Messages

Congratulations on the AGS Awards win for best music!

You're right, Blonbraid. Abusing is a wild behaviour, that's why I used that word.

Well, you'd be surprised just how many abusers carefully analyze what they can get away with and await the right opportunity, only to pretend it was a wild impulse. ¯\_(ãƒ,,)_/¯

But on an unrelated note, I recently read an article which I would strongly reccomend in this thread;
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/men-women-books/
Researchers let a machine read and analyze 3.5 million books and analyze the positive and negative words used to describe men and women, and I quote:

“The algorithms work to identify patterns, and whenever one is observed, it is perceived that something is ‘true.’ If any of these patterns refer to biased language, the result will also be biased. The systems adopt, so to speak, the language that we people use, and thus, our gender stereotypes and prejudices,” says Augenstein. She gives an example of where it may be important: “If the language we use to describe men and women differs in employee recommendations, for example, it will influence who is offered a job when companies use IT systems to sort through job applications.”

That's some seriously worrying implications as algorithms determine more and more of our everyday lives. 

I'm gonna say it:

It grinds my gears immensely that so many people still think Dimetrodon was a dinosaur.

*Bows head in shame, having made my kids play a certain Dimetrodon game when they had a dinosaur project in school*

Well, treat it as a learning opportunity to show them how the synapsid was different from dinosaurs! 

I'm gonna say it:

It grinds my gears immensely that so many people still think Dimetrodon was a dinosaur.

Good point. Mobile games seems off the radar of the main criticism (press, blogs et cetera). I can't tell why.

An interesting thing is the percentual feature that shows how many players goes wild with the girls and how many stay fair. Is it just for the statistic or maybe to affect the player's choices?
"Ehi, the 70% of the players ripped off the dress of the nurse! I'm one of the crowd, then!"

_

That's just making it all the more disturbing, like they're actively trying to normalize the worst choices.

I also wanted to point out your phrasing, like "goes wild with the girls" sounds like harmless fun, compared to "sexually abusing a subordinate", which is what much of the commercials actually depicted if it had happened to real women,
I'm 100% certain that you didn't mean it that way, but I think this highlights one of the risks when people are describing sexist media in the ad's own language; even when you try to criticize it, it's easy to accidentally perpetuate parts of it.

Firstly, why post a random ad selection for some obscure mobile game in this thread?
TheFrighterer, have you entered some kind of sponsorship deal akin to all the YouTubers promoting game apps everywhere? 

A single ad is not enough to make an idea in how gross is this game, Blondbraid. 
My intention is not to promoting this kind of games, just to show how far they can go with the sexism.

_

I wanted to make a light joke as well as taking a crack at having to see bad mobile ads everywhere nowadays, I'm sorry if it came across as aimed at you in a bad way, it wasn't my intention.

But yeah, these kinds of ads do deserve to be called out for their sexism, and it baffles me that they can still publish and promote mobile ads with content
that would have sent their creators raked over hot coal if it had been ads for films, non-mobile video games, or any other form of media.

If I may use an analogy, it's like seeing people trying their best to clean out any trash and dirt from their entire house, except they let one room be the most rancid thing ever for no reason at all. 

Firstly, why post a random ad selection for some obscure mobile game in this thread?
TheFrighterer, have you entered some kind of sponsorship deal akin to all the YouTubers promoting game apps everywhere? 

Secondly, I've seen a ton of sexist mobile ads that have just awful stuff they'd never get away with in any other medium,
but even so, this still took me by surprise in how creepy and sexist it was.

The female characters in the ads are clearly only doing "badass" stuff like shooting guns or resting sexily on tanks to pander to guys with a dominatrix/strong woman fetish,
and all the players are shown as guys collecting them and keeping them around like a harem, and minigames dedicated to pinup shots and strip poker where all of the
different girl characters literally say the exact same voicelines as one another, there's not even any pretense of them being individual characters from one another.

But the creepiest part by far is at the 6.00 timestamp in the second video linked where the player is straight-up encouraged to grope a nurse despite she's constantly asking the player to stop touching her in a frightened voice.
Seriously, who greenlit that?

Sorry to  hear that Blondbraid but work is work I suppose...

Yeah, I'm hoping I'll have better luck in a future MAGS.

I'm sorry to say I won't have a playable entry this MAGS, but my new job has simply taken away too much time and I haven't had the energy to work on it now.

I had the same problem that Laura Hunt had, when reading Ali's post. Maybe it's our "cultural language" influencing how we read that first paragraph? And not knowing who "Jan Švankmajer" didn't made it easier.  Thanks for posting the video. 

Also, a bit OT @Blondbraid: Marsha and the Bear is actually very entertaining/funny (if you can overlook the fact that a little girl is hanging around a bear ). Even though the target audience are small children, it's very well made and adults can watch along (another cartoon for small children that also included adults in it's audience is Peppa Pig, with some very "adult jokes" that children won't pick up on  ). They're both on YT, if you want to watch one (they're like 5 minutes long, if memory serves me right).

I might just check it out when I can!

My sister took me to see Švankmajer's Něco z Alenky when I was around 8 . It didn't traumatize me as much as you'd think (not even this part)... I was confused and a little creeped out, but as far as I remember some of it was interesting to me and I didn't end up hating it. But I also don't love his animation aesthetically - there's a frantic choppiness to it at times which has always felt unpleasant to me.

I was exposed to a lot of traditional Czech animation when I was little (including this national treasure - check it out for some Amanita vibes), but Disney and other American cartoons soon won me over. I loved the stretchiness and squishiness Ali is describing and tried to imitate it, made stuff like this when I was around 10 or 11 I think:



A lot of it was influenced by games - I copied some animation tricks from Aladdin, the flask drinking is from Prince of Persia, maybe there's also some Day of the Tentacle? So yeah, my perception of "good animation" had been thoroughly Disneyfied and americanized while I was still little, just through osmosis.

Ok, that's some seriously impressive animations for a 10 year old!

As for animation, it's always been my impression that eastern-European animation, and Czech animation in particular, is much more dominated by stop motion, paper cutouts, and a mix of textures and materials compared to the American and Disney animated works.
Living in Sweden, SVT would mostly reserve the more popular Disney cartoons for Saturdays and weekends and fill up the rest of the kid's slots with a mix of animated shorts and series from all over Europe, though I suspect mainly because they were cheaper to get the rights for
then the Disney ones rather than any deeper wish to share diverse perspectives with Swedish kids.

The "Superman is a horrible concept to write for" idea.
The idea that a protagonist that is morally upright and invincible can't have good stories. To me, that just smells of excuses for not being skilled at writing, and I thought pop-culture as a whole had moved beyond that argument, but I saw it recommended to me as a video again recently.

Yeah, it's pretty annoying when people bring up the whole Mary-Sue (or in this case Gary-Stu) argument.
The argument goes that a character with zero flaws, is a boring and poorly written character. The problem is, it is impossible to make a character with zero flaws. If you look at some of the worst written fan-fiction ever, with protagonists that are clearly supposed to be Mary-Sues, then you will quickly find an overwhelming number of flaws (being selfish is usually the main one). The problem is, those same stories tend to completely ignore those flaws.
As such, there is no perfect character with no flaws, only stories which ignore those flaws. There is no character that can do anything, only stories that allow a character to do anything.
I can think of a whole bunch of stories for Superman, and clearly the creators could too. That's why his arch-nemesis is just an ordinary business man. You can be an invincible morally-upright superhero, but even that's no match for an ordinary scummy business man who doesn't technically do anything illegal.
So yeah, I agree. That is annoying, and just a showcase of poor writing abilities. The thing is, almost everyone seems to be a terrible writer. (Me included, but at least I recognize it.)

I second that, plus I'm tired of people automatically assuming that dark and gritty automatically makes it deep.
More often than not, it just means tacking on a bunch and imagery pandering to edgelord teens, but also, the same hack writers just replace any idea of good morals and likable characters
with mean-spirited and incredibly shallow nihilism instead, to the point you don't care about anyone or anything that happens in the story. I'm pretty sure that was what made Batman vs Superman such a bad story.
For comparison, watch this clip from Superman vs The Elite:

I think Monster Mash might have some potential as an animating program if anyone knows a way to convert the animations to a set of 2D frames.

Crimson Wizard:
Well, Disney is still tightly associated with Mickey Mouse in Sweden, not due to any feature films, but a few shorts, some of which are part of the Disney Christmas special
that's become a long-running tradition to watch in most Swedish households.

As for Disney vs Ghibli, my impression was always that Disney targeted all ages, whereas Ghibli aimed at a bit older kids, and hence why they could focus more on a slower pace and fleshing out the characters
(watching a relative's 5 year old see Disney's Aladdin for the first time, she was bored during all the dialogue and mainly interested in the big action scenes where the hero was chased by things).

Funnily enough, I've seen Marsha and the Bear run on Swedish TV too when flipping through the channels, though I never watched it any closer as I don't think I'm the target demographic.

Some sort of centipede creature gaping at the onlooker?

I don't think anyone here believes that there really is a western monoculture - the only people who actually think that are crazy ethno-nationalists. Even the term "West" is silly, because the planet is spherical.

But there are parts of the world where US and North European culture (more anglophone, more capitalist, more protestant) has more political and cultural influence. We can make an observation about (for instance) Walt Disney's influence in these areas, without approving of that influence, or suggesting that there actually is a clear delineation between West and East. Just like we can make observations about the construct of race without actually believing in race as a biological reality.

This sounds like what I've been trying to say for a while now.

And no, I don't approve of USA and England exporting their culture at the expense of local ones, and I do agree on the problem with replacing "victim" with "survivor", which is no doubt influenced by the American tendency to equate victimhood with weakness,
and I hate how Swedes have started to import the sexist tradition of the father giving the bride away at the altar, a remnant from times when women were literally traded as property, and I despise seeing wannabe intellectuals analyzing Disney's version of Snow White
and Cinderella as if they were ancient myths and not Americanized adaptions of oral tales with multiple and rather different versions between nations, but at the same time, I don't think erasing the concept of the west from my vocabulary will make it go away,
and it was never intended as anything but a broad observation, and an attempt to acknowledge that not all the world is equally influenced by Disney and US pop culture. Had it been better if I had said that Disney has had a huge influence across all the world instead?

Just think about how it is seen as very rude to curse in English and how women in particular never curse in English

And I guess I see your point about generalisations... because this is entirely not my experience of English speaking women in Britain.

I'm going to have to agree with that. Some of the most creative swearing I've heard in my life has come from English/Irish/Scottish female friends and acquaintances

I always thought swearing was largely a class marker in British culture, where it would be massively rude among the upper-middle class and posh families,
but not a big deal and often used casually among the working class, though it's just what I've heard and seen used in their media. 

I will say that I've not seen southern Europe portrayed as a separate entity from the rest of Europe and if I may give a Swedish perspective;
In my homeland students are given a choice to study French, Spanish or German as a third language in school, plenty of Swedish words are loan-words
from the french language and our king is descended from a Frenchman brought to Sweden to become king, and many people will travel to the alps for vacations,
and from what I can tell, alpine towns in Germany and Northern Italy will have far more in common culturally than north and south Italy.
And then you have the history lessons, with everything from the Roman Empire to the modern EU specifically focusing on how different European nations have
influenced each other.

The term "Western world" is in common use, and it would be interesting to know if this is an offending term. The term is loose in meaning and easy to attack, yet useful for generalization.

It's starting to feel to me that FormosaFalanster and Laura Hunt are arguing more as to why southern Europe shouldn't be counted into the western world,
rather than bringing up examples as to why the western world as a concept itself is invalid.

Nice. Let's dance together [imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/9fmfLGY.gif[/imgzoom]

Why not?

[imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/Abgboev.gif[/imgzoom]
Wow, it's long. I love how the stick fills up with colors.





Nice. Let's dance together [imgzoom]https://i.imgur.com/9fmfLGY.gif[/imgzoom]

Look, this whole thing started because I made an off-hand comment on Disney having a huge impact on western culture, because US media does have more on an impact in those countries,
and I've noted it myself in conversations with Crimson Wizard and others living in other countries that many persons there don't have the same pop-cultural reference points as people I've talked to
living in USA and western Europe.

I've never claimed that there aren't differences between USA and Europe, or that there isn't discrimination within Europe, and I used "the western world" to denote that some places are
more influenced by American pop-culture than other places, for various historical reasons, and do you really disagree with that statement?

Or what other words should I use when referring to countries that have closer ties to US culture than countries that don't and have historically closed themselves off to the US?

Does anyone else like the Nemi comics?

As for the concept of the western world, as I've said before, I haven't seen people be offended by it before, and this has been a blind spot to me. In my homeland, Sweden, I was taught in school
that the idea of "the western world" was popularized during the cold war, where on one side, there was USA and most western European nations mostly siding with USA and consuming Anglo-Saxon media
(Hollywood blockbusters, music, fashion)

Hmm, did not have much intention to speak on this topic as I have minimal experience with this, but has to admit that it was also a surprise to hear "western world" term may cause this kind of reaction. Guess it depends on what level of "identity" one puts into this. In Russia "western world" is a very common term, used to loosely define the cultural basis that lies in foundation of west-european countries and their deriatives (USA, Canada, and so on)

I can't speak for FormosaFalanster, but for me it's a reaction against what is being increasingly perceived as an Americanization of the world, whether it's by means of literal military force (in places like the Middle East), military propaganda in "family-friendly" media (obvious e.g., Marvel), the left-wing turn towards identitarianism over class concerns, the embrace of commodification, mercantilization of every aspect of life and capitalism as supreme values, and the inspiration for right-wing populist movements via figures like Donald Trump. Rejecting the association with the idea of some homogenized "western world" is, indeed, admitting it does exist on one hand, but also expresses a will to push against this and to be able to find solutions to each culture's specific issues that are specific to those cultures, not just a blanket set of anglocentric values pushed by greedy, massive corporations and a culture that prioritizes individualism over everything else.

And USA as we know it was created in the first place thanks to English, French, Spanish and other European colonizers settling the continent through imperialist means. Heck, even Sweden was in on it for a short while,
and many of the problematic parts of US culture that still remain today are a legacy of the European colonizers.

Now, I don't like US foreign politics, or their cultural imperialism, or how many local things get replaced by mass-produced American stuff, but I also think it's hard to criticize USA without also recognize how it was created in the first place.