Zoop

15 hours ago, Haven Celestii said:

Honestly, prolly Discord and every other instantaneous serotonin filling app.

Thankfully I'm allergic to serotonin so they've never really held too much sway over me... though I suppose an alternative theory would be that I'm simply out of touch with The Youth™️, but I prefer my other explanation.

15 hours ago, Haven Celestii said:

It goes....all over the place. Life has been hectic and I've had to learn a lot of life lessons as of late, but i'm making it.

Thaaaaaat makes sense. I'm guessing pandemic related matters probably haven't helped with regards to things being hectic? And life lessons are good, if sometimes uncomfortable in the moment(s) that one is undertaking them. Its been largely the same on my side to be honest with regards to that. I'd like to think that I'm less of a conceited jackass than I sometimes tended to be in times past, if nothing else. :V

5 hours ago, Haven Celestii said:

It has been for a while, yuss. Even I've somehow given up on it.

Hello, old pal.

Damn kids and their Discord servers (presumably) killing off chat threads and forums in general. :T

Hullo. How goes? 

This thread is pushing up daisies, I see. :V

23 minutes ago, Splashee said:

Wouldn't this thread be better executed as a blog entry?

*scratches head*

I confess that I'm a little puzzled. With regards to this thread, it was posted literally a decade ago (Jesus Christ it makes me feel old saying that) when the forum was one month old, and was pretty much in line with other music genre focused threads of the day, both in content and title (ie we had Crispy's Metal Thread or such, I barely recall at this point). I'm not even sure MLPF had the blogging system enabled at the time.

With that said, I've been off staff and pretty much entirely disconnected from the community here for the better part of a decade (the only reason I was even aware of your post was due to seeing the email notification), so I'd hardly be offended or otherwise bothered if it's deemed in need of renovations of some sort or another. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

19 minutes ago, Shiki said:

Don't worry babe I'll be gentle uwu

o-oh my 

16 minutes ago, Shiki said:

I'm SWOONING

I've... I've still got it? 

1 hour ago, Shiki said:

@Zoop

Flattered as always. 

(and it does kinda make sense, I always was the cutest motherfucker around. )

1 hour ago, Shiki said:

boop @Zoop

careful now, I bruise easily o3o

1 hour ago, Shiki said:

holla @Zoop

hallo plummy  

Shit like this makes me feel old

props for keeping the site going as long as it has. 

27 minutes ago, ~C. Discord~ said:

Thorax is cuter than Fluttershy, fight me, @Zoop. 

c'mon man gimme a break D:

On 4/18/2019 at 11:04 AM, Shiki said:

@Zoop

He's still my hubby he just doesn't know it

I have questions

(mostly, did you use any other names here? I'm having a major brain fart ;_;)

and... honestly, I don't necessarily have a good answer - I'm so incredibly out of touch with anything and everything relating to this forum that I just... dunno? Picking favorites is difficult, even at the best of time. I could prattle off some random names of folks that probably haven't been here in years, but that doesn't really seem all that great... so I'll just take the easy way out and say @Shiki - if only for remembering who in the heck I am. 

On 4/22/2019 at 5:37 PM, Shiki said:

@Zoop???????????????????????????????????????

You're not the boss of me. 👀

and uh, idk... I choose you, @Totally Lyra  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't care what anyone says, Korean rap is valid af

fight me

A little birdy came came by and dropped me a link to this thread. I still exist (somewhat), though I'm afraid my time here has largely ended... though I do pop in every few months if someone specifically brings something to my attention. ^^;

There's not a whole lot for me to say, myself... in my case, the magic simply departed, leaving in its place plenty of less than fond memories of trudging through reports, mod disputes, and the many other less than pleasant memories of administrative work. These things happen. I still keep in touch with those that care to do so, so there is that.

Honestly, I think people give too much credence to things such as having an early registration date or a high post count. I suppose it's nice to feel as though one is a part of an ELITE GROUP or PRIVATE CLUB or such, but... eh. Empty numbers are silly things to celebrate in the end. Post counts, registration dates, etc. 

Anyhow... back to my cave. o3o

snip

A little birdy came in and mentioned your shout-out, which I appreciated. Honestly, as far as this topic goes, I would say that you definitely qualify - your posts always tended to stick out to me, and left a very lasting impression. I was fairly saddened when I noticed you had stopped coming around, though I've since joined you in moving on (or, more accurately in my case, moving elsewhere) for the most part.

So yeah. Props and such. ^^

No offense meant, but the way you describe it, it almost sounds as though you're implying that everyone who lacks desire for sexual content does so out due to emotional trauma or some other sort of condition. This isn't quite the case, though... while that may be the case for some, just as there are plenty of folks that exist on every step of the heterosexual/homosexual spectrum, there to exist plenty of folks that just aren't sexual at all, or are so in only limited ways. The whole concept of general asexuality isn't all that well known or 'out there', but it is a thing.

Having said that though, considering how important sex is to most folks, it is something that would be best off being discussed openly and early on, to prevent any explosions later on down the line. As for myself, I am (and have been for quite some time) in a sex free relationship, and have been quite happy with it. 

I read this article recently that said the same thing. It focused on the top films that came out in theaters. Consistently, the movies tend to have a male-skewed cast. Female characters only accounted for 29.2 percent of speaking roles in 2013's films. Veryyyyy disappointing.

Yeah, it is a thing sadly. I think the headline to that article is very much worth highlighting as well, and is actually something that I had meant to mention but had forgotten to.

"Women in film: no improvement since the 1950s"

Kind of a big thing, that. ^^;

Ironically though, films with female main characters were some of the top grossing. Hunger Games: Catching Fire came in first place and Frozen came in third. People try to justify the lack of female representation saying, "But male characters bring more money to the box office!" but that's not really true.

Amusing thing about that... I can't remember the exact source, but films with female focused casts tend (though I'm sure things like Hunger Games and such are exceptions to this) to be given significantly smaller budgets than those that are male dominated. I guess people don't think they're worth investing in? x_X

I'm hopeful that, since it's been proven that movies that focus on women can bring in money, female representation will become a more popular thing in the next few years. But only time will tell.

It's hard to say. It would be nice, but I think the immense male bias when it comes to creative control might be a bit of a road block to this, at least in the near future.

Women don't lack the attention

 Let's pull some numbers. Mileage may vary depending on exact locale, but... o3o

http://i.imgur.com/yKvsGAE.png

Just a small amount of bias in favor of males here.

http://i.imgur.com/rwftw1l.png

Looking here, it looks like reality television is the only truly balanced category, with news coming in second. Everything else has a decently significant disparity. 

They lack the PROPER REPRESENTATION

You are right that they lack proper representation, though. Let's look at some more things.

http://i.imgur.com/A3XZMH3.png

Over sexualization much?

http://i.imgur.com/heXqWXs.png

I think this speaks for itself?

Images pulled from some of the sources below, all of which are worth taking a look at.

http://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/key-findings-gender-roles-2013.pdf

http://seejane.org/wp-content/uploads/key-findings-gender-disparity-family-films-2013.pdf

http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/files/2013_It's_a_Man's_World_Report.pdf

And, for a bit of further reading, you might take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid_ceiling

Soo... yeah. Women are honestly under represented in mainstream media, with the representation they do have in media being less than ideal, both on and off screen.

I don't mean to start an argument or anything, but I think it is worth seeing the numbers where these things are considered, because ... well, the disparity is kind of significant, to say the least.

Edit: Apparently the hook that MLPF uses to download and re-host remote images went screwy, breaking my image embeds. Added regular links to the images, but have left the broken embeds in place just in case the hook magically starts to work at some point. :V

http://chrismilloy.c...anes-in-canada/

Wow. That's mildly insane. If it's actually enforced, that would effect a decent number of trans folks I know that have no intention of undergoing any sort of surgery, one of whom is planning on moving to Canada in the next few years. Here's hoping that reasonable minds will come out on top. x_X

Rape is never a good thing, against men nor women, but it's pretty clear that, even accounting for lack of self-reporting in men, women have a much higher percentage chance of being raped.

To add to this, not only do they have a higher chance of being raped, but in many situations they'll run into a lot of hurdles in trying to bring the rapist to justice, and could themselves suffer consequences in attempting to do so, or in simply reporting what occurred, particularly at colleges and similar places where sexual assault runs massively rampant. 

So...

Both sides need to be fixed, absolutely, but it definitely seems like women are getting the rawer end of the deal.

This is something that cannot be stated enough.

...../rant (that went on longer than expected!)

Good rant, I'd say... and on a matter worth ranting about.

People like to get defensive about silly things. Talk about the challenges and issues that a group that someone isn't a part of faces? Lots of people that I've observed clam up and get offended. How dare you accuse* them of benefiting from the privilege associated with their gender/race/orientation? How dare you imply that their achievements in life were anything but the result of their sweat, blood, and tears, and that they may have had some degree of advantage that others lacked! How dare you imply that others that have reached the same heights as they may have had to work harder in one way or another to do so! Etc.

* whether or not any accusation was actually levied is irrelevant.

As a guy, are there some gender issues that impact me? Well, yeah, sure - but there are a whole hell of a lot more that I don't have to deal with as a guy. Not only that, but those things that I don't have to deal with tend to be a whole hell of a lot more significant than that which women tend to have to face, the sheer number of which tends to be mildly staggering. So... when I see guys whine that something like feminism is exclusionary by nature, or whatever, it's grating as heck. 

I feel like this is the way it happens for a lot of people. Everyone thinks feminists are these crazy, man-hating, violent, radical people -- until they meet one and get to know them irl. Then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh. So they're just like, regular people who want equality for women. Who knew?"  Hahaha.

 

That's the unfortunate thing about the media. They like to sensationalize everything so all political groups look more out-there and radical than they actually are. It gives people all these false impressions on a daily basis, and people believe the media without even realizing there may be faults in how groups are represented. I haven't been immune to this, myself. That's why no one can tell me the media doesn't affect people. Subconsciously, the media can really wire our brains a certain way if we let it... and unfortunately, many people let it.

Sadly this is a common thing that isn't limited strictly to feminists... it's always easy to overlook and not notice people that are being reasonable, but far less easy to do so with unreasonable vocal minorities. You can pass by twenty good folks without realizing it, but the moment you walk by someone loud and obnoxious, they're going to have your full attention.

As for the media, who wants to watch calm, quiet, and reasonable stuff on the news and whatnot? That's boring! The people want to be entertained! What better way to entertain someone than to give people something to mock and laugh at? Honestly, it's obnoxious as hell, and does little more than breed toxicity.

I used to think most feminists were the radical ones (fucking news media, man. Doesn't matter if its liberal or conservstive, only radicals get airtime ) but then I dated a feminist. An actual feminist who disliked the radicals as much as I did, albeit for different reasons. I'm not sure I'd say I became a feminist, though, because I've always been for equality.

Yeah, ditto. For a long time the only real exposure I ever had to feminism was limited to people that were on the extreme side of things... but, really, they're the ones that scream the loudest, and so are good at training people to have knee-jerk reactions to any mention of feminism and similar things, as has been illustrated quite nicely more than once in this thread.

Not only that, but people often find it easier to simply cover their ears with their hands, shake their head, and deny that there is any degree of inequality or injustice in their world, let alone that they may themselves be a part of it in some way, shape, or form.

This sums it up in my opinion.

Which is why I consider it a failure.

 

There's where to many loopholes and cracks for it to ever be a valid gauge of anything in my eyes. It's pretty much the textbook example how NOT to design a gauge for anything. It's almost as bad a someone of the MPAAs content gauges(did you know a movie could completely PG in all other ways but dropping two f-bombs or one in sexual context will get it an automatic R?)

I don't typically get involved in these sorts of discussions (especially not here, of all places), but I figured I may as well throw my two cents in on this before fading back into obscurity.

As has already been mentioned, I don't think there are many that would praise the Bechdel test as being the single most important thing under the sun in determining the quality and worth of a movie... having said that though, I don't think it's right to simply brush it entirely aside due to the fact that it isn't perfect, as it does highlight some amusing trends. One such example is the fact that movies that pass it, on everage, have lower budgets than those that do not (and, to add to that, that movies that pass it tend to bring in more money than those that do not, as described here http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dollar-and-cents-case-against-hollywoods-exclusion-of-women/). This doesn't come as a massive surprise though, considering things such as what is described here: http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test/ and the fact that an extreme majority of creative positions in Hollywood are staffed by men (which is described here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celluloid_ceiling).

As for the complaints about MPAA ratings, again, no such system is perfect. Just as some movies may be penalized a bit too harsly at times, others have gotten away with a bit too much given the ratings that they've received. The same can honestly be said for any ratings system, really, though that's honestly a topic for another thread.

TL;DR: just because something isn't without flaws doesn't mean it isn't worth some degree of consideration. Perfection tends to be a rare thing no matter where you look for it.

It's nice to see you coming out of the world of equestria once in a while my "Favorite" Admin

I do crawl out of my hole once in a rare while and lurk around these parts.

This is a topic I feel very strongly about, so I couldn't stop myself from commenting. Harassment in any shape or form is a dreadful thing, one that can cause more grief than one might imagine for those that find themselves targeted. Sadly, a lot of people look at it with an extremely apathetic eye.

And I'm your favorite? Yay! Hugs?

I'm glad to see that empathy and care are truly universal traits. Remind me to withhold my sympathy if you ever fall under some sort misfortune.

Words are powerful things. They can comfort, they can cause pain, and they can even kill. Used in certain ways, they can cut deeper than a knife, and bruise more than a baseball bat.

Meh.