Civil Disorder

I got an unexpected email this morning.

Months ago, I signed up for BlueSky's invite code thing. I never forgot about it, and I didn't care at first. Not 'til I started measuring the time in months, which clued me in that maybe that platform isn't great on the management side.

For almost ten years I was told by people, and seen general internet reaction, that this film was terrible. Shown a couple of out-of-context scenes. I wasn't sold, but I didn't discount maybe it was true.

I just watched it myself for the first time ever. The ending was stupid, but the bulk of the film was actually pretty good. People wanting 1:1 remakes of things are kind of missing the point of art in film. And I'm sure some of the backing of this one getting made was corporate "can we reboot a franchise" cynicism, but this film still had things to say (about transhumanism in particular) and that was worth letting it happen.

Citation first, then thoughts:

So uh... Mixed feelings eh?

E3 definitely had its problems. Coerced audience reaction, weird choices by Ubisoft in who to have give the presentations, etc. Plus, as the internet was more normalized for content delivery, it didn't make sense to have an event locked mostly to the press happening in a physical space. There could have been ways to adapt the event to fit the times, but the ESA just never chose to. And no, I don't have those ideas, but I do know that people still do attend other sorts of in-person events which is evidence enough.

Still, I'm gonna miss E3. There were a lot of years where the conferences were a spectacle that would be community watched. I remember in one particular year I was running back and forth from my computer to the living room since E3 was being broadcast on TV, exchanging view time and frantic internet posting in reaction. It's a nostalgia thing.

The obvious replacement people are talking about is The Game Awards, as sold by Geoff Keighley. This guy.

Cringe.

Look, I don't mind a decentralized, non-walled-garden replacement for E3 showing up. A neutral zone for video games. But the Game Awards - awards intrinsically suggesting that it's about the celebration of games already out and the people who made those games - should NOT be it. We've all seen how the TGA (yes, the The) has increasingly gone toward commercial time. This year was probably 40 minutes total of awards and speeches, with the other 3 hours dedicated to game announcements and related promotions. Oh, and let's not forget Keighley's habit of giving Hideo Kojima all the time he needs to talk about... a movie or game or whatever the fuck.

A star-fucker worshipping a star-fucker. A match made in heaven. But I digress.

Let me keep this one short.

Centrists say in response to Biden having a lot of awful political baggage, "vote blue no matter who." They never consider the angle that they should follow their own advice.

Run Biden: Has baggage, will turn voters away, election at risk. Run Not-Biden: May or may not have baggage, won't turn voters away.

It's... really easy. There's plenty of time to primary in someone who isn't Biden (and preferably not Harris either) so, why are they fighting so hard for Biden specifically? Not their bullshit "he's the most progressive president though" propaganda they throw at us, I mean what they among themselves like about him.

So I tweeted this but I'll repeat it here: it blows me away that when centrists see they are polling poorly, their reaction is "people have the wrong reaction to us." Rather than any adult sort of "what can we do to make it better, constituents?" This is why the Democratic Party (on the whole) are terrible and barely win by virtue of "not Republican." There's a few individuals in the party who stand out as being awesome on their own merits, but that's got nothing to do with them being part of the party. It's because they're good people with good hearts and vote and legislate accordingly.

Had a discussion spark just now from a piece Jason Schreier wrote (linked below) about Blizzard Entertainment and this new era of being under Microsoft instead of Activision, and felt I should commit some thoughts to here.

First is that, BlizzCon was way too close to the acquisition stuff as far as timetable goes for Blizzard to have any material and communication prepared about what is different or will be different. So using that for info is out.

I think our best barometer for seeing what happens with Blizzard is Overwatch 2. A lot of the decisions that went into it were very much from the cynical Activision capitalism influence, and while Microsoft is obviously capitalist as well (I'm meaning to refer to boards of directors /stocks here but it's more fun saying it this way), MS isn't as shitty about it. If Blizzard wants to show some good faith, it will be most obviously expressed through Overwatch 2.

WoW is going to be the worst barometer. Aside from being a decades-long MMO, with baggage in its own right from that, it also carries a lot of baggage from prior to Activision's merger with Blizzard. Bad lore decisions were happening even back then, and through Activision, and potentially now through Microsoft. I won't dwell on WoW anymore because I could write a goddamn thesis on it but I'll leave my parting shot to it as, the series needs to be rebooted. It's the only fix.

I'm worried about Jason's comment about Starcraft not being an RTS for its next entry. I don't mind the idea of Starcraft exploring other genres of gameplay as spinoffs, because as a setting it very much works for so many different kinds. But if the RTS mainstay is abandoned, I will fall out of my chair. Starcraft 2 was lauded as a massive success because it proved the RTS genre has legs still. It evolved the genre without abandoning it. I'm sure people will want to chime in about the eSports side failing and hey, you're right. Can't correct or "gotcha" me if I'm agreeing with you pre-emptively. However, I will note that eSports is 1) not the only reason why video games get made despite Activision's insistence (which no longer matters), and 2) eSports as a whole has been falling on its collective ass. It doesn't mean those genres or series should stop, just that the artificial pursuit of eSports should get reined in.

Alt-right: Fighting Jewish, Arab, and Muslim peoples, and progressives, weaponizing concerns about antisemitism.

Centrists: Fighting Jewish, Arab, and Muslim peoples, and progressives, misunderstanding antisemitism.

I know I do a lot of politics but can I be a Star Wars nerd here for a moment? If anyone needs to know my credentials I was born in the 80s and have digested most every piece of media and a lot of the books. There are few entries (ironically most of the films now) that I dislike.

Andor is like the best thing ever made for Star Wars. I didn't watch it yesterday or anything, but I've kinda been reliving it by exploring other peoples' live reactions to episodes and their video essays on the show and such. And it's sparked some hope and joy in me.

It's not just a matter of my personal sentiments regarding rebellion idolization and standing up against oppression. From the first film we were told: There is an Empire, and it is being rebelled against. And while that's generally a backdrop to the adventure stories, it doesn't get explored very often. Andor is the first mainstream exploration of that concept, to further cement what is at stake through all the other shows, films, video games, and book written. It is a good thing. And even setting aside the themes, as a production of work, it is spot on.

There's something to be said of the portrayal of evil in Andor vs the Star Wars series as a whole. In Star Wars people get shot pretty often with little regard, and in media where the Dark Side is being portrayed or described, it's very cartoonishly evil. Andor does away with all of that. Minutes into the show, two abusive law enforcement agents are shot - and the writers didn't do that just to show "yeah, this hero is a badass." The hero DWELLS on that because killing people in this show has consequences at a law enforcement level. When does that happen EVER in Star Wars? Life is actually given weight, even when it's the lives of the bad guys. And then there's the atrocities of the Empire. It's the little things people don't consider; control of cultures across occupied territories. Mandates and permits about who can participate in what celebration when and where and how. Even funerals are controlled. And while this is a work of fiction, it lands so well with people because of how imperialist and colonial powers have acted in real life and continue to right now as I write this.

The ADL has decided that college students calling for love and peace among Jewish and Arabian peoples counts as "terrorism."

News broke not long ago that all communication in Gaza has been cut off. International medical staff, rights observers, press, etc, they're all affected. But that's not why I started this.

This message is for every American who has been in favor of genociding Palestinians or otherwise taking very reckless stances when it comes to war violence.

Imagine if, in order to get rid of the KKK, the United States sealed off the state of Tennessee, denied it electricity and water on and off, denied it cement to rebuild structures and facilities destroyed in decades' worth of bombing - all this regardless of whether or not the people in Tennessee are members of the KKK or just so happen to be in the state it was founded.

Via Twitter, the Israeli government has chosen to say the quiet part out loud. The quiet part being them knowingly dismissing the Geneva Convention, which is meant to do things like prevent genocide. Israel is claiming their survival is contingent on being able to perform genocide against the Palestinian people (as opposed to surgically taking on Hamas as their propaganda claims). Palestinian people and Israeli people deserve better than that fascist, hateful government.

Guilty Gear XX has like the best rock soundtrack for video games, next to Quake 2. We need more things like that.

Bigot: "We need to exterminate (insert group of people here)." Internet wieners: "You're being divisive." (correct!) Someone from that group: "People are saying they want to kill us, that's messed up." Internet wieners: "You're being divisive." (incorrect!)

CBS released some polling data regarding the Israel v Hamas conflict and it has given me hope. By majority, US citizen support sending humanitarian aid to Gaza, and do not support sending more munitions to Israel. The specifics are:

Aid to Gaza Should: 70% dems, 59 inds, 41% reps Shouldn't: 30% dems, 41% inds, 59% reps

Weapons to Israel Should: 47% dems, 45% inds, 57% reps Shouldn't: 53% dems, 55% inds, 43% reps

It's important to note that the latter data is based on sending more munitions for the sake of the current violence, not the long term support of Israel.

So for as much as the government, the press, and famous people try to frame the situation one way, they aren't speaking for Americans by majority at least. So I'm foolishly choosing to have hope, that someone in the government will listen to all of us, and eventually get the ear of the diplomats to Israel and start applying the pressure to stop killing civilians.

I do want to leave one additional note here that Republicans support Israel's genocide against Palestinians because Republicans, being white supremacists, hate everyone in that region. They want to push one side into committing atrocities so that the other retaliates. For them, violent conflict is a win-win.

Whereas centrist support of Israel's genocide is coming from I guess a place of fear, that they'll be labeled "anti-Semitic" for being critical of specific actions a government is taking. Which isn't anti-Semitic; we criticize all governments in the same fashion.

Twitter is testing having all users pay to use the site whatsoever in two countries and is going to roll it out globally soon. It may be a dollar for the whole year, but giving financial info to one of the least security minded people on the planet is something a lot of people are NOT going to do that (let alone the site has been free for its 15-some years of operation).

It's finally about to die. Not that I specifically was cheering for it. Twitter had a lot of problems, but it served functions and was useful. But ever since that dumbass took over, he ruined all of it, particularly for creators.