The Mary Sue points out this probably entirely unintentional juxtaposition of Hugh Jackman magazine covers, illustrating beautifully the fact that idealized comic book males are actually male power fantasies, not designed to be beefcake for women the same way that the comic book ladies are cheesecake for men.
Continue reading “Hugh Jackman for Men vs Hugh Jackman for Women”
geekery
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Is the Skeptic Empire dying?
A new employee of Americans United for Separation of Church and State has already started receiving death threats and harassment just for mentioning feminism.
A quote from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that’s relevant to what we’re seeing right now. We call ourselves rationalists but we devolve into hyperskepticism and denialism about real, demonstrable problems in our community. Problems like irrational hatred of feminism to the point of excusing harassment, death threats, rape threats et cetera as “trolling”. To the point of being unable to criticize our leaders for their well-evidenced transgressions.
Ezri Dax: I think that the situation with Gowron is a symptom of a bigger problem. The Klingon Empire is dying; and I think it deserves to die. I tend to look at the Empire with a little more skepticism than Curzon and Jadzia did. I see a society that is in deep denial about itself. We’re talking about a warrior culture that prides itself on maintaining centuries-old traditions of honor and integrity. But in reality, it’s willing to accept corruption at the highest levels.
Worf: You are overstating your case.
Dax: Am I? Who was the last leader of the High Council that you respected? Has there even been one? And how many times have you had to cover up the crimes of Klingon leaders because you were told that it was for the good of the Empire? I… I know this sounds harsh, but the truth is, you have been willing to accept a government that you know is corrupt. Gowron’s just the latest example. Worf, you are the most honorable and decent man that I’ve ever met. And if *you* are willing to tolerate men like Gowron, then what hope is there for the Empire?
What kinds of rationalists are we? What claim do we have to being decent human beings without our dogmas if we act like this?How can anyone take us as a movement seriously if we can’t clean our houses? How the hell do we even drain this swamp?
Should Spider-Man be gay?
There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching right-wingers lose their shit over people NOT treating homosexuals as eeeevul deviant pre-verts, except perhaps watching an entire media’s fandom lose their shit over an idea for injecting novelty into their favourite franchise that involves, you know, actually changing it. This is one of those rare celestial alignment type coincidences that is probably pretty unlikely to happen again any time soon. We should take careful note, and savour it for all it’s worth.
Andrew Garfield, star of the current iteration of Spider-Man movies — a franchise that, full disclosure, I absolutely love, and for which I found the Sam Raimi movies underwhelming at best — has suggested to the director, then publicly, that he sees no reason that Peter Parker shouldn’t be gay, exploring his sexuality in a rebooted universe where it turns out MJ is a guy.
Right-Wing Watch reports that this has majorly rustled the jimmies of Charisma’s Jennifer LeClaire:
Really? Don’t we have enough gay comic book heroes? About this time last year, DC Comics outed the Green Lantern. When he’s not wearing his neon-green garb and accomplishing superhuman feats, the chiseled Green Lantern enjoys kissing his new boyfriend. As I noted in my column last year, perhaps DC Comics was trying to compete with its rival, Marvel Comics, which announced just days earlier that it would host the first gay wedding in the June 20 issue of Astonishing X-Men #51.
Mock The Movie: Gymkata transcript
Lost in all the excitement of the CONvergence videos and the planning for FtBConscience was this gem of a movie that we mocked the hell out of this past week. So bad a movie is Gymkata that Ed Brayton suggested we do it for MTM — several days after we’d just done it. The movie is notable for its threadbare plot, its omnipresent ninjas, and its requisite pommel horse conveniently placed so that the hero, who I’m pretty sure is named Luke Skypommeler, could repeatedly kick criminally insane folks in the kisser.
Will post the subtitle files shortly in the usual place.
Continue reading “Mock The Movie: Gymkata transcript”
Ashley, Heina and I talking about rape, comics and conventions
Three disparate topics, not exactly light conversation to start off, but we got progressively less ragey at least. It was an interesting conversation tonight on the Ashley F. Miller Show. (The F stands for “Fuckin'”. [No it doesn’t. And you’d know that if you’d watched FtBCon!])
It was a relief to be on a panel I wasn’t running, with people who needed no prompting to set things up appropriately, after having done that all weekend long. Though I think I might be burned out on public appearances for a little bit. Let me restock on spoons for a bit, then we’ll see.
Also: I can’t believe I misattributed the nude revolutionary calendar to Taslima Nasreen. Now both she and Maryam Namazie are going to hate me. 🙁
#FtBCon: Video Games, Religion and Morality
Thanks to the tight timing between the Atheist Music panel and our panel, where we had many of the same participants, we ended up turning into a pretty raucous and jovial crowd at the top of the panel while killing time waiting for Ashley and Brianne to join in. That translated into a much looser panel than I was expecting, but I really enjoy those sorts of panels so I encouraged it gladly.
Best single moment for me: Ashley humming the Katamari Damacy theme.
FtBConscience: Get your lanyards here!
Are you attending FtBConscience? Do you want some hard proof, the way that other conventions give you a badge when you’re an attendee? Here’s where you get yours!
CONvergence – Real World vs the Internet
It’s a false dichotomy. End of panel. Thank you all for coming!
Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You’ll want to listen to this one, especially where we draw significantly on our personal experiences and discuss how the lines are blurring, and how “meatspace” is not really all that distinguishable from the internet. In fact, the biggest and most important “internet-based” event in my life actually took me some time to recall, because I wasn’t mentally classifying it as internet-related, which is why you’ll hear me fumble for an experience at the start of the panel.
Panelists were Stephanie Zvan, Jason Thibeault, Lux Pickel, PZ Myers, and Jamie Bernstein.
[audio:http://cdn1.the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/07/cvg2013-skepchickcon-realworldvsinternet.mp3]
cvg2013-skepchickcon-realworldvsinternet.mp3
Sorry it’s taking so long to get these out. I basically came crashing back to reality hard after CONvergence, coming home to two gigantic work crises at once, creating a perfect storm that I’m still shovelling out. Fifteen hours yesterday, seven hours sleep, more work since I’ve been awake. Essentially, the only reason I’m posting this now is because I’m on an enforced break while my VPN access point is rebooting. Seriously, God must really hate me for being so dismissive of him over the weekend or something.
CONvergence – Gods of Geekdom panel audio
I absolutely enjoyed this panel. It was thorough, informative, and hilarious. We discussed gods and god-concepts in various sci fi and fantasy fandoms, including comic books, novels and even video games.
Panelists were Nick Glover, Ryan Consell, Jason Thibeault and Fionnuala Murphy.
[audio:http://cdn1.the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/07/cvg2013-skepchickcon-godsofgeekdom.mp3]
CONvergence – Worldbusters!
This one is the second made using the built-in sound app on my phone, and thus it’s also a crappy 8kHz, though I’ve passed it through a few filters to try to get it to a listenable state. It’s a little quiet, but I’ve managed to take out a good deal of noise and level the sounds somewhat. I may yet go back and do the same to the EvoPsych panel.
This panel was fun, though not nearly as popular or populated as the penis panel. In this one we took audience suggestions about specific sci-fi / fantasy tropes and disproved them, with heavy emphasis on the biology behind most of these alien biology scenarios. Sadly, no questions about tech that I could have fielded. Oh well!
[audio:http://cdn1.the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/07/cvg2013-skepchickcon-worldbusters.mp3]
cvg2013-skepchickcon-worldbusters
Panelists were Jason Thibeault, Siouxsie Wiles, PZ Myers and Laura Okagaki.