It’s good to know that Men’s Rights Activists are taking on the issues that truly matter the most to men — like fictional princesses cucking “nice guys” in the plumbing business.
I found the meme above on A Voice for Men’s Facebook page, with this explanation:
Mario learns a hard lesson for white knighting and the Princess just learns…a hard lesson. This one is for fun.
But some of the commenters there had a hard time finding the humor in it.
Keep fighting the good fight against completely imaginary problems, MRAs. Excelsior!
To bring the two topics together, if it can be said that a created entity like Vivian James has some sort of animistic soul, I feel so bad for it. I’m over-empathizing. I totally agree with PoM of what the whole point of the character is. Like everything else GG is about, it’s a bludgeon to harass women.
re: Vivian’s expressions. She’s cool. She’s the cool chick. No emotions allowed beyond the borders of snark and anger.
Though, interesting thought perhaps. It’s part of the male stereotype that men and boys not express emotions beyond the negative, aggressive ones – snark and cynicism being a mild form of aggression.
Vivian James expresses a stereotypically male emotional range. She’s a direct stand-in for them. She’s nothing more than a cipher, a mask for them to put on to try to make their odious thoughts more palatable.
Hm. That thought’s still half baked, there’s more there. Will have to think on it.
Yeah, and Vivian is also a woman, so they have to frame her as angry, deceitful or manipulative all the time… i guess for the GG crowd, unhappy would just be a given
@John
Yeah, I’m mostly being facetious about Viv. Empathetic? Yeah. Like her design? Adorable in a vacuum. Think she’s worth reclaiming? GG touched it, nuke it from space
But involvin my dude Piccolo in some fuckery tho? Them’s fightin words
http://data.whicdn.com/images/164063351/superthumb.jpg
@ scildfreja
To bring three topics together (adding the magical elements from the tweet thread), my anthropomorphising/animist tendencies do cause me to believe that anything we create might end up imbued with a ‘soul’ (to use an inaccurate but convenient shorthand), especially if it’s representative of a person (human or otherwise).
I could go on about the Logos and all the related history and philosophy of this, but it would pale compared to your analyses. Speaking of which I liked your thing about exercising mental muscle memory. It’s something I try to do in all sorts of areas.
@Scildfreja –
That was fascinating. And, in a way, made me feel a bit less weird about saying “thank you” to traffic lights (if they turn green just as I’m approaching, or “listen” to my “c’mon, stay green” long enough for me to make it through the intersection).
And why is Mario grousing about having to go rescue Peach? It’s his job! Has been since he was “jumpman” back in the stand-up arcade game I put way too many quarters into. (If I’d invested those quarters in Nintendo stock, I’d be writing this from Cancun!!)
Thanks Just Wandered In, Policy of Madness. My only familiarity with the story was a play I’d seen, and I guess I had overmuch faith in the people who adapted it. Still…seems to be a *related* bit of tropey-ness, and I can sorta see why the people who did the adaptation ended up putting that spin on it.
@Ariblester
In the Eighties and early Nineties, having only the right ear pierced was supposed to mean a man was gay. And possibly gay men actually did do that to signal each other, because it was way riskier to be open about it even back then. Lots of straight guys I knew would talk about getting one ear pierced, “but only the LEFT one!”
Now I’m re imagining that picture with a different spin. Peach is trying to get away from her nasty abusive little ex (who’s a plumber) who keeps trying to drag her back to him.
@Alan, Penny,
You should be totally confident about thankin’ those traffic lights for being nice and letting you through, and the elevator for arriving right on time. It’s an excellent thing to do, because it’s great empathy practice, and you can do it anywhere. It also sends out social signals, reminding anyone who sees or hears you do it that they should be thoughtful and subconsciously cueing that sort of eusocial behaviour.
As for things being imbued with essences by virtue of their creation and their interaction with people? I’m on board. I’m sure that your analysis would be spot on, and better articulated than mine would be, too; I’m all rambly and focus on the wrong bits.
@ scildfreja
It’s a massive subject, but perhaps I can give you an overview and tie it into something I’d be interested in your thoughts on.
The idea that you can ‘speak’ things and especially life, into being is a common one. Christianity has the Logos. “in the beginning was The Word; and the word was made flesh”
But that crops up in a lot of creation myths. The Dreamtime and some African cosmologies are particularly interesting.
There’s also the idea that you can model life from facsimile. Make Adam out of mud, voodoo dolls, poppets etc.
The question is, can we still do that? People who cast spells would say Yes; as would anyone who’s ever made a golem.
So how’s that possible? I’d say magic. Another alternative (which may actually amount to the same thing) is that we’re living in a simulation, so all spells do is re-write the coding. But even if this isn’t a simulation there’s some serious research that suggests when you get down to even below quantum level the fundamental structure of the universe resembles something on a par with code anyway.
But is that code ‘read only’ or can it be manipulated?
If it can be overwritten then theres no distinction between a life created ‘naturally’ or one thought up by an author or designer.
So for all intents and purposes, Vivian has a soul.
(Also, I can teleport just by manually changing my x,y,z coordinates)
Since we’re talking about gg’s mascot this will be a good time to post this wonderful little comic
Social justice warrior special ops team rescues Vivian James
http://pierre.thecomicseries.com/comics/35/
Ahh, Pierre comics, I love’m and wish there were more. Is deserving of more.
@Alan, interesting! I figured you were going in that direction when you were talking about Logos. Comparing the universe to code on a fundamental level is an… interesting thing. I hear it a lot, but I hear it mostly from techbro singularitarians who are utterly blind to everything that isn’t within their little slice-o-life. They’re the same sorta people who say that the brain is basically a big ole computer, which it very, very much is not. So I take statements like that with a heapin’ helpin’ of salt.
… that said? There’s something inherently appealing about the idea, and something that makes a deep level of sense. The universe is expressed in set theory as close as we’re able to understand (at present), and code attempts to speak in the language of sets. So there’s an argument to be made that we too spin souls out of nothingness, as we were once spun.
wwwelp, I’m gonna start putting some complimentary comments in my code from now on, I think. My poor little babbies. I’m already pretty nice to the fictional characters I come up with though, given that by all accounts they are me and I am they.
Lovely thoughts, those! I like the idea. Poor Vivian really does need a rescue.
@Scildfreja
SA Swann’s book Broken Crescent has a computer science student transported to a world where (a) language does underly reality, and magic involves manipulating it like code. The people whose language it is taught some of to the people who now dominate, who used magic to strip language entirely from the minds of the first group, who are now slaves. It’s not terribly deep, but it’s interesting.
Hrm…hate to be the big meanie, but please remember that training eusocial behavior can make one more vulnerable to predators. Been there done that, glad I took self defense lessons years back. It’s an important part of making life worth living but it’s not a magic silver bullet that makes everyone more happy without any problems whatsoever. It’s just yet another tool.
Totally true, Lyzzy! Eusocial behaviour is far from a universal panacea and it can get you into terrible situations, too. I agree 100%, that’s a good thing to keep in mind.
Empathy for objects – especially virtual – is probably also a good thing in terms of being nicer to people online. The online bystander effect is an observed phenomenon, and (surely) empathy for virtual characters might also help empathy for “virtual” people one interacts with online. Not that I have any studies providing evidence for such a theory, but it seems… Probable, given what I do know.
@Karalora
Thanks. I thought it was something like that, but wasn’t sure.
I read quite a bit of speculation as to the motives of Gamergate behind the creation of Vivian James, and so I think it’s only fair to go back to their stated aims (i.e. primary sources) and see how well that lines up with how she is presented:
Source: This Imgur link, screencapping a message sent by a representative of 4chan to The Fine Young Capitalists
So there you have it, Vivian James is basically the attitudes of /v/ poured into a female-presenting mold. Her disaffectation is a reflection of her (male) creators’ general emotional state, and she takes the same level of enjoyment from video games as her creators presumably do (“tough-love”, which I interpret as sitting somewhere between mildly-involved apathy and barely-contained impotent rage).
To impute further traits onto her (e.g. “she’s a female character created by misogynists, and therefore must be a duplicitous snake”) would be reading too much into it, IMHO.
So what the fuck is up with those sheets? Like, he’s trapped inside, all rigid and whatnot. Meanwhile, she’s barely, provocatively covered. And her leg is out from the bottom, but way higher than makes any sense. What kinda warlock sheets are these? This is weird, right? Or is it just me? Not the point of the piece or anything, but I can’t focus on the rest of it now that I’ve noticed…
@Axe
Well obviously Peach is hogging the sheets. Bowser is probably having to make do.
To use a term popularised by James Portnow of the seminal Extra Credits, Vivian James seems to embody the concept of playing games as self-abnegation.
(That is, she plays to escape from her life and herself, because she doesn’t like either.)
It speaks volumes about the attitudes of her fans that this is what they consider desirable in their perfect woman.
@Oogly
A regular cuck, he is 😀
There’s probably something in both Mario and Peach (determined and aloof respectively) both being smokers, but it’s late. The image itself is actually super interesting beyond the initial joke. Tho, I somehow don’t think it’s intentionally interesting…
@EJ
“Life Will Always Welcome You Back”
There’s a point where I have to stop giving Axe mental fist-pounds because otherwise I’d never get anything else done.