My pain is not your entertainment

This post contains spoilers for The Others series by Anne Bishop and references the computer game Guild Wars 2. It also contains descriptions of self-harm and self-harm ideation, and discussion of various mental health conditions. As such, clicking on the jump into the post signifies your consent to reading all of the above, that you will never talk about this or mention it to my mother, and also your understanding that these depictions might distress you. Links are included to various organisations dedicated to helping the survivors and sufferers of the issues discussed. I am turning off comments for this post.

Armchair Activism: A Practical Guide

“What can Men do against such reckless hate?” – Theoden, The Two Towers

A few days ago I (finally) tweeted about my horror and disgust at the Gamergate “movement”, and about my disappointment at the relative lack of comment by most of the male gamers I know. A couple of people responded with “but what can I do” questions or comments, and I have spent some time since then thinking about that. (Also plotting out a novel and playing Saints Row IV, because I multitask.) So here are some suggestions. I have illustrated with lots of different examples, not just my current particular bugbear, because this stuff is appropriate in a lot of different situations.

Publicise. The general public does not have my awareness of Gamergate, because most people don’t have my specific interests. Even where there is public awareness of specific events, like natural disasters and war, people forget pretty quickly. This is natural and does not make them terrible human beings with all the compassion of a brick. It is just what we do. We care about things that affect us personally, and if they don’t, we care when we first hear about it and then we forget. So, keep talking about it. You don’t have to bore everyone by talking about it all the time, but mention it, link to articles or stats about it, and make it clear that it affects you – it’ll affect other people through you.

Consider getting your place of employment involved, if you work in the kind of place that likes ostentatiously giving to charity or which has some kind of interest in the issue. Companies wield a different kind of power than people do, and usually have much wider pools of people they can reach. But companies do not take action independently of their employees and owners/shareholders: someone has to be the first to suggest it. This isn’t always appropriate, but it widens your ability to publicise from a couple of hundred people up to potentially Stephen Fry-like levels of influence.

Educate yourself about the issues involved. This is especially important for social justice stuff, but the way that things are presented in the media always involves some level of prejudice and presumption, and you need to be able to identify what and how. For example, the ebola crisis in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea is widely known about, but the media concentrates on white victims, or on those who have developed the illness in Western nations. Not only is this a clear media bias based on systemic racism, it also presents a false image of the disease and its spread and consequences across the world. In order to counter that, you need to know the facts about the epidemic as a whole, and you should try to have an understanding of the social issues involved both here and in the affected countries.

This leads on to: Learn the arguments. Again, this is more specific to social justice issues, but there are always arguments, and you need to understand both sides in order to explain them to people who don’t know. So, in the case of the Fukushima disaster, a lot of people took the view that all nuclear power stations were ticking time bombs, when in actual fact the set of circumstances which led to the meltdown were really specific - tsunami and industrial negligence – and they can be protected against. But people don’t know that unless they know roughly how nuclear reactors work, and have a reasonable working understanding of probability. Most people do not have these things, hence the reaction.

In situations where you have a clear moral stance on something, you need to know what the other side is saying so that you can recognise the specific argument and respond to it effectively. Most people have not been trained in debating or in critical thinking, and there are a lot of really terrible arguments out there. It is unreasonable to expect that the people who are directly affected by the "policing" of Ferguson should have to spend their time and effort explaining Systemic Racism 101. They are too busy doing other things, like surviving and keeping themselves safe. But Systemic Racism 101 still needs to be explained. That is something you can do, and it’s helpful both as an explanation and as a gesture of support for the victims.

Complain to the relevant authorities. This isn’t always an appropriate course of action, but when it is, do it. You can write to your MP, MEP, Senator, whatever. There are specific oversight bodies which have powers to investigate, fine, or take to court –get in touch with them. You can also get in touch with other bodies which have a vested interest, like the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund, or the Trussell Trust, or a politician who is on a committee investigating a related issue. And then tell other people what you’ve done and why. Don’t make it about your feelings though – you’re not telling people so they can praise your actions, you’re telling them so that they know they can do it too. Provide a link to the method you used, to make it even easier. This is tedious to do (believe me, I know) but people are lazy and won't necessarily do it themselves.

Provide emotional support to the victims. It’s a little eye-rollingly twee to say things like “solidarity for the victims of this terrible thing”, but it’s not useless to do – you’re making your views clear, and while one voice on its own is quiet, lots of quiet voices together is a roar. Politicians and charities genuinely do gauge reactions to crises by aggregating responses on social media and blogs etc, so even if none of the victims ever see it, you’re still helping.

Provide financial support to the victims, if you can afford it. For big disasters, go through one of the big charities – they’re more reliable and more efficient. I would recommend UN bodies, MSF, or the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which are much larger and have access to specialists who can provide appropriate assistance. For private individuals, check if there is a crowdfunding appeal for them (I would exercise caution with this though, be sure to research it as thoroughly as you can), or support them through their work by sponsoring them or purchasing their products.

Providing goods instead of money can be useful, but unless you know what specifically is needed it’s generally a better idea to just donate a sum of money. Food banks much prefer to receive cash rather than tins of food, because they can buy in bulk which is cheaper, and because people get it wrong. Anyone who’s ever seen a harvest festival in a church or school knows that there are a lot of mystery cans or esoteric ingredients which are unlikely to be useful to the people receiving them. What use is a can of capers on its own? Even if you get it right, you’ll still be missing a lot of basic supplies that are needed – food banks also hand out nappies, sanitary towels and tampons, toilet roll, and other necessary but unglamorous products.

(This last is something that it is good to remember about giving wedding and baby presents. When my sister got married, she ended up with so many towels that some of them are still unused five years later. When she had her daughter, they got so many newborn clothes that my niece had grown out of them before she could wear them all. This is so common that charity shops have huge ranges of unworn newborn clothes, which hardly ever get bought. Think about what other people are likely to get, and don’t get that. If you don’t know, just give a voucher or cash.)

Listen to the victims and believe them. Hard to believe that this still has to be said, but people doubt the testimony of victims all the time. This is in part because of media reporting on the issues, which makes false claims seem much more prevalent by focussing on them instead of on the wider picture, but also because of underlying social issues like sexism and racism. (That ties back to education as well.) If you as an ally or supporter dismiss claims as outlandish or as exaggeration, think how much easier it is for the opponents to dismiss them.

Don’t expect thanks or praise. You might receive some, but you shouldn’t be looking for it. Giving money to look good is still useful, but constantly making the conversation about yourself is selfish and unhelpful. I know that this sounds like I’m contradicting the first thing I said, but it’s possible to demonstrate that you are affected by an issue and care about it whilst making sure that the voices of the direct victims are heard. If in doubt, don’t mention anything more than “I care about this issue and I think you should too”.

Don’t talk yourself out of helping. You don’t have to do all of these things. You don’t even have to do any of them: if you want to help and can think of a better way, do that. But don’t think that your contribution would be meaningless so why bother at all. It’s both defeatist and wrong. One person genuinely can change the world, albeit one person in the right place at the right time with the right skillset, and you have no idea if you’re going to be that person.

Keep yourself safe: only do things that you are prepared to accept the consequences of. This is especially important in protests where you know the police (or army) are using violent or aggressive tactics. If you can’t afford to get arrested because of the type of industry you work in, you’re allowed to stay at home. You are allowed to place your safety ahead of your principles. Equally though, everyone is allowed to place their principles before their safety. The calculation is different for everyone at different times. Don’t presume that someone else didn’t think their actions through just because you came to a different conclusion.

Finally, don't be a dick. Don't threaten people with an opposing viewpoint physically or verbally, or make deliberately inflammatory statements, or make sweeping generalisations like "all TERFs are evil". These things can and will be used as ammunition by the other side. They will also alienate people with more moderate views, or people who are undecided about the issue or issues involved. You don't have to be excruciatingly nice to every sockpuppet or right-wing talk-show host you come across, but as a general rule you can't persuade them anyway: you can only persuade their audience. And that's a worthy goal.

Armchair activism has a bad name, but I'm pretty sure I have just comprehensively demonstrated that there are a large number of things that can be done sitting on one's arse in front of one's PC, or standing on public transport using your phone, or round the water cooler at work. You don't have to do all of them. You don't have to do any of them. If you need to stay anonymous, do it. But there are always, always things that you can do if you care about something.

Here are a list of links to various organisations, some specifically mentioned here and some not, which I have googled for you so you don't have to. Feel free to add more in the comments. (Just so we're clear, I reserve the right to moderate any comment made.)

• The Trussell Trust - food bank in the UK
• Comic Book Legal Defence Fund - protecting First Amendment stuff in the US
• Medécins Sans Frontières - international charity sending doctors to places their expertise is needed
• International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent - links to national pages there too
• UN Foundation - international with links to different campaigns
• UNICEF - international, links to national pages
• Kickstarter - crowdfunder, projects need to be fully funded to take off
• Indiegogo - crowdfunder, allows flexible funding where projects can withdraw funds even if target is not met
• Patreon - crowdfunder for sponsoring creative types

Game Review: Gone Home

I'm still winging this reviewing business so it'll take me a while to find a format for this that I like. But I do like looking a game from a non-gaming point of view as well as a gaming one, in the hope of spreading the love to non-gamers.

With that being said, Gone Home is pretty much perfect as an entry level game, as it's far more of an interactive story than a skill-based game. (To the outsider, this definition is unimportant, but a lot of gamers get their knickers in twists about it; I'll discuss this at the end of the review.) The gameplay is easy, it's similar to the classic hidden-object style of game which was popular in the mid-Nineties, and there's nothing complicated or fast about the physical elements of gameplay. You don't even need a good sense of direction, because the map's really good.

The premise is simple: you are a 19 year old who has arrived home (to Salem, I think) from her year in Europe. The house is empty. You don't know it at all, as your family moved there when you were abroad, so you need to find out where your family are and what has happened to them. You find various different letters and the occasional object along the way. There's a lot of tape players around the place too, and you can use them to give yourself a Riot Grrl soundtrack if you want to (I actually didn't much, not being much of a fan, it wasn't part of my adolescence at all).

What makes this game stand out from any other hidden object/clue based game is the depth of the characterisation and the interweaving stories. There's not just one mystery, there are four, and I'm not sure that one of them has any kind of resolution - I certainly didn't find one. There are dark secrets which are hinted at but not resolved, and creepy areas to go through - it's very atmospheric, just the right side of scary for me to get an adrenaline response but not be too scared to continue (I am looking at you here Amnesia, I got five minutes in to that game and then stopped forever).

As the game progressed, I got more and more emotionally involved with the characters, and by the end my response was pretty much what it would be if I'd been in that situation in real life - it's hard to describe without spoiling the story, which I really don't want to do. I played through the whole thing in about four hours, maybe five, and while that's a short game, the experience was very intense.

I highly recommend this to pretty much everyone. This is an experience I will carry with me for a very long time, and I hope it marks a watershed moment in the industry, showing that you can make these stories, these pieces of art, and people will play them and love them. A lot of non-gamers don't appreciate that games can be art - a lot of gamers don't either to be fair - but if this game doesn't change your mind, then there's something wrong with the way you define art. Gone Home is beautiful and important, and that's what art is.

So, onto the scoring. I'll stick to the arbitrary system I used last time.

• Plot: 5. Compelling and well told, the plot becomes more complicated the closer you look at it. There are a lot of laugh out loud moments to relieve the tension, but you never forget your purpose.
• Sound and vision: 4. It would be 5 if I hadn't had to turn the graphics settings really low in order to get the movement as smooth as possible.
• Gameplay: 5 for ease of use. Everything was well-documented in-game as well.
• Representation: 3. Given that there were only six characters, three of whom aren't voiced, this is harder to judge, but basically, excellent gender and sexuality awareness and representation, poor race representation (one Hispanic character, the rest WASPs), questionable mental health representation.

As a point about the Representation category, I don't expect every game to be perfect at this - in fact, scoring any points at all is an achievement. I don't think that every game (or novel, comic, film, etc) necessarily needs to hit everything all of the time, and some stories will by necessity be more limited in their representation due to number of characters, actual historical details, or limitations of the genre. What is important to me is that both some kind of awareness is shown, and that stereotypes are avoided. Whereas everything else is judged on a 1-5 scale with 3 being "meets minimum expectations", Representation is judged much more fluidly, and I am happy to give negative points (down to -5), as my enjoyment of a game is genuinely impacted negatively by use of offensive stereotypes, images and language.

In total then, this gets 17 out of a possible 20 points. Play this game. You will not regret it.

Here follows a brief but connected discussion about interactive story and skill-based games.

Game review: Skyrim

I wanted to try for one of these a month, and I've only actually played four games total this month (this, Minecraft, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2), so even though this has been out for ages and nearly every serious gamer will already have played it, I'm going to review this one. Because most gamers will know it, I'm going to look at it from a non-gamer point of view - I did actually get a non-serious-gamer playing this at one point, so I figure I have form there.

Basics

Skyrim is the fifth instalment in The Elder Scrolls series, but don't be put off by the fact that there's a series, they're all stand-alone. It is set in a land called (wait for it) Skyrim, home to the Nords, which is in the middle of a bloody civil war as the Stormcloaks seek to secede from the Tamrielic Empire. Added to this, the dragons are returning; once thought long extinct, they are rising from their ancient burial mounds and reclaiming their seats of power, led by Alduin the World-Eater.

The game is designed to be played first-person, although you can play it third-person if you prefer. You have access to a wide range of weapons, grouped into three sets (One Handed, Two Handed, and Archery), an even wider range of spells covering pretty much everything you could want, and various sneaky/talky/crafty abilities. Each time one of the skills levels up (from 1-100) your character progresses towards the next level, which allows you to pick Perks and increase one of your three stat bars: Health, Magicka and Stamina.

Because you don't have a character class, and every skill progresses your character, you're not limited to one play style through the course of the game. It's harder to kill things at higher levels if you're using things you're less good at, but a little care and attention will see you through the worst of it. Everyone has a play style they find most comfortable and natural, and Skyrim really gives you the space to work out what yours is and develop it if you don't already know, whilst allowing more experienced gamers to challenge themselves by moving out of their comfort zone.

You can have a follower as well, who will fight for you and carry your things if you want. You can equip them with better gear, and they level up at similar rates to you. I usually don't bother with them because I get guilty when they die though, and most of them can die unless they're crucial to the plot. They are really helpful while you're finding your feet or if you're concentrating on a particular play style and are missing something, but be aware they all have their own moral code, and some of them will be really arsey if you steal things or murder people, which whilst a really nice touch definitely makes the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild quests a lot harder.

Story and gameplay

As an open-world game, you're not led down any one plot more than any other: once you finish the introduction, you're free to do what you want. I would highly recommend following the main plot closely until you speak to the Greybeards, because certain things will be unlocked and explained to you, but after that do what you feel like. There are four major guilds you can join, each of which have long and interesting plot chains; each major settlement has one major quest or quest chain associated with it, and a bunch of minor ones; each of the Daedra (sort of demons but not all of the are evil) has a quest chain, and a couple of the Gods (also known as Aedra) do too, and of course there's the Civil War stuff, where you get to pick a side.

Your character can be male or female, and any one of a number of different races, which all start with slightly different advantages in different skills and one unique racial power. As far as character building goes though, that's basically your lot; there's not much room for character development beyond "am I going to follow this quest or not", and whilst there are consequences for your actions, there aren't really any for your words. The player character isn't voiced although everyone else is, which adds to the impression of being a bit of a cipher.

Gameplay wise, the controls on the PC are fairly easy to grasp and the most challenging part for a new player is using the mouse - the sensitivity defaults to pretty high so if you're particularly jumpy your point of view can swing around wildly, making it hard to hit the enemies. Fortunately, this is easy to customise in the options, and all of the key bindings can be changed as well to whatever you feel most comfortable with.

Musically and graphically, the game is beautiful. There's a lot of in-game footage out there demonstrating just how incredibly gorgeous it is, and I regularly find myself enjoying the scenery even after nearly 300 hours of play time and on the lowest graphics settings (my PC has a problem with particle rates which makes me very sad).

Representation

As far as representation goes, the game isn't without flaw, but it's still ahead of the curve. (Of course, this is an industry with a massive problem with representation, so the bar's really low.) Men and women are represented pretty equally across professions, so they're pretty good with gender issues. Race and mental health issues clearly both still have a long way to go though; of the four human races, only one of them is non-white, although in the game's defence that's more a legacy thing I think, and there is a lot of discussion about xenophobia in the way that the other races are presented and interact with each other. (I do not think that this excuses the game designers though. They could comfortably get rid of Imperials and Bretons as different races and add another coloured race if they wanted to stick to the same numbers. The fact that they haven't seems to suggest that they're perfectly happy to not represent anyone who isn't white particularly well.)

Mad characters are either raving murderous lunatics or beggars, and whilst there's a lot of "I used to be an adventurer, til I took an arrow in the knee" from the guards, you never seem to see one of them limping and there's no visible sign of infirmity except a magical plague and some ill people in the temple of Kynareth in Whiterun. One can make the argument that lycanthropy and vampirism are diseases (vampirism certainly is in game mechanic terms) and as such are the way that the game investigates illness, but that's stretching it quite a lot, seeing as they're both powerful advantages as well.

There is zero trans awareness in the game at all; when you pick up clothes, the skin changes depending on your gender, and despite a school of magic which literally turns iron into silver then into gold, there's no spell which will let you change your gender. Whilst the game has rightfully been praised for allowing both male and female player characters to marry any of the marriageable characters regardless of gender, all of the relationships I've seen in the game outside of my own are straight, which is really poor.

Scoring

So, using an arbitrary 0-5 scale, I give the game as follows:

• Plot: 5. A brilliantly crafted and immersive story.
• Sound and vision: 5. Groundbreaking when it came out, this is still incredible two years later. The only criticism it's possible to level at it is its starkness, but I'm fine with stark.
• Gameplay: 4. There are definitely quirks, but on the whole it's pretty seamless.
• Representation: 1. One point for being okay for women, half a point for gay marriage, half a point for investigating xenophobia, and -1 point for completely ignoring queer issues except in that one way.

That gives it a total of 15 out of a possible 20. A great game in many ways, but let down by its lack of sensitivity towards under-represented groups.

Mass Effect 3 revisited

This isn't a proper review of the game: instead I want to look at my reaction to it two years ago and to re-analyse the ending from a more... rational point of view. There will be spoilers for all three games.

I was devastated when I finished the game for the first time, as I'm pretty sure anyone who read my previous post on the matter would realise. I've seen this type of reaction described as "entitled" in the past. I both agree and disagree with this.

I agree because so many of us were neither rational nor moderate in our discussion of the ending at the time, and Bioware were pretty much forced to release an extended ending to address some of the complaints that were made. From a writer's point of view, this is pretty awful. It was their story. They should have been able to tell it the way they wanted to. I mean, I hate the Star Wars prequels, but I absolutely agree it was George Lucas' right to do what he wanted with his own intellectual property.

The basic criticisms of the original ending still stand though. It was a pretty arbitrary deus ex machina which was not foreshadowed well except in DLCs (Javik's and, later, Leviathan) which not everyone had access to at the time; it was poorly presented with a lot of things happening that the viewer was unaware of the context of; and it was a very emotionally abrupt way to finish the player's relationship with the characters. I think that criticising the game on these points is not being "entitled", it's just being critical.

I would love to know how the writers came to make their decisions about the ending, but I'm never likely to find out - whilst Bioware were willing to address the issue by giving us more exposition, they've closed ranks about any discussion over whether they consider themselves to have done a sloppy job on it or not. In lieu of ever actually knowing, I have formed my own theories about it.

Mass Effect was a very different game to Mass Effects 2 and 3. It was much more like the Knights of the Old Republic games, with a considerably improved combat system. So, a role-playing game. Shepard talked a lot. There were a lot of pissant plots which required you to make moral judgements. There was a lot of emphasis on the choices and personality of Shepard, and the game encouraged you to become emotionally involved with the characters.

Mass Effect 2 had a very different engine, and the emphasis in the game was much more on combat and much less on character. From being an RPG with shooting elements, it became a third-person shooter with role-playing elements. This changed the nature of the plots available. By necessity, the action became more important, and you-as-Shepard spent little time talking to anyone other than your team just for the sake of it. The moral choices are left to big decisions in the important story missions, and any choices you make outside of them are pretty arbitrary and unimportant, basically just whether or not you wanted to be a dick.

There was also very little investigation done in the game. The Collector plot revolves around it, sure, but there's not much else in there which encourages the player to consider a wider, older galaxy. This was crucial in determining the plot of Mass Effect 3. The game is all about the action, even removing the hacking mini-games (which I personally enjoyed because I'm a nerd like that). The pace of the plot is relentless. There is no mission which does not feel urgent or necessary. No more pissing about on crashed spaceships or crashing your Hammerhead into a wall: Shepard was on the go all the time.

(It's worth noting that of the three DLCs released after the game, two of them directly address the gameplay mechanics I've mentioned here: Leviathan is all about the investigation and logic puzzling, and Citadel (whilst the plot itself clearly has a purpose) gives the player a constant facility to piss about. You can even play Find The Lady with a pair of Vorcha card sharps. I presume that the DLC writers realised there was an audience for these aspects of the game and specifically added them in to address that.)

Obviously, that relentless focus served an important purpose in making the player appreciate the importance of the plot. But it also meant that the plot could only ever go the way that it did. As soon as the writers decided to start the game with the invasion of Earth, they had to make the rest of the game about the war. So, instead of spending several missions trying to come up with a plan or investigating the historical battles with the Reapers, you're just handed the plans for the Crucible and told to get on with it. That again was a deus ex machina, albeit not the literal one seen at the end.

The reason why the writers misjudged the fanbase with the ending was that by the time 3 rolled round there were essentially two separate fanbases. There were the people who approached it as a role-playing game who generally invested much more heavily in the characters, and there were the people who approached it as a combat game, who were more interested in the action. (This is a massive generalisation, I know, but I think the basic idea is a valid one.) I make no value judgements here: the games lent themselves to both types of player, and we all play games in our own ways, that's one of the reasons why we game after all.

The thing is. if you're playing it for the combat, you pretty much expect the plot to lead you, rather than you dictating the plot. So when the game ended the way it did, your reaction was probably much more "why is the Normandy there? Oh bugger it, I'm having a beer and playing Halo" rather than the bereft confusion and sense of being cheated that the RPG fan was left with. I didn't mention Halo casually there either: Halo 3 also ends with the presumed death of the main characters, but I was fine with that, because I hadn't made a single decision in the game that wasn't about shooting the shit out of Covenant or Flood.

I'm convinced that the reason why Indoctrination Theory became so popular so quickly was because it was the one way that a Paragon Shepard (and a Paragon player) could keep Shepard alive and still feel good about themselves. The Destroy option kills an entire race of people, and the one member of your crew who is utterly loyal and has never fucked you over (even BFF Garrus has caused you hassle over the course of the games). That's obviously not the Paragon choice. But it's the only choice you can make which allows you to get your happily-ever-after. That was a terrible choice made by the writers, frankly, and they should have realised it.

The kind of heroic quest that Shepard was on by the end pretty much requires Shepard to die. Heroes don't get to live if they're saving the world from certain destruction. HOWEVER. There is a workaround. An appropriately important and heroic secondary character can sacrifice themselves to save the hero. This is a well established trope. It would have been easy to do that in Mass Effect 3. You even actually shoot Anderson, who one assumes then dies, so he would have been the ideal choice. Failing that, you have a squad full of people you didn't shag who would be appropriate. As would Hackett. Hell, even the Normandy herself could conceivably fulfil this criteria.

Even with the limitations imposed on the plot by the nature of the game, the writers still deliberately chose to have Shepard die in two of the three original endings, and only allowed Shepard to survive with the Destroy option if they played the multiplayer game - a game which, purely coincidentally I'm sure, encourages micro-transactions to get better gear. I've been playing it on and off for nearly two years now, and I'm still missing guns, characters, and equipment: very little is maxed out other than the really basic packs. (This does not bode well for me ever actually managing to solo a Gold match. Gear really makes a difference at the higher levels.) This was clearly done to promote the new cash cow, and should be treated with a lot more scorn than I've seen directed at it.

Regardless of the confusion of the ending, Destroy/Control/Synthesis ending was essentially identical to the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which at least had the decency to foreshadow the nature of the ending in the name of the fucking game. Mass Effect 3 came out considerably after DE:HR did, and even if the writers did have the idea beforehand, I'm really surprised they stuck to it.

I've completed the game a couple of times since my original playthrough, and it elicits a brutal emotional toll on me when I do. I normally just stop playing after you sync the Mako to the Normandy, and avoid the worst of the trauma. I still don't have a completed playthrough on the X-box though, and I want those achievement points so I'm going to do it again soon. I'm really not looking forward to it; I might leave off having the party until after I get the respawn point when the game is over, just so I have a reason to finish it.

No game should make me have to bribe myself to finish it. Especially not one I loved so much. I'm capable of having a rational discussion about it now, but I'm still hurt by it, and I don't think that'll ever change.

Resolving

Next year I plan to be more productive and not just play computer games, read, and knit. I'm going to blog about playing computer games, reading, and knitting, as well as doing them. I might also talk* about various political things and discrimination issues as the mood takes me.

I will try to post at least once a week, about anything on the above list or something else entirely. I'll also try to link to sources and things like that.

Why now? I could have done this at any point over the past two years, why am I doing it now?

For a start, I'm chronically depressed and have CFS, and that really impacts on my ability to motivate myself (never my strongest feature) and to care about things enough to keep them going. But this isn't going away, and I have to learn how to work through it. So hopefully having a reason to keep going will help. Also, I like writing and being opinionated** so this should be pretty easy to do. I have a bunch of other things I'm planning on doing this year too. Starting slowly and in reasonable chunks, like a sensible person who doesn't want to set herself up to fail.

The other reason why is more complicated. I've wanted to add my voice to the growing number of people who are complaining about representation in the things they love for a while now. But I'm mentally ill. I don't deal well with criticism and personal attacks. Doing this is a huge risk. This is why I'm making sure there is a historical record of me not only saying this but stating my reasons so clearly: if I do end up being routinely harassed, I want a clear record in case I ever have to go to the police.

The fact that I feel afraid enough of the responses I might get to feel the need to state that makes me very angry. As it should make everyone angry. 

I hereby promise to delete comments which are personal attacks and to try to make this as safe a place as I can for myself and for anyone else who comments on it. I will not, however, arbitrarily delete comments which I disagree with. If you, imaginary potential commenter, want to have a reasonable discussion then I will do my best to enable it. Ad hominem attacks are not reasonable. There is a big difference between saying "be fuckng polite" and saying "be fucking polite you cuntbag", and the former is fine, but the latter is not.

I hope I manage to do all of this, but I'm not going to beat myself up too much if I don't (those courses last year on condition management were good for something). If this starts becoming a terrible chore and makes me unhappy, it's not doing its job, and I'll stop it again for a while. Hopefully not though.

* rant

** ranting

Metroid Prime

Spoilers for Meroid Prime 1, 2 and 3, and for Metroid: Other M.

Four Years behind the times, right? Well, I finally got a copy of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and I've been playing it obsessively for the last couple of weeks. Good things about the game: you start with space jump and you don't lose it, ditto morph ball. Bad things about the game: nearly everything else. The graphics are underinspiring, for what was a shiny new console at the time; the voice acting is poor; the fact that there is voice acting at all really annoys me; there's a lot less depth to the game as a whole. I do appreciate being told where all the suit upgrades are, but that takes a lot of the fun out of it in some ways.

After some time thinking about it I finally worked out the issue that I have with it properly (and with Other M, although my issues with that game are more pressing). In Primes 1 and 2, Samus was a woman alone. Every so often her suit's AI would tell her it had found things. That was it. In 2 she interacted with the sole Luminoth survivor, and with the holograms of the some of the other Luminoth, and she did see the video footage of the GF forces on Aether as well. But it was all silent. This added to the feeling that you-as-Samus were completely on your own, working out all of the puzzles and world as you encountered it.

In Prime 3, you're led by the hand by not only the human general of the GF but by two powerful AI-types. You interact with three other bounty hunters, and are in fact rescued by one of them. You are not alone. You are not relying on your own cunning and intellect. You are merely a hired grunt. At least you don't get to hear Samus, because apparently she just whines like a little girl - and wets herself when she sees Ridley, a monster that she personally has killed - completely alone - on more occasions than I am aware (never played it on the older consoles). She's allowed to be fucked in the head. I mean, who wouldn't be, if they'd been raised by an ancient alien race and gifted with an über-powerful mech suit from them? But she shouldn't be so goddamn annoying.

Prime 3 and Other M changed her from being an inscrutable warrior woman, whose face you never saw except in the occasional reflection, to being a vulnerable girl who needs rescued by the big strong heroes who are round about her. She is no longer a feminist icon, she is a doll, a toy to be played with then put away.

In my head, she never speaks. She never has to. She does the job, she does it well, she does it alone, and she leaves. Her life is hard and lonely. And she is tough enough to do it better than anyone else in the galaxy. She could out fight the Master Chief, and she and Ridley would have beautiful fighty lesbian sex while fighting off all the alien hordes who dared to interrupt them.