Categories
worldcon

Brief(?) Summary and Commentary on Thursday and Friday WSFS Meetings

Just what it says on the tin. As a note, for my liveblogs I generally try to keep my commentary to standalone statements or parenthetical statements. I do my best to summarize fairly from what I can hear and process while pressed for time. This post is all me.

I have no intention of reproducing the summaries of the resolutions and amendments here. Please see the Sasquan agenda, I will refer to them by name.

Playlist of all the 2015 meetings on youtube is here.

Preliminary Business Meeting (Thursday)

Liveblog here.

So the entire point of the preliminary meeting is to set the agenda and debate times for the main meetings, which is actually extremely powerful and should not be discounted. This is a great place to strange resolutions and amendments in the cradle, so to speak.

The big take-homes:

  • The two year eligibility amendment got killed
  • All other proposed amendments (E Pluribus Hugo, 4 and 6, the 5% Solution, Best Series, Nominee Diversity, Multiple Nominations, Electronic Signatures) made it through with varying amounts of debate time set
  • All amendments originally voted on at LonCon last year were assigned debate times, to be ratified or not in the main business meetings.
  • The electronic signatures amendment, which is supposed to make remote site selection easier, got referred to a short-term committee to come up with language that didn’t suck.
  • E Pluribus Hugo (referred to hereafter as EPH) and 4 and 6 (4/6) were specifically assigned to be debated and voted on for Sunday. This is unusual because there isn’t normally a Sunday meeting. But this takes the two most contentious amendments (the ones that will affect Hugo nominating/voting) and attempts to give them a day of their own. Assuming we manage to get everything else done by the end of business on Saturday.

This meeting was pretty rowdy for a preliminary meeting. I expect things are only going to get more energetic as time goes on.

Business Meeting Number One (Friday)

Liveblog here.

The start of this meeting was devoted to taking care of business that should have gotten done at the preliminary meeting and didn’t. Here are the highlights:

  • The YA Hugo Committee reported that a YA-focused award is a proper request and necessary, but a YA award may not fit in with the normal Hugo methodology. So we should think perhaps something more Campbellian. The committee wants to continue study of the topic for another year and was granted permission.
  • All of the eligibility extensions were passed.
  • The resolution requesting anonymized nomination data for this year’s Hugo’s be provided was passed and Sasquan’s Hugo administrating team expressed their intention to comply with the resolution, which is technically non-binding. Hard data for this year’s clusterfuck will be provided before the Sunday meeting to the people (presumably EPH) who requested it. Other people can request the data, but it will not be simply posted publicly.
  • There was a “Committee on the Whole” regarding EPH and 4/6. This wasn’t for substantive debate, but rather consideration of technical issues. EPH presented their methodology and I was honestly impressed. They’ve converted me to their side and convinced me that they can help deal with the administrative issues; the 2016 Hugo administrator stated that he would also be working with the EPH people no matter what to help them refine their method. For 4/6, it was decided that the actual numbers (number of nominations you make versus number of nominees per category) would be decided on Sunday by fill in the blanks voting rather than burn the limited time today.
  • Just as a note, I consider the potential of EPH to break accidental Dr. Who domination slates a feature, not a bug. I am really fucking tired of seeing one show completely dominate a short form category that should rightfully even have podcasts in it.
  • Millenium Philcon (2001 Worldcon) finally has distributed the last of its funds and been formally discharged from duty.
  • We took up the Popular Ratification amendment from LonCon3 for voting. This amendment would have put WSFS business up for popular ratification (vote by all members of WSFS, which literally means all members of Worldcon, attending and supporting) after passing two rounds of the Worldcon-based WSFS business meetings.
    • This would have made amending the WSFS constitution a three year process, which I wasn’t wild about, but also had a five year sunset clause, after which it would have required re-ratification.
    • One of the main concerns about this seemed to be the power of mob voting by supporting members, thanks to the ample demonstration by the puppies this year. This is not a fear I’m that convinced about, considering popular ratification doesn’t allow for anything passed by the business meeting to be modified, etc. Just voted up or down. Word case scenario, nothing gets done for five years if the trolls are that dedicated.
    • It should also be noted that anyone has a right to present new business to the WSFS meeting, whether they are in attendance or not.
    • Kevin Standlee made the point that it’s time for supporting members to get treated like actual members. I tend to agree with this.
    • This would also have been, in my opinion, an important measure for keeping the WORLD in WorldCon; it would have given power to people remotely and internationally. There are plenty of reasons people can’t make it to the WSFS meeting even if they attend WorldCon; there are many more people who would like to participate in the community who are continually blocked by the stranglehold that America holds on the convention.
      • ETA: Point well-made to me by David Clements just now. One problem that does need to be considered is the language barrier. Having voting on resolutions available is not really inclusive if people can’t understand what they’re being asked to vote on. Even a “plain language” explanation of an amendment would be American English. So this is something that needs to be addressed by another attempt at this kind of proposal.
    • Also, one would hope that this would encourage broader involvement by making voting more accessible. The harder you make participation, the fewer people participate. We see that again and again. Make it easier, you’ll get more people who will become interested and get involved.
  • But anyway, you’ll note that all this is in past tense, because Popular Ratification got voted down in the business meeting, 69 for to 99 against. Which I am, as you might imagine, very unhappy about.
  • The open source software resolution failed after a lot of linguistic nitpicking.

What I’m most disappointed about is the failure of the Popular Ratification. I also really, really didn’t like a sort of implied insult to all non-attending voters; people brought up again and again that these resolutions were just too complicated, etc. People just wouldn’t care. While I admit there’s an argument to be made there (please see voter ennui in the US) the implication that no one could possibly care of understand what’s going on at the business meeting so it’s okay to exclude them is pretty upsetting to me. Particularly because if we want to continue to pretend we are an internationally-minded body, it behooves us to make the proceedings accessible internationally. And not just to people rich enough to attend.

Final note: Even the Worldcon chair acknowledges I am dapper as fuck. Thank you.

Categories
worldcon

WSFS Meeting #2 (Friday): Liveblog

1247: Meeting is adjourned.

Categories
worldcon

WSFS Meeting #1 (Thursday): Liveblog

As a note, all the business (amendments and motions) I’m talking about can be found here.

Categories
suffering for charity

A Monday Treat(?) – those 50 Shades of Grey notes

So back in February, a bunch of people donated the princely sum of over $800 to domestic violence charities to make me watch and blog about 50 Shades of Grey. I’d hoped to get a bit more money for charity by holding my handwritten notes hostage; that didn’t succeed.

After thinking about it, and looking over said notes (wow, my handwriting does some amazing things when I’m drunk) I’ve decided:

  1. These are kind of hilarious and I think people should be able to read them.
  2. I’m just going to make the inclusion of the notes standard from now on, to go with the blog post. Charity still wins.

Sorry, I no longer have my notes from the horrible TMNT remake, but those were probably not nearly as funny, as I did not get nearly that drunk.

So here are the notes. May you sadistic bastards choke on all 14 pages of them.

Categories
zomg

BEHOLD: THE SQUIRREL WHISPERER

ALL SHALL LOVE ME IT AND DESPAIR.

Thank you, random and barely coherent internet douchebag!

Screen Shot 2015-08-14 at 9.58.34 PM CMavYCRUwAAyN_z Screen Shot 2015-08-14 at 9.59.25 PM CMavXr-UkAAZfvcMan, that was TASTY. Living with a certified mixologist is the BEST.

 

Categories
rants

Brad Torgersen, I invite you to fuck all the way off.

Partial quote:

What sort of things were they saying before? No, expelling Correia or Torgersen is easy, but it’s not enough. Not enough! We have to investigate the entire science fiction field and the publishers, we need to find out how the field could have allowed an unsafe environment to thrive in which these cisnormative, sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic authors could operate with impunity. I think, comrades, that we need to send a Hate Crimes commission to Worldcon. And to identify all the unsafe elements that may be present.

So, the field is essentially returning to its Marxist roots. But the starry-eyedness is mostly gone. Now we’re down to the raw hate of the thing: the vengeance-minded outliers and weirdos, determined to punish wrongdoing and wrongthinking and wrongfeeling. Which means, of course, smoking out all the wrongfans having all the wrongfun with their wrongstuff.

If they could clap us in shackles, put us into the boxcars, and send us to the icy wastes to die, they would do it in a heartbeat.

My friend Paul reposted that borderline incoherent comment from Brad on his own blog; read it in its entirety there.

Frankly, I am not interested in wading into the sea of strawmen and attempting to dismantle them. (Shaun Duke’s already taken a shot at it at his blog.) Nor am I at all interested in trying to present the positions of my “side” and offer gentle correction, as has been done nicely here.

All I have to say is this: how dare you, Brad. After you helped garner John C. Wright, a man who not-at-all-coyly talks about gay bashing as an “instinctive reaction” to “fags” a record number of nominations, how dare you project your paranoid fantasies of people wanting to harm you on us. How dare you wrap yourself in a blanket of imagined persecution when to this day transpeople are being murdered for simply existing. How dare you whip up false fears about people wanting you to die over a fucking literary award when right now black men and women are being killed by the police for simply existing. How dare you imagine yourself a second-class citizen when underprivileged women and girls are suffering because their male-run government has decided they have no right to bodily autonomy.

How dare you talk about people being shipped to frozen gulags when, today, gay and trans youth are still subjected to the very sort of reeducation you claim we want.

How dare you.

Real people are harmed every day by the positions those with whom you associate yourself espouse. Real people, who experience real pain, and real suffering, and all too often real death. The number of your faction that has been sent off to a reeducation camp is zero, and it will remain zero.

I’m sure if you dig hard enough, you can find some crazy, leftist asshole out there who says something in line with your beloved delusion. And then you can go ahead and compositional fallacy-it up if it makes you feel all warm and squishy inside. No one can stop you. But this insulting, despicable lie of yours will still not be true.

I’m tired of this. I’m tired of the paranoid fantasies. I’m sick of the pathetic attempts to play the victim in the same world where I suffer the real fear that one of my trans friends will drop off the internet and I will never know what happened to him or her because someone decided ignorance and hatred justified violence. Because this is the real world, you fucking asshole. This happens to real people.

So no, Brad. I do not want anything bad to happen to you. I never have. I have never wanted any harm to come to anyone. Even now, with my hands shaking with anger, I don’t. All I actually want is for you to take a step back, listen to yourself from outside your echo chamber, and understand how basically insulting this melodramatic persecution complex over a goddamn literary award is while outside, tire irons are not a coy little non-metaphor.

Failing that, I want you to fuck all the way off. Because that is an expression of my anger that suggests no action and has no power to do real harm.

Categories
anthology writing

Hey you. Yes you. I want you to write a story for my anthology.

What fresh hell is this? Only the freshest of hells, my darlings: No Shit, There I Was. And yes, that sure is my name as the editor.

See, this one time at this one con, I was sitting in the bar with other writers, and we were doing what writers do, which is drink and cry about our life choices, when I mentioned how I thought there should totally be an anthology where every story started with the immortal line, “No shit, there I was.” Because where those stories go is always a magical and at times intensely horrifying place. And every time I mentioned this fictitious anthology, my fellow writers would always laugh and say hell yeah, they’d either write a story for that, or read the shit out of it, or both.

Then one day I hauled out my threadbare little idea when I was in a bar with Steven Saus. Which lead to him sending me an e-mail that basically said, “Hey, were you actually serious about that anthology idea?”

And here we are.

Okay, everyone who ever told me that you thought that sounded like hella fun and you’d write a story: time to do the thing. And everyone else? You should write me something too. Give me comedy, give me tragedy, give me both at the same time so I won’t be sure if I’m crying with laughter or sorrow, just so long as it’s speculative fiction. I want to see all the interesting places your characters can go when you take a step past the obviousness of the line.

This is going to be awesome.

Categories
science fiction worldcon

Looking forward to WSFS meetings

I ended up browsing a bit on File770 and saw the latest collection of news, which included this astounding example of hollering before you’re hurt from David Pascoe writing on Sarah Hoyt’s blog:

While there’s a good deal of speculation over whether such a motion will even get approved (what then, would supporting members get for their hard earned filthy lucre? How could WorldCon possibly garner any kind of diverse, international support by shutting out anybody who can’t afford to fly across an ocean to come to the majority of conventions?), that it’s not reduced to backroom rumor mills is a sign of how strong the desire is to keep out the undesirable types.

A few points after reading the post:

  1. As a queer pinko liberal SJWer hell bent on destroying everything that makes America great(TM) I would stand against that kind of resolution so fast that the air displacement would break the sound barrier. In reality, I (and I surmise a lot of my filthy brethren and sistren) want supporting memberships to be cheaper. Because greater accessibility to voting is a good thing, always.
    1. I don’t have a problem that the self-named puppies want to nominate things they like. I never have, because I’m an actual adult human being who isn’t threatened by people disagreeing with me. It’s okay to not like things as long as you’re not a dick about it!
    2. I do have a problem with the fact that the puppies aren’t acting like puppies–they’re acting like seagulls. As in making a lot of noise and shitting all over everything. Which is, by the way, a classic example of being a dick.
    3. It’s also okay if things I don’t like get awards! Things I don’t like get awards all the time! Almost nothing I ever think should get an Oscar gets an Oscar, for example. I might grumble, but I haven’t made it my mission to personally destroy the Academy Awards because it’ll make people who have sinned by disagreeing with my taste upset.
    4. Considering the go-to whinge on the puppy side seems to be the ceaseless butthurt over If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, the hypocrisy is just astounding.
  2. As a note, I’ve heard a couple suggestions that there should be some kind of test to force people to prove they’ve read the works they’re nominating/voting for. I would also vote against that so fast I might injure myself. Making voting less accessible doesn’t help anyone. Or at least not anyone I’d want to help.
  3. If there is a more lovingly self-pitying way to characterize those who disagree with one’s position than calling them “puppy kickers,” I have yet to hear it. Barf.
  4. Speaking of making life hard for anyone who can’t fly across the ocean to attend a convention, how about we stop holding so many WorldCons in the US? Helsinki in 2017. Just sayin’.

If I wasn’t clear enough, the ego-stroking conspiracy paranoia about limiting voting memberships? Appears to be just paranoia. The lovelies at File770 helpfully provided the supporting link for current business on the WSFS agenda for this year, and destroying all those who dare disagree with my taste in escapist fiction being a giant dickbag about voting memberships isn’t on there as of yet. Since there’s some new items on there, a quick run through of thoughts:

  • 4 and 6: still in favor of this
  • The Five Percent Solution: YES STILL IN FAVOR
  • Best Series: They’re no longer trying to destroy novelette to make room for this category. I generally tend to be of the mind that more rocket ships to go around is a good thing, but on the other hand, I have no desire to sign myself up for that amount of reading. On a third hand (because I’m an alien creature) maybe it would encourage people to finish up their goddamn series in a timely manner instead going on and on for like 20+ books. Probably not, but I could hope. On the fence, still thinking about it.
  • E Pluribus Hugo: Still can’t wrap my brain around this. Still think it’s needlessly complex. Still willing to be convinced, but as that might well require a powerpoint presentation, I doubt that will happen.
  • Multiple Nominations: Ensuring that a work can only be in one category? I’m in favor of that. Spread the rocket ships around, etc. I also consider it necessary if Best Series if going to be a thing.
  • Nominee Diversity: I’m so goddamn tired of the dramatic presentation short form being the Best Doctor Who category. Also, whether the author is someone I personally like or not, I don’t think any one person needs to have a lock down on all or most of the slots in a category. Stop being greedy. (Though I think some clarification is likely necessary when it comes to authors, for example, how that works in a co-author situation, etc.)
  • Two Year Eligibility: The part of me that never has enough time to read thinks sure, why not. The part of me that understands math points out that if there’s a two year range of eligibility, you’re really just doubling your field. Not in favor. Could potentially be argued around, but not bloody likely.
  • Electronic Signatures: Seems like a no-brainer. Will hopefully help give site selection another little boost when it comes to trying to diversify Worldcon geographically.
  • I Remember the Future: Sure, why not.
  • Hugo Eligibility Extension for Predestination: Again, sure, why not.
  • Hugo Nominating Data Request: It would certainly cut down on the speculation in all quarters. I’m in favor of more data being available–so long as anonymity is guaranteed.
  • Open Source Software: Sure, why not? Is there a reason to not?
  • MPC Funding: Another sure, why not?

NOTE: I will be attending all of the WSFS meetings at Sasquan unless something actively prevents me from doing so, since it’s been asked a couple of times. And if there is wifi to be had, I will be liveblogging at this space. If there isn’t wifi, I’ll livetweet from @katsudonburi. I just type a lot faster (and more coherently) than I can swype tweets into being, so keep your fingers crossed for wifi that won’t make my wallet cry.

Categories
guest post movie watched a movie so you don't have to

[Guest Post] The Flesh: Goldblum versus Fly (1986)

Note from Rachael: I love this post from Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam so much that I think this might become the favored format for all guest posts in the blog from now on. Call it Guest Writer Watches a Movie So You Don’t Have To. Or maybe something catchier.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can’t watch gory movies. I have to avert my eyes, even for the smallest hint of blood. Anyone who knows me well knows I can’t resist Jeff Goldblum, with his healthy ego and his slightly-stammering speech patterns. So when I decided to watch a monster movie for Rachael’s blog in order to promote my fiction-music project Strange Monsters, funding on Kickstarter until August 1st, I decided I had better pit my love of Goldblum against my dislike of gore and watch and record my reactions to The Fly*.

Why is The Fly related to my album project? Well, okay, I could write something lengthy and insightful about how the stories in my Kickstarter all question our concept of what makes someone monstrous, and since Cronenberg makes us both enamored (just me? Probably not just me) and repulsed by Brundle the half-creepy/half-endearing scientist protagonist, it was only logical I watch this particular movie. But really I’ve just been hearing about it for so long it seemed an inevitable fate. It’s one of the Goldblum masterpieces I’ve been too chicken, until now, to watch.

*Fermented beverage was imbibed during the watching of this movie.

Here goes:

Okay, here’s Jeff Goldblum’s character being creepy at a party, but since I know he’s legit it’s not necessarily a turnoff. He can make me cappuccino, anytime. Well, except cappuccino makes me nervous (too much caffeine), but I do love the smell so maybe I can just smell the cappuccino and he can talk to me about fake science.

His house is “cleaner on the inside.” Is this a mangled Doctor Who reference? Is Seth Brundle the generic, less exciting version of a time lord?

Things I know about Seth Brundle: Seth Brundle gives away research secrets for a date. Seth Brundle writes with French fries, unlike us lesser humans who write with pens and pencils and sparklers. Seth Brundle hates baboons (not the baboon! Ugggggggghhhhhhhh, I’m already regretting the decision to watch this movie).

“I must not know enough about the flesh myself. I’ll have to learn.” <Best pickup line ever?

Say “the flesh” again.

He offers Veronica two steaks: one that’s gone through the teleporter, and one that hasn’t. He offers them to the reported for an “objective opinion,” but tells her which one was teleported. Come on, Seth Brundle. Bad science!

Veronica’s buying him clothes. Well, that escalated quickly.

The moral of this movie is: jealousy will turn you into a fly. Looks like I don’t need to watch any further.

There’s that flesh Seth/Jeff keeps going on about.

It’s begun. Things I’ve learned about flies: they’re flexible. Good at gymnastics. And have a lot of sexual stamina?

Shit, Brundle/Goldblum is being a dick. Don’t be a dick! It hurts my head not to like your character.

The plasma spring sounds like a swimming hole I’d like to avoid.

I’m at the arm wrestling scene. Oh balls, the wrist! And the woman’s into it? I don’t know about anyone else, but watching bone pop out of the flesh doesn’t make me want to have sex. Probably just me, though.

Seth Goldblum just pulled his fingernails off. Okay, movie over. Great film. I’m done. Fuck, David Cronenberg! Why do you do this to me?

“Secondary element is not-Brundle.” I like this. On my off days I am not-Stufflebeam.

The secret is out, on all counts. What a start to a relationship!

Oh holy fuck, with the vomit and the ear and the face.

She’s pregnant with the fly-baby. Did they use condoms and/or other birth control? I’m thinking two highly intelligent people would use some form of birth control. Also, why are these accidental pregnancies so common in movies? Birth control must only be 20% effective in movie-world.

Oh fuck with the teeth. He’s keeping his parts in the medicine cabinet? Well, okay, isn’t that where everyone keeps their extra body parts? (I’d probably keep them in the fridge. Less rot that way.)

An insect politician would be a lot more interesting than most of our human politicians.

Seth Goldblum: “I’ll hurt you if you stay.” Is the Fly seriously making me cry?

He melted the editor-man’s hand. Now I’m crying for a different reason.

Shedding the flesh! Shedding the flesh! Why is this happening? (And now I’m singing “shedding the flesh” to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive.”)

I might have lost my attraction to Goldblum. Better watch the Portlandia episode with the beet sketch. That’s better.

Final verdict: if you stop watching right before he first teleports, when he’s naked in the pod, the Fly is a perfect movie.

(PS from Rachael: go support this kickstarter. It’s an excellent project and I’m supporting it too. Bonnie has earned it with her delicious suffering.)

Categories
video game

Destiny: I don’t even go here

According to the Destiny app on my droid, between two characters I’ve now spent 3 days, 7 hours, and 40 minutes playing this video game. Even more startling is the fact that I have a droid app for this fucking game to begin with. Destiny is a science fantasy game by Bungie, the people who brought us Halo. This would be more relevant to me as a gamer, had I actually played Halo or any of the following games. But I haven’t, because I really, really, really hate first person shooters. Mostly because I suck at them terribly. I get twitchy and sort of randomly fire in all directions and then die, over and over again.

And yet. Over three days of game time. Rachael, what the hell are you even doing with your life?

Simple answer: I have friends who play it. Friends who don’t live in the same state as me. Friends who will consistently poke me when they want a warm body to fire a simulated handgun with a self-consciously badass name like Thorn in random directions while they reassure me on Skype that I am totally doing fine shhhh, shhhh have another beer, it’s cool. I’m weak to that kind of shit. It’s an amazing way to hang out with friends I would otherwise never get to talk to, because fuck phone calls, I can’t handle that holding a little slab of metal to my ear and trying to think of something other than the weather to talk about thing, but if you want to have an in depth discussion of just how many dicks are in the big bag that Bungie has given a blue face and named Rahool I am so there.

I wasn’t even going to get sucked into the friend game vortex, but then I had a back spasm and basically couldn’t do anything for three days except sit on the couch in a drugged stupor while a heating pad slowly cooked my back. I played a lot of Destiny those days. I think. I was on a lot of medication, but I came out of it with a character at level 32, so I’m guessing that’s what happened.

And it’s all so hilarious because there is so much about this game that just gets on my tits. It’s a pretty game, but the back story is so goddamn thin that it would make a Michael Bay film look densely characterized in comparison. If you want to even know who the fuck half the NPCs are and why you should care, you can look up “grimoire cards” on the Bungie site or via the app, but even that just gets you enough to feel really fucking annoyed about the whole thing. There are characters (notably Lord Shaxx and Lord Saladin) where we don’t even know what species they are. You do know they’re mentee and mentor respectively, you know they fought together at some battle in a war that’s described in the vaguest terms and because of some unnamed thing that happened they don’t really talk any more, and that’s it. Maybe not even enough to squeeze fanfic out of. It’s like some kind of asshole psychologist worked with Bungie to come up with the bare minimum amount of detail guaranteed to drive people absolutely batshit with curiosity if you then refuse to ever tell them more.

Story missions constantly end on such vague terms (“They were beaming an unknown signal to something at the edge of space I guess, and this sounds super important but oh well, we’re never going to talk about it again!”) that my not-so-inner writer no longer screams with outrage, just beats its head against the TV and whimpers.

Cut scenes you can’t skip. Ever. No matter how many times you’ve seen them.

No maps.

Let me say that again.

No. Maps.

There’s technically one area that has a map: the Tower, the home base you go to so that Rahool can be a massive bag of dicks to you and shit on all your engrams before he hands them back as useless weapons you’re just going to dismantle for a pittance of money. It’s basically the one area straightforward enough that you don’t even need a goddamn map. But everywhere else, including the oh-fuck-you-forever-Bungie enormous Shrine of Crota have. No. Maps. Just ask my friends about the number of times they’ve had to answer a pathetic little “guys? I’m lost, please come find me” whimper on Skype. On second thought, don’t ask, the answer isn’t one I need to know. But I have spent more time lost in this game than I did in Descent, with its unbelievably awful and enormous 3D wire frame maps, and that’s a massive achievement on my part. (Descent is, incidentally, another game I sucked at but played anyway because friends did. Or more accurately, a high school crush did.)

Everyone is DPS. Everyone. There’s a sort of vaguely tanky class (Defender Titan) and a sort of vaguely buff-y class (Sunsinger Warlock) but you still spend 99.9% of your time going pew-pew-pew (or in my case pew-pew-urk-help-guys-I-need-another-res). My kingdom for a healing class, that’s where I’m not actually dead weight that needs to be stowed in someone’s Baby Bjorn and carried through a strike.

Though there is one thing about this game I really love, other than its prettiness. It’s the fact that all of the characters wear body-covering armor, regardless of gender. No boob windows. No armor bikinis. I like the fact that the alien species (Fallen, Hive, Vex, Cabal) are truly alien and lack any kind of ridiculous sexual dimorphism that we see constantly in other video games.

Just don’t get me started on why the fuck Exos, which apparently were non-sentient robotic war machines to start, were created with gendered bodies. I’m talking roboobs. WHY.

If all my friends stopped playing Destiny tomorrow, I could walk away from the game and never feel a pang of regret. And no doubt get sucked into whatever new thing they’re playing, no matter how much I suck at it. I’ll just hope forever that next time it’ll be a real MMO, with maps, like World of Warcraft or FFXIV. (Both of which I already play, so the chances are slim to none.) And on the day that happens, when the no-neck mook cat starts throwing a tantrum because he wants me to sit on the couch with the footrest up so he can cuddle my feet, maybe I’ll put my newfound sucking-ever-so-slightly-less-at-first-person-shooter game skills to good use and finally start playing the Halo games. I’ve got a friend who wants me to do that too. I hear there’s actual lore.