About that Kotaku Article: It's good, but...

I know, it's Kotaku, but for once I'm linking to their article because someone actually gets it when it comes to male privilege and how it intersects with gaming. (And then from the very first comment the readers prove they fail basic reading comprehension and get all buttmad because hey, he was talking about them, the jerk.) I do, however, disagree when he says that there aren't that many women in nerd/gaming culture, but I've said why I believe that's not true before. We are there, we just aren't being heard.

I've known about this article for a few days and hesitated linking it because while I was impressed and thought it had a good message, something was bugging me about it (aside from the clueless douchebags in the comments). Then, today Melissa McEwan linked to the article and added this commentary: You know what would have made this piece about "Nerds and Male Privilege" better...? If its male author had linked to any one of the hundreds (thousands?) of female writers who have said the very same thing before.

She's right. Even I've talked about it in a way multiple times and I know I've seen many an article or, hell, even whole blogs dedicated to women gamers who are (rightly) ranting time and time again about male privilege. While the article is good and makes many, many excellent points, it could have been better by including some female voices who also know what they're talking about.

So. Yeah. That's what was bugging me.

CoH: "This floor looks familiar. Oh, right, I've died on it before."

So, Sam and I played a bit of City of Heroes since the kiddo has no homework (and his last day of school is tomorrow). We decided to take the remade Titan Weapons Pasha and Stalker Jodan back to the First Ward as we're working our way through there. It's a nice place and I dig the storyline, but holy crap the enemies there, particularly The Awakened. Here's my impression of what Pasha was probably thinking when we strolled into one mission:

"Oh hey, enemies we haven't seen before! Oh, look, they're holding up a silver platter and, hey, is that my ass I see?"

Despite the debt I accrued for dying (and losing all my patrol XP because we died a lot), I managed to work it off and gain a level, so it wasn't a total loss. I really, really dig the story line as I said, and the First Ward as a whole is an interesting place, but man it can be rather difficult to get through.

By the way, Titan Weapons as a power set? Freaking awesome even if I'm toting around Cloud Strife's Buster sword a razor sword that totally doesn't look like a just-this-side-of-copyright-infringement remake of a popular video game character's weapon rather than a generic great sword or bastard sword. (Seriously, NCSoft, we've got a freaking railroad crossing sign and an atomic hammer, you couldn't make a Claymore too? We've got kilts as a costume option, so it wouldn't be that far fetched.)

Also, also, the Subjugator? Yeah, I didn't like the squid-attached-to-someone's-head concept any better when I ran Throne of Tides in WoW. (No, really, I was totally reminded of the Erunak Stonespeaker fight and Mindbender Ghur'sha.) I mean, I'm trying to get away from tentacles right now as Folami will, hopefully soon, have an entire outfit full of them. Seriously, she already has the helm, so she's walking around with a tentacle wiggling out of her face. And I totally have a dagger that looks like a wriggling tentacle ready for transmorgrification.)

...um, wow. This got really nerdy really fast. I'm gonna go away from the computer and make some baked BBQ chicken for dinner as I planned.