This was my response to a Cracked article on “things adults shouldn’t get angry about.” Look how many downvotes I got for a simple, factually accurate statement.
I didn’t even have to say that I thought “toys” were a negative thing. I collect and write passionately about toys. I want to design toys. All I had to do was use the word near “video games” to make over a dozen people in a comment section furrow their concave, shaggy brows and hammer the “thumbs down” button between grunts.
If you are an adult who plays video games you are an adult who plays with toys.
That isn’t even an insult to me. That’s a nice thing. You should be comfortable to play with toys until you’re rotting in the ground.
If you can’t accept that’s what you’re doing then you’re emotionally dead.
Lemme lay it on ya straight, kids.
Since practically the moment they were born, video games have been broadly regarded as either totally hip and cool or largely inoffensive by everyone but confused, frightened bible thumpers.
It’s been somewhere between forty and fifty years since video games could actually be considered a niche, underground hobby.
Except for the odd media panic that never went anywhere, nobody has actually been ostracized by society because they liked video games.
I doubt anybody in the free world right now is being bullied or harassed because they love video games and hate sports or outdoor activities. The exact opposite is in fact more believable in today’s culture.
Tabletop games, science fiction serials, theater, poetry, art, even the broad and centuries-old umbrella of “cartoons” still carry bigger stigmas in the adult world.
So-called “gamers,” a term about as dated as “computer geeks” or “music listeners,” have not in fact ever had to put up a significant struggle for mainstream acceptance.
Why, then, do so many self-described video game lovers practice such an elitist, hostile, sexist, xenophobic and and entitled attitude, as though they’re some long-suffering and marginalized demographic, superior to the plebeian “normal” people. You are the normal people. Video games get superbowl commercials. Video games sponsor sitcoms. Video games are multi-million-dollar productions. Playing or owning video games hasn’t been special in any way for half a century.
Okay no offense to fans of Sora but like
It makes me SO ANGRY FOREVER that Kingdom Hearts was at one point proposed as just starring Donald Duck.
What heartless bastards saw a game where Donald goddamn Duck saves the whole Disney universe from an insane shadow-monster empire and then thought “ew, no, this totally needs to focus on some Bishie animu mary suebros.”
I don’t even care if it was technically a smart decision from a marketing perspective. That only goes to show what a soulless imaginatively dead heathen audience creators are reduced to pandering to.
DONALD DUCK
ROAMING REALITIES
KILLING MONSTERS
WHY WAS THIS DENIED US
blerp
(there’s nothing “wrong” with any of the latter pokemon here, there’s just something backwards when fans hate on the weird, unique ones while going mad with adoration for something we’ve seen several times before)
Who’s got a pokemon-based article on the front page of Cracked right now??
It’s only a “quick fix” (Cracked’s super-miniaturized articles) but “4 Reasons Pokemon is the Scariest Alien Invasion Story Ever” is the first time, to my knowledge, that any Cracked feature has been 100% pokemon-centric. You’re welcome.
They’ve been turning down pokemon article pitches for years, saying they didn’t think their reader base had enough pokemon fans, but they thought my personal sci-fi horror pokemon theory was just interesting enough for a quickie.
The editorial made a couple minor errors (like referring to “species” of tentacool) but most of my jokes and all of my basic points are intact.
Just FYI
It’s such a cliche in Japan for superheroes to be insect themed (largely thanks to Kamen Rider) that this is most likely the reason Dark-type pokemon are specifically vulnerable to Fighting and Bug moves.
The strongest offensive bug moves, including Signal Beam, Silver Wind, X-scissor and U-turn, are very similar conceptually to the kind of battle moves and secret powers wielded by Tokusatsu heroes.
My only disappointment with Stunfisk…
…Is that it isn’t just a twinge more true to its flatfish basis.
I. Would never. Not have this. On my team. Huge missed opportunity; maybe an evolution one day will correct it.
Incidentally a bogleech article on flatfish is coming soon. HARD.
THE NUMBER OF FOLLOWERS YOU HAVE IS YOUR POKEMON NUMBER! which pokemon are you?
Halloween 2: Bogleech talks about the Binding of Isaac!
My most-request monster review list ever, and the incredibly dumb reason why I kept putting it off!
CLICK HERE for that!
I know I’m late to this party and all…
It happened months ago, I know, but catching up on the story now, I’m honestly pretty amazed and disappointed by how heavily offended people were by Tentacle Bento. It’s not all that impressive an idea, no, a lot of you artists I follow have come up with way better around the same premise, but it definitely doesn’t sound like it deserved to be pulled from kickstarter for “endorsing rape.”
We’re talking about a humorous parody of a long established pornography genre that exists exclusively in fiction. Tentacle porn is literally centuries old, but nobody in the real world has ever been sexually assaulted by giant mollusks. If that’s imitatable behavior to you, our planet is probably long dead by the time you’re reading this in the crab nebula.
More to the point, it’s not as if the only people who would make, endorse, purchase or play a tentacle porn game are men who view women as collections of orifices. People who like tentacle porn are as likely to be well adjusted and respectful of others as anyone else. I’d give myself as an example, but I’m a 29 year old who blogs about pokemon, so I don’t count as a positive example of anything ever. I know you’re out there, though. Tentacle fans are also at least as likely to be female as male, as anyone who keeps up with internet art communities has probably noticed by now. More than half the girls I know fetishize the idea of molestation by tentacles.
…The other half just being more likely to give themselves the tentacles in their fantasies. That’s probably the only thing really wrong with “Tentacle Bento;” no bishie dudes in the clutches of slimy parasite queens. I know four hundred people in my Deviantart watchers alone who would be all over that. Maybe they’ll do an expansion?
What bothers me most of all is mainly that the same people who accused Tentacle Bento of “perpetuating rape culture” ironically appear to overlap with the same people who INSIST that violent video games don’t perpetuate violent acts ever. Even I consider that one debatable, because really, really young children are still exposed about a hundred times more to violent games and movies than they are to pornography, and children these days are way bigger assholes than I remember when I was one of them.
Fortunately, we’re still doing a much better job keeping kids out of hentai than keeping kids out of murder simulation. “Tentacle Bento” was aimed squarely at adults, most of whom understand the difference between reality and fantasy by the time they realize they feel funny in the pants about gelatinous invertebrates.
Pokemon Biology on Nintendonerds!
So Nintendonerds.com has decided to feature my long-popular article on the real world inspirations of various pokemon; it’s the same article, but it looks nice and probably displays better, so why don’t you READ IT?
REMINDER
No matter how realistic, no matter how violent, no matter how sexy, no matter who they’re marketed towards, no matter how big the hole in your life you think they fill, video games are toys and will always be toys. If you identify as a “gamer” it means that you love playing with toys so much, it’s become a lifestyle, which by all logic should be adorable.
I’m going to be 29 years old in a couple months, and this photo of my bedroom was taken last year. Obviously, I don’t think there’s any shame in being an adult who loves toys.
There is a FUCKTON of shame, however, in getting seriously angry, judgmental or defensive over which toys other people like to play with, which box they plug said toys into, which alphabet letter the ESRB puts on their favorites, or whether or not every single little thing in your latest toy went exactly the way you would like it to.
Now fucking admit that you play with toys and act like the fun-loving child you feel like on the inside, not the bitter, unlovable asshole you look like on the outside.
What Captain N could have been
This is original production artwork by Fil Barlow, one of my favorite character designers and a generally awesome guy. HERE you can see these on his Deviantart and read the sad story of what almost was.
Aspects of his character designs were preserved in the final show, with his Eggplant Wizard surviving unscathed.
And now I’m outraged over Meat Weasels.
So IGN is reporting that this is official concept art for an upcoming horror game, the Grinder. It looks pretty cool, but only because it was already cool in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, when they called it a Meat Weasel and it was the best reason to see the movie at all:
As someone who has dreamed of designing monsters for video games since I was a child, I am appalled at this…this display of…of UNPROFESSIONAL LACKADAISY.
It actually seems to have been a mistake on IGN’s part and isn’t real promotional art for the game at all. Whoever made the image is still just stealing someone else’s art, though.
!!!
