Zero Provocation

I have weird feelings about gaming journalism. On one hand we greatly enjoy the services, both journalistic and recreational, of folks like Jim Sterling, Laura Dale, and Yahtzee Croshaw. Jim Sterling in particular is an eloquent and earnest consumer advocate whom I greatly admire. On the other hand, a great deal of time and money has been dedicated to creating a powerful, public-facing back-feed loop in the area of games media. The sheer shameless, entitled corruption in mainstream gaming journalism has been so pervasive and so resented for so many years that it periodically gets tied to some asscheese's personal beef with someone in the industry by gossamer threads and we all go on a merry hatebinge for a week or so.

The good works and great joy contributed by the bad-ass PCs mentioned previously give me something very much like hope. It could just be an erection, but I'm pretty sure hope is involved. It's hard not be jaded about it though. I've been gaming since my fingers were big enough to push the buttons, and for most of that time gamers have been losing some really important battles to corporate profits. We've seen a couple big wins over the years; the slow, steady grinds towards greater inclusion and acceptance, towards better transparency in the industry and towards gaming as a positive force in the world.

Unfortunately, we've also suffered some pretty heavy consumer defeats. The hype-machine of mainstream games journalism has contributed to the success of anti-consumer standards for years, they've been selling out and selling us out since the console wars.

So really, I guess I don't have weird feelings about games journalism. I have a deep love and appreciation for games journalists and the work they do on our behalf, and an articulated, slow-fucking hateboner for the corporate schills who've consistently collaborated with those who would do harm. So pretty much like regular journalism.

Somewhere Between Love and Shoggoth

This Friday a man I don't really know, don't trust, and who only seems to be interested in the pleasure he gets from slicing on a living person is going to reach up my nose and (hopefully) cut all the sick out of my fucking head. Fortunately, I will probably be unconscious for that whole nasty endeavor, but it still brings a lot of Deep Hate out in me.

I watched doctors apathy my mother to death for most of a decade. Watched people who openly mocked her for her weight ignore the cancer that was creeping through her entire body until all the MRIs and x-rays and examinations didn't matter anymore. People whose only job was to watch for the things that ended up killing her, who would rather make a fat joke than discern between mysterious nerve pain and the pain caused by cancer ravaging bones and organs. I Hate doctors. Spending fifteen minutes in an office, listening to a bored man try to justify yet another course of the antibiotics that have to this point pretty much only served to destroy my digestive tract fills me with the kind of rage that characters in stories dedicate their lives to and ruins peoples lives in real life. The idea of spending three hours helpless while that same man digs around millimeters from my fucking brain is loathsome beyond description. The only thing that keeps me from being reduced to a Lovecraftian puddle of cosmic fury, much less actually going along with this, is my wife.

A person in pain for long enough tends to turn into a dick, especially a person known for being a grumpy fuck in the first place, and I won't put her through that. Not if I can help it. So for this week I'm going to do my best to be a man and not a Shoggoth, because she shouldn't have to pay for my anger. I honestly hope that this whole event can vent some of the poison from my heart, maybe even go some way towards convincing me that there are actually doctors out there who aren't worthless, self-righteous, shit-souled, fuckpuppets. I hope.