The Bottled Sun

Incoherent brain dumps from an ever worrying mind.

[femfreq]

This is a culture war. The right side is winning, at great cost. At great personal costs to people like Anita Sarkeesian, Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn and even Jennifer Lawrence, and countless others who are on the frontlines of creating new worlds for women, for girls, for everyone who believes that stories matter and there are too many still untold. We are winning. We are winning because we are more resourceful, more compassionate, more culturally aware. We’re winning because we know what it’s like to fight through adversity, through shame and pain and constant reminders of our own worthlessness, and come up punching. We know we’re winning because the terrified rage of a million mouthbreathing manchild misogynists is thick as nerve gas in the air right now. Us Social Justice Warriors – this is me, stealing that word in order to use it against my enemies- are winning the culture war by tearing up the rulebook, and there’s nothing the sad, mad little boys who hate women and queers and people of colour can do about it. Nothing, at least, that doesn’t sabotage their strategy, because they can win their game from day to day, but they’re losing the war. They can punish me for writing this, and I’m sure they will, but that will only prove my point. I’m not afraid anymore. Every time they make an example of one of us, ten more stand up in outrage to hold her up or take her place. We are stronger, smarter and more numerous than anyone imagined, and we are not to be fucked with.

Excerpt from WHY WE’RE WINNING: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AND THE NEW CULTURE WAR by Laurie Penny (via femfreq)

I sure hope so! 😊

[fabeo20]

I Got Curious

Yesterday I got to play Depression Quest. Ironically I wouldn't ever know about the game if not for shitstains on the Internet harassing its creator, Zoe Quinn, which is damning and sab, but at least I got to know about the game. Now I wanna talk about the game a little because I thought it was very interesting, intriguing, etc...

Depression Quest felt very comfortable to play through, although it my choices in the game made it rather short. Apart from some minor details, it felt like the game was describing the real me uncannily. Odd, really because I don't know the first thing about depression. I never suffered it and I don't even know what it would be like, despite the game constantly telling me that I was profoundly depressed or some such thing.

I'd like to know how professionals in the field can really diagnose someone with depression, because it's possible that a person is depressed and have difficulty getting through life, but it also could be the case that the person is not really clinically depressed but rather just lazy, useless and stupid like myself.

I also thought some details in the game unfathomable. Like, the protagonist had some friends that at some point he couldn't socialize with anymore and a girlfriend. How is that possible that depression allows for such things? I don't have friends or a significant other and I'm not even depressed.

Other thing I didn't understand quite well is that the game ended without ever bringing up the topic of suicide. Maybe it's something else entirely, but people always conflate depression with suicide, so I thought I'd encounter something to that effect in the game. Oh well...

Actually I guess there might be some correlation betwenn depression and suicide but not necessarily causation. I mean, people doesn't have to be depressed to be suicidal necessarily, right? I bet most abhorrent failures such as myself constantly dabble in such thoughts.

That all aside, playing through the game was fantastic. It was like me living my days as usual. Breezing through work, seeking distractions in the evenings until I'm sufficiently tired that I can just plop on my bed and sleep, etc. I could never describe what it's like to live. Then along comes an interactive game and does just that (I wish I was a little eloquent).

Now, about the choices I made in game. I think I must've played it wrong because at no point I was on medication or being treated at all, so I must've fucked up some choices and then the narrative kinda just stopped about a month after I broke up with Alex. There was no end. For my part, I'd have expanded the end a little to include the formidable Exit Bag (check it out on Wikipedia, it's fantastic!). Not that it should provide a solution for clinically depressed people, but I'd definitely recommend it to human garbage like myself. In fact, since I learned about the wonderful properties of helium/nitrogen I became a very calm person. Just knowing that having a little bit of cash stashed away for when I hit rock bottom basically killed off all my anxiety. =)

Still, the vast majority of people will go through life without ever knowing what depression is really about. Just look at the douche nozzles accusing Robin Williams of being a coward. For this reason, I recommend that EVERYONE plays this game.

Peace!

[brutereason]

The irony of this situation is massive enough to develop its own gravitational field. These harassers want Sarkeesian to stop talking about misogyny in video games. So they unleash horrifying misogyny on Sarkeesian herself. To, I guess, make the point that video games are just fine? That misogyny in games is having no broader cultural effect? That there is no problem here? Because this kind of behavior is normal? If I wasn’t half convinced that the men harassing Sarkeesian weren’t in fact actual trolls — like, the kind that live under bridges with only rocks for friends — I would wonder how they’d feel if their mom or girlfriend or wife was receiving the same threats.

Video Game Misogynists Argue That Misogyny In Video Games Is Not A Problem By Misogynistically Harassing A Woman, Because That’s Logical | xoJane (via brutereason)

I'd say that "trolling" is beside the point because whether someone's dishing out such levels of vitriol genuinely or just to get a rise out the victim, it's still disgraceful and sociopathic behavior.

Also, I'd rather people had real empathy towards everyone, rather than just close women close to them. A women don't stop being a human being deserving of respect just because she's not everyone's close relative.

What's more: anyone who goes out of their way to prove Anita's point for her is just a massive idiot.

[femfreq]

This dominant narrative surrounding the inevitability of female objectification and victimhood is so powerful that it not only defines our concepts of reality but it even sets the parameters for how we think about entirely fictional worlds, even those taking place in the realms of fantasy and science fiction. It’s so normalized that when these elements are critiqued, the knee-jerk response I hear most often is that if these stories did not include the exploitation of women, then the game worlds would feel too “unrealistic” or “not historically accurate”. What does it say about our culture when games routinely bend or break the laws of physics and no one bats an eye? When dragons, ogres and magic are inserted into historically influenced settings without objection. We are perfectly willing to suspend our disbelief when it comes to multiple lives, superpowers, health regeneration and the ability to carry dozens of weapons and items in a massive invisible backpack. But somehow the idea of a world without sexual violence and exploitation is deemed too strange and too bizarre to be believable.

Tropes vs Women in Video Games, Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 (via femfreq)

Another sublime episode as I've come to expect from the Tropes Vs Women in Video Games' folks!

Kudos to everybody involved and especially to Anita Sarkeesian for having the courage to go through even knowing that she'll inevitably have to deal with toxicity of internet shitstains.

You guys make a huge difference! Thank you all! :)

[brutereason]

(via Flowchart: Should You Catcall Her? | Playboy)

Pretty impressive for Playboy.

[brutereason]

John Crawford III was shot in a Wal-Mart after police received a 911 call alerting them that a man with a rifle was walking around the store. Officers arrived on the scene and, after a brief encounter, shot the 22-year-old man, who later died of a gunshot wound to the torso. As we now know, Crawford was holding a Crosman MK-177 air pump rifle—a nonlethal replica air rifle, intended for a child—and sold at the very store where he was shot while carrying it. Much of the focus of the discussions around this case has been on this fact: Why would police shoot a man holding a child’s replica gun in the store that sold it? A fair question, to be sure, but I wish to raise another. Ohio is an “open carry” state. So even if Crawford were carrying a real, fully loaded rifle, why would that raise any alarms? How could that possibly be a reason to kill him?

John Crawford Shooting: Open Carry for Whites; Open Season on Blacks - The Root (via brutereason)

[brutereason]

And there it is. A nearly all-white crowd chanting to a nearly all-black crowd, “Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!” Contemporary racism encapsulated by an attempt to package it as support for the police, exposed by calls to shoot black men. There are no words.

Ferguson protesters chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” Darren Wilson supporters replied, “Shoot!” (via brutereason)

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6rAM5Gw0_E&list=UUC8712GD68MdjmFD4TXgYuw

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[brutereason]

People who say that suicide is selfish always reference the survivors. It’s selfish to leave children, spouses and other family members behind, so they say. They’re not thinking about the survivors, or so they would have us believe. What they don’t know is that those very loved ones are the reason many people hang on for just one more day. They do think about the survivors, probably up until the very last moment in many cases. But the soul-crushing depression that envelops them leaves them feeling like there is no alternative. Like the only way to get out is to opt out. And that is a devastating thought to endure. Until you’ve stared down that level of depression, until you’ve lost your soul to a sea of emptiness and darkness… you don’t get to make those judgments. You might not understand it, and you are certainly entitled to your own feelings, but making those judgments and spreading that kind of negativity won’t help the next person. In fact, it will only hurt others.

There’s Nothing Selfish About Suicide | Katie Hurley (via brutereason)

[trapcard]

okay but when you have holocaust survivors and people who were activists during the civil rights movement supporting mike brown and then KKK members and neo nazi’s supporting the officer you should be able to figure out which side is the right one.

[brutereason]

If we’re going to throw out platitudes like, “Suicide never solves anything,” or “if he had only waited a day, things might have gotten better,” when someone dies from suicide, then we need to say the same things about people who die from other diseases. “He shouldn’t have died from heart disease. If he’d waited a day, things might have gotten better.” “Having a stroke never solves anything.” “Dying from cancer is the most selfish thing a person can do.” We often blame patients for their illnesses, especially in cases where addiction, obesity, or sexuality is a factor, but somehow it strikes me as especially cruel in a case where the criticism is echoing the very thing that killed the patient in the first place. People who have committed suicide already believe themselves selfish, weak, and cowardly. Rarely does a person succumb to Leukemia specifically because they feel bad about what a Leukemia-having person they secretly are at heart.

After a Long Illness | Trout Nation (via brutereason)