NULLSLEEP
I consider that my childhood was relatively more high-tech than the average pre-schooler, but my parents totally managed tech-play with moderation. It was a special treat for my dad and I to stay up til midnight playing Hardball on his classic mac, or exploring adventure games like Cosmic Osmo together. But this current trend is perverse. Look parents, if you have kids, play with them. As much as I think video games and computers really did enrich my life as a child, my most memorable play was the stuff I used my imagination for. Remember pillow forts? Remember playing dress up? Geez.
ee.en sent these to me this morning and made my morning. All of these are dead-on as far as I'm concerned, and fortunately (hopefully), I can confidently say I don't fall into any of pre-ordained illustrations. At least, an illustration hasn't been rendered yet. *phew*. Check out more in my gallery and even more at yourscenesucks.
Okay okay. I promise (I think) that this is the last Rock Band post I'll do (for a while). Remember how when the Wii first came out everyone got their respective undergarments in a twist because of the wildly customizable Mii's? Imagine Mii's but with more cowbell and you've got the Rock Band rock star generator.
With a humongous range of hairstyles, outfits, shoes, accessories, and tattoos, each typically available in any color that you could possibly want, you can create really crazy looking rock star identities to serve as your virtual vehicle to Rockdom. While the form of the characters are relatively simple, their body structures maintaining a similar cartooney proportion to a lot of Jamie Hewlett's characters, the style and musical sensibility you want to evoke in your character has such a large range of possibilities. In other words, its a lot of fun.
Yesterday my friend told me he was working on a Phoenix Wright band and had already assembled an avatar that looked like Nick. I worked on a Noodle and 2-D from The Gorillaz today, but here are my two standard avatars:
Note: This post was written in context to a current discussion being held within the community blogs at Destructoid.com, initiated by Reverend Anthony's recent podcast rant about the phenomenon of 'grrl gamers'. To get the full story, listen to Anthony's argument here a little before midway into the show and read VirtualGirl's response post here.
After listening to the good Reverend's rant and reading
Virtualgirl's response I felt the need to just skim the surface on my
personal thoughts in regards to the grrl gamers out there. I'm going to
try to keep it simple and short so as to potentially develop my
argument later, so here goes nothing:
Media scholar and philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the quintessential expression "the medium is the message". Taking this into consideration with grrl gamers, the particular ailment of these female gaming communities is the dependency on the image as their first and foremost means of communicating their apparent plight for 'respect'. As Rev. explained, when these girls slather prolific amounts of photos of themselves the message they are projecting is very particularly and exclusively oriented towards distinguishing themselves as 'female' or 'not male', thereby immediately debasing whatever idea of equality they were supposedly demanding.
Why is this message so inherently black and white? Because these photos are circulated within and are part of the mass media in which personal intentions, general goodwill, and individual personalities behind the image are altogether ignored, erased, and replaced with the surface level meaning. Period.
I want to reiterate that the key phrase of this statement is 'mass media'. Personal stories such as VirtualGirl's reveal to us that there is a large level of devotion and meaning within such cultural acts as dressing up as Lara Croft at a convention which I can respect to a certain degree on an individual basis. Her passion and confidence for something that she loves are to be envied. But the mass media cares only what the masses want, and within this largely masculine gaming demographic the masses want to consume stereotypical, sexualized fantasy women, so thats what they will see.
My advice? If you want to discuss how you want to be treated
equally as a gamer because you think that you are somehow alienated by
your sex then write about it instead of posting photos of
yourself. What you look like has absolutely nothing to do with how
passionate you are about gaming or games.
Here's some pics of my cameras getting to know each other, on a macro level.
Takeru Kobayashi, most well-known for dominating the world record for hot dog eating for six years, failed to meet his fans expectations today at SpikeTV's "Turkey Bowl" where competitive eaters furiously clawed through 20 lbs of turkey. Amidst the competition, Kobayashi stopped all of a sudden between his chews due to the pain in his jaw from artheritis. It was nearly a whole minute before he started to eat again so as to not disappoint his fans worldwide, this time sucking pieces of turkey whole to swallow since he could no longer chew.
I'll be frank, I think that food eating competitions are pretty disgusting displays of first-world entertainment and luxury. I can't for the life of me understand how one obtains pride and satisfaction for being able to eat so much in so little time. But in comparison to the pale bellied, soft fingered American food eating competitiors that ate alongside him, Kobayashi seemed like some kind of exotic variety of a hero. It really made me sad when he couldn't keep chewing, and it was tragic to see the look in his eyes lose their intensity as he nursed his throat with cups of water.
Don't be too sad Kobayashi, eating that much Turkey on Thanksgiving was never a good idea anyway.
