Geralt, Warhammer 40k and Stop Motion Animation

This has been a busy week in nerd land, blissfully free of rage against the patriarchy. I took a week of from feminism, like a vacation! As best I could, at least. I automatically took some notes while playing the first hours of Witcher 3. Noticeably: that I thought the intro was more keen on objectifying Geralt than What’s-her-name. Actually, the continuing shameless objectification of Geralt leaves me torn. On the one hand, “YAY, CANDY FOR US AT LAST!” and on the other, two wrongs doesn’t make a right.

Let’s Play Midnight’s Blessing!

I’m going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment, so there have been little motivation for me to blog. Instead I try my best to distract myself, so apart from picking up where I left on Doctor Who, and binge watch Sense8 and Orange is the New Black, I also bought some Warhammer 40k miniatures that I will begin painting this weekend. Never painted a miniature before.

Furthermore, I dug up an old dream of mine, and started recording a “Let’s Play” series.

Marvel’s First Issue of “Thors” Is a Train Wreck By Men, For Men, About Men

This post contains spoilers for Thors issue #1 2015. Thors (in plural) is the continuation of the Thor series, where issue #1-8 2014 sparks the story of the new, female Thor. This post does not spoil that story, and nothing really important happens in Thors, so you’re probably good reading this unless you’re a super hardcore fan (in which case I’m sure you already read Thors).

If you’re new to Marvel like me, maybe you didn’t know they mess around with multiple universes in their stories. I guess it’s something you’ve got to do when you’ve been pumping out comics for over 70 years and have over 8000 characters to keep track of. Right now Marvel is cleaning up their house, killing off a ton of story lines, characters and comic books in a big and pretty complex story arch they call Secret Wars. They mash everything together in some kind of final fight, and at the end of it fewer comic titles will emerge. I’m not going into details, but Thors is a new temporary series that’s a part of this.

PSA: Furiosa Merchandise

I bought this for a poster. It comes as t-shirts, hoodies, pillows, skirts… You should buy it too. Just saying. Arist: Hugo Dourado.

⇒ Shop link

Bioware Pose the Poster Lady for Mass Effect Andromeda

(This is a leading question)

Edit: Actually, this is quite an accurate representation of how I normally keep track of time. Keeps me ready to go off in a sprint if I’m late for a meeting.

Notes and links

• Reddit: have at it!

[Review] Vagrant Hearts PC Game on Steam Sale

My tip for the feminist who wants an adventure in a traditional setting, but with a fresh view on gender roles, is to pick up Vagrant Hearts. I’ve played 13 hours of it and love it.

This old school RPG is about two sisters setting out on an adventure, but taking different paths. I’d describe the story as the fantasy tale you’ve heard a gazillion times, beautifully skipping over tiresome tropes concerning rivalry, chivalry and ye old evil vs. good.

Small update

Hey, checking in so you know I’m alive. I’m having a tumultuous life in the meat world right now, so I haven’t had time for the blog. Doesn’t mean I haven’t consumed geek things of course.

I’ve watched and fallen in love with a full season of Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, an absolute adorable anime about a high school student in love with a shoujo manga artist. I laughed out loud in every episode, the jokes are well timed. Either the show is extremely gender queer friendly or blatantly homophobic. It’s hard to tell with the Japanese culture that are so far from my own world view.

An Hour of Guild Wars 2 Made Me Face My Own Racist Bias

I’m a person with a lot of privilege. I’m white, straight, cis-gendered, young, thin, and not poor, to name some of the big ones. I am spending a considerable amount of time informing myself, trying to understand my privileges and change my biased behaviour towards less privileged groups. One thing I have dabbled with from time to time is to play darker skinned characters in video games, but rarely, and mostly in World of Warcraft. I have made few-to-none observations that has helped me understand white privilege better, but I didn’t really expect to either. The thing that annoyed me with WoW was that there were so few options of darker skin for humans, and that the darkest I could choose felt light brown to me.

Kill la Kill: Turning a Blind Eye to Sexism in Anime

I am so confused by the contradiction between the super cool strong female characters and the objectification of them in Japanese anime. When it’s enough with a minor sidestep within the western culture to make me throw a hissy fit, I can let almost insurmountable amounts of objectification and racism from Japanese anime slide. And that stuff is so ripe with it that it should be blinding. For instance, I thoroughly enjoyed Cowboy Bebop despite constant objectification of Faye Valentine, and years later I’m still yelling GIGADRILLU! after having a blast watching Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann with scantily clad Yoko Littner. I have a penchant for entertainment that is over the top, which Gurren Lagann is a prime example of, or anime FLCL, graphic novel Metabarons, or judging from the reviews I read, that Jupiter Ascending movie I probably should watch.

 
Faye Valentine and Yoko Littner

Vision Impaired by Sexy Haircut

Morrigan in Dragon Age Inquisition promotion

Have you noticed that one indicator of sexiness in women is that they have hair in their eyes? No? Neither had I, until I started to get more and more annoyed with seldom finding a haircut I liked in video games. When I stopped to ponder why they all felt awkward, the pattern emerged in stark clarity before me. I call it the Morrigan Syndrome, and Bioware are high profile offenders. Morrigan had a disturbing amount of hair in her eyes in Dragon Age, and amazingly, it grew out to make her completely blind on one eye in Dragon Age Inquisition. I love Morrigan. She’s sensible and practical. Why would she wear her hair like that?