Month: June 2011

On badass Orthodox Priests…

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Greek Orthodox religious people can be quite badass.

Greek Orthodox priest

Plutonick just posted a story about the dual-class Priest/Manager he saw at a recent wedding ((It’s in Greek btw)) he went to and reminded me of my sister’s wedding and the shenanigans that went on in there. I don’t think I ever posted about it and it was a good chance to outclass pluto so here goes.

At my sister’s marriage I had a fairly eccentric attire, wearing a bandanna, a sleeveless black shirt and a cape ((don’t judge me)) but as weird as it sounds, I wasn’t the most interesting thing to look at that day. You see, my brother-in-law has a fairly unique take on Greek Orthodoxy that I don’t quite understand. But anyway, that’s his own schtick so I don’t mind. However, their religious marriage also happened with people who shared the same unique style of belief.

The first sample was the best man. From what I understand, a quite “sinful” person in the past who had a total change of heart and became a hugely devout orthodox, even joining a monk coven for a bit (I think) and growing the archetypal epic beard. So during the Orthodox marriage ceremonies, one of the classic things happens, which is that a priest-helper sprinkles the family guests with holy water thrown from a special plant ((i.e. they have a pot of holy water in which they dip these plant leaves and then sprinkle the guests by flinging it in their direction)). So as the priest-helper was going along the line of guests sprinkling, he eventually reached this devout best man.

He sprinkle him once and moved on the row, but as he was returning for a second pass, the best man leaned in and whispered something to him. I visibly saw a look of terror and shock dawn on the priest-helper’s face. I cannot guess what the best man told him, but apparently it was terrifying enough so that the helper visibly avoided any contact in the future. Even eye-contact.

But that wasn’t the only thing that happened. If you think the best man was aggressive, it’s because I haven’t told you about the priest actually doing the ceremony yet.

As is traditional in these marriages, there was a hired photographer going around taking artistic photos. Generally these photographers are given some leeway in movement so that they can take the good shots from the front of the couple and so on. So the photographer was doing his job, which inadvertently meant that he had to move to and fro and pass between the couple and the priest.

Well, let’s just say the priest did not take this very kindly.

After the third time the photographer passed between couple and priest, the priest abruptly stopped the ceremony, leaned down and whispered aggressively and loud enough to be heard to the third row something to the extent of “If you walk between me and the couple one more time, this will be the last time you walk.”

After that, the priest went back to his ceremony as if nothing had happened, while the photographer cowered in the corner for a while and then continued taking pictures in a very…conservative manner. I couldn’t see my sister’s face, so I don’t know if she was as surprised as I was at this outburst but later she told me that the guy deserved it because he was being kind of disruptive anyway.

Needless to say, this was the most awesome wedding I’ve ever been to.

Well that's a first. A gaming community that actively opposes objectifying women

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The TF2 community shows more maturity than expected.

I came upon this thread on /r/gaming where someone thought that if more females played TF2, the class models would look like this:

Female models for TF2 that have been objectified with large bewbs and showing as much skin as possible.

Cringeworthy, I know.

So anyway, I went into the thread, expecting the usual privileged circlejerk that I would have to fight over to point out that the above art is extremely objectifying to womenm but I was pleasantly surprised when not only the top comment, but the majority of comments already made the same point.

I don’t if this says something about the TF2 community, or about reddit’s TF2 community but this is honestly the first time I’ve seen this happen. It’s usually the other way around, where I get downvoted to oblivion when pointing out that perhaps having all females dressed provocatively is just a tad sexist.

As weird as it seems, I think it has to do with the fact that the game didn’t have any official female models from Valve which would have been very likely to be dressed in skimpy outfits, simply because the original concept artist might not have given it a two second thought (anymore than they gave a thought to the idea that hey, maybe some of the characters should have been female). And from then on, it would have been an upward struggle to change the set perception where exposed cleavage, midriff and thighs should not the norm for females.

Now, that all the models are originally perceived as fully clothed, the expectations are different, leading in fact to fans creating empowered females when they try to create such models. Examples ((Unfortunately I don’t have direct link to the sources)) :

Lets hope that if Valve ever considers finally repressenting the other half of the human race in the game, they’ll go with such a design.

 

"The Rape" of Mr. Smith

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The Shit Reddit Says….

I found this little gem via reddit, when someone was trying to equate being the situation of being robbed to being raped.

Quoted here in verbatim

“Mr. Smith, you were held up at gunpoint on the corner of 16th & Locust?”
“Yes.”
“Did you struggle with the robber?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He was armed.”
“Then you made a conscious decision to comply with his demands rather than
to resist?”
“Yes.”
“Did you scream? Cry out?”
“No. I was afraid.”
“I see. Have you ever been held up before?”
“No.”
“Have you ever given money away?”
“Yes, of course –”
“And did you do so willingly?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Well, let’s put it like this, Mr. Smith. You’ve given away money in the
past — in fact, you have quite a reputation for philanthropy. How can
we be sure that you weren’t _contriving_ to have your money taken away
from you by force?”
“Listen, if I wanted –”
“Never mind. What time did this holdup take place, Mr. Smith?”
“About 11 p.m.”
“You were out on the streets at 11 p.m.? Doing what?”
“Just walking.”
“Just walking? You know that it’s dangerous being out on the street that
late at night. Weren’t you aware that you could have been held up?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“What were you wearing at the time, Mr. Smith?”
“Let’s see. A suit. Yes, a suit.”
“An _expensive_ suit?”
“Well — yes.”
“In other words, Mr. Smith, you were walking around the streets late at
night in a suit that practically _advertised_ the fact that you might be
a good target for some easy money, isn’t that so? I mean, if we didn’t
know better, Mr. Smith, we might even think you were _asking_ for this to
happen, mightn’t we?”
“Look, can’t we talk about the past history of the guy who _did_ this to
me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Smith. I don’t think you would want to violate his
rights, now, would you?”

Bonus link: See here how funny reddit’s /r/gaming finds pedo rape, and what happens when I call them out on it.

Quote of the day: The Anomaly of an mostly-female cast

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The Double Standards of a gender-skewed society.

Quoth Sarah Morayati (found in TV Tropes)

“If a smash hit has mostly male characters, nobody raises an eyebrow, but if it has mostly female characters, it’s a Great Big Anomaly worth several trees’ worth of shocked speculation.”

What also usually happens is that a movie with a primarily female cast is going to be considered a “chick flick” by many, while movies where there’s at best a token female are considered simply as “Action Movies”, “Adventures”, “Comedies” and so on, rather than “Dude flicks”.