"MLP: Dog and Pony Show is sexist!"

If the Diamond Dogs episode is sexist because Rarity whines and cries (tricking the Diamond Dogs to let her go) to get gems (for her costume (For a customer)), then I suggest by that logic Rarity is a sexist stereotype of a woman cause her special talent is finding gems.

Why I Like Humanified My Little Pony Characters

I'm going to put up a disclaimer here because I'm just pinning down why it is I like MLP:FiM characters turned into humans. And the reason just occurred to me.

Visually, Friendship is Magic is a terrific cartoon, and I love the design, but there's not a whole lot to do in the way of fanart. Much of the main cast is just entirely based upon their coat color, and how their mane is styled and colored, such as Rainbow Dash's blue and rainbow, or Pinkie Pie's curly mane and pink. You can do some more stylized stuff, but for the most part it'll still be the same build with some artistic differences, such as stronger shading and higher detail on hair.

Humans, however, are extremely different, which is why fanart is such a draw. Rainbow Dash, for example, can be a pale-skinned punk rocker, a cheerful-if-pushy, thin teenager, a colored buzz-cut teen, as a giddy teenager in a blue jumpsuit, or even posing as Rosie the Riveter.

But it's not because I like taking away that it's about ponies (an inherently 'girly' thing), or trying to find some kind of roundabout way to be 'attracted' to these characters, it's because I like Rainbow Dash. Rainbow Dash could be a Goddamn frog for all I care. I love her for her character - the brash, sometimes insensitive, ferocious, wonderful ball of awesome she is. Humanized Dash is just another way for me to celebrate one of my favorite characters with all sorts of different artistic directions.

The fact that there's really hot, hot Dash/Rarity action is just a wonderful bonus.

Tae Kim is fucking stupid

So there's that Other M review that Abbie did on G4 where she gave it a 2/5 and called it a sexist portrayal of Samus. So Tae Kim asks, does gender affect game reviews? 

It dawned on me that if Abbie hadn’t pointed it out, I would never have thought of Other M that way. I simply didn’t have the necessary perspective to see the larger implications of the narrative decisions Team Ninja and Nintendo had made. I began to wonder how differently GamePro’s review would’ve turned out, had I assigned the game to a woman instead of doing it myself. For that matter, how different would reviews of games like Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword, and Guardian of Light have been under the same conditions?

Wow, that was really stupid. 

I absolutely fucking hate this backwards-ass notion that somehow women are able to bring a new light to all sorts of angles of everything by virtue of having vaginas. Being female is not a perspective. It is an identity. It may affect your outlook but Other M's portrayal of Samus has nothing to do with gender. Gender politics, yes, but not gender roles.

I mean, sure you might have a higher chance of meeting women who agree with the sexist portrayal of Samus, but that doesn't mean it's a blanket statement you can tack onto the female populous. I'm sure there are women who are sexist and think rape jokes are funny. 

It's especially ridiculous considering you can look at, ohhh, I dunno, Gamepad Dojo and see me and Noncon both tearing it a new one. Or even Yahtzee looked at it and went, "That's pretty sexist." We are not women - this is just our perspective. You don't have to be gay to see homophobia. Aggie is feminist and looked right at the sexism and called it out. Other reviewers did not see it. 

Even this is probably giving it more attention than it deserves considering a few paragraphs in he basically runs off the rails and talks about how "these things need to be considered equally" and "you don't always need these things in a game review" etc etc etc. It's just outright ridiculous that he asks if gender affects reviews, and he says yes because everything affects reviews. Well yes that's true...but you haven't really answered the question. Reminds me of when you accuse someone of stealing and they talk about how all property is theft. 

It's just a backhanded-ass sexism to treat women gamers as though they have this entirely different set of credentials based on being born with a vagina. We're going to get a lot further on in our collective chosen hobby if we stop treating women differently - not better or worse, but differently - and just keep in mind at all times that they're gamers like us. 

I don't care how many games feature it

I will never get over how Goddamn silly it looks to have a big, scarred, rugged barbarian warrior clad in full leather swinging a greatsword bigger than he is, and right next to him is a wispy lingerie model wearing a leather bellyshirt with deep cleavage. 

I mean I get that Hunted: The Demon Forge is going for the Boris Vallejo look run through a grainy gritty filter and everything but good lord. Every time you put a female into a skimpy top in a place where it's painfully obvious that it does nothing except paint a big target right where your heart/guts are, I groan and facepalm. 

It looks fucking ridiculous. Knock it the fuck off. 

Lesbians are only okay if they're pretty

So I've been going about this lately on Twitter but I only recently came upon enough material for a blog post relation to Mass Effect.

Why are the asari women? 

Don't get me wrong - the asari race is a really cool concept. They're a race of blue aliens that psychically link their nervous systems with their partners to reproduce, and often are encouraged (to the point of disgust at those that aren't born of a non-asari partner) to do so with as many species as possible. They're effeminate in speech, as well as facial/body structure, IE, wider hips, smaller waists, likely redundant breasts, and smooth skin. All of these are beautiful traits to humans, with the obvious exceptions of blue/teal color and the tail-heads, which of course everyone got used to forty years ago with Star Wars.  

I was under the impression that asari were a ungendered race, and this is supported early on with Liara's own words, IE, "mono-gendered" and "not precisely a woman." But I started playing Mass Effect 2, and right under their section in the game's own codex, it says "all-female." Even if this weren't in here, they're obviously women. There's not even a good example to point out about how ridiculous this is, because genders are so specific. Too many concepts of femininity line up with the entire asari species traits for it to be anything other than a species of women. 

Again, let me say that this is a very cool idea; like the Amazons if they were psychics instead of warriors. Amazons, however, were a nation of female warrios, where as this is an entire species. The entire concept of them needlessly being bisexual women, indeed the big Mass Effect selling point is getting Liara naked along with either manShep or femShep, enforces this ridiculous mindset of 'pretty lesbians are okay' via having the only viable gay relationship be an alien species that identifies as 'female' to human perceptions of beauty. You can sleep with Liara as a man, but it's obviously heterosexual. 

My point is, why couldn't they be completely gender-ambiguous? They're aliens - they don't have sexes. The fluff even describes that asari have some sort of supernatural resonance that makes them attractive to all races. Mordin surmises 'neurochemical,' and I've had theories that it's a subconcious biotic power. 

So here's my theory - make them androgynous. Take away the big hips and breasts, and smudge the facial features. Maybe keep the voices higher-pitched, but switch voice actors around so they aren't all women and some are just very high-pitched men. If you make them unisex you can still keep the origins and reproduction, and still have the relationship, but there's no big flaming honking sign that says HEY LESBIAN SEX THIS WAY, PICK FEMSHEP AND LIARA TO SEE SEXY BUTTS TOUCHING!!

I shouldn't be so uppity about this but it just smacks as more sexism/homophobia to consider pretty lesbians okay for absolutely no reason.  It's nice to look at, therefore it's alright. I've known women to be more accepting and appreciative of female beauty but that's purely because of this kind of thing - you don't get that kind of reaction out of men these days. If a man observed another man's being attractive, most of the time he'll be called gay faster than you can say, 'Flamingly Homophobic Chestbump.' Enforcing and encouraging 'pretty lesbians' is just more disgusting homophobia; it all melts away the moment you have elderly lesbians, or overweight lesbians, or anything that doesn't fit this male-driven perception of 'sexy.'

It's the same kind of thing that's propagated in Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. VV, bless her wonderful heart, is bisexual. All the women you can pick up in bars are bisexual, to the point of where nobody even mentions that you, the protagonist, are a woman hitting on these random and all-too-willing ladies. The options for men seducing men, even with powers/Seduction skill are almost nil, to the point of where some men are given the seduction option and recoil in horror. Women seducing women is practically equaling that of hetero. More backwards-ass double standard bullshit. 

It's especially ridiculous since turians are basically cricket humanoids with carapace skin and krogans are giant space hunchback lizard-orcs. You never even see females of either of these species, or salarians for that matter. What's with the underrepresentation of the ladies of other species? The only time I even hear about female turians is Garrus's fantastic story in Mass Effect 2. Why can't we get a female turian in ME3? 

Now to be fair I'm not crying out sexism or homophobia in Mass Effect (okay, Miranda's blatant ass-shot in ME2, yes, most definite sexism). FemShep is probably my favorite version of Shepard and her voice actor rules. The relationship you can have with Garrus is brilliantly written, portraying him as an charming man and a total sweetheart. The relationship with Tali was fantastic, especially that subtle line of how she rambles 'since her face is always covered and people can't read facial expression.' Ashley, racism aside, was a great character to have a romantic fling with. But these are just small gender/sexism nitpicks that, while fine taken alone, continue to reflect a double-standard in our society's perception of homosexuality. 

AFTEREDIT : I think there definitely is more sexism in Mass Effect upon closer inspection. I really shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss it just based on how ME is a good game series.

Abusing women is funny

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/08/15/tila.tequila.attacked/index.html

Lolz!!!!!!

Apparently violent abuse is hilarious because
- she's a reality/playboy star and who thinks she can sing so she deserves it.
- she's a girl and therefore its nothing new.
- she took off her top to appease them so she's a whore and she deserves it.
- they got more violent to her bare breasts, which means good on them, showing that whore what proper modesty is.
- she tried to keep singing while bleeding into a towel so she obviously didn't get the message.
- having rocks and broken bottles thrown at you isn't that life threatening I guess.
Its good to know that Insane Clown Posse continue to be the worst thing to ever happen to the music industry since Slipknot. Now their own fans are nothing more than violent sadistic giggling fucking assholes who think anything is funny provided you're not on the receiving end.

I'm really looking forward to the ICP response to this fucking horrifying event which will be the musical version of a high-five from them to the fans.

Reading Wanted: Hal Jordan

So, let me get this straight. 

The Green Lantern Corps is created by Ganthet and the Guardians who deprive themselves from emotion because it's dangerous, IE fear. However, a rebel group of alien women who don't wish to separate themselves from emotions form a dangerous splinter faction that lets a love-fueled gem zip from planet to planet, making hostile takeovers of whatever female body it wishes with no concern for human life. Its grand plan is to encase everything in crystal to keep it in suspended animation for all time.

So yes, the right and proper men The Guardians cleanse emotion from their lives, while the hot tempered women Zamarons run off and do senseless and dangerous things that turn them into terrorists.

The men are smart, logical, and good while the women are dumb, emotional, and villainous. 

Um.

What the fuck Geoff Johns?