Gift_of_Gab (they/them)

Not sure if this will provide you with any hope, but there’s some good news as to our* numbers. While it may not seem like much, it’s a massive jump generationally. In the US, out 2SLGBTQIA+ people are almost 10% of the entire population. Considering how many of our siblings are closeted, it’s a pretty big boost.

(*I discovered last month that my being enby counts as a ‘trans experience’ so I am tentatively trying out including myself.)

Back when I was a kid, pedophilia meant what she said - attraction to a prepubescent child. If someone was an adult who thought a physically developed 15-year-old was sexy, that was just logical.

Was this the 1890’s? I was born in '82, and I can’t think of a single time someone was like “oh an adult and a 15 year old child? Yeah that’s okay.”

I find it strange that we use the same word for someone who rapes a toddler, as someone who “statutory rapes” (as it would be called) a 15-year-old. They are both wrong, but it seems to me that one is much worse than the other. Both because of the attraction (or I guess power fantasy) on the part of the adult, and the impact to the victim.

This is straight priori falacy. Why the fuck are you arguing the ‘degrees of okay-ness’ for sex with children. This is fucking baffling.

As an AMAB them-fatale who found out they had male pattern baldness the day they came out, I, uh, I needed to hear this. 😭 EDIT: I really do appreciate the ideas and help, everyone, but I think we all misunderstood the assignment given the quote: “…femininity doesn’t have to come from hair or any of those traditional female archetypes of appearance…” 😂 Thank you all though, I have happy tears reading your replies.

That’s why I’m thinking the folders were merged in error.

This would require so many different people to fuck up it seems pretty unlikely, not to mention they would have to take those images, resize/edit them, put them into the game, and have not one person notice they deviate from the images that were agreed upon. You don’t just ‘upload someones folder’.

Oh wow that was incredible, hahaha.

I can almost guarantee you that what happened is that Antireal’s art was saved to one of the artists’ “inspiration” folders, and somewhere between creating an inspo gallery and that artist quitting/getting laid off, the files got merged into a “concept/assets” folder. Likely when going through the laid off artist’s hard drives, they found images that they probably assumed were all originals.

I’ve worked in games for 18 years, and outright theft of assets happens constantly. I worked on a game where an artist took an asset (from a rather well known game) and outright used it, no changes. Another place I worked an artist took an (extremely unique) weapon from an IP and just copied it over.

If you look at the Bungie art it couldn’t possibly be an inspo gallery because they are just straight up used with (some) changes made to them. This was absolutely known to have occurred, and wasn’t ‘an’ artist. You can see why they do this because even in the event they’re caught, they can blame a former employee, and pay some nominal fee for the actual artists work.

This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

How do you handle going outside when there are random people in public, in stores, on the street, at work, who do not believe in vaccines?

Vaccines don’t need to be believed in, they’ve worked and will always work. If the number of these people is large enough to prevent herd immunity, then I do so oblivious to their absolute callous disregard for sick children and the elderly; I simply don’t know that they’re awful, shitty people who claim to be human beings, who could so very easily save the lives of these sick children, yet refuse to do so, really just because they can, and it makes them feel superior.

What do you say to anyone who has never had a vaccine and is in prime physique medical health?

Stop being a fucking carrier of deadly diseases.

Years later in programming people were slashing zeroes and I was mighty confused. Some greybeard explained it eventually.

As someone who slashes their zeroes, ouch.

You should probably delve that particular line of thought more deeply, tbh.

I know you meant this flippantly but I came out as nonbinary last year; having (especially white) men act like entitled toddlers online was a helpful push into embracing more femininity.

And I fully agree, the way the op posted it with “counter point” already send the discussion in the wrong way.

I think the ‘discussion’ failed the moment someone said “how come men are angry at women doing ‘x’” and the entire fucking thread is full of men talking about men.

Like I’m not surprised, I’m just mildly amused I’m yet again changing accounts for awhile while my inbox fills with angry men shouting messages at me I never read. Every. Single. Time. A thread about an experience a woman has with men being shit in it is always filled with comments from men “nuh uh, whatabout…!” in response.

Every. Time. It’s so fucking embarrassing I wish I could literally just not be my gender for awhile. We’ve been in power for almost the entirety of humanity but oh my God a woman made a comment about how shitty men are to them, so let’s constantly make absolute ironic assholes of ourselves.

Peace out, men, you continue the trend of making us all look like whiny babies who can’t handle not being talked about, and not being The Normal.

Yes, it’s not a counter point but rather an also important parallel discussion. We need to have higher standards for male role models, or we will continue to have incels fill the space.

I feel like it’s awfully interesting though that we have ‘parallel discussions’ whenever someone says “hey this specific thing sucks for women.” The original question posited here was:

Why do males complain about female-led stories or too many female characters when the majority are still dominated by males?

The question is why do men complain about female leads, which they do, when the majority of leads are still male, which they are. The answer to that isn’t “we need better male role models in movies” (though it would obviously help as well) as it’s dodging the original question.

You can’t really compare the two movies,

I’m not exactly, I’m asking why:

A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun

Can be true, but also John Wick can never falter and that be fine. Kinda seems like a double standard to me.

First, I’m confused as to why you’d need to segregate books and film by gender, these all have either a male or non-gendered lead: Captain Underpants, Nate the Great, Hal The 3rd Class Hero, The Hobbit, The Lord of The Rings, Treasure Island, Danny the Champion of the World, The Outsiders, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Percy Jackson (all 40 billion of the series), The Giving Tree, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Bridge to Terabithia, James and the Giant Peach, Holes (series), Where The Wild Things Are, The Heroes of Olympus (more Percy Jackson I think), Ender’s Game, Winnie The Pooh, Narnia (series), The Wind In The Willows, The Indian in the Cupboard, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Neverending Story, I Am Every Good Thing, Don’t Hug Doug (He Doesn’t Like it), King Arthur’s Very Great Grandson, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Wild Robot (series), Stuart Little, Mr. Popper’s Penguins, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Lord of The Flies, Calvin and Hobbes (series), The Dangerous Book for Boys, The American Boys Handy Book.

(You didn’t specify age, so I tried to add our family suggestions for about 4-12. Once he’s older, depending on your thoughts on the language, we also have a lot of suggestions for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn)

I think the issue is that the movies aren’t written well. Rey in the third trilogy never saw a challenge she couldn’t master on the first attempt. A story about a character born perfect and never faltering isn’t fun

John Wick gets a pass, though?

These problems existed long, long before the modern far-right movement started. It’s partly why it works so well. This male egotism in media existed before, and less resistance to it also used to exist. That change in social atmosphere means that men can be manipulated into further and further misogynistic beliefs. All it takes is dogwhistles and a loud, angry, entitled male gamer, and you can radicalize thousands of people into misogyny. And they will repeat that cycle with more or less any boy or man they know.

I’m sorry you’ve written so much here I want to underscore and shout to the heavens, yet there is so much and I fear I won’t do it justice. Fascism is on the rise, and young men-- just as last time–are carrying it forward. Misogyny has become an assumed character trait in huge swaths of men, to the point you see insane arguments online about how men ‘have it harder’ than the gender held in captivity less than a lifetime ago. It wasn’t until the 1960’s in Vancouver, BC that women could get a loan without a man co-signing (and it was a credit union, not even a large bank.) I grew up and lived as a male, white, for over 40 years, and right now is on par, if not worse in many cases, than it was in the 90’s. Men now rail at the idea they can’t always be ‘the default.’ That the reason for these pronoun-forward changes is because it’s always been man-first, from not even bothering to test drugs on women to ‘room temperature’ being what a bunch of middle aged white men, such as myself, find comfortable. To men being the vast majority of main characters, to the goddamn Bechdel test being oh-so-relevant.

So I wanted to add a quote about just how long this has existed, and the sheer length of fight women have had just to exist unchained. I have not gone through the fight you have, yet I hope you’ll allow me at your side.

"You see, when I was growing up at the time of the Wars of the Medes and Persians and when I went to college just after the Hundred Years War and when I was bringing up my children during the Korean, Cold, and Vietnam Wars, there were no women. Women are a very recent invention. I predate the invention of women by decades. Well, if you insist on pedantic accuracy, women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn’t know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn’t get off the ground. Even with a genius behind it an invention has to find its market, and it seemed like for a long time the idea of women just didn’t make it to the bottom line. Models like the Austen and the Brontë were too complicated, and people just laughed at the Suffragette, and the Woolf was way too far ahead of its time.

So when I was born, there actually were only men. People were men. They all had one pronoun, his pronoun; so that’s who I am. I am the generic he, as in, “If anybody needs an abortion he will have to go to another state,” or “A writer knows which side his bread is buttered on.” That’s me, the writer, him. I am a man." -Ursula K. Le Guin, 1992

I’ve begun to prefer scifi written by women, because then at least I know its not going to be completely cringe.

If you haven’t, check out Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness. Absolutely fantastic novel.

I got back into scifi books recently as an adult and was disgusted to find that virtually all of the “great” scifi authors are menwritingwomen trope goldmines.

Asimov is so, so difficult to read through now that I’m older, as the female characters are just… ouch. The ideas are there, but good gods I wish he’d just avoid writing out conversations at all.

I appreciate what you’re saying, however:

Women are, regardless of any other stat, still under-represented. 2000-2009 is depressing.