russman588

@rexman64: Very nice post! I have two things to add.

With the exception of botches (wrestlers messing up moves by accident) 99% of what you see on WWE television is something that WWE intended for you to see. A rule of thumb is if you're watching something on WWE TV and you're not sure if it's real or not, it's probably not real. There's a couple of other exceptions, and they usually have to do with fans jumping the railing or interacting with the wrestlers in other ways that they're not supposed to. WWE will gladly take some things that are very much real and work them into their current storylines, but the reality part of it is usually something that happened off camera. CM Punk leaving WWE is a good recent example.

I wouldn't write off TNA on Jeff's experience alone. They have definitely had moments where they put something on TV that is far worse than anything WWE will put on, but they also have some really good characters and really good technical wrestlers. When the writing is good, I find myself enjoying Impact Wrestling more than Raw. When it's bad, it's still entertaining, but for the wrong reasons. If you have the time, I'd watch one or two episodes and decide for yourself. Impact Wrestling is on Spike TV on Thursdays if you want to try it, and I think you can also watch episodes on their website depending on where you live.

Wasn't Carolyn's article essentially an opinion piece?

Weirdly enough, I really like video podcasts. I'm really glad Patrick and Alex do Bombin' that way. They go great with handheld games.

The problem isn't that a male character decides to do the right thing and rescue a female character from being kidnapped. He's not a real person in a real situation. As far as I know, Sarkeesian has never said that real people who rescue their spouses from harm are sexist. She's talking about fictional characters, so the problem is in the writing. Video game writers often decide to go with the easiest and laziest possible motivation for their male protagonist. Which is to have their love interest kidnapped or put in harm's way. This leads to female characters in games being constantly portrayed in a weakened, helpless state with no agency. They might as well be objects in most games that use the damsel in distress trope.

Who has actually done anything like this? You get the exact opposite, most of the time. "Hey! Our lead is white... and they're male! They're even straight! Joe Shootem is just like you, hardcore gamer! Also, he says one-liners after he murders dudes!"

Hey, do you have a citation on the "serial misogynist" quote about Miyamoto? A minute mark on whichever YouTube video it was will work. I don't remember hearing that in the one where she discussed Mario games, but then again I haven't seen all of her videos either, so maybe it was a different one.

Fair enough, I just don't think Patrick's Twitter account is relevant to this thread in any way, shape, or form. Serious issues can be joked about, it still doesn't undercut the point they're trying to make. Heck, just look at The Daily Show.

I've seen Patrick interact with people in comments threads on this site, I don't think he's the type of person who paints all people who disagree with him with the same brush. He will occasionally interact with people who are disagreeing with him reasonably in a more meaningful and fair way. On the other hand, he will gladly make fun of people who are actually being immature or juvenile in their discussion of this topic on his own personal public speaking venue, that's what that one tweet is about. The one person who made that image actually does need to grow up.

It's Patrick's personal Twitter, posting it doesn't "accomplish" anything, but neither do 99% of all tweets ever. Twitter is just stuff that amuses/interests the person tweeting about it. I have no idea why you and so many other people that have a problem with Patrick care so much about what he tweets.

Of course. I'm not going to cause a thing to not exist just because I have issues with it. Like I said, this has nothing to do with censorship.

I think you're taking discussion of sexism in games to be a lot more malicious than it actually is. If a game has flaws, we should discuss them. Not everyone is going to agree on whether something is a flaw in a specific game or not, whether it's game mechanics, story writing, graphics, music or anything else. Casting shame on creators is not a goal of mine, I don't think it's a goal of very many people.

I find a problem in these discussions that happens over and over again. If I say that Game A's story has a scene that comes across as sexist towards women, people will take that to mean that I believe that the person who wrote Game A's story is sexist. Meaning that that person believes women to be inferior to men, and that that person probably hates women, too. In reality, 95% of the time, I think the only thing that person is guilty of is casual sexism. They likely weren't thinking about the larger picture of how something will look or feel to someone who is thinking about gender and how it's portrayed in media. This might be on purpose, it might be accidental. Either way, I have nothing against them personally, but that's not going to stop me or anyone else from calling it out.

Everyone is allowed to write whatever they want, including criticism of stories that are overly cliched or stereotypical to the point of being offensive. The games industry can write games that have only male protagonists and poorly written, stereotypical female side characters for every AAA game from now until infinity, and I can write that I find those stories to be extremely uncreative, boring and sexist.

This is not a discussion of censorship. Criticism is not censorship. There is no restriction happening anywhere due to any of this discussion. You are derailing this topic.