No, but seriously, Brianna Wu's favorite videogame character is a violent psychopath who, in terms of characterization, is completely indistinguishable from her male counterpart.


Addendum: are you fucking kidding me with that Mario question? Yes. Yes you fucking are. Because anyone who looks at that scenario for more than one picosecond understands that there is no choice there. Either the Mass Relay explodes and takes the star system with it, or the Reapers arrive and destroy the entire galaxy, including, you know, that star system. It's not an either-or scenario. It's a scenario where in one outcome you have three hundred million killed, and in the other outcome you have exty zillion killed, including the three hundred million who would have died in the other outcome! THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY TO SAVE THE BATARIANS IN THAT SYSTEM. THERE IS NO GOOD CHOICE OR BAD CHOICE. THERE IS THE UGLY-BUT-NECESSARY "CHOICE" OR THE FUCKING RETARDED ONE. SO DON"T TELL ME THAT MARIO WOULDN'T HAVE DONE IT. FUCKING SUPERMAN WOULD HAVE DONE IT!!!!!!!!!!

I feel like there's the potential for a post titled X Times Joss Whedon's Shows Would Have Come Under Fire From Anita Sarkeesian But For The Fact That He Gave Her Nerd Cred.

Off the top of my head (spoilers for stuff that's at least 5 years old):

• Turning Willow gay instead of Xander on Buffy, because lesbians are hotter.
• Firefly - while both Mal and River are shown naked, Mal is totally cool with it, but River is all vulnerable.
• Dollhouse. Like, f*cking all of it.
• All of the (mortal) female characters on Angel die, while at least one mortal male character is still kicking at the end of the finale. 

And now, a word about the sexualization of female videogame characters

Videogame characters are not real.
I knew that when I was 5.

It must be nice on your weird non-Earth planet

or: another GamerGate post.

First off, a hat tip to my liberal friends who keep (inadvertently) pointing me to these things. Today we're discussing another article (ostensibly) about GamerGate, this one on The Daily Beast, called Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage.

First of all, this article has almost nothing to do with GamerGate. It does, incidentally, cite another article that has almost nothing to do with GamerGate that I dissected previously. It is, to the extent that it's about anything other than liberal chest-puffing (more on that in a mo), about denigrating reactionaries.

Let's first take a step back here and talk about what's going on.