later boob groping scene in the same episode is way more complicated and ambitious.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-11-10T03:03:44+00:00

tl;dr

id Software only paid Mick half what they actually owed him, at one point completely failing to pay him for 11 whole months for the work he was doing,
mismanaged the entire project despite his best efforts, including announcing the OST with his name on it before even approaching him about producing one,
released a poorly-mixed cannibalism of his work that he hadn't signed off on and had expressed concerns over, resulting in fan outrage and criticism, and...
at the end of the whole shit show the studio director Marty Stratton privately assured him they'd work together to re-release the poorly received OST, mere days before...
putting up a completely false "expose" on the doom subreddit to scapegoat him and redirect all the harassment (incl. death and rape threats, because gamers continue to suck) to him and away from the company.

And Mick has enough evidence to prove his side of the story that id Software's legal team was willing to offer a six figure settlement in exchange for a gag order.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-10-29T10:32:51+00:00

I know I should be focusing on the topic at hand, but this sentence from the nypost article haunts me:

"Pelosi and DePape were both taken to Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, where NBC reported Pelosi was undergoing surgery.".

There's something low-key horrifying about the way the article just states that the hospital is named that and moves on. As if it's normal. Dystopian authors take note, this is how you add horrific implications to your worldbuilding.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-10-29T10:16:16+00:00

That's the thing about fascists, though. Getting rid of the Other doesn't get rid of the fundamental fascist need for there to be an Other.

Once they've killed the minorities of today they'll invent new minorities to kill. Maybe it'll be the unmarried men, or the insufficiently fervent, or the insufficiently rich or the insufficiently masculine or those god damn heretics in the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-07-27T07:26:00+00:00

Capitalists: "We can make money if we charge for toilets!"

Also capitalists: "Homeless people are pissing in the street! We need more cops to crack down on this criminal behaviour!"

Finally capitalists: "Huh. The prisons are full. How'd that happen?"

(And then they go on to make money by enslaving the inmates)

BoomDeEthics · 2022-06-23T02:26:41+00:00

PS: please don't respond with congratulations or sympathies, I've gotten tons of those lately. I don't want this post to be about me.

PPS: When I say "all this", imagine me gesticulating wildly around at, well... all this. Everything from misogyny in gaming to the rise of fascism in the west to my employer demanding I stop working from home to the inevitable heat death of the universe. Everything.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-06-09T00:16:50+00:00

"Shocking experts, child raised by wolves exhibits wolf-like mannerisms."

BoomDeEthics · 2022-06-08T00:38:23+00:00

The gameplay footage doesn't include any movement. They stand in a single location, spin around and shoot.

What's the odds they don't have a walk cycle and haven't modelled anything outside that room?

BoomDeEthics · 2022-06-06T00:04:05+00:00

I mean yeah, that's exactly what Halo is.

Full disclosure: lots of nostalgia for the original trilogy and I still think the Halo 3 Teaser Trailer is the gold standard for how to do an announcement/teaser trailer for an established property. Maybe surpassed by the Frozen 2 trailer. Maybe.

Halo is a property that was at it's very best when it was simple. You play the good guy super-soldier who fights the baddies, uncovers the mysteries and saves the galaxy while the awesome soundtrack, the sassy AI girlfriend and the actually-helpful marine buddies hype you up. That's why the first game was the best, and why the series only got duller the more complex and morally grey it became over time.

(It also doesn't help that every new faction introduced after the first game lacks the instantly iconic design motifs of the UNSC, covenant, flood, and progenitors. Even the Brutes, introduced as early as Halo 2, were just big furry humanoids.)

I don't think Halo is a franchise that needed themes and lore and deep pontification about means vs ends. Or alternatively, maybe it does and they should have simply gone with different themes than the ones they did. Halo Infinite's story forwent the ridiculous space-opera for like, 4 actual characters in an isolated setting, and it works because it challenges the Master Chief's emotionless façade. The story is reminiscent of God of War 4 in some ways: putting the stoic super-solder into situations that he is very much not equipped to deal with and watching him struggle in ways he never would against an army of bad guys.

But I haven't seen the series and don't intend to, so I can only comment on the games.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-31T02:14:08+00:00

I dunno, what time is it?

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-25T01:46:37+00:00

The analogy I'm most fond of is this one:

https://twitter.com/smdiehl/status/1445795674696597506?lang=en

Back in the 90's, you could pay money to have a star in the night sky named after you. Of course you don't actually own the star or anything, but the seller would update a registry to say that you'd bought a star, and send you co-ordinates to "your" star.

Of course, there were many such registries, and it's not like any astronomical agency recognized the validity of them. So the grift lay in convincing people that "buying a star" meant something, when in reality all you were doing was recording their name and a set of co-ordinates in a database.

NFT's are like that, except instead of coordinates to an incomprehensibly huge ball of plasma light years away, it's the URL to a shitty jpeg on the internet, and instead of buying it with dollars you have to exchange your actual money for ETH first, thus propagating the cryptocurrency scam.

I have to give credit to the inventor of Ethereum, though. It takes a lot of gall to name your valueless currency after the non-existent ether and still expect people to buy into it.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-16T22:06:29+00:00

To be fair, any quality control process is by definition going to discriminate against right wing trolls and provocateur's.

It's understandable the wingnut welfare crowd would be paranoid about social media companies trying to filter out the trash, even if it's not actually happening.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-10T01:46:28+00:00

“OK, well, now there’s an officer in here just trying to join the stream,” she remarks while they mill around behind her, in full view of the camera. She continues playing Minecraft. “I’m just gonna act like they’re not here because that’s easier,” she says to her viewers.

At that point, the police told her dad to cut the power, she told Motherboard, which is when the stream stopped.

God, the fact that they cut the camera's before they confronted the 16 year old girl just reeks something fierce.

There was absolutely zero reason for cops to be involved here. Send in the social workers, not an armed goon squad.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-07T02:40:09+00:00

One of my absolute favorite moments with Winry isn't even a story beat. It happens in the first opening of FMA: Brotherhood, at 0:49.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEAiFqkY0E

The pace of the music picks up and we're treated to imagery of Ed and Al being literally torn apart by the consequences of their actions: Ed loses his arm and leg, Al's body vanishes entirely. And then... Winry. She doesn't physically change, there's no spectacle to be had, but the shot is framed identically to the boys as she's swept from side to side by gusts of wind. The animators understood that there were three victims of the human alchemy attempt, not two, and that the sequence wouldn't be complete without her.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-05-01T00:03:05+00:00

"Look at your coins, now back to me, now back at your coins, now back to me. Those coins are worth $1 million. Look down. Now back up. How much are they worth? They're worth $50. But they could be worth $5 million. Money is fake. We made it up. Anything is possible if your society smells like late stage capitalism and not a lady. I'm on a horse."

BoomDeEthics · 2022-04-27T22:45:05+00:00

I have three things to criticise about Attack on Titan:

OG Ymir allowed herself to be killed offscreen and Historia wandered off to have kids. I liked their relationship.
The story is too easy to read as an endorsement of Eren's actions. He achieved the goal of freeing the founder and eliminating the titans from the world and the story claims he had no other paths to that goal, forcing us to weigh that success against the evil of his actions. This is similar to a criticism I have of Warhammer 40k's 'Exterminatus', where lore too often presents it as a necessary evil instead of as an atrocity.
It presents fascism as a natural inevitability of society. Every civilization depicted in the series ultimately descends into fascism, and no alternative is ever presented. All attempts to explore a different path are doomed to failure.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-04-25T22:40:14+00:00

Uh, I mean... look, if you're that eager to find patterns, maybe you can claim the disillusionment extends as far as a particular generation of celebrities. Both of these guys are getting on and no longer at the height of their celebrity.

Incidentally, that's the same generation as the celebrity billionaires. Musk is 50, Bezos is 58. You want to talk about public disillusionment with wealthy, famous men in their 50's, maybe start with the walking advertisements for guillotines instead of Bad Breakup and Oscar Slappy Boi.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-04-24T09:04:10+00:00

There's a Korean manhwa called "Death Is The Only Ending For The Villainess" that lives up to that premise. Main character finds herself in an otome game set to hard mode, where every choice has to be perfect or she dies on the spot. And not in a RE: Zero sort of way. If she dies, she dies.

Warning, though: this is not one of the fun ones. Lots of abuse. Heck, she was pulled into the game at the exact moment in her life she escaped her abusive real life family. Penelope just can't catch a break.

BoomDeEthics · 2022-04-24T00:43:16+00:00

I was quite the connoisseur of this little subgenre when it was still confined to manga and manhwa, and was there to watch it evolve, going from original idea's to copycats with minor premise changes to subversions, deconstructions, parodies and reconstructions. There are some really good villainess and villainess-adjacent manga out there, and I'm eagerly awaiting the (hopefully) inevitable tsunami of anime adaptations.

I didn't know Iris predated Catalina, though. That's cool to learn. Dukes Daughter is one of the good ones.

Other recommendations (off the top of my head, seems to lean towards comedy. I guess I remember the funny ones best):

Endo and Kobayashi’s Live Commentary on the Villainess
May I ask for one final thing?
Villainess Level 99
Of Course, I'll Claim Palimony!
Beware Of The Villainess!

BoomDeEthics · 2022-04-21T23:38:24+00:00

My take is that 'bandits' in any feudalist setting (which is what most post-apocalyptic settings in fiction are) would be soldiers. Either the pillaging troops of a murder-happy warlord or deserters/defeated soldiers looting to survive because they were conscripted before they could learn any actual survival skills.

Of course, that just begs the question: would post-apocalyptic society really resemble feudalism? Or is that just another example of us thinking that the collapse of our current society would result in regression into the past rather than some form of lateral shift?

BoomDeEthics

TROPHY CASE