In the future, young men will be forced to play all video games as Fat Lara Croft.
The We Hunted the Mammoth Pledge Drive continues! If you haven’t already, please consider sending some bucks my way. (And don’t worry that the PayPal page says Man Boobz.) Thanks!
Of all the loopy manifestos that this whole #GamerGate fiasco has inspired, I think this loopy manifesto, posted several days ago to the Men’s Rights subreddit to a smattering of upvotes, is probably my favorite.
Take it away, trudatness:
Think about what really went down in gaming journalism – not on the micro level, but on the macro level.
The most left-wing journalism companies happily filled the gaming journalism void. Think about it…
The most virulent lavender menace feminist laced industry on the planet began covering an industry whose target audience was comprised of somewhat socially awkward young men.
Hey what could go wrong?
Answer: Everything.
Woah, hate to be a stickler for stuff that actually makes sense, but if you’re going to use a homophobic slur to describe your opponents, make sure you pick the correct homophobic slur. The phrase “lavender menace” originated as an insult aimed at lesbians in the feminist movement; the term was later reclaimed by lesbian feminists. Whether as as a slur or as an honorific, I’m pretty sure the term is not a terribly apt description of the dude-dominated world of video game journalism, as dudes cannot actually be lesbians.
The video game online journalism industry hates gamers. They made no bones about that fact when they coordinated a drop of nearly a dozen articles eulogizing the gamer.
Er, a eulogy is “a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing, especially a set oration in honor of a deceased person.” I think what you meant to say is that there were a bunch of articles proclaiming the death of the traditional self-described “gamer.” Most of these articles were not full of hate for games, or for people who play games, but only for self-proclaimed “gamers” who want gaming to be a preserve of adolescent (and overgrown adolescent) dudes.
If you hate gamers, then why cover gaming?
Answer: There’s only so much money you can make covering gay pride parades.
Not true. It’s a little known historical fact that John D. Rockefeller Sr. made his fortune covering gay pride parades.
Wait, I am being told that John D. Rockefeller Sr. actually made his fortune by founding Standard Oil, and that there weren’t actually any gay pride parades anywhere until decades after he died.
I need to stop getting all my information from IncorrectGayOPedia.
So these twisted totalitarianists decided they were going to take an industry – a humble hobbyist collective that had grown into a billion dollar industry – and simply evict the current tenants with bullying, shaming and sexual coercion. They were going to move in, via takeover, bringing all their talentless cronies in with them.
THE LAVENDER TOTALITARIANISTS ARE COMING FOR YOUR GAMES!!
What better way to deal with the gamers you hate, by shaming them into subservience? These 3rd wavers wanted to co-opt gaming and turn it into their vehicle of propaganda, dictating to designers what is to be produced.
Apparently mentioning that many games contain sexist elements is the same as ordering designers to replace Call of Duty: Black Ops with Call of Duty: Kill All Men.
Who the fuck do these people think they are? They truly intended to force gaming hobbyists into kowtowing and accepting their dogmas.
This is what feminism does.
It’s true. Feminism has always been about fucking with hobbyists. Who can forget Mary Wollstonecraft’s famous A Vindication of the Rights of Women to Force Dudes to Play Sissy Facebook Games Like,You Know, Farmville or Some Shit?
Egalitarianism? Hardly? More like Machiavellianism. They want to control the masses and superimpose their value system onto people by force.
That’s right: Anita Sarkeesian has actually been using her Kickstarter money to fund the training of an elite core of feminist commandos who will soon be dispatched to mother’s basements across the nation to pry copies of Grand Theft Auto V from the hands of true gaming heroes.
They cannot let the truth of their message speak for itself.
Hard to do when all you do is front out lies. …
Look at the so-called game reviews… They aren’t game reviews. They are social justice critiques. Does the game get the feminist lavender menace seal of SJW approval?
I would actually love to see a Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval. Could someone draw me one?
Tsk, tsk, tsk… Those women have too big of boobs… Not enough “realistic woman” protagonists… That’s Sexist!
Pretty soon all games are going to require that all game characters are lesbian or trans-gendered and run around fighting the patriarchy or some dumb shit like that.
Yep. Soon all red-blooded young men will be forced to play all games as Lesbian Lara Croft.
Do you want to kill some zombies or get lost in an RPG fantasy? Play a little PvP? I hope you like tumblr-style fat-acceptance friendly avatars.
Make that FAT Lesbian Lara Croft.
This is the twisted fucking world they live in – and they want to make every single gamer out there accept their worldview.
It’s time for the tail to stop wagging the dog.
It’s time to full on evict SJWs from the gaming world.
Not if we sit on you first.
EDIT: Ok, ok, I fixed the terrible typo in the headline. But speaking of LAVENDER menaces, Leocigale has provided us with this wonderful Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of SJW Approval, which will now go in the sidebar. (There were several other excel
lent Seals of Approval submitted, but this one has an actual adorable seal it it!)
Arf arf!
Leocigale: Isn’t that a bit on the nose. Or are you just on the ball?
…I’ll see myself out.
It was a while ago, but if I remember correctly he has to use a specific word (I don’t remember which) in sentence and write three relevant comments without talking about his favorite MRA leader.
So, quilting was considered a humble hobby that has since grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. When will the SJW Lavender Menace takeover of quilting be? ‘Cause I’d really like to make a quilt with fabrics with the Feminist Lavender Menace Seal of Approval on them. Seriously, leocigale’s seal is awesome.
And, as with everyone, I’m really confused as to how having playable characters who aren’t macho white men or pointing out that video games tend to portray women in sexist, objectified ways is equal to totalitarianism.
RE: deniseeliza
I don’t feel like the game is condemning Booker for murdering his way through the city when you’re actually playing the game.
You know, this is actually something I APPRECIATED about the Alice games. In the second game in particular, it’s hammered in that Alice is extremely violent in headspace, but completely harmless in real life. She hurts exactly ONE corporeal person in the games, and it’s made explicit that killing him is her only option. Heavily implied are the consequences; Alice will likely lose everything, and her grip on reality seems to have deteriorated further. I actually really appreciated that.
RE: BigMomma
My gaming partner wanted to quit Riven, but I was determined to plow through it. Afterward, we definitely agreed not to play any more Myst games.
Alice 1 is good, but it has REALLY clunky controls, due to time period. I couldn’t get through it. It comes free with Alice: Madness Returns (PS3/Xbox/PC), and you can also settle for watching a Let’s Play of it. (I recommend Lotus Prince’s.) It’s a platformer with a lot of gore and horror trappings. Gigi adores it.
RE: The Lady Zombie
Five Nights at Freddie’s is freaking me out and frustrating the hell out of me. Has anyone here cracked it yet?! If so, HINTS!
Oh my gosh, I loved Freddie’s. (Though I only watched Let’s Plays.) I do have some hints! Don’t know how far you’re in, but: Freddie only comes if you run out of power, so you can leave him alone. Ducky only comes to the right door, tends to take longer to get there, and also longer to leave. Bunny only comes to the left door, tends to move faster than Ducky, but he’ll also leave faster. As for Foxy, he will sprint straight for you if you check on him too much OR too little. You have to find the happy medium.
@LBT
Isn’t Foxy also kind of the “hidden” one? I heard he wasn’t in any actual details so he just sorta surprised people.
Also man I’m amazed anyone managed the all 20 AI night, much less at least two people.
@LBT Just saw your Zork and Monkey Island mentions OH LORD HOW I LOVE THEM! I’ve been playing those games since I was just a wee thing, they’re pretty much my childhood. I loved Zork: Grand Inquisitor, really good voice acting. Haven’t played the rebooted Monkey Island yet, I kinda prefer the super-pixelated original.
RE: Broken Butterfly
Yeah, Foxy isn’t mentioned until Night 2. She was definitely an unpleasant surprise to a lot of people!
I am also impressed at folks being able to beat Night 7 on 20. Seriously, it seems beyond intense.
RE: saphy
I actually have only played Zork: Nemesis. I don’t know any other Zork game, much to my embarrassment. I really liked Nemesis, though, more than I liked Myst or Riven!
@LBT
Wait, I thought Foxy was a guy? I remember everything I read labeled him as a guy… and Bunny as the girl.
Though I guess creepy haunted animatronics don’t really have genders anyway.
RE: Broken Butterfly
Enh, just for fun, I coded them all female. I mean, they’re murderous animatronics, gender pronouns likely aren’t particularly important to them.
@LBT
Nonsense, murderous animatronics are always just shrugged off for being murderous animatronics! We need to take a stand! Talk to them!
You go up and ask them questions and I’ll hold the mic and try to get their answers between your agonized screams of pain.
RE: Broken Butterfly
*snrk* Well, if you follow the hidden story, the animatronics are possessed by four children, and the odds of all four being one gender seems kinda stretching probability. (Especially since, if the news articles say ‘children’ and not ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ it means that it was a mixed group.)
Ergo, because my logic-y logic of rationality, at least one of those three animatronics are female! (Only not really, because the story is optional and the animatronics don’t actually exist and don’t seem to communicate except through that HORRIBLE NOISE.)
@LBT
The noise aahhhhggg. >_< It's horrible.
I actually tried watching the game but it… freaks me out. 8D I'M PRETTY GOOD WATCHING HORROR GAMES but I can't ever play the things and I'm always screaming like a little girl.
RE: Broken Butterfly
I followed Markiplier’s Let’s Play; he’s silly enough and loud enough to break up the tension.
(Also because sometimes it’s just so satisfying seeing a grown man scream in terror, especially when you know they’re enjoying the experience too.)
@LBT
Ah, Markiplier. One of my favorite LPers of all time because he’s just kind of over the top naturally. He doesn’t bother to reign it in, but like I told a friend I know he doesn’t actually SCRIPT anything either.
He goes into this stuff blind and it’s fantastic. It helps that his voice is liquid silk when he talks normally too.
RE: Broken Butterfly
For me, it depends what I want. Lotus Prince is my other go-to, and he tends to be way, WAY more understated. He really wants to give his viewers an immersive experience, so he tends to keep his mouth shut, and when he does talk, he will often give out cool trivia like details about the game, its creators, how he first came to play it, stuff like that.
He also is possibly the most emotionally restrained Let’s Player of horror games I’ve seen. I watched him play Amnesia: the Dark Descent, and I think the biggest reaction it got out of him was complete freeze, then, a few seconds later: “this game is a dick.” Maybe a “Jeez!” He doesn’t have markiplier’s radio announcer voice, but his voice is actually really calm and soothing, which gives his plays a totally different flavor. He’s also WAY more lax with cuts than Markiplier is, so his plays run longer.
Basically, I go to Lotus Prince when I really want to get sucked into the game. I go to Markiplier when a game is so terrifying that I need his constant blathering to stay in my seat. And their weaknesses are polar opposites: Markiplier can sometimes be too hyperkinetic for me, while Lotus Prince I sometimes wish would cut more of his grinding or figuring out a puzzle.
@LBT
The problem I find with Lotus Prince is that the whole reason I can’t play horror games is that I get… way too scared if I don’t have a distraction and he’s not really giving one. I think he’s an awesome guy, but I think Markiplier’s cuts are pretty good; watching someone redo the same thing over and over isn’t exactly fun. XD
Which… you said anyway so yes! I actually agree, that sounds about like how I’d think of it too. I think I tried to watch his Corpse Party LP and just… had so much trouble because I was annoyed with Lotus Prince. Good voice but man, dude, just… yeah. XD
RE: Broken Butterfly
Yeah, I remember Corpse Party. He definitely spent a lot of time walking around. I usually don’t mind watching him work out puzzles because it’s fun to pitch my wits against his and try and figure it out before him, but sometimes if he really has trouble, I can zone out a bit.
And I have a pretty high tolerance for psychological horror. It’s only stuff like Five Nights at Freddy’s that I needed Markiplier for.
@LBT
You got me beat there. I wet myself at Silent Hill.
It’s okay, Broken Butterfly. I can’t handle jump scares or gore AT ALL. It’s only psychological horror I’m a tank for. (Which was why Fight Nights at Freddy’s did me so bad; oh god, the jump scare! THAT NOISE! D8 )
UG JUMP SCARES
Actually, jump scares make it hard for me to watch things too. Psychological horror still gets me bad but I can at least watch those, it’s the BOO thing that makes me unable to do much with it.
@LBT I couldn’t handle Myst, so infuriating and isolating, I’m just not psychologically prepared for that kind of solitary journey through dreamscape. My mum finished it, though, She was very pleased with herself. Good work, mum!
Game rec: Broken Age.
Not typing anynore. Bye.
jlupm scares hurt for daaaays. I throw out my basck.
Haary potte r made me call one sick because of jump safe.
Sorry. stopping nowe.
You gynes, I love our seal off approval. Thing is it’s not a seal. It has external ears and a pelvis. It’s not a fur seal either though because… it has cetacean tail flukes. It’s not ever a real animal. It’s a lie.
I thought I would be the only person whose first response to the seal would be “it isn’t a true seal. It is a sea lion.” In fairness, I have a love of seals so I’m weird like that.
Actually, the flukes don’t look that cetacean-y to me. If you look at it as the second fin is turned profile and one is dead on, like the fur seal of approval is wandering about surface side, it kind of still works.
Kind of.
It’s a purple furrinati seal, which is not a true seal of approval of the feminist high council, but is a furry one of the SJW branch, hidden in a separate secret bunker.
RE: Broken Butterfly
Jump scares are the worst. I actually appreciate Five Nights At Freddie’s for showing that a jump scare can actually be done well; most of the time, I just hate them. Those, at least, had a reason for happening, and the entire game is based around trying to AVOID them.
RE: saphy
That’s funny, we ADORED Myst. It has a weird place in our head because as kids, we just wandered around this isolated island, looking at shit. Not trying to beat the game, making barely any progress (I think we maybe made it to ONE other world) just looking at shit and imagining what it meant. It dates back to a time where we would do that with a game, not play to win, just wander around.
Playing it again as an adult with our friend, we found it an oddly emotional experience, old and new at the same time. (Since like I said, we didn’t get far at all.)
That said, Riven was a PAIN IN THE ASS. Jesus Christ. At least Myst, we only had ONE headbanger moment.
@fruitloopsie
Folklore? I loved that for its bright cartoony melee, instead of the
dark-and-gritty/massive blood-splattered weapons kind that’s so
common.
It is the Great Lavender Furrinati Seal, bred in the secret laboratories of the Feminist High Council.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Arf, arf, arf!
@Leocigale
From (r/)SRS here, would you be happy with us using that seal of approval? Although sorry but if we did could we have slightly different eyes – at present it could look like mockery of people with strabismus, although I doubt you intended that. If you did so then preferably one with a transparent background as well. Sorry to fussy without even having your approval!
@LBT:
Heh, I recently watched a friend replay Myst and Riven (because I remembered all the puzzle solutions… curse younger me for looking up walkthroughs). That series is my favorite of all time, and the graphics were still as beautiful as they were back when I first played them as a little tyke. Just watching the game brought back all the emotions.
I was also struck by how detailed the worlds were in how they worked. Sure, some of the machinery was a little mystifying in what was going on under the hood, and sure magic teleporting books, but everything was wired/piped together properly and worked like a real world would. It was especially amazing in a huge world like Riven.
Now I just need to figure out how to get Myst III and IV on steam so I can watch my friend play through those as well.
I hear that Cyan studio is making a new game called something like Exegenesis? The gaming world needs more beautiful world puzzle game adventures, especially with live actors.
@Tesseraction:
Sidebar, but I’m occasionally on SRS too! Definitely not as much recently, but still. *high five*
Correction: the new Myst-like game is called Obduction. There may be another game in the works as well with a title similar to Exegenesis, but I can’t find it.
“Have it your way – you heard a lavender menace seal bark.”
ARF
The “Lavender Menace Seal Of Approval” gets my approval! Adorable, too.
I’ve grabbed that seal as my FB profile because it’s wonderful and I think the whole SJW whinge should be made fun of – but let me know if that’s not cool and I’ll pull it down.
You know, I actually thought I saw a certain amount of subtext between Lara & Sam in the Tomb Raider reboot…
Interestingly, synthphyle, I’ve seen that Sam/Lara subtext theorised a few places, and I thought I picked up on a bit of it too. I’m kinda glad they left it unstated though.
And I agree with the people who said that the TR reboot is kinda squicky. While I appreciate that a) the designers were trying to portray Lara’s pre-badass super-vulnerable phase and b) they’re deliberately trying to cater to a more mature market, there’s certainly a large amount of gratuitous violence (both peformed by and to Lara) and the repeated death scenes border on torture porn if you repeatedly fail the same part of the game. While I was playing, feeling awful for Lara and genuinely wanting to avoid death, there were points in the game where I was thinking “Someone who hated women and wanted to see them suffer might really enjoy this part”. 🙁
Gameplay-wise, it definitely gets better (less quicktimey and more varied, with cooler ways to play) after the first part, and when you get a bit past halfway and Lara goes from being scared to being a genuine badass, it’s pretty awesome. But I could definitely understand a lot of people not getting to that point purely based on the graphic violence, or the way Lara is pretty much damselled before she ends up saving her own butt.
(I’ve read and watched a hell of a lot of horror throughout my years, it’s entirely possible I’m way too desensitised to fictional depictions of graphic violence – still can’t handle IRL violence though)
So …I am getting nostalgic for comments sections featuring good old fashioned unhinged paranoia – Obama the Kenyan Muslim Commie Incompetent Gay Tyrant….sigh….
Seriously though… what are they putting in the water because these guys are seriously losing it… I am guessing that Dad is upstairs typing away about OBAMANATION!!!! while Derek pounds away at his gamergate manifesto down stairs fantasizing about Zoe’s head exploding while fapping. This shit has to be genetic.
Just noticed this because of the lavender seal. Bark, bark!
How about angry adolescent (or overgrown adolescent) men “evict” themselves? Then they can just let the rest of us, “SJW” or not, enjoy the body of – currently largely nonexistent – games that have been ~forced~ to show women in a positive light that make them soooo angry?
Nobody is forcing them to listen to critiques of games that already exist and, by the way, cannot possibly be forced to change.
This isn’t at all relevant, but I wanted to mention there are actually guys who identify as lesbians. I have talked to at least one, and I’ve seen Eddie Izzard mention it in an interview. The more you know.
ugh, we may be seeing the awful logical conclusion of misogyny in video games with this little nugget of awful here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OP1XG60
Hi. I’ve been lurking for a while, and I actually saw this before, but I was just struck by inspiration to draw another lavender menace seal of approval (though thinking about it now, not sure if it’s actually LAVENDER, and not some other shade of purple)
I was going to add a face initially, but it somehow came out so clean I was worried about trying and wrecking it. So, there it is, in all it’s blank glory.
I thought there was going to be some reference to the infamous “sea lion” cartoon. Because Dude! Sea Lions!
http://wondermark.com/1k62/