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Alex Humva

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Blog Comments posted by Alex Humva

  1. Also you're just bummed. You'll get over it.

     

    Of all the times I've been bummed over things, usually the one thing that was certain to make me sink deeper into it was my father telling me I'll get over it. It's just not a very helpful piece of advice for the bummed and the depressed.

     

    To the blog topic itself, yeah, I know the feeling. A good movie or TV series ends and you just want more. There's always well written fan fiction.

    • Upvote 6
  2. Little tiny twig floating around while the storm wages on overhead but I am confused on one of these points, the one that keeps bringing up Rule 34. While there certainly seems to be plenty of that in the MLP community, well, I guess the big point here is public availability, rather than its actual existence? Google searches and that. Personally I've never actively sought out such things so I don't know how much that applies, though I am aware of the semi-disturbing trend of anthropomorphic ponies, things that aren't really NSFW but also very clearly show a level of sexualization by the author. That is the sticking point I'd like to make; while I may not agree with DV's overall thesis (which, if I read it right, is "the brony community is flawed and the hate directed towards it is because of its negative parts) (which I'd be more inclined to agree with, incidentally, if I hadn't seen the sheer vitrol of what fundamentalist Kansans have towards that sort of thing) (but I do agree with the flawed part, to a degree), I do feel that the brony community isn't really doing as much for the non-graphic stuff. Enjoy what you want to enjoy in your own time and place, but that stuff is public on places like Tumblr, and can cause the younger children problems.

     

    I can't speak much on the topic of homophobia or misogyny in the fanbase, mostly due to lack of knowledge, though I do have to say that the "coming out of the stable" stuff continues to annoy me. Yeah the folks around here might not like men watching little colorful ponies but they have a prioritized scale and to compare one to the other is laughable at best and downright offensive at worst. It is worth noting, though, that I also agree with bits of Necro's thesis, that being that it's a minority, a ten percent ruining it for the other ninety percent. Harder numbers are needed on the subject but I just have not seen the vast problem myself, not unless one goes to sites specifically dedicated for that sort of thing. Tumblr has a problem too, so I've heard, though honestly Tumblr sort of lends itself to the easy posting of such content. I'd like hard, empirical studies, to get proper numbers on this, and not just "I've seen it myself" or "I haven't seen it myself." Maybe some institution will get bored and do it one day.

     

    One final note on the vitriol, and one that may get me labeled as "NOT ALL MEN!" but hey, such is life. Innocents do get caught in this crossfire. Go on a noble crusade to rid the community of its filth, I'll support you all the way. Sack a city or two along the way and I'm going get a bit queasy. I have seen, like Necro, people be lambasted for merely liking the show. As far as I'm aware, despite the fact that I occasionally watch it with my sister, I have yet to become some sexualized freak. If I am, it was probably from something before MLP, trust me. Judging a community is fine. Judging people based on the community is not. A topic* that immediately comes to mind, especially since I'm following a peep on Tumblr that does it all the time, is the bi/gay dichotomy. There is a strong sentiment in the gay and lesbian community, which has been documented and recorded, as well as been put out by popular members of the community like Dan Savage, that bisexuals either do not exist, are merely confused, or worse, traitors to the cause. This is disturbing as a bisexual, and I've had to deal with it in my own local community, one of the reasons I left the local LGBT group for the local GSA. At the same time, though, when I see a gay person my first thought isn't "oh god he's one of those people who don't believe bisexuality is a thing." But people do! One of the Tumblr blogs I follow has made "monosexual hate" a meme, and actively spouts it off, with a great deal of support.

     

    Similarly (though not equivalently, mind), I have to raise an eyebrow at the antics I occasionally see on Tumblr, where individuals, not the community, are attacked, and not for their individual deeds. I have even seen it occasionally in the non-internet world. People can and have been driven to suicide by this. I cannot support any movement that will not acknowledge this fact, and maybe then decide for a more surgical approach, rather than just bulldozing everyone out of their way.

     

    tl;dr I'm a nice guy and I don't like people yelling at each other, my family does that enough that I don't need any extra in my life. I think both sides could stand to to hear each other out a bit more, I support glorious crusades against internet filth, but I'd also like to avoid sacking any cities along the way.

     

    *no this is not an equivalent topic in terms of severity, I rather care about this a lot more than the problems of bronies, but it's the best thing I could come up with at the time.

    • Upvote 2
  3. Humva - But if the real world is irrelevant, why would this whole representation argument matter in the first place? Couldn't writers write whatever gender ratios they wanted, since the real world didn't matter?

     

    Just a tiny bit misconstruing the argument there. You seem to think I said that since the real world does not have to dictate what stories are about and do, that I was arguing it does not matter at all. I did not. Fiction affects the real world, one way or the other. The real world does not have to affect fiction. Imagine, if you would, two one-way highways. One is going into from city A to city B. The A-to-B highway is always open, in this case, fiction to the real world. The B-to-A highway, however, is only occasionally open, maybe from 7am to 9am; in this case, the real world to fiction.

     

     

     

     

    And because I believe that women are just as important as men, I don't object to putting genders where they would logically find themselves. I just don't find a universe without women in the direct limelight to be a universe without important women. Perhaps this is because I myself do not wish to be in the limelight of our universe. I get what you are saying about total escapism, but that is just a difference in tastes, with me preferring the the meticulously calculated fantasy of Tolkien. I am not against changing more, I am just puzzled by the need for it.

    Well, other than the cultural and societal implications and ramifications of a lack of important women around in a story, the fact is that this argument, as you said, can go both ways. When such a thing happens, we have to look at the burden of proof. It is the responsibility of the defenders of a system to have the burden of proof as to why it should remain this way. They must present arguments as to why this system deserves to continue on. So far, I've seen no arguments here that have not been successfully rebutted by those before me. The need for change is because the old system has proven itself ineffective at standing up to debate, by people more skilled than I at doing these things. If something cannot validate itself, then it's time to find something else.

    • Upvote 3
  4. So I mostly skimmed this, apologies to those who made great arguments. A recurring theme I did notice, though, was a lot about being accurate to the real world and being accurate to real world gender ratios in various occupations. It's been replied to already but I simply had to get this off my chest;

     

    The real world is irrelevant.

     

    This comes with a clause; if you're going tout yourself on historical accuracy or somesuch then yeah probably probably is relevant. In your standard fiction, however, these things to not apply. Is the gender ratio 1:1 in an American big city police department, say, Chicago or Seattle? No, it isn't. If I go write a story about my own city, Wichita, and write about the WPD and introduce a 1:1 gender ratio in a department that certainly doesn't have it... yeah, I've messed with the real world. But it is fiction, and more often than not fiction is there to make some sort of point while being entertaining. Even if it is purely for entertainment purposes, the argument that depicting a police department with a 3:1 gender ratio or somesuch is alright because it's how it is in the real world is tenuous at best and simply false at worse. If you were writing a story about the hardships of a female officer in the force, then that ratio probably makes thematic sense. If you're just writing a cop story, then why not have a 1:1 ratio?

     

    It's a theme I see springing up a lot in all of this. People desperately defending the current ratios because it's how the real world is. The real world is a pretty terrible place, war, famine, pestilence, all sorts of nasty stuff. Fiction can comment on this, or it can provide an escape from it. Commentary requires some level of realism, though a competent writer can insert commentary in practically any story. Escapism requires the consumer to be able to really connect with the character. Is it impossible for one gender to connect to another gender? No, and I hope to live to see the day where the differences between the genders are negligible or nonexistent in popular culture and everyday life. For the world we live in right now, however, we have girls being raised in a society that propagates its stereotypes on them. They need someone to connect with, strong characters, weak characters, confident characters, nervous characters. Most importantly, though, they need characters that are front and center, that are there in the public eye. Female characters simply do not occupy this role, or when they do, they represent some stereotypical image. This image is not bad, but when it is the only image for girls to see, it's very problematic.

     

    There are exceptions, and in the modern day, progress is being made. Those exceptions are not the rule. The rule right now is that "woman" is its own character archetype. Having a female character is something special. It propagates the notion that while men are capable of being all these things, a woman being all these things is something odd, out of the ordinary. This idea is riddled all over the debate in this entry. Having a perfect ratio, advocating it, should not matter. This is not saying that the battle is meaningless, but that by simply being in opposition is meaningless. I do not mean to put words in others' mouths, but this functionally what the argument boils down to. We can run in circles all day long talking about the effects of media on society at large, realism in fiction, so on and so forth. The fact, though, that this debate exists at all represents the problem.

     

    Hmm. I do need to work on getting my points across better. The tl;dr of this all is that writing more female characters is good simply because it should not matter if your character is male or female, they should simply be a character. As such the resistance to a 1:1 ratio is puzzling. Appeals to reality hold no place in fantastical movies. If the Avengers had a 1:1 gender ratio, it would seem very silly to be crying about reality while they're fighting alien invaders. Even in real-world movies, like my previously mentioned cop show, reality influences but reality does not have to be the end all to be all demographics-wise. Contemplate this; up until 2008, all American Presidents had been white males. If someone in 2004 had made a show with a female President, or a black President, then this very argument about realistic ratios would apply quite well here. The profession of President of the United States had been completely dominated by white dudes, much like how police departments are dominated by men right now. This is not a strawman argument, this is not a logical extreme. This is simply the argument about reality, transplanted over.

     

    So yeah. A bit lengthier than I was hoping for. If I repeated previous dead arguments, my apologies. I just really needed to talk about this for a bit.

     

    Incidentally a 1:1 avengers casting would have been godly. I have a list right here of the roles.

     

    Also might be slightly counterproductive to the argument but yeah MakBoss, I argue for 1:1 ratios a lot.

    • Upvote 3
  5. The main thing to remember here is that what your degree is in makes a significant difference. I'm going into mechanical engineering, and that's a degree that is basically guaranteed to get you a job somewhere, and why I find it interesting that on the graphic, they leave out the statistics on STEM majors, with only peeps like CompSci on there. Computer science majors, incidentally, are in a bit of a pickle due to market dilution, but topic for another time.

     

    Really, it's a topic that can't be explored in a cheeky infographic like that. There's tons of statistics that have to be looked at, essays can be written on the subject, and ultimately what you do with your education is best left to the advice of a college counselor, who's entire job revolves around understanding these trends. Nothing you do is going to give you a 100% certainty of getting a good job, but there are some fields that will simply always be better paying.

    • Upvote 1
  6. If you mean actually catching the Pokemon, not too terribly long in my experience, you run around a bit and tend to capture them quickly. If you're just transferring one team, thirty minutes, tops, if you're transferring a couple boxes... give it a few hours.

  7. Aye, you can, but if you live in an ancient house like mine, nearby sockets are sometimes rather difficult to come by. Really if your interior decorating isn't right, it becomes rather difficult.

     

    And alas, they have not made their money back yet. Nintendo's been in the red for the last few quarters and still hasn't pulled itself out yet. Due to their bank stockpiles though they can easily manage until they get something that can turn a profit easier.

  8. I think you misread me Necro; the only complaint I lobbied against the touchpad was its battery life. I really like the idea of two screens on a console, basically doing for the couch what the DS did for the handheld, but three hours of battery life is simply abysmal for folks like me who can retreat to their room and play video games for 16 hours straight. Get better batteries for the thing and it has the potential to be really brilliant.

     

    Honestly I think that if Nintendo takes the 3DS, ditches the 3D screen, upgrades the hardware and makes a bigger push for online capabilities, the next handheld will be great. Nintendo has stated that it doesn't intend to abandon the 3D but, well, its investors think otherwise and I'm fairly sure that if they don't abandon the concept completely, they will at the very least make it into an optional thing rather than sticking it right in the name.

  9. Microsoft and Sony have always sold their consoles at a loss, whereas Nintendo has traditionally sold theirs at a profit. The Wii and the DS both were sold in the black from day one, and as such gave birth to the meme that the Wii prints money. This allows Nintendo to funnel a ton of money at their first-party IPs, whereas with Microsoft and Sony, they rely on the game sales to compensate for the loss on the consoles.

     

    Really, what people are forgetting is that even as the market changes, Nintendo still knows how to exploit its niche and exploit it well. Despite having much, much lower power than its competitors, Nintendo knows how to suck every single drop of power from its machines. This generation they've mostly been hurt by their latest gimmicks; the Wii U's touchscreen is cool but it has terrible battery life. The 3DS' 3D is cool for exactly five minutes and then you never use it again. Consider that Nintendo is selling the 2DS at a very slim profit, while they're selling the 3DS at a loss. That 3D screen bumped the initial launch price to $250, an outrageous price from a company that released its last big thing, the DS, at $150, and the Gameboy Advance before it, at around $75. So they had to cut the price to $150 for the 3DS and take that loss.

     

    Nintendo got lucky with last gen's gimmicks, with the Wii's motion controls working and the DS' touchscreen being magnificent. Nintendo will work on the next best gimmick and likely strike gold again, print money for the next seven years, and start the process all over again. It's just their way.

    • Upvote 1
  10. The thing is right now that the 3DS is being sold at a loss, as is the WiiU. People use this to scream that the end is nigh but frankly Nintendo has billions in the bank, and can afford to take a loss for a little while. Undoubtedly, as we speak there's guys in Nintendo R&D saying "what can we do to make the next consoles we release the big thing."

     

    The company has survived for 125 years, they'll manage through this.

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