A Wild Lurker Appears! Hyoi's Random Banter #232

[Form]

I can't tell if you're joking or serious. It's the same thing.

It's important to keep in mind that people's identities and personalities are more complex and nuanced than consisting of a single aspect. A person is more than just their sexual orientation or gender identity. People are not just straight/gay or trans/cis, they also identify as being of a given nationality and/or religion and/or being a fan of X and/or having a given profession, etc. Don't simply write a character who is just LGBT and nothing else. Write a character whose identity and personality has multiple facets, one which can happen to be a LGBT facet, if you decide to go that route.

[Lacco]

Must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.

Thursdays are for work. The other days are just one long meeting.

Also, sounded a bit more like Mondays. Or the eternal Friday (you know, the hellish place where last 15 minutes of work take around two and a half eternities).

Let's say you've lived in New York City all your life. How well do you think you would be able to write about a farmer? Probably not very well, one would imagine. Especially if you have no farmer friends to ask about their experiences. But if you do have a lot of farmer friends, they could help with a lot of it.

Great. Now I'm thinking how cool would it be if someone who never heard anything about farming would write a book about a farmer. You know, the whole "and in the morning he went outside, to plant the cows".

Because I definitely need another crazy idea to wander around my head.

[Jasdoif]

Great. Now I'm thinking how cool would it be if someone who never heard anything about farming would write a book about a farmer. You know, the whole "and in the morning he went outside, to plant the cows".

That could explain mooshrooms....

[Tvtyrant]

Pretty is pretty. I can find them attractive for their looks and/or personality while respecting that they would not find me attractive at all (or being able to acknowledge that I am damned pretty without any attraction to me, like how I can tell some guys are incredibly good-looking while having no interest in them).

Of course, I'm like 99% sure you meant "why do men find them attractive on the basis of being lesbians", which I also don't understand.

I'm fairly certain it is an objectification thing. The male gaze displacing legitimate interest in women with desire to look at women.

Great. Now I'm thinking how cool would it be if someone who never heard anything about farming would write a book about a farmer. You know, the whole "and in the morning he went outside, to plant the cows".

Because I definitely need another crazy idea to wander around my head.

Reminds me of the "robots pretending to be people" comic. Missing the point entirely is a fantastic form of comedy.

[Bartmanhomer]

It's important to keep in mind that people's identities and personalities are more complex and nuanced than consisting of a single aspect. A person is more than just their sexual orientation or gender identity. People are not just straight/gay or trans/cis, they also identify as being of a given nationality and/or religion and/or being a fan of X and/or having a given profession, etc. Don't simply write a character who is just LGBT and nothing else. Write a character whose identity and personality have multiple facets, one of which can happen to be an LGBT facet if you decide to go that route.

Thank you for your advice. I'll keep that in mind.

[Keltest]

If the typical male brain likes to look at a woman, then a lesbian couple has twice as much of the pleasing thing to look at. As opposed to a heterosexual couple, which has one thing to look at and one thing to ignore. I make no judgement on the appropriateness of viewing a woman as an object of attraction, but I'm pretty sure that's the basic thought process.

As much as it's a stereotype, sometimes things really can be as simple as they seem on the surface.

[Peelee]

Good: still haven't left the office. Nearly all day tomorrow will be pure overtime. We haven't even started on the last surgery of the day yet.

Bad: I was hoping to give my little one a wagon ride tonight. Guarantee Im not going to be home before his bedtime though.

[Keltest]

I wish I could get excited about my job like that.

[Bartmanhomer]

I'm hyper and calm at the same time right now because I only drink one cup of coffee earlier today.

[Peelee]

I wish I could get excited about my job like that.

Well, when I get paid time and a half for effectively doing nothing except chat with y'all, it's pretty bearable.

Unless I was supposed to give my little guy a wagon ride. Then I'm mildly annoyed.

[DataNinja]

Not on steam, but there should be cross play with MCC on Xbox, so we should still be good. Unless you want to co-op campaign (which I'm always for), in which case I have no objection to getting it on steam so long as i can hook up my Xbox controller to it.

...I forgot that non-co-op was a thing.

Sorry, I'd just assumed campaign! Since... I am not a competitive person at all. Can confirm that Xbox controllers work on PC, though. Since I got my Xbox controller specifically for Halo.

Dances into the Random Banter...has it been awhile!

I'm alive, mostly. Hope everyone else is doing alright?

Oh, hey Wombat! Long Time no see! Glad you're at least mostly alive!

I don't get lesbians.

It's okay. We don't get us either.

[Rater202]

On the esbian thing:

Evolutionary psychology: A man's contribution to reproduction is a much smaller investment than a woman's in the traditional "nomadic hunter-gatherer" that humans evolved to live in.

Becuase of this, as humans evolved one of the psychological differences between male and female humans became that a man's instinct is to sleep with multiple women and a woman's instinct is to have one man to protect her while she's pregnant and less able to hunt/ather/defend herself.

Granted, in the modern-day this instinct is far from universal, but this idea tends to be reinforced socially. If not in a formal manner, such as the legalization of polygamy involving one man with multiple wives but not the inverse, then informally.

Think the attitude that a man who sleeps around is by default a "stud" while a woman who sleeps around is by default a "slut."

At the same time, the basic instinctive drive behind reproduction tends to result in people not liking the idea of a potential "rival" getting with someone that you've already gotten with or are hoping to get with and passing on their genes behind your back.

And it requires a great deal of emotional maturity to understand that someone you're attracted to might not be attracted to you.

All of this comes together to mean that for some men, the "reptilian hindbrain" sees two girls that the man in question is attracted to kissing, or doing more, and thinks "breeding harem." Often times this isn't even a thought they're consciously aware of.

Think about it: How many pieces of adult media entertainment have a scene of two or more girls together and then a man turns up and gets in on the action? I've been led to believe that this is a classic trope in such works.

Granted: This is obviously not universal.

[Peelee]

...I forgot that non-co-op was a thing.

Sorry, I'd just assumed campaign! Since... I am not a competitive person at all. Can confirm that Xbox controllers work on PC, though. Since I got my Xbox controller specifically for Halo.

Woohoo! I love co-opping campaign in the Halos!

[DataNinja]

Woohoo! I love co-opping campaign in the Halos!

Cool! We can coordinate via PMs, or I dunno if you have a Discord or whatever where it'd be simpler to do? If so, I can PM you my Discord username.

[Peelee]

Cool! We can coordinate via PMs, or I dunno if you have a Discord or whatever where it'd be simpler to do? If so, I can PM you my Discord username.

I'm good either way.

[Bartmanhomer]

Is 100,000+ or 1,000,000+ subscribers consider celebrity status on Youtube?

[LaZodiac]

Is 100,000+ or 1,000,000+ subscribers consider celebrity status on Youtube?

Neither of those are considered e-celebrity status.

You need enough that people outside of the internet knows some degree of what your ame is and what you do.

[Lacco]

It also depends on your bot/human follower ratio .

Of course, if Skynet becomes your follower, then you're pretty much a celebrity immediately.

[Anonymouswizard]

a woman's instinct is to have one man to protect her while she's pregnant and less able to hunt/ather/defend herself.

Granted, in the modern-day this instinct is far from universal, but this idea tends to be reinforced socially. If not in a formal manner, such as the legalization of polygamy involving one man with multiple wives but not the inverse, then informally.

Feels like multiple partners would be even better, spread the workload more.

Think about it: How many pieces of adult media entertainment have a scene of two or more girls together and then a man turns up and gets in on the action? I've been led to believe that this is a classic trope in such works.

Ah yes, the song industry and it's dabbles in lesbian erasure. 'All lesbians are severely bisexual' is just as problematic a trope as bisexual erasure is. Sometimes I want to smack society in the head and tell it to grow up.


Yes, I also have issues with a lot of yaoi being aimed at straight women. #GayLoveForGayPeople

[Rater202]

Is it weird that i get frustrated when it's established that an antagonist did something but we never actually find out what the results of that are because their get defeated soon after?

Great example, which I'm spoiler tagging because it's long.

Spoiler

Show

Doctor Hayes, first name unknown, is the mother of Dr. Alice Hayes(biological) and Dr. Gene Hayes(adopted), and grandmother of Molly Hayes(Daughter of Alice and Gene)

Doctor Hayes is a geneticist who was aware of the existence of mutants before they became publically known, and she cracked the X-Gene.

Gene and Alice were born as humans, but thanks to Doctor Hayes's research, they are genetically and physiologically indistinguishable from naturally occurring mutants.

For completeness's sake, this a retcon: When initially presented, it was heavily implied that Gene and Alice Hayes were blood siblings and the result of multiple successive generations of inbreeding to maintain a specific mutant power set(They refer to themselves as a 'purebred union' when describing how rare it is for two mutants to have identical powers and in a flashback are established to have not been sure if they were physically capable of having children)

Honestly, I'm not sure if their only being adopted siblings who have powers becuase their mother liked playing with needles is much better than the original backstory, but I guess any digress.

Well, there is one way they're different. Naturally occurring mutant powers are based in part on genetics, in part on random factors, and in part on your nature at the time your powers kicked in. This process generates identical powers in every subject: Powerful telepathy allowing for mind reading, mind control, sedation, and memory erasure as well as the ability to use psychic energy to perform remote surgery on someone's nervous system(like, say, a lobotomy...) The mutant's eyes become bioluminescent, glowing a light magenta when powers are in use, with psychic energy they generate appearing as the same color when rendered visible.

These traits are consistent across Gene and Alice, Doctor Hayes herself, and the dozen or so cats she gave mutant power to just because.

Spoiler: Side Tangent

Show

Molly, being the result of random genetic recombination, instead has a psychokinetic aura that grants her superhuman toughness and superhuman strength. Officially her max lift fluctuates between 800 pounds and 25 tons, unofficially she was able to pick up and slam down a fifty story tall monster while on a caffeine high and has successfully removed Cloak's cloak, which Thor and Hercules have tried and failed to do, and can knock Wolverine the **** out with one punch if she gets the drop on him.



Realistically, this should have killed Frank. She's hitting him with enough energy that he would have just sublimated into mist.

Granted, Frank spending the next several issues standing perfectly still while clutching his gut using all of his willpower to avoid crying or passing out in front of witnesses is funnier.

Gene and Alice, being supervillains, eventually met with a sticky end.

Being both a grieving mother and mad scientist, Doctor Hayes eventually tries to bring Gene and Alice back to life with a combination of her preexisting genetic engineering technology, mind-stuff, and cloning: Clone Alice, tweak her genes and upload the appropriate knowledge into the clone's brain until Alice is "perfect" and then repeat the process with Gene.

When it's revealed that she's cloned Alice, Doctor Hayes states that she didn't just recreate her, she improved the process of giving her powers using what she learned from studying the DNA of the Runaways...

But the Runaways escape and call the Avengers saying that Doctor Hayes is performing illegal genetic experiments and cloning Supervillains, and then get the hell out of dodge. Several issues later it's established that Doctor Hayes is in prison and the clone of Alice's location is, as of this time, unaccounted for..

So we never learn what, exactly, Clone Alice ha that makes her an upgrade over the original Alice Hayes.

And that frustrates me. We get the setup but not the pay-off.

We don't even know enough to infer what they might be beyond a vague 'somewhat stronger.' It would be easy enough to assume that she'd jut been given the combined powers of the runaways... Well, Chase Stein and Gertrude Yorks are officially normal(Doctor Hayes insisted that the Steins have powers but don't clarify and Gertrude's parents were time-and multiverse travelers from the future exposed to exotic radiations so Gert has interesting mutations but nothing that makes her anything but an ordinary human,) combining X-Gene complexes, even among blood relatives, is not an exact science, Old Lace is a genetically engineered Deinonychus so the genes that give her powers might not have the same effect in a human unless the human were made a proper human/raptor hybrid which the Alice clone did not appear to be, Nico's a sorceress and most of the magic comes from artifacts and while her bloodline has inherent magical power it's not clear if that's genetic because magic doesn't have to follow conventional scientific laws, Victor Mancha's powers mostly come from his machine parts, and she never had access to Karolina.

So unless the clone turns up again, there's really no way to know the answer. And that frustrates me. Question but no answer.

Anyone else have things like that that frustrate them?

[Lacco]

Anyone else have things like that that frustrate them?

No, at least I am not aware of things like that that would frustrate me.

It's mainly the matter of selection of the comics I read. When you get a tight narrative structure, firmly set characters that are set into a well-defined world, it's much harder to find points of irritation.

And while there are definitely some changes between the starting point and the later released issues, Astérix does not suffer from this issue so much.

The only point that could theoretically irritate me is the renaming of characters between issues in our translation. This is especially prominent with one of my favourite side characters, the fishmonger, Ordralfabétix/Unhygienix, who started as Alfabetix, then got changed to Rybix (equivalent in English would be Fishix) and then back.

To be honest, I prefer Rybix to Alfabetix, but I'm not really frustrated. I just call him Rybix.

Does it help?

[Rater202]

No, at least I am not aware of things like that that would frustrate me.

It's mainly the matter of selection of the comics I read. When you get a tight narrative structure, firmly set characters that are set into a well-defined world, it's much harder to find points of irritation.

And while there are definitely some changes between the starting point and the later released issues, Astérix does not suffer from this issue so much.

The only point that could theoretically irritate me is the renaming of characters between issues in our translation. This is especially prominent with one of my favourite side characters, the fishmonger, Ordralfabétix/Unhygienix, who started as Alfabetix, then got changed to Rybix (equivalent in English would be Fishix) and then back.

To be honest, I prefer Rybix to Alfabetix, but I'm not really frustrated. I just call him Rybix.

Does it help?

...so you've never read a story where a question gets brought up and never answered because the answer became immediately irrelevant.

[Tarmor]

...so you've never read a story where a question gets brought up and never answered because the answer became immediately irrelevant.

I can't think of a specific situation, but that sort of thing does bother me. In your example: if you never learn what "improvements" were made, then why make mention of such improvements at all! It hasn't served any purpose in the story.

[Lacco]

...so you've never read a story where a question gets brought up and never answered because the answer became immediately irrelevant.

Yup. All the time - also, plotholes, loose threads...

...but I was never annoyed or frustrated due to this.

First of all, depending on the reliability of the narrator, things may be omitted or forgotten.

Second, these may be plot points that are going to be used in the future.

Third, I don't read comic books as much as I used to when I was a kid - and even then I had like... what? Twelve issues of Spiderman total? Some were lost, some I borrowed, one my sister used for potato peels by mistake. Still, poor Uncle Ben, he died in two of those.

And most importantly: it's realistic. Life tends to have these loose ends and extremely bad narrative structure - thank whoever created it.

I can't think of a specific situation, but that sort of thing does bother me. In your example: if you never learn what "improvements" were made, then why make mention of such improvements at all! It hasn't served any purpose in the story.

...you'll find out in next issue of our...damn, cancelled? Oh well, never mind...

...life.

[Bartmanhomer]

I made a joke by commenting on another Youtuber video today:

I always thought that intuitive eating was a food for psychics.

[LaZodiac]

I made a joke by commenting on another Youtuber video today:

I always thought that intuitive eating was a food for psychics.

So what's the joke?

By which I mean; I do not get it.

[Bartmanhomer]

So what's the joke?

By which I mean; I do not get it.

The joke is that intuitive eating is a food that psychic eats. Intuitive=psychics.

[Rater202]

Problem: Soysauce flavored stovetop ramen is, to my tongue, rather bland and salty compared to other flavors(I am fond of most ramen flavors, particularly miso and chili.)

Not enough to be inedible, but...

Solution: Add ground ginger, garlic powder, honey, lemon juice, and a dash of Worcestershire for kick to soup base and cook the noodles in the base instead of adding base after needles are boiled.

Cuts down on the saltiness and gives it a less bland flavor, kind of like a mildly spicy teriyaki.

[Lacco]

The joke is that intuitive eating is a food that psychic eats. Intuitive=psychics.

I thought psychics ate whole cans of scam spam. Especially bohemian spam.

[Bartmanhomer]

I thought psychics ate whole cans of scam spam. Especially bohemian spam.

They do.