The Enemies of Captain Obvious: Feminism, Video Games and Twitter Wars

Recently the twitter explosion which is E3 had a little secondary blast I would like to call, “The Enemies of Captain Obvious.” The mildly famous or infamous Anita Sarkeesian’s tweet on her Feminist Frequency page got a ton of negative responses, then her pointing out those responses caused negative responses, which caused more and…you get the picture. All she did was point out the new XboxOne press conference didn’t have a game with a female protagonist. Anyway, there was lots of cussing and name calling, some of which I will admit to being a part of but that guy had it coming for implying media doesn’t affect people. I haven’t been sleeping well and had just finished watching Century of the Self, so don’t fuck with me when it comes to sociology! ^_^

This is my take…

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FYI:Old Anime That Seems Worth Watching

Anime like any other art form goes through different stages. Some stages are great, other…eh not so good. Another truism is that classics or oldies often seem superior to contemporary art, music, film etc,  because what is still listened too has already gone through a selection process that weeded out the ‘inferior’.

Assuming 90% of the music that is played on the radio will even be remembered in a decade, what survives will still look better than the majority of what is popular in the future. This doesn’t mean that forgotten bands or songs are not as good it just means that through luck, marketing, timing etc. their music wasn’t selected. This is a misconception about biological evolution too, Sixto Rodriguez and the film Searching for Sugar Man are perfect examples of this.

Anyway, back to the the anime.

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Prediction: Pain – Cristiane “Cyborg” Santos vs Fiona Muxlow

The best thing about Invicta FC has been there match making.  Many of their best fights have been wars between evenly matched competitors. Will this continue or will the celebrity of one fighter change this trend?

The last time we saw Cyborg in the cage was December 2011, where she beat down an over-matched Hiroko Yamanaka in just a few seconds and then to have it overturned because she tested positive for steroids. Given all the accusations and gossip concerning Santos’ physique and strength this failure makes her almost perfect record seem suspect. Though she is talented and clearly athletic, would she have been as dominant if she was a clean fighter? With this cloud hanging over her head, the proper thing for Cyborg to do would be to have her fight an evenly matched fight against a respected opponent. This doesn’t seem to be happening.

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Hey! Another Aliens: Colonial Marines Review…

Well, sort of. I just got done playing Colonial Marines and decided to briefly comment. While, I won’t go into great detail on why this game is so horrible or why the story doesn’t make any sense, I will just say that in almost every aspect of what makes a game worthwhile, Colonial Marines is bad.

All I could think of while playing this game was that someone could have made an Aliens themed mod of Swat 4 or Left 4 Dead 2, and it would be better than this game. Well, that and that I felt weird playing as Paul Ryan’s descendant.

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Uncreative Hollywood: The Crap Factory

For the past few years there has been an outcry against the perceived unoriginality and lack of creativity in Hollywood. The most glaring example of this has been the large amount of sequels and remakes.

“You are puffing nostalgic smoke”

Roger Ebert’s partial list of the aproximately 27 sequels of 2011 are nauseating:

“Cars 2; Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2; The Hangover Part II; Happy Feet 2; Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil; Johnny English Reborn; Kung Fu Panda 2; Piranha 3DD; Sherlock Holmes 2; Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked; Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son; Madea’s Big Happy Family; Paranormal Activity 3; Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”

Also in 2011, 8 of the top 10 films were sequels, and the other 2 were adaptations of Marval comic books. This is pretty much unprecedented (NYT) and according to the site Short of the Week and their cool infograph, there seems to be a trend towards this lack of creativity. Read more »

Dumbing Down Dialogue: Counter Cultured Strikes Again

Counter Cultured, “a blog about social, political and cultural issues from the perspectives of young conservatives,” has only been around for a few months, despite this they haven’t wasted time treating the internet like an intellectual garbage dump. One of the latest examples is a video log posted by the site’s main personality Anna Maria Hoffman.

In the YouTube video creatively titled “What the Fluke, Sandra? Contraception Coverage ≠ Leukemia Coverage!” Hoffman rants about women’s rights activist Sandra Fluke who, according to Hoffman, “Claimed that opposing contraception control coverage is like opposing leukemia coverage.”

This of course isn’t what Fluke said or meant.

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