Fantastic Spaztic

This ties directly into the Man vs Wild let's play Please watch It will open your mind Check out all of the videos

Dear 11 year-old self,                This is your 19 year-old self talking.  In a lot of ways, you will change drastically [and that’s a good thing.]  But in others, you will stay fundamentally the same [and that’s also a good thing.]  You’re 11 and life is still relatively easy for you – apart from the learning how to cope with menstruation part.  I still don’t like that aspect of our life, but it is what it is.  I don’t want to say “a part of being a girl” because not all girls menstruate.                This may come as a shock for you.  It did for me, probably two and a half years ago.  But… everything you know about gender is wrong.  It’s not your fault specifically; it’s society’s.  Forget about those rigid gender roles because YOU don’t even embody a rigid gender role.  There are people...

Today’s topic will be Markiplier.  Markiplier is my favorite so he gets the honor of going first. I wasn’t with Mark from the beginning, but it’s not something that I regret.  That’s just the reality.  But I WAS there in mid-September – during the Slenderman / Slender-related craze [I won’t go into the specifics of games now; that’ll be after I tackle my favorite let’s players & the horror genre that they’re all pretty much a part of.]  From there, Mark’s channel has grown from 20,000 to nearly 200,000.  The growth of his channel has been nothing short of explosive. I really like a lot about Mark, but I’ll keep it to these solid factors: his voice; his sincerity; his generosity; & his passion.  a.      THE VOICE This is Mark’s money-maker.  It’s the first thing you notice about him whenever he opens with “HELLO!  MY NAME IS MARKIPLIER & WELCOME TO [insert game here]!” & when he ends wit...

Gaming & gaming culture receive a lot of criticism - & a lot of that is valid.  I criticize the culture & the players / fans, too, because it needs to be criticized.  Because the spaces of gaming / let’s playing / viewership of gaming/lp-ing are those of primarily privileged groups: white cis hetero able-boded males.  Usually in their mid 20s.  Sometimes they still live with their parents.  & a lot of the time they subscribe to a variety of isms / hatreds: racism; misogyny; transmisogyny; cissexism; classism; ableism; eurocentrism; & hella other things.  A lot. When you frequent videos & the comments on those videos & the comments uttered during gameplay, you hear rape jokes.  You hear people calling each other female body parts aimed to insult.  You hear slurs people use in hatred to refer to homosexuals, or perceived homosexuality which is still lesser.  You hear racist slurs thrown around like they’ve lost...

& now I come to our next game.  Again I had heard about it, but I didn’t pursue it until VERY recently – try a week & a half ago recently.   I had been PLANNING to watch the playlist pewdiepie had complied since he came out with it [January], but life happened.   [You can view that playlist here:   But it was WORTH THE WAIT.  Let wiki tell you the rest: In   Journey   the player controls a robed figure in a vast desert, traveling towards a mountain in the distance. Other players on the same journey can be discovered, one at a time, along the way; two players that meet can assist each other, but they cannot communicate via speech or text and cannot see each other's names. The only form of communication between the two is a wordless shout. This shout also transforms dull, stiff pieces of cloth found throughout the levels into vibrant red, affecting the game world and allowing the player to progress through the levels. The robed figure...

    You may not know it from this blog, but on my main tumblr blog, I post a lot of let’s play videos & gaming videos.  & I know this is more of an “art-oriented” blog, but I want to talk about video games & gaming culture for a little bit.  Because I can.  Because it’s my blog.  So deal with it.   Video games are a medium that isn’t always addressed.  Most art buffs take an elitist stance on the matter [ but then again when DON’T they take an elitist stance on things? ]  Yes there are a lot of first-person-shooter games, but even THOSE games have finesse & quality graphics nowadays.  It takes sometimes hundreds of people just to make the pixels that make up that man running across the screen with a gun & all the game physics keeping his world together with all the objectives & environment graphics & gameplay.  People who can’t get past the PAINTINGS ARE THE ONLY ART THERE NOT OTHER SUBSTI...