Knives and Scalpels

      To the four of you who actually read this thing, Thanks, by the way.  I didn't get a post out last week because I am a video game addict as much as I am an appreciator.  Plus, next month I'm doing NaNoWriMo and I'd rather breathe a little bit before then.  Anyways, just apologizing to the void for the lack of content.  Peace.

    I'm jumping ahead with my schedule a little bit because I just watched Star Wars: Visions and want to tell you all how much I liked it.  Even though I consider myself an ex-Star Wars fan, I also have a bad habit of hooking up with my exes, so it's actually in character for me to drop the irony for this.  Without further ado, here are my unadulterated thoughts. Episode I: The Duel     Ever seen Seven Samurai?  This is a pretty direct homage, and I especially appreciated the craft that went into the black-and-white art style.  It's an approach to 3D that is clearly absurdly expensive but that I wish was more mainstream, since in my opinion most of the 3D movies to come out in the last decade look like absolute dog shit in addition to being misery factories for the animators.  I also liked the unique character designs, and the low tech-high tech aesthetic that I think is so lacking in modern science fiction.  Unfortunately, there's not ...

      As a masturbation enthusiast, I have occasionally been exposed to the unassumingly huge world of pornographic video games.  That's right, since our world is constituted by digital myths this blog that was supposed to be about feminism (or something) is actually about video games.  Surprise!  Okay, well, it's also secretly about feminism, but I won't tell anyone if you don't.  But I digress.  To make a long story short, I've got beef with the people who make porn games.  And yes, that includes the more progressive stuff, but I'll be gentle and just ignore it in lieu of being too critical of what is largely a marginal genre within an invisible but extremely popular category of video games.  I don't want to write another piece about the "dark underbelly" of gaming, complete with lurid descriptions of what objects you can insert into which digital orifices.  Instead, it's more important to me to express my grievances with a genre ...

      I've been addicted to the mindless cascade of dopamine that is The Fermi Paradox ever since I bought the alpha version a month ago.  Its an oddly meditative game, sparse in actual mechanics and very hard to outright lose.  You play the Galactic Gardener, an unseen, anonymous observer who influences the development of sentient species who, at least initially, have no knowledge of one another.  You win when they obtain the ability to communicate instantaneously with one another, at which point you are unceremoniously dumped back to the title screen.  What fascinates me the most about this game is how, if you remove the superficial distinctions between its eras of history, there is no fundamental difference between each era.  This remains true even after your pet species colonize new worlds, a mechanic that makes it even harder to lose the game since as long as extinctions happen with low to moderate frequency there will always be some sentient...

      Referring to Natalie Wynn as "ContraPoints" feels weirdly alienating, and calling her Natalie feels too familiar.  I don't know her, and if I did I wouldn't cop to it.  She deserves her privacy at the very least.  In true academic style, I'll be referring to her as Wynn, which hopefully won't confuse anyone.  I think it's essential for us, and by us I mean the girls, to exercise a certain amount of restraint when talking about her.  This is sort of an extension of last week's theme, since I think Wynn has unfortunately become a lightning rod for some of the resentments that exist between trans people, resentments we often displace.  We do this primarily because we love each other and because we need each other.  At least that's why I do it.  I also think that Wynn invites so much ire because she attempts to project her insecurities back onto other trans women, and because, to be frank, much of what she believes and has experie...

      Since it's my job as a gay person to make definitive statements about the rest of you, this week I'm going to be extra judgy.  One of the worst parts of being a homosexual, apart from all of the institutional discrimination and the fact that straight people want nothing more than to torture me to death and then cum on my body, is that I am unwillingly exposed to other people's opinions about children's TV.  I have no data to back this up, but it's pretty obvious from a cursory survey of my college friends that more grown adults than ever are obsessed with media ostensibly made for children.  I say ostensibly because many of them are marketed towards adults.  Their existence on streaming services is a testament to this.  No child with homework is going to binge watch three seasons of She-Ra, but a woman in her 20s probably will.     One of the main selling points of modern kids' TV is that it features characters who are, to varying ...