Anyway, I am sorry, and let's just move on.
World Goth Day ended, with the month of events, the World Goth Fair, and the Nightstalker Hunt. An amazing amount of money was raised, considering the current level of fundraising options in Second Life. And though I wasn't an official blogger--because things are still chaotic on an RL level--I was glad that I put out a few entries raising awareness. All in all, I'm very proud of what the organizers accomplished.
Remember when I mentioned a while back that the mesh deformer project might die on the vine? Well, it seems to be sluggishly moving again, but--as New World Notes wrote--the fact that a Linden, who has somewhat endless channels of communication open to them, is choosing to reply in a comment on a blog--and not in any official format (not that people read the official formats, either)...well, it really ties up the problem in a nutshell, doesn't it?
Second Life as an entity has a Twitter account, a Tumblr, a Pinterest account, an official grid status blog, an official grouping of blogs as well as official community forums and the JIRA, with all the JIRA's subsections...and yet, the Lindens as a ruling body still cannot manage to communicate ideas and changes effectively. Why is this? Do they just not know they have all these avenues of communication? Who's maintaining them, then?
[02:34 AM] xxx Yxxx: hi
[02:34 AM] xxx Yxxx: you are sexy
[02:35 AM] Emilly Orr: Thanks?
[02:35 AM] Emilly Orr: Who are you?
[02:36 AM] Emilly Orr: ...and I have to jet, so if you're going to answer, answer; otherwise I'm gone.
[02:37 AM] xxx Yxxx: i ujst meet you
[02:37 AM] xxx Yxxx: you not knwo me
[02:37 AM] Emilly Orr checks her watch.
[02:37 AM] Emilly Orr: Okay, going and gone. Later.
Whatever pitiful stores of patience I had on reserve have been utterly exhausted, and I don't seem to know how to access the new stores of the stuph, so...yeah. There's been a lot of conversations like this.
Moving back to games, I won't lie--I've played Hitman games in the past. And really, the game style's in the name: travel to distant places, buy ammo, kill everything that breathes. It's not complicated, it's very violent, and there have been protests against the game in the past.
And while I do consider myself a feminist, there are things--like some video games--that I give an open pass to.
The trailer for the new Hitman game, however...does not get that pass. Am I against nuns in fetish heels carrying weapons? Not as such--go as far back as Two Mules for Sister Sara, and you find the nuns with bad habits trope; it's far from uncommon. Where I have a problem is with the progression of things. Follow:
- Our "hero", the nameless assassin, is seen cleaning wounds and changing in an anonymous hotel room.
- The shot shifts to an exterior, showing a group of nuns walking towards the parking lot.
- First shot of Something Not Quite Right is seen in the form of fetish heels on the part of a few nuns.
- The nuns strip off their habits to reveal tight, glossy black latex outfits--but leave their wimples on. (Myself, I can easily think it would be a bitch to untie and remove a properly pinned wimple, but likely the game designers did not think that far ahead--thus clearly they intended the fetishwear to be paired with the wimples for maximum effect.)
- After having clearly established they are there as eye candy, not serious opponents, the Mother Inferior opens fire with a rocket to the facade of the hotel.
- The facade blows up but leaves the assassin unharmed.
- He then sets to fighting with a vengeance, and--of course--he wins, but not without some gratuitous sacrilege along the way--high kicks with crotch shots, strangulation with rosaries (both by the Hitman, and by the nuns), and other assorted irreligious concepts.
- Several women are shown wounded--and I don't mean suffering the aftereffects of violence and then dying--they're shown with broken noses, blackened eyes, stab wounds, blood gushing from bullets that flew into their bodies.
- The nuns fall and die to a single woman, which was obviously the intention when they showed up. Not only were they cookie-cutter opponents, they barely presented a challenge.
- The final scene is of the assassin tenderly closing the eyes of the dead (black) nun, thus pseudo-restoring his perceived humanity.
So many unanswered questions, which I, for one, will not be answering any time soon. Come November, that's now one game I will not be purchasing.
From battle nuns to fat black protagonists, and isn't it a sad thing when the single most misogynistic game to come out for the past three years looks better than Hitman, above? Still, you have to hand it to Saints Row 3: you can make a fat sassy character for your knock-down, drag-out, kill-everyone gaming pleasure. Nothing stops you. And due to a unique mechanic within the game itself, your character as created (and attired) shows up in the cut scenes. (This, on occasion, does result in some very surreal moments indeed, but that's entirely dependent on what your character chooses to wear, after all.)
Meanwhile, the Most Bizarre Movie Tie-In award goes to...this toy, from the Dark Knight Rises franchise. ...The hell?
In other baffling news, cosplayers are an inventive and insane lot. I now present to you Sailor Head and Sailor Nurse, from Silent Hill by way of Sailor Moon. The horror.
Finally, in depressing news, DC has announced they're killing off Jade and Obsidian. Well, no, see, that's the problem--between the "new 52" launch and their huge announcement of a "major" superhero character coming out, they've retrograded the announcee...so it's less than Alan Scott killed off his kids (including the gay Obsidian), and more never had them in the first place, and oh my gods, I hate DC so hard now.
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