I want people who use a word to self-identify to acknowledge that that word is not a shield to protect them. I want them to not build their personal identity on the definition of the word, both for their sakes as individuals and for society’s sake as having to deal with them. Geek or nerd is NOT an honorific or a…

You either were unaware of or just ignored the insidious misogyny around you. Assholes committing assholery are easy to spot. You’re telling me none of your guy friends pined after a girl only to make the platonic move and then get resentful when she dated some other guy? Or made gestures in hopes of banking “good…

Geeks are welcoming! Geeks are enthusiastic about Geekery and love sharing that with their fellow geeks!

As long as we’re gonna throw out anecdotal evidence, in high school (mid 90s) I was a dyed-in-the-wool nerd (D&D, Monty Python, collected Ghost Rider and Lobo comics, played a buttload of NES and SNES games) and 100% abso-fucking-lutely carried around ideas about women that were unfounded at best and toxic at worst.…

No true Scotsman nonsense.

That’s kind of my takeaway too. Looking more broadly at our struggles (not just in gaming), “Listen to us” is probably one of the most common and visceral demands we’ve been making, forever. Men still don’t listen, after thousands of years. That gaslighting burner illustrates the absolute tone-deafness they all seem…

I’m an old timer. I remember when geek was an insult, instead of something I’m proud to call myself.

Man, SonicFox was a fantastic sport about it as well.  Cheered him on and everything after the match.  That’s the kind of sportsmanship we need in all big tournaments!

What a shitty argument. Life reflects art. Art reflects life. Sigma is an artist’s depiction of mental illness, no matter where he as a character originates. Therefore, he is a negative depiction of mental illness.

One of the lore tapes you find for the warden of Arkham implies that his whole family has mental conditions that they should have sought treatment for and have deliberately not done, making them unfit doctors. So those games were NOT trying to say that Arkham Asylum was an appropriate place for sick people to be…

Fictional depictions have real world affect on people’s opinions of such things. There’s a reason why sharks were killed en mass after Jaws hit theaters. Jaws is fictional, but a lot of sharks died as a result of that movie.

Probably accepting that Arkham is a HORRIBLE place and the people in charge of it are cruel, disturbed, and equally unfit to run the place, so it’s not exactly meant to be a ringing endorsement for criminal reform...

But it IS trying to be inclusive, by the developers’ own admissions, and to be respect of the people it is including. Just because a character has a super power doesn’t mean their representation should be acceptable no matter what. A level of respect and understanding in how you handle them is expected.

It’s something worth talking about. It’s just that you and your ilk are not smart or mature enough to hold the conversation with.

Just living with it would be fine. Really, the problem is that it plays off the same old idea that to have a mental illness is to be dangerous or violent. These things are true:

I would kill for more characters like that in general.

The skin is just one part of the overarching problem: Sigma is the only character who is depicted in-game as having mental illness, and almost every part of that depiction is negative. He hallucinates a melody, becomes randomly disoriented about his surroundings, at least one artist wanted the bare feet to “sell the…

I would kill for a video game character like this

It must be comfortable, living in a world where you think people are constantly lying about their problems.

Broke: Insane asylum Sigma.