Yale's Mixed Company a cappella group recently got a bit of flak for the "Single Asians" video--no longer available on YouTube, probably because of what happened when people actually, uh, started watching the video, but you're not missing much since (apart from everything else) the video was lovingly produced with all the care and attention you might put into a five-slide PowerPoint presentation--which features four young Asian women dancing and singing to the tune of "Single Ladies" by Beyonce. So it wasn't amazing. But was it... racist? (Dun dun dun.)
The lyrics, if you care, are listed below (via Ivygateblog.com). It's basically a recitation of Asian stereotypes; for the first thirty seconds the song bears some tenuous thematic connection to the original "Single Ladies" and it's still possible that this is in fact a satire of stereotypes about Asians, but then it's revealed as a list of increasingly random Asian stereotypes presented without commentary. Did a lot of people hate it? Sure. Does that make them humorless haters? Well, for those people to have "missed the joke," there at least has to be a joke in the first place.
Therein lies the problem. The song doesn't really push back on Asian stereotypes or offer any subversive commentary, it's too straightforward to be clearly identifiable as satire or parody, it doesn't attempt to empathize with the Asian/Asian-American experience (whether as the object of stereotyping or otherwise), it doesn't display any particular insider Asian or Asian-American knowledge or humor--more the opposite, in fact. In the end, it's perfectly content to rest on a bunch of Asian girls dancing as they happily reiterate that Chinese people can't tell the difference between "R" and "L". So, even if for no other reason than sheer ignorance and lack of effort in both conception and creation, in the final running this work could well place closer to a minstrel show than a work of satire or commentary. Laziness dooms all intentions, people. Don't let it happen to you.
(Mixed Company claims they're "known for having a great (and irreverent) sense of humor." Which, ironically, is probably the funniest thing about this toothless song.)
Anyway, the lyrics:
All the single Asians (x5)
Now put your hands up
Library and MCDB
Test comin' up next week.
You dropped a flask,
And now I've gotta ask
If you're enough to be in a lab with me.
I need this grade
I've never been laid,
Because I live my life for med school.
I do bio-chem
On the weekends
You ain't hardcore enough for me.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it,
An A-minus
Ain't the same as an A is it?
Cause if you like me
Then you shoulda got an A on it.
Let's make some noise
For all the boys
Who have yellow fever. [By the way, "yellow fever" is incredibly annoying.]
I'll be Lucy Liu [Seriously, the weird shit some strange dudes will tell you in public...]
Or Sailor Moon [...about how their Japanese girlfriend feared the size of their non-Asian cock...]
A geisha just for you. [...but learned it was not, in fact, too big for her to handle--yes, this really happened.]
At the restaurant
I'll taste your sauce
And you can slurp my sushi. [slurp a long cylindrical (and, it seems, inexplicably oozing) sushi roll? These girls are clearly packing a little something extra in their shorts... what the hell?]
I like it raw,
So bring it on,
And me love you long time. [I'm a Japanese dick-girl! Wait, now I'm a impoverished war prostitute! Oh, I'm so confused.]
[With faux-Chinese "accent"]
We from Beijing,
We dry cleaning, [Wait, unless we're back to discussing the Supreme Court holding in Yick Wo, that's not even the "right" stereotype--who wrote this? C'mon, folks, stereotypes are annoying enough without people blurring them all together to boot. If you're gonna hate, keep it straight: that's my new motto, as of two seconds ago right now.]
And practice viorin.
We visit Yale,
We bring peace there,
And take picture at the Beinecke.
I make the rice,
(She make it nice)
Cause I'm in charge of Dim Sum!!! [Yes, the song is really this emphatic about dim sum, even though rice isn't really, uh, the point of a dim sum spread]
I make chai tea [Don't recall if this lyric is accurate--I mean, chai tea isn't even East Asian to begin with]
I do tai chi
And bring honor to our family.
[Chorus reiterating Beyonce's lyrics in Korean]
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Laughter is the best medicine (for brainwashing)
So, Dollhouse. The main premise appears to be that young women are raped, or pretend to be in danger of rape, or are implanted with memories of rape, or get assaulted by rapists, or stand around naked and oblivious in the shower while guys stare at them with hard-ons. (The latter is what passes for a love story in this show.) Sometimes young women do other things too, like get brainwashed into having sex with dudes for money. But this is all okay because, ladies, if you suffer long enough and hard enough, eventually you will get to punch a dude in the head, or ninja-kick him or something--mainly because your handlers gave you that ability, not because you have any real agency of your own--and the audience will cheer because that ninja-kick totally makes up for everything that just happened. And then you'll forget most of what did just happen. Until next week, at which point it's back to running around in a very short skirt to be imperiled and stuff. There're supposed to be some other themes to the show, too; as the opening credits make clear, one major theme is that Eliza Dushku's character could not be happier about putting on hooker stockings and wearing the aforementioned very short skirts while listening to outtakes from the Felicity soundtrack.
Anyway, all this clearly makes Dollhouse staff (AKA the British Nationality is a Substitute for Having a Character, the Seth Green Lite, the bad cop, the good cop) active and knowing members of a human experimentation-prostitution-slavery operation. But did you know they're also funny and lovable? It's true! Why, in the most recent episode, "Echoes," everybody starts tripping balls on secret drugs: drugs which could make you crazy and suicidal, or--if you're a member of the Dollhouse staff--spout charming Whedonesque dialogue and jump on trampolines. Comic scenes ensued, and the fans ate it all up; who knew pimp-slash-rape-enablers were so wacky and adorable? Those lovable rascals! Which one's your favorite? I like the one that says "inappropriate starches!"
There's no rule that says people can't have likable aspects and do awful things to people on a daily basis. But "Echoes" in particular is more invidious than the simple and honest premise that people are complex, that a doer of evil is not simply a walking evil tower of evil 24 evil hours a day. Instead, it gives the characters a gloss of Whedon-brand whimsy. People remember the catchy lines, not the whole rape-slave-oppression-as-a-day-job part. Then again, Dollhouse is a show where Boyd the handler gets a sympathetic edit because he cares about Echo. Really cares, deep down. That's why he helps pimp her out again and again, occasionally furrowing a brow to show the depth of his concern, and then at some point during a given episode he'll descend upon Eliza Dushku like a savior angel, taking her hand and leading her out of danger to--to another round of brainwashing and pimpery, mainly. But he furrowed his brow to signify a vague moral concern on which he can't be bothered to take action, so what more do you want; he's funny and plays the piano when he's tripping on drugs! And isn't that what's really important here?
Of course it is. And isn't that the Joss Whedon touch everyone has been waiting for?
Anyway, all this clearly makes Dollhouse staff (AKA the British Nationality is a Substitute for Having a Character, the Seth Green Lite, the bad cop, the good cop) active and knowing members of a human experimentation-prostitution-slavery operation. But did you know they're also funny and lovable? It's true! Why, in the most recent episode, "Echoes," everybody starts tripping balls on secret drugs: drugs which could make you crazy and suicidal, or--if you're a member of the Dollhouse staff--spout charming Whedonesque dialogue and jump on trampolines. Comic scenes ensued, and the fans ate it all up; who knew pimp-slash-rape-enablers were so wacky and adorable? Those lovable rascals! Which one's your favorite? I like the one that says "inappropriate starches!"
There's no rule that says people can't have likable aspects and do awful things to people on a daily basis. But "Echoes" in particular is more invidious than the simple and honest premise that people are complex, that a doer of evil is not simply a walking evil tower of evil 24 evil hours a day. Instead, it gives the characters a gloss of Whedon-brand whimsy. People remember the catchy lines, not the whole rape-slave-oppression-as-a-day-job part. Then again, Dollhouse is a show where Boyd the handler gets a sympathetic edit because he cares about Echo. Really cares, deep down. That's why he helps pimp her out again and again, occasionally furrowing a brow to show the depth of his concern, and then at some point during a given episode he'll descend upon Eliza Dushku like a savior angel, taking her hand and leading her out of danger to--to another round of brainwashing and pimpery, mainly. But he furrowed his brow to signify a vague moral concern on which he can't be bothered to take action, so what more do you want; he's funny and plays the piano when he's tripping on drugs! And isn't that what's really important here?
Of course it is. And isn't that the Joss Whedon touch everyone has been waiting for?
Monday, March 2, 2009
The Nightwing Doctrine in what regard, Charlie?
So--Outsiders, yeah? Borrowed a couple of the trades and so far it's a mildly horrible book. Thoroughly approve of gorillas and the disembodied brains that love them, or vice versa, but the book conveys less of an edgy-superheroes-doing-edgy-things-that-regular-superheroes-can't-do-because-they're-not-edgy feel, more of a I-watch-Fox-TV-shows-while-high-on-Percocet feel. As amusing as it is to watch superheroes go 24 on, er, regular human beings. (See Judd Winick et al., Outsiders: The Good Fight 30-36 (2006).) But he knows where the nukes sarin canisters are, guys! And there's only five minutes an indeterminate amount of time left until they blow somebody maybe decides they should do something putting the plan into place to use them! Ooh, ooh! Can Metamorpho turn into a waterboard?
Here's the thing--say you have superpowers. Heck, say you have an entire team of superpower types, and a high tech flying ship that can do all kinds of neat computery things, and so on, and so forth--if your first and only answer to the question "Where would someone put a not-insignificant storage facility containing a crapload of sarin, somewhere in an African nation of modest size?" is "Let's grab an assistant in the office of political affairs, put on our best camo and gimp hoods, then systematically start breaking his hands and other assorted parts of his anatomy until he cracks," you are a) a fucking lazy moron, and b) in the wrong business entirely.
Let's rehash, shall we?
You: superpowers, magic soul-eating sword, giant flying ship full of fancy computers and stuff. Also, kryptonite in a box. Just in case.
Them: desktop PCs and paper. Snazzy berets.
Something about that match-up suggests that it is not, in fact, terribly hard to find out where the sarin is, as long as you don't mind having Metamorpho breeze in through a window or something and maybe pry open a file cabinet. Or, y'know, maybe you have to hack into some government files by punching in the president's birthday as a password. Maybe you might even try, um, scanning any large semi-demi-military-looking bases that happen to be sitting around in the open. Because that's where the sarin is, you know. Inside a large military-looking base. Which is sitting out in the open.
The best part is that Thunder is like, hey, um, isn't this kind of torture and kind of wrong? but Nightwing slaps her upside the head with his Jack Bauer logic (Big picture! It's all your fault! Big picture!) and then they find the sarin, sitting around, not being used, not being about to be used, and Thunder sadly admits Nightwing was right after all big picture. Terrible.
(And the less said about the Outsiders' concept of regime change, the better:
Step 1: put the current president on a desert island.
Step 2: tell the deputy minister he's in charge and he should be really nice to people. Because generally, that's all it ever takes to assert control of a destabilized nation dominated by the military and plagued by an army of rogue child soldiers.)
Here's the thing--say you have superpowers. Heck, say you have an entire team of superpower types, and a high tech flying ship that can do all kinds of neat computery things, and so on, and so forth--if your first and only answer to the question "Where would someone put a not-insignificant storage facility containing a crapload of sarin, somewhere in an African nation of modest size?" is "Let's grab an assistant in the office of political affairs, put on our best camo and gimp hoods, then systematically start breaking his hands and other assorted parts of his anatomy until he cracks," you are a) a fucking lazy moron, and b) in the wrong business entirely.
Let's rehash, shall we?
You: superpowers, magic soul-eating sword, giant flying ship full of fancy computers and stuff. Also, kryptonite in a box. Just in case.
Them: desktop PCs and paper. Snazzy berets.
Something about that match-up suggests that it is not, in fact, terribly hard to find out where the sarin is, as long as you don't mind having Metamorpho breeze in through a window or something and maybe pry open a file cabinet. Or, y'know, maybe you have to hack into some government files by punching in the president's birthday as a password. Maybe you might even try, um, scanning any large semi-demi-military-looking bases that happen to be sitting around in the open. Because that's where the sarin is, you know. Inside a large military-looking base. Which is sitting out in the open.
The best part is that Thunder is like, hey, um, isn't this kind of torture and kind of wrong? but Nightwing slaps her upside the head with his Jack Bauer logic (Big picture! It's all your fault! Big picture!) and then they find the sarin, sitting around, not being used, not being about to be used, and Thunder sadly admits Nightwing was right after all big picture. Terrible.
(And the less said about the Outsiders' concept of regime change, the better:
Step 1: put the current president on a desert island.
Step 2: tell the deputy minister he's in charge and he should be really nice to people. Because generally, that's all it ever takes to assert control of a destabilized nation dominated by the military and plagued by an army of rogue child soldiers.)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
9 out of 10 fanboys love the smooth taste of rape! I mean, grape. Well, no, actually, rape.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MNEMOSYNE RELEASES NEW SODA, TENTACLE GRAPE
NEW YORK, NY - December 29, 2008 -Mnemosyne LLC has teamed up with the people who brought you the Anime After Dark Film Festival to bring you a new taste sensation!
This new beverage, inspired by the genre of adult Japanese animation called Hentai, is a perfect caffeine rush for gamers, cosplayers, and comic book fans.
"Obviously I don't take the brand very seriously. we can't. The best I can do is develop products that I'd want to buy myself and frankly this is the right combination of ridiculous and delicious." Says brand creator, Dekker Dreyer.
Proofreading: another thing he doesn't take very seriously. So, uh, Tentacle... Gr--
As the website copy says, "WATCH OUT! You gonna get GRAPED!" (Her lips say "いや!" but her tastebuds say "おいしい!")
The only reason this soda exists is to point out that "rape" sounds a lot like "grape," and wouldn't it be funny if you constantly replaced the word "rape" with "grape"? "[S]tart graping your friends!" Uh, no thanks. But please note that this beverage is "crafted with care... [by a "skilled team of grapists," no less] and a slight feeling of breathless anticipation." Because what's more appetizing than the thought of a bunch of geeks hunched over a soda production line, "breathlessly anticipating" (there's a new euphemism for you) the forcible pseudopod rape of screaming, baby-faced Japanese schoolgirls all over it? Woo. Plus, once you've seen a criminal case where a man suggests he molested his prepubescent daughter in part because he was influenced by his anime porn habit, thinking about a "skilled grapist" is just not thirst-making. Still, if it weren't prohibited by jail regulations, the guy would probably really appreciate someone pre-ordering him a case of Tentacle Grape. You gotta laugh at it all, right?
(According to the press release, "[a]dditional flavors and label designs are slated for the third quarter of 2009." How about Shouta-Cola? You can put a cringing 6-year old anime boy on the label and surround him with molesty adult hands. The fizzy taste of imminent pedo-rape is just the right combination of ridiculous and delicious to appeal to Mr. Dreyer's purchasing sensibilities.)
Keep on keepin' it classy, male fandom! And I'll keep avoiding you at conventions. And comic book stores. And GameStop. And...
MNEMOSYNE RELEASES NEW SODA, TENTACLE GRAPE
NEW YORK, NY - December 29, 2008 -Mnemosyne LLC has teamed up with the people who brought you the Anime After Dark Film Festival to bring you a new taste sensation!
This new beverage, inspired by the genre of adult Japanese animation called Hentai, is a perfect caffeine rush for gamers, cosplayers, and comic book fans.
"Obviously I don't take the brand very seriously. we can't. The best I can do is develop products that I'd want to buy myself and frankly this is the right combination of ridiculous and delicious." Says brand creator, Dekker Dreyer.
Proofreading: another thing he doesn't take very seriously. So, uh, Tentacle... Gr--
As the website copy says, "WATCH OUT! You gonna get GRAPED!" (Her lips say "いや!" but her tastebuds say "おいしい!")
The only reason this soda exists is to point out that "rape" sounds a lot like "grape," and wouldn't it be funny if you constantly replaced the word "rape" with "grape"? "[S]tart graping your friends!" Uh, no thanks. But please note that this beverage is "crafted with care... [by a "skilled team of grapists," no less] and a slight feeling of breathless anticipation." Because what's more appetizing than the thought of a bunch of geeks hunched over a soda production line, "breathlessly anticipating" (there's a new euphemism for you) the forcible pseudopod rape of screaming, baby-faced Japanese schoolgirls all over it? Woo. Plus, once you've seen a criminal case where a man suggests he molested his prepubescent daughter in part because he was influenced by his anime porn habit, thinking about a "skilled grapist" is just not thirst-making. Still, if it weren't prohibited by jail regulations, the guy would probably really appreciate someone pre-ordering him a case of Tentacle Grape. You gotta laugh at it all, right?
(According to the press release, "[a]dditional flavors and label designs are slated for the third quarter of 2009." How about Shouta-Cola? You can put a cringing 6-year old anime boy on the label and surround him with molesty adult hands. The fizzy taste of imminent pedo-rape is just the right combination of ridiculous and delicious to appeal to Mr. Dreyer's purchasing sensibilities.)
Keep on keepin' it classy, male fandom! And I'll keep avoiding you at conventions. And comic book stores. And GameStop. And...
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Peter David's remake of The Blob
Is it petty to drop one issue of a comic? Well, maybe. But $3 for X-Factor #36--I could be persuaded to part with $1, probably, but a whole $3 feels like giving Marvel an unearned reward when I could buy a hot chocolate and a bagel instead and actually receive joy from my purchase (except that bagels in this part of the world are uniformly horrible, but that's another story). It's a pretty low day when the ad pages are more attractive than the actual comic content, yet here we are. How many times can it be said? Comics. Are. A. Visual. Medium. So even though Peter David's scripting might be the same as ever, it can't save the issue when Larry Stroman's art continues just this side of horrific, a nightmare world where objects, background, physiques all shift, puddle, move and mutate from one panel to the next; even if he does try to lighten it up by drawing random kitty cats and birds and bunnies instead of proportions and perspectives and anatomy, the color palette is dourly unappealing as well.
Although the comic is still intended as noir, it now has the same noir feel as, say, feeding the entire script to The Maltese Falcon through Babelfish--English to Finnish to English--and then re-enacting the end product with Quizno's puppets. Though it looks like next month, people go back to vaguely resembling people instead of a head I once tried to sculpt out of hamburger meat. So, who knows. Hopefully the magic will come back.
Although the comic is still intended as noir, it now has the same noir feel as, say, feeding the entire script to The Maltese Falcon through Babelfish--English to Finnish to English--and then re-enacting the end product with Quizno's puppets. Though it looks like next month, people go back to vaguely resembling people instead of a head I once tried to sculpt out of hamburger meat. So, who knows. Hopefully the magic will come back.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Detroit: a place where people do stuff. Maybe. It's hard to tell.
You'll have to pardon me for temporarily borrowing these scans from the Photobucket of one tw_basketcase until I can finish touching up my own, but now that X-Factor #33 is finally out? Yeah... no.
I don't think I hate Stroman's art in this issue because I'm ignorant of what art is or unable to stomach anything harder than Alan Davis--yeah, I was really into Mondrian, Magritte, Seurat, all sorts of Impressionist/Post-Impressionist and Hudson River School-type stuff when I was a kid, fairly tame as far as it goes, but I was raised on New York City art museums to be cool with everyone from Burne-Jones to Kandinsky to Pollock and beyond. And even after taking into account that art can take on just about any form, however abstract, and still possess positive, lasting qualities, I still consider Larry Stroman's work here to be hideously unsuccessful. He can draw, I must emphasize--from time to time there's a panel that actually looks perfectly decent and you wonder, well, why didn't he bother to keep doing that, then?--but for the most part, this issue looks like it was phoned in over two paper cups and a length of string.
Or maybe I just really hate this top panel. The sequences with Darwin and Longshot rapidly oscillate between "hey ho, here we are in the trackless waste" and "look, an urban street with people on it!" In the page just before this, Darwin and Longshot stepped off a Detroit street into what I guess is an abandoned lot, which here magically morphs into giant sand dunes filled with free-standing ruins and random floating animals. Two panels later on the same page, even though they haven't even moved, the background? Trees and intact houses.
(And about those animals, what the hell is that? Is that a hawk? Or just a really inept Skrull? Because it's the wrong body type to be a pigeon, starling, sparrow, chickadee, mockingbird, oh, I dunno, night warbler, whatever. It looks like a random... ground-skimming... hawk... in the middle of what is either allegedly Detroit or the protected shoreline nesting habitat of the killdeer.)
Turn this page and now they're back in the same trackless waste, except it's inexplicably filled with crowds of people. A page before, Jazinda appeared to be standing near a telephone pole on a city street. Now--is that her silhouette to the far right of the top panel? Just standing around in the desert? (Floaty Cat also reappears in silhouette in the bottom panel, for no reason.) The whole thing is like that--there's no real attempt to establish where anybody is in relation to anything else. It's just a bunch of panels that happen to be sharing a page, which is doubly unfortunate when there's no dialogue to disguise the weakness of the action sequence. Comics are a visual storytelling medium and, regardless of personal art style, if you can't convey the story in an effective, dramatic manner, it just doesn't work.
Anyway, we'll see. I do like X-Factor, for the most part. But I'm perfectly willing to jump ship and hook up with Invincible Iron Man instead of paying to watch Jamie "No Nose" Madrox and his other face-shifting buddies throw punches or randomly run back and forth through an indeterminate landscape populated by African-Americans depicted with the same bone structure as Deep Ones. (Marvel Detroit's new slogan might as well be "Dude, You'll Never Guess What We Put In The Water Here.")
I don't think I hate Stroman's art in this issue because I'm ignorant of what art is or unable to stomach anything harder than Alan Davis--yeah, I was really into Mondrian, Magritte, Seurat, all sorts of Impressionist/Post-Impressionist and Hudson River School-type stuff when I was a kid, fairly tame as far as it goes, but I was raised on New York City art museums to be cool with everyone from Burne-Jones to Kandinsky to Pollock and beyond. And even after taking into account that art can take on just about any form, however abstract, and still possess positive, lasting qualities, I still consider Larry Stroman's work here to be hideously unsuccessful. He can draw, I must emphasize--from time to time there's a panel that actually looks perfectly decent and you wonder, well, why didn't he bother to keep doing that, then?--but for the most part, this issue looks like it was phoned in over two paper cups and a length of string.
Or maybe I just really hate this top panel. The sequences with Darwin and Longshot rapidly oscillate between "hey ho, here we are in the trackless waste" and "look, an urban street with people on it!" In the page just before this, Darwin and Longshot stepped off a Detroit street into what I guess is an abandoned lot, which here magically morphs into giant sand dunes filled with free-standing ruins and random floating animals. Two panels later on the same page, even though they haven't even moved, the background? Trees and intact houses.
(And about those animals, what the hell is that? Is that a hawk? Or just a really inept Skrull? Because it's the wrong body type to be a pigeon, starling, sparrow, chickadee, mockingbird, oh, I dunno, night warbler, whatever. It looks like a random... ground-skimming... hawk... in the middle of what is either allegedly Detroit or the protected shoreline nesting habitat of the killdeer.)
Turn this page and now they're back in the same trackless waste, except it's inexplicably filled with crowds of people. A page before, Jazinda appeared to be standing near a telephone pole on a city street. Now--is that her silhouette to the far right of the top panel? Just standing around in the desert? (Floaty Cat also reappears in silhouette in the bottom panel, for no reason.) The whole thing is like that--there's no real attempt to establish where anybody is in relation to anything else. It's just a bunch of panels that happen to be sharing a page, which is doubly unfortunate when there's no dialogue to disguise the weakness of the action sequence. Comics are a visual storytelling medium and, regardless of personal art style, if you can't convey the story in an effective, dramatic manner, it just doesn't work.
Anyway, we'll see. I do like X-Factor, for the most part. But I'm perfectly willing to jump ship and hook up with Invincible Iron Man instead of paying to watch Jamie "No Nose" Madrox and his other face-shifting buddies throw punches or randomly run back and forth through an indeterminate landscape populated by African-Americans depicted with the same bone structure as Deep Ones. (Marvel Detroit's new slogan might as well be "Dude, You'll Never Guess What We Put In The Water Here.")
Friday, July 18, 2008
AX Post-Mortem, Pt. 1
Atlus ran a Shin Megami Tensei panel at AX 2008. Cool, right? So I went, and so did some friends--the room was packed to capacity, unsurprisingly--and here's the thing: that panel was deadly. I'm not sure if marketing ever gave its seal of approval to the entire affair, but the main speaker was not really a polished public speaker (not his fault, but a moderator figure would've been a good idea) and the accompanying slideshow presentation was specifically designed to hide any or all aspects of interest. If you want a technical recap of the panel, you can find it easily enough online, but the whole affair pretty much went like this:
1. Static slide of game cover art appears on screen.
2. Yu Namba (senior project manager at Atlus) haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
3. Static slide of the next game's cover art appears on the screen.
4. Yu Namba haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
5. Ad nauseam.
One particular wince-point: as Digital Devil Saga VA Yuri Lowenthal talked about his experiences voicing the game, he mentioned seeing some of the cutscenes and being amazed that the game was actually being released in the U.S. Somewhere... somewhere in all of this would have been a swell opportunity to play a cutscene from the game, or at least a clip showing the man doing his damn job. Instead, Atlus provided... a static slide of the game cover art. The only way anyone could have put any less effort into this panel would be if they just shut off the projector entirely and let Namba mutter for an hour.
Now, I love Atlus, I love Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei series, but I'd been working all day and this was a flagrant waste of time. The panel didn't even attempt to excite any newcomers in the crowd: hey! Play this game! It comes with a cover and there is a picture on that cover! Wait, where are you going?
Swag or no swag, I pulled the ripcord and bailed. Didn't regret a thing. Wasn't even the first to leave.
My companions did stay for the duration--because one of them had a game device to ease the tedium until the Persona 4 announcement. Later on they came by to show me the swag: somewhat unexciting bright yellow shirts, which only came in gamer size (L) and were thus pretty much useless for small females anyway. Plus, bright yellow. (Who is that color supposed to flatter?)
"Ebay," they said.
"Ebay," I nodded.
1. Static slide of game cover art appears on screen.
2. Yu Namba (senior project manager at Atlus) haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
3. Static slide of the next game's cover art appears on the screen.
4. Yu Namba haltingly describes the game and its gameplay features, all of which you have to imagine for yourself because the AV presentation consists solely of a static slide of the game cover art.
5. Ad nauseam.
One particular wince-point: as Digital Devil Saga VA Yuri Lowenthal talked about his experiences voicing the game, he mentioned seeing some of the cutscenes and being amazed that the game was actually being released in the U.S. Somewhere... somewhere in all of this would have been a swell opportunity to play a cutscene from the game, or at least a clip showing the man doing his damn job. Instead, Atlus provided... a static slide of the game cover art. The only way anyone could have put any less effort into this panel would be if they just shut off the projector entirely and let Namba mutter for an hour.
Now, I love Atlus, I love Persona and the Shin Megami Tensei series, but I'd been working all day and this was a flagrant waste of time. The panel didn't even attempt to excite any newcomers in the crowd: hey! Play this game! It comes with a cover and there is a picture on that cover! Wait, where are you going?
Swag or no swag, I pulled the ripcord and bailed. Didn't regret a thing. Wasn't even the first to leave.
My companions did stay for the duration--because one of them had a game device to ease the tedium until the Persona 4 announcement. Later on they came by to show me the swag: somewhat unexciting bright yellow shirts, which only came in gamer size (L) and were thus pretty much useless for small females anyway. Plus, bright yellow. (Who is that color supposed to flatter?)
"Ebay," they said.
"Ebay," I nodded.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Breaking new ground since... never
Another delightful female character description, courtesy of PvP:
Jade Fontaine
Certainly there is more to Jade than just a chick who’s into games, comics and the Lord of the Rings movies. But, hey… who cares really? She’s a hot chick who’s into geek culture. That’s all we, as men, really need to know. Right?
Well, that's pretty much all you really need to know about the mindset of the author, in any case. ("But wait! I was being ironic! Yeah, ironic...")
Anyway. Fellas, if you think the world really needs one more comic about the hee-lar-ious adventures of yet another slacker gamer fanboy who may or may not bear a surprising resemblance to you (in your mind), or you already have a comic about the amazing exploits of said generic white dude and the people who inexplicably put up with his wastage, I strongly suggest that you not embrace the mindset of the Parents' Basement. You have every right to give every impression that you and your kind are socially retarded man-children--adverse to ambition, exercise, and fresh salads, content to see women as breasticular fantasies instead of actual people--but I wouldn't really advise you do so. (If nothing else, it doesn't hurt to differentiate your work from the horde of guys out there peddling the exact same tired wares.) It may take effort and/or talent to rise above its mephitic depths, but the Basement is not your friend.
Also, it floods whenever it rains. So, there's that.
Jade Fontaine
Certainly there is more to Jade than just a chick who’s into games, comics and the Lord of the Rings movies. But, hey… who cares really? She’s a hot chick who’s into geek culture. That’s all we, as men, really need to know. Right?
Well, that's pretty much all you really need to know about the mindset of the author, in any case. ("But wait! I was being ironic! Yeah, ironic...")
Anyway. Fellas, if you think the world really needs one more comic about the hee-lar-ious adventures of yet another slacker gamer fanboy who may or may not bear a surprising resemblance to you (in your mind), or you already have a comic about the amazing exploits of said generic white dude and the people who inexplicably put up with his wastage, I strongly suggest that you not embrace the mindset of the Parents' Basement. You have every right to give every impression that you and your kind are socially retarded man-children--adverse to ambition, exercise, and fresh salads, content to see women as breasticular fantasies instead of actual people--but I wouldn't really advise you do so. (If nothing else, it doesn't hurt to differentiate your work from the horde of guys out there peddling the exact same tired wares.) It may take effort and/or talent to rise above its mephitic depths, but the Basement is not your friend.
Also, it floods whenever it rains. So, there's that.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Guys! Don't know how to be funny? Go for the tit punch every time!
Hey hey, kids! Did you want to know more about Otakon's mascots? No? Tough. There's a spec sheet out on the Otakon website with all the vital information you didn't give a damn about, such as:
Hiroko-chan
Age: 22
Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
Weight: 145 lbs (66 kg)
Build: Busty (C Cup)
There. Aren't you glad they took the time to give her a bra size? After all, women are their breasts. (For the record, her "brother" Hiroshi-kun has a build that's "Skinny/Wiry Muscle.")
For another example of the principle in action, let's take a trip through otakudom via the Sketched Out Life webcomic, where when it comes to humor, women are
Nothing...
But...
Their...
Breasts.
Breasts... that are crazy! Like the nameless main female character!
(Soon to be named main female character) She's all that geeks want in a woman. Yes all other comics have this type of girl, but this one is special. She's the embodiment of all Sketch's experiences with girls... so basically she's nuts!
Woh-ho! Females have boobs and they're wacko? What a way to really distinguish this faceless fantasy object from, y'know, every other stereotype of the female gender. Then again, she is allegedly based on real girls the author has met, all of whom apparently possessed no notable personality traits aside from mammaries and insanity.
To be fair, some people are perfectly happy to just play titties or bust for the rest of their natural, and if that's all someone is aiming for, they have every right to do so. (And let's face it, there will always be people happily ensuring that the stench of the proverbial parents' basement clings to fandom until sometime shortly after the sun goes supernova.) Doesn't mean they still shouldn't get called out for it, though.
Hiroko-chan
Age: 22
Height: 5'9" (175 cm)
Weight: 145 lbs (66 kg)
Build: Busty (C Cup)
There. Aren't you glad they took the time to give her a bra size? After all, women are their breasts. (For the record, her "brother" Hiroshi-kun has a build that's "Skinny/Wiry Muscle.")
For another example of the principle in action, let's take a trip through otakudom via the Sketched Out Life webcomic, where when it comes to humor, women are
Nothing...
But...
Their...
Breasts.
Breasts... that are crazy! Like the nameless main female character!
(Soon to be named main female character) She's all that geeks want in a woman. Yes all other comics have this type of girl, but this one is special. She's the embodiment of all Sketch's experiences with girls... so basically she's nuts!
Woh-ho! Females have boobs and they're wacko? What a way to really distinguish this faceless fantasy object from, y'know, every other stereotype of the female gender. Then again, she is allegedly based on real girls the author has met, all of whom apparently possessed no notable personality traits aside from mammaries and insanity.
To be fair, some people are perfectly happy to just play titties or bust for the rest of their natural, and if that's all someone is aiming for, they have every right to do so. (And let's face it, there will always be people happily ensuring that the stench of the proverbial parents' basement clings to fandom until sometime shortly after the sun goes supernova.) Doesn't mean they still shouldn't get called out for it, though.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
What to Expect When You're Expecting... to Be Shot At
So issue #5 of Cable came out last week, in which Cable continues his adventures with the baby-who-I-thought-was-Rachel-Summers-for-a-second-and-then-I-remembered-that-Rachel-is-flying-off-in-space-with-Shi'ar-Cloud-so-I-guess-it's-supposed-to-be-baby-Jean-Grey. Le sigh. I liked Cable/Deadpool.
So, whatever, right? Except I saw the cover on the shelf, and my god, is that what I think it is?
After running all around during Messiah Complex dodging the Marauders (and Bishop) with this fragile, newborn infant strapped to his chest... right over his center of mass... with no head support (I'm sure the world's most powerful telepath/telekinetic can withstand a little Shaken Baby Syndrome)... he finally buys the world's most bad-ass Baby Björn. Or cobbles one together in some warehouse somewhere. Look at those sturdy pipes! Air tubes? Poop tubes in case she needs a change in the middle of a firefight?
I guess it's something, though I fully expect that hole in the middle to fire psionic beams at some point.
So, whatever, right? Except I saw the cover on the shelf, and my god, is that what I think it is?
After running all around during Messiah Complex dodging the Marauders (and Bishop) with this fragile, newborn infant strapped to his chest... right over his center of mass... with no head support (I'm sure the world's most powerful telepath/telekinetic can withstand a little Shaken Baby Syndrome)... he finally buys the world's most bad-ass Baby Björn. Or cobbles one together in some warehouse somewhere. Look at those sturdy pipes! Air tubes? Poop tubes in case she needs a change in the middle of a firefight?
I guess it's something, though I fully expect that hole in the middle to fire psionic beams at some point.
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