The Men of Orange is the New Black

So there’s an article from The Atlantic going around about how under- and misrepresented the poor, poor men are in a show about a women’s prison. The bulk of it is mostly about how the show frames women as victims of misguided love to make their backstories more dramatic and sympathetic than those of the male prisoners. He complains that these male prisoners, of which we see a whole three with speaking roles, are depicted in positively stereotypical ways that give us no room to see them as victims too.

His only example of how horribly male prisoners are represented… is the single male prisoner with any real characterization at all. Darius McRae (who I might point out the author hinged this whole argument on and could not be bothered to look up his name) is a black man in prison presumably because he is also a hitman. He and two other white male prisoners are given speaking roles in the airplane scene of season two’s premiere. As opposed the white guys, whose very stereotypical depiction has them discussing what one can and cannot see in a bird’s eye view of the Midwest, McRae introduces himself by suggesting to Piper that she can ride his dick to Chicago.

Read on…

Faminism: Food in The Devil Wears Prada

Someone searched for “faminism the devil wears prada” on here. Spelling error aside, why the hell not? Let’s talk about food in Prada.

It gets overshadowed by the fashion, but food is actually used a lot in this movie to delineate the differences between the culture at Runway and Andy’s lifestyle. Unlike fashion, however, it’s not Andy’s complete cluelessness about the topic that draws the line between the worlds she walks in, but in the appreciation of it.

Read on…

Decor is Very Important: Action Figures

All right, nerds. I’mma have to be real with you.

You need to stop with the packaged action figures. It’s sending all the wrong signals.

I see a lot of “nerd” rooms that have action figures, still in their boxes, on display like they were cherished tchotchkes. It is my assumption that aside from declaring loudly and proudly that you like nerdy shit, the intention behind this is to convey a sense of fun and childlike whimsy to your visitors. Because who but a fun person would collect Legends of the WWF toys or obscure DC superhero action figures?

But “fun” is not what piles upon piles of toys you cannot play with suggests.

Read on…

Decor is Very Important: Eclecticism (Like on Friends)

Let’s talk about that respite from brokeness, limited options, and fear of commitment to a style: eclectic decor.

It’s been around forever, I’m sure, but the most famous and popularizing example of it is probably Monica Geller’s apartment in the TV show, Friends. Monica’s home is full of mismatched furniture, different wood grains and stains, and knickknacks everywhere. It’s busy as hell and there’s shit every way you look.

Monica Geller's living room from the television show 'Friends'.

Monica Geller’s living room from the television show “Friends”.

Read on…

Anatomy of an Update: Lessons from Robotic Boogaloo on Community Updates

It’s been a good long while since Robotic Boogaloo, the first (and thus far only) community-created update, and I’ve been thinking about it lately. The update never sat well with me and even if we don’t all agree that the update wasn’t that great, we should all acknowledge it wasn’t well-received. But I don’t feel that should be the end of community-created updates. I think the TF2 community can and does do better. If we want community updates to be a thing that people celebrate on the same level as normal Valve updates, though, they need to BE on the same level as a Valve update, as opposed to being a thing of people seeing one is out and thinking “Aw fuck, hat glurge”. The next one, if there is a next one, is gonna have to really knock it out of the park to prove this is a thing worth doing on the regular.

Read on…

Launching Games with Unusual Formats (including DOSBox and Other Studios’ Knock-Off Clients) in Steam

So maybe you are like me and you have 50+ games on your Steam account and you are using the rest of Steam’s functionality enough that you want to launch all of your games from Steam’s neatly organized and alphabetized library. Or maybe (also like me) you just think it’s fun to let your friends know when you’re playing 5 Days a Fuckfest or Tales of Game’s Studios Presents Chef Boyardee’s Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa.

It’s easy as hell if your game launches with an .exe file, as most games these days do. But what about older shit? Or ROM dumps? Steam doesn’t permit importing of most proprietary formats just by the usual way, nor links to webpages. As such, how to launch browser games or anything in an emulator, especially the clusterfucks that are DOS-based games, is not something readily obvious in Steam.

But you can do it and here is how.

Read on…

Baby, It’s Slut-Shamey Outside

It’s that time of year again, when all the new SJ warriors “discover” that Baby, It’s Cold Outside is about date rape. This is, of course, based solely on one innocuous line of the lyrics – “Say, what’s in this drink?” – and further conjecture based on the (usually) male singer’s pushiness.

Allow me to, if I may, offer a different yet equally modern interpretation.

Read on…

Being Big

My stats tell me that someone recently did a search on my site for an essay on Lloyd from Phonogram: The Singles Club. I’m not sure what specifically you were hoping to learn about him, but I do have thots on him, so whoever you are, hopefully you will be back.

When The Singles Club was first coming out, trickling out really, the character I most related to was Emily. Emily is the leader of her own coven of Phonomancers which is what other indie music scenesters know her for, but her defining character trait is that she has completely and consciously reinvented herself. Much of her story is about her old self occasionally peeking through and her current one trying to squash the other out. So long as she doesn’t feel like gloating to her own reflection anyway.

A lot of the reason why I liked her story was because I felt I couldn’t be who I really wanted to be at the time. I’m sure your own home is probably not unlike mine, in that you cannot really do anything new or different without people making something of it. I am shy in a lot of ways, and sensitive to that kind of thing. I wanted to change myself, but I wanted people to treat it as if I was always like that and there was nothing funny or stupid about any change I had made. Emily’s transition into her new self was very enviable. (The Immaterial Girl may reveal otherwise.)

Now that I live by myself and am free to pursue being who I really want to be, I find that nowadays Lloyd’s conflict most resonates with me.

Read on…

Hello

Presently

The Future is Still Silver and Black: The MSI’s Pioneer Zephyr and the IRM’s No. 9911-A “Silver Pilot” are pen pals, writing to each other from their respective museums about their service lives both pre- and post-preservation.
Low Art Lyseum: DJ, Ray, and Ellie play and critically analyze videogames. 7:00 CST on Thursdays/Fridays. Currently playing We Happy Few.
Engines in Sidings: Thomas the Tank Engine stories. Written with Ray.

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This is going to be a startling question: Are you aware of the youtube ai age verification situation? If yes, could you help me get more awareness for this issue? If no, I would highly suggest looking into it as well for your benefit.The age verification will destroy online privacy and effectively censor the rest of the internet. We may lose the ability to watch videos that an ai determines to be of childish nature, whether it be a commentary of a tv show or a slime review video. The ai will deny you of your access to youtube, unless you present an id like a credit card or a drivers licence to regain access to watching any video. Even if you are an adult, it will not allow you access unless you surrender sensitive info about yourself. Should this spread, internet privacy and safety will be gone, and even a 1984 situation would take place (hoping not). The surrendered data can be exposed to the world, doxxing so many people and allowing scammed and hackers to steal personal info. I do not want to see this ruin anyone's love for anything that may seem childish to a faulty machine designed to somehow replace a parents' responsibility of looking after their own children. It is scheduled to take into effect on August 13th this month.I am afraid that this is what will shatter many fandoms of beloved childhood shows, games, books, and franchises. I just hope that at least the TTTE fandom will help step up against the loss of internet security and privacy. United we stand, together we fall. Let us stand and stand firm against this ruin.Cheers,A worried American who is a thomas fan

So like, there seems to be a wave of bad, privacy-violating legislation going around lately. Gonna be real in that I don’t really know how to fight that kinda thing effectively. Based on the UK one that just passed, kinda seems like the point is actually to stifle communication, since… [more]

for the WIP ask game... The Future Is Still Silver and Black? (original train fiction from you two sounds really interesting!)

So last year, I went up north to visit Ray. Ray lives in Chicago, which just so happens to have the largest railway museum in the United States, the Illinois Railway Museum.

At the IRM, we saw the Nebraska Zephyr, which is a streamlined stainless steel articulated trainset. Each of the… [more]