Welcome to my twister mind

welcome to my epic fantasy world. we have many developed fantasy kingdoms with 2000 years of rich lore and history. and to the south you can see the evil sand people and to the east theres japanchina.

you will struggle to say the unsayable thing for five years straight. and then it will suddenly become easy on a Wednesday morning

It's fun being queer and weird and unconventional until you remember you live in a society

In my experience, horror fans are by and large lovely people with a very healthy relationship to their genre of choice, but sometimes they fuck up and say something that in their ears sounds very affirmative of the movie of discussion and to everyone else sounds like the most sinister shit.

Revealing the ignorance of my youth here, but who is this and what is she known for?

Anita Sarkeesian, feminist who interpreted media under a feminist lens. She did a series about video games and she was the subject of targeted harassment. That was the start of gamergate

Minor correction, the start of gamergate was based around a different reporter, Zoe Quinn, but they were both absolutely violently threatened over their involvement in video game criticism and development. A hate campaign was started by Quinn's ex-boyfriend when he wrote a post falsely accusing them of dating video game journalists in order to receive positive reviews on their own game, Depression Quest, which led other bad actors to accuse all women in the industry (Zoe identified as female at the time) of perceived sexual immorality. Anita Sarkeesian's brilliant Youtube series Tropes vs Women in Video Games (which everyone should watch, right now) sparked a particular nerve for criticizing popular games of killing and/or victimizing any important female character (there is a CHILLING bit that borders on ludicrous where she describes the plots of a seemingly endless parades of games as "In [title], [male player character's] wife dies, and you then have to rescue [his] daughter."). That series did actually make a huge change in the industry, especially when touted by progressive legacy developers like Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Psychonauts), who went on to expand hiring in his company to front women and minority voices, but the shift didn't really show for a long time and echoes of the sexism that plagues the industry at its core are still rampant.

Thanks for the correction! I was like 8-10 years old when this all went down (2014-2016) so I only know vaguely about it. I’m still learning about this.

The gamergators were also the start of the modern alt-right and younger male wing of the MAGA movement, btw. They were coopted into MAGA by Steve Bannon, then-aide to Donald. Sarkeesian and Quinn did not ruin video games, but the men and boys who harassed them certainly ruined politics for the next ten years. (And video game review sections/discourse, arguably, given how aggressive the gater-chuds are and how they never shut the fuck up about their hatred of anything they believe is “woke.”)