Holy shit this game is awesome.

That is all.

I've come to the conclusion that some gamers are masochists.

This is the result of witnessing complaints about the new Prince of Persia, and how the game doesn't let you die.

The short and simple explanation is that the Prince's companion, Elika, will grab him and teleport him to the last platform he was standing on if he falls during the course of his wild, freewheeling platforming. Some people say that this makes the game too easy, and removes all the challenge.

My response: what the fuck.

Now, perhaps I'm in the minority. Perhaps I'm just the lone man who feels this way, but I do not like having to redo five minutes of gameplay over and over and over again because I screw up a simple button press. In fact, that's why I dislike a lot of platformers, precisely because I have to redo entire levels because I missed a jump.

So, when I learned that Prince of Persia basically allows you to go back to the platform right before the jump sequence you screwed up in, without forcing you to wade through several dozen other jumps before it, I was thrilled. In fact, it was the first platformer in a long, long time that I really, honestly enjoyed, precisely because I knew if I screwed up, everything was alright and I could redo the part that I failed at without having to slog through an entire level again. It didn't make the jumping itself any easier, but it did make it so that I could go back to the part I failed at much more quickly and reattempt it. That dramatically reduced the frustration I usually get at a platformer like this.

Some gamers, though, don't like that. Those gamers are convinced that it is more "fun" to wade through entire platforming segments they've already done because they screwed up a single jump five minutes down the line. Because wasting time redoing the same five minutes over and over again is the height of fun. Whoo. Cheer.

For me, Elika and her rescuing function is a massive improvement that makes Prince of Persia vastly more enjoyable. It lets me get back to the freewheeling jumping awesomeness that much quicker, with a minimum of frustration and pain, and that, in my definition is fun. In my opinion, the shorter the time between the phrases "Aw, fuck, did it again" and "Okay, let's try that again," the better the game is.

....is fucking awesome.

It is two and a half hours of distilled win. I don't think there's a single point int he movie where it really felt "slow" or "down" compered witht he rest, and it has some shockingly good acting, as well as being funny as hell. Heck, even the romance element was well-done and not ham-handed into the movie like it is in some superhero flicks.

Only complaints: explosions are your standard Hollywood fireballs, which annoy the hell out of me. Also, a tank shot Stark out of the air during his house-cleaning in Afghanistan. Somewhat difficult to do with a tank; feasible, certainly, but not very much so.

My grandmother just passed away a little while ago. 

It kind of came without warning, as a lot of these things tend to do, but we had plenty of time to prepare for it. She was suffering from Alzheimers', and was going through the usual biological breakdown that happens to anyone in their old age, and for the last few years was traversing from assisted-living quarters to nursing homes. She started having complications with breathing over the last year or so, that ended with serious breathing problems in the last couple of weeks, and she passed on a couple of hours ago.

My emotions are somewhat mixed. I'm sad from her passing, but I try to keep my emotions in times like this in check, and focus on how good her life was and what she did for me. I try to treat death not as something to be feared or to be sad about, but instead as a natural end of all things. I pretty much try to accept someone's death as a given, enjoy their presence and their life as they live, and remember them after they pass on, all the while keeping in mind that everyone's time is finite. I'd accepted my grandmother's ultimate end a long while ago, back when she was first put into assisted living, but it still hits me hard.

She's gone now. Nothing I can do to change that, except cope with it.

Current Mood: sad

Statement: This blog's original owner is currently indisposed. 

Conjecture: I believe it is due to some form of meatbag entertainment medium, that he calls "Bioshock." Precisely why such entertainment is so amusing is unclear, especially when he is taking away valuable amounts of time that would otherwise be directed at his undying hatred for the majority of his fellow meatbags.

Conjecture: Perhaps it is due to the particular violence of this entertainment medium. I am loathe to admit that anything intellectual manufactured by a meatbag brain, but this entertainment medium does seem to possess a heartwarming amount of cruelty. 

Statement: Watching the insane meatbag monstrosities formed by their attempts to become perfect by upgrading their inferior genetic structures being set on fire and then running around screaming is quite satisfying. Plus, the main character seems to have the capacity to shoot bees out of his hand. Perhaps if you humans had such impressive abilities, this blog's owner wouldn't feel so much contempt at the majority of your kind's obvious intellectual ineptitude.

And it was good.

No more classes for me. Yay~ 

On the other hand, this gives me more time to work and make money, which is important. I have intentions of finally getting my hands on Bioshock at some point, and I want to get Kane's Wrath. Also, GTAIV, because murder simulators are just what an impressionable you universe-hating psychopath like myself needs.

My buddy Jason got me an application for a security-system monitoring company. All goes well, I'll be paid piles of money to sit around, surf the internet all day, and make phone calls whenever there's an alarm. Which will be awesome.

Well, well. The last rant I addressed from Allecto, regarding Joss Whedon's supposed hatred of women in Firefly (you know, the series where the female characters racked up the biggest body counts and tend to occupy such sufficiently advanced social circles that they can blacklist men for nothing more than insulting them) has been followed up with another one, dealing with the episode "Our Mrs Reynolds." Since Allecto refuses to allow direct commentary in her own blog, I doth riposte here.

For reference, the rant can be found here: http://allecto.wordpress.com/

Quotes by Allecto wholesale will be in italics.

*skips the first few pointless paragraphs railing against her critics who are understandably a bit upset about her insane rantings*

Let's get to the meat of the point.

Umm… ok so now that is done with. Let’s get to the good part. Our Mrs. Reynolds is the sixth episode of the television series Firefly. This episode was written by the Great White Feminist himself, Joss Whedon. In this episode, Mal the captain of the ship finds out that he has married a woman when he finds a stowaway on his ship. The stowaway, whose name is Saffron, was traded to Mal as a gift because he helped the inhabitants of a planet to get rid of some bad guys.

Except that its not the case at all, it just seems that way. But I digress.

(shows the script of the first scene of the episode)

So the ‘woman’ sitting by the driver of the carriage is actually Mal in drag. Shock, surprise, this is real funny shit huh, women? A man in drag, teeheehee. SO radical. And feminist, huh? What do you think, does Joss get a cookie?

Sigh. There has been loads of work done on the anti-feminism of drag and I can’t be bothered to rehash. Suffice to say Jayne gets away with spouting a whole bunch of sexist, looksist crap and it is ‘funny’ because he directs it at a man in drag. Not to mention, joking about rape. Drag is often used by men as a way of expressing woman-hatred and they dress it up as humour. Just a joke girls, now get over yourselves, right?

Right.

Right! Because its not a scene whose whole point is to joke about how they're using the disguise to trick the fucking bandits.

I also find it hilarious that you're trying to shoehorn feminist statements into everything in the entire series. Sometimes, you know, jokes are just jokes, not insults, and the very, very, very vast majority of mankind, male and female, tends to not project feminist or anti-feminist statements onto everything they see.

A bit later Mal talks about how he likes to wear dresses with Inara. “Like woman,
I am a mystery,” he says of his enjoyment of wearing dresses. Sorry, Joss, score zero for that one. Women aren’t a mystery, WE ARE FULLY CONSCIOUS HUMAN BEINGS.

No shit, Sherlock, that's how they're presented in the series, too. Then again, figuring out your own fucking mental processes while you're writing this is probably the single most challenging mystery I've ever had to deal with in my life.

Once again, the point here is that Mal is joking, and that to a lot of men, women are mysteries. Ditto for the opposite. Its a reference to how fundamentally difficult it is for a man and woman to understand one another, which has been something that has been recognized by humanity for as long as we've been sapient.

Mal is a wanker and wankers aren’t a bit mysterious. At least they aren’t to me. Maybe wankers are mysterious to unicorns. Who knows. I think I’m starting to hate unicorns. 

And now we just have rabid, unjustified insults being thrown out about Mal.

So, Mal saves some colonists from the bad guys by killing them all while wearing a dress. Mal and the crew get back on the ship. As they take off, Mal surprises a stowaway, who tells him that she is his wife. Mal gets all panicky and calls Zoe.

Now, it is pretty obvious by this point that Saffron has been traded to Mal in exchange for his killing the bad guys. She is a wife in the sense of being a sexual and domestic slave. When Zoe is told that Saffron has been traded to Mal as a wife/slave she begins to laugh. 

First of all, there's no evidence that Saffron is a domestic slave in any way, at least not at this point; as far as everyone is aware, she is a wife married to him on equal terms. Good job distorting the actual show.

Secondly, you saying that Zoe laughs at Mal's plight is an outright lie. Her initial response is a very calm yet disbelieving "Really." as if she is surprised and disapproves of the notion, and then, when she notices that Mal is obviously shocked, confused, and discomforted by the fact that he is married without warning, then she gets amused.

She then calls the rest of the crew and invites them to join her in laughing at Mal’s newly acquired possession.

Really. Because I certainly don't see anyone laughing at Saffron. I see them...actually, not all of them laughing, and the laughter is directed at Mal by Wash. Everyone else is shocked, appalled, or confused, except for River, who is.....River.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never met a Black woman who laughs about slavery. I can’t believe that any woman, Black or white would laugh at an incidence of men trading women. Where the hell does Joss Whedon do his research on women????? What women does Joss know that he can portray them like this???? 

Well, let's see. There's no slavery involved, no apparent trading of women that has been presented thus far, and the laughter is directed at Mal for being stupid enough to get married while drunk in the first place. So, no, there is no laughter at any slavery because there isn't any going on. Just laughter at a drunken, flawed character accidentally getting married. Once they find out that Saffron was apparently married in trade, then things get more serious.

(script snip)

So, Saffron runs off crying because of how she is being treated. Mal goes after her. Now in the following scenes we see Mal being magically possessed by a unicorn. His transformation is astounding. In one second we see a man who screams at the female members of his crew and violently defends his position as alpha male, the next *pouf* a beautiful, gallant steed, shining white against the grey backdrop of the ship, spouting fine speeches while tossing his mane, nobly defending the Rights of the Fairer Sex. Watch.

Whoa, a character who changes his approach after getting shamed by his entire crew for being a callous and insensitive bastard, who, incidentally, is reacting mostly with shock and disbelief at getting married without knowing about it the previous night.

Yeah, its not like real people change how they act when they've had a chance to think on their actions, or have had time to think period, especially when compared with gut responses to unexpected complications and problems.

(script snip where Mal tells Saffron that she needs to defend herself if someone's trying to kill her)
Ah Mal, Mal, Mal. So gallant, so kind, so noble. But just one question, Joss. Do you know what happens to women who defend themselves from violent men? Have you heard of Patreese Johnson, Renata Hill, Terraine Dandridge, Venice Brown, Dixie Shanahan, Yana Ladgari, Mary Winkler, Sherry Mariana, Marva Wallace? (This list is by no means exhaustive.) Women who defend themselves from men who are trying to kill them have their children taken away from them and are locked up. That is the stark reality of what equality means for women who live under male supremacy. 

Okay. My response is....so? This is a science fiction setting that obviously does not adhere to the same cultural mores as the real world, you fucking asshit retard. 

For fuck's sake, the first time Mal gives Saffron honest advice and says something that can be portrayed as empowering to women, urging her to defend herself if attacked, and your reaction is to lambast it as unrealistic.

And just a tip Joss, from one writer to another. If you believe that women should kill men who try to kill them then, quite frankly, I agree with you. If you want to show your encouragement and support for women who defend themselves from men, then write a female character that kills a man who is trying to kill her AND GETS AWAY WITH IT.

What I find particularly hilarious about this bit is that this very episode has that happening twice int he first few minutes with Zoe killing two of the bandits. The pilot includes Zoe killing two more of Patience's goons. Zoe has five more confirmed kills in "War Stories," with an unspecified number killed by the grenade, and she kills at least three more in "Heart of Gold." Nandi and her prostitutes gun down several more goons in the same episode, Petaline kills Rance Burgess in cold blood, and Nandi is implied to have killed the former owner of the brothel. In the movie, Zoe also kills several Reavers and engages them in hand-to-hand combat. Finally, the most solid example of a female character killing male opponents and getting away with it:

http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e186/cra2yw01f/River_tam.png

But of course, you can't recognize the color red when staring at a fucking apple.

Now, let’s see, do you actually show women getting away with being disloyal to men? We had Patience, a character in the first episode. How did she fare when she tried to cheat Mal? Hmm… let’s think. Oh, that’s right. You left her trapped under the carcass of a horse. Mmm. I just love that feminist empowerment, Joss. 

Well, let's see....she tried to cheat Mal. She wasn't being "disloyal" to him, she was breaking a fucking deal because she was greedy and tried to keep the money she gave to Mal and Zoe and was going to kill them. And if you ever bothered paying attention to the pilot, you would have noticed that Mal repeatdely points out that if they do not get paid, they are stuck and won't be able to fly the ship or find work. In other words, Mal's livelihood depends on getting paid by this greedy planet baron who won't give him his fairly negotiated price. 

Now, if you want an example of Zoe getting away with being blatantly disobedient, there's at least two instances: Zoe returning to the ship in "Out of Gas" and Mal's own admission that Zoe disobeyed his order to not marry Wash and had disobeyed countless others. And Inara, who, when insulted and threatened by Atherton Wing, responds by telling him his threats are useless and then blacklists him for daring to go against her. And then there's River, who constantly "gets away" with repeatedly attacking male characters; for fuck's sake, she slashed Jayne on the chest with a knife for no apparent reason and got a scolding.

MAL
She’s a nice girl.
BOOK
Seems very anxious to please you.
MAL
That’s their way, I guess.
BOOK
(bright, casual) I suppose so. If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the
theater. (My emphasis.)

Now, that comment right there indicates to me that our dear Mr. Whedon is a porn user. And that it is highly likely that his pornography of choice is Hustler, given that he seems to think it funny to trivialise the sexual abuse of children. How many times has Joss wanked to our degradation in Hustler while chuckling away at Chester the Molester cartoons? I actually really want to know the answer to this question.

I'd let that insanity speak for itself, but there's the rare, off chance Allecto might actually be reading this. So....

How the fuck did you arrive at the idea that Joss Whedon watches porn based on a joke being delivered about people being sent to a special level of hell by being child molestors, sexually abusive, and talking in theaters?

So, Saffron cooks Mal dinner and Mal eats while she stands by waiting on him, fetching refills etc. Does Mal use Saffron as a domestic slave because he enjoys being a slave owner? No, no. He uses Saffron in order to stop her from crying. Really, truly, it’s for her own good.

*facepalm*

She's the one who chooses to feed him, and he does it to make her happy. Its not Mal's fault that Saffron is acting like what she believes is being a good wife.

(script snip of Washa nd Zoe watching Saffron feed Mal)

White male husband wishing his black female wife was more submissive and cooked his dinner. Anyone else see a problem with this?

I don't see a husband wishing his wife was more submissive at all. In fact, I don't see anything at all in the bit you quoted where Wash wishes Zoe was more submissive at all, and the very idea that he would consider asking her to cook for him - something that people who like each other do often, by boths exes, and not because they're submissive - is dashed instantly by Zoe with a look.

(script snip of Zoe commenting on Mal enjoying his own "nubile little slave girl)
)Black female wife being jealous of a woman she terms a ‘slave girl’. Anyone else see a problem with this?

Jealous? Did you even pay attention to this scene? Did you even read what you quoted? Zoe never even hints at being jealous, and if you actually watched this scene like you claimed, and listened to the way she spoke, you would have noticed that she is MOCKING Mal and admonishing him for apparently taking advantage of Saffron.

Allecto, you are not simply distorting the truth, you are outright lying about the content of the show.

After a brief scene with Inara, we come to a touching scene between Jayne and Mal, where Jayne offers to trade his favourite gun to Mal in exchange for ownership of Saffron. Mal once again transforms into a unicorn, delivering more impassioned speeches on The Rights of the Fairer Sex. 

Here the audience is supposed to notice that there are two sorts of men in the world; good men: Mal, and bad men: Jayne. Me? I see two rapists. Only difference is that one is in a two-dollar-shop disguise as a unicorn.

The fact that you're calling them rapists should say everything about your line of reasoning here, as we've no evidence that either of them are rapists beyind your fucking idiotic definition of rape, which includes most forms of consentual heterosexual sex.

Given that Mal nobly believes in protecting the female members on board his ship from the ravages of ‘the world’ (read: men), I find it hard to credit that he allows Jayne to stay on board his ship. In this scene Jayne talks of women as sexual and domestic property, obviously unaware that women are human beings. Men who think like this about women ARE DANGEROUS. If Mal did care about the protection of women, he would have spaced Jayne immediately, or at least locked the fucker up. 

For what crime? Are you advocating Jayne be locked up or killed simply because of something he said?

There are places that follow that kind of mentality in the real world, places with words like "Soviet" in their names, or have fun little guys referred to as the "Great Leader" in control of them. You'd probably be right at home there, Allecto.

On another level, the trading of women and the naming of Phallic weapons, the sharing of homoerotic tales of male violence (Jayne’s story of how he acquired his gun), this is part of the larger romance of the show, the homoerotic, masculine connection between Mal and Jayne. 

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b148/peptuck/areyoushittingme.jpg

At this point, Allecto ends her blatant distorting of the actual show and clear indications that she can't read subtext, or simply likes inserting her own, as well as her clear inability to see what is blatantly shown right in front of her. Now, looking over this, I am left with a strange impression that she built everything in this rant based on simply reading the script, as there is no way in hell a rational, intelligent person could come up with some of these arguments if she actually watched the show - especially the bit about women killing men and getting away with it, when I can count Zoe killing at least ten men, several Reavers, and wounding several more in hand-to-hand combat, Nandi, Petaline, and their prostitutes killing several of Rance Burgess' men and Burgess himself execution-style, and River pretty much being a fucking blender in the face of a horde of rape-happy psychotic male space pirates.

Thus, Allecto, I am left with the undeniable conclusion that you are either stupid, lying, or basing everything on the script, with the added benefit that you seem to have come from the Glorious Motherland, complete with natty Commissar cap, considering you'd happily condemn a man to imprisonment or death simply based on what he says.

Oh, hey, Allecto, I also noticed you're deleting negative responses to your bloggery. Like that's going to dissuade the notion that you're playing at being a rabid Soviet feminist. Keep proving just how much a shitbag lunatic you really are. Why else do you think I posted this here?

....and for some reason, writing this leaves me with a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest.
 

Current Mood: amused

I've been rickrolled seven times today. I even got rickrolled ON THE WAY BACK FROM WORK. The fucking song came on the radio while I was driving home. I cannot get away from this damn song. ;_;

Current Mood: aggravated

Without preamble, this is feminazi idiocy directed at Firefly without a hint of logic or accuracy to the actual series.

http://users.livejournal.com/_allecto_/34718.html

Disclaimer: I'm not even going to pretend to be nice here. I'm angry, I'm sleep-addled, and I'm nerd-raging.

First off, snipping about six or so paragraphs of feminazi raging.

"There is Inara, a Companion (Joss Whedon’s euphemism for women in prostitution). "

Apparently, someone hasn't heard of courteseans, which the whole concept of the Companion is based on. Courteseans were, back in ye olden days, highly valued, socially powerful women who contracted sex. They were prostitutes only in that they were paid for their services, and had enormous social clout. Female empowerment, oh shit!

"And a Shepherd (which means preacher), a black male character. "

Why is the fact that he is black so important? I've noticed through writing this that you seem to obsess over a character's race, to the point where you let their race and your preconceptions regarding them override what actually happens in the series.

"The first scene opens in a war with Mal and Zoe. Zoe runs around calling Mal ‘sir’ and taking orders off him. I roll my eyes. Not a good start."

Well, gee, it might be because THEY'RE IN THE FUCKING MILITARY, YOU STUPID SACK OF AIR-WASTING FUCKSHIT.

IIRC, when you're in the military, you call your superior officer "sir." That's completely normal. I should know, I've been exposed to enough of the military in my time to understand such simple facts.

"The next scene is set in the present. Mal, Jayne, and Zoe are floating about in space. They come into some danger. Mal gets all panicky.

Zoe says, “This ship's been derelict for months. Why would they –”

Mal replies, (in Chinese) “Shut up.”

So in the very second scene of the very first episode, an episode written and directed by the great feminist Joss, a white man tells a black woman to ‘shut up’ for no apparent reason."

Yes, because its not like a commander who is trying to think in a difficult situation and has subordinates nattering in his ear while he's trying to think would be annoying and dangerous.

"And she does shut up. And she continues to call him sir. And takes his orders, even when they are dumb orders, for the rest of the series."

She calls him "sir" because she was his subordinate, he is her captain, and if you actually paid any attention in "War Stories" you would have noticed that ZOE DISOBEYS MAL'S ORDERS PLENTY OF TIMES BY MAL'S OWN ADMISSION.

But you're too busy spazzing femnazi bile to notice shit like this.

"The next scene we meet Kaylee, the ship’s mechanic. <- Lookee, lookee, feminist empowerment."

How is being the mechanic feminist empowerment? try to be consistent here, as Zoe is one of the more empowered characters, seeing how she is constantly beating the shit out everyone they encounter, slitting throats, cracking skulls, blasting guns out of people's hands from a hundred meters off from the hip.....

"In this scene Mal and Jayne are stowing away the cargo they just stole. Kaylee is chatting to them, happily. Jayne asks Mal to get Kaylee to stop being so cheerful. Mal replies, “Sometimes you just wanna duct tape her mouth and dump her in the hold for a month.” Yes, that is an exact quote, “Sometimes you just wanna DUCT TAPE HER MOUTH and DUMP HER IN THE HOLD FOR A MONTH.” Kaylee responds by grinning and giving Mal a kiss on the cheek and saying, “I love my Captain.” "

If you actually paid attention to Firefly, you would have noted that Mal likes using hyperbole, sarcasm, idle threats, and jokes like this all the time, yet never follows up on them. This is because real people make jokes like this all the time, especially among people they are familiar with and consider family or co-workers, which is kind of the whole Mal/Kaylee dynamic here.

"What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here? A black woman calling a white man ‘sir’. A white male captain who abuses and silences his female crew, with no consequences. The women are HAPPY to be abused. They enjoy it. What does this say about women, Joss? What does this say about you? Do you tell your wife to shut up? Do you threaten to duct tape her mouth? Lock her in the bedroom? Is this funny to you, Joss? Because it sure as fuck ain’t funny to me."

I personally find your ridiculously racist overreactions to characters joking around, the ship's first mate obeying the Captain's orders, and standard military talk to be quite fucking hilarious.

"Our first introduction to Inara the ‘Companion’, Joss Whedon’s euphemism for prostituted women, is when she is being raped/fucked/used by a prostitutor."

Hold it. 

You just called a relationship in which a woman contracts consentual sexual intercourse for money from a  man to be "rape."

Get off my goddamn planet.

"We are close on INARA's face. She is being made love to by an eager, inexperienced but quite pleasingly shaped young man. She is beneath him, drawing him to his climax with languorous intensity. His face buried in her neck.

He tightens, relaxes, becomes still. She runs her hand through is hair and he pulls from her neck, looks at her with sweaty insecurity. She smiles, a worldly, almost motherly sweetness in her expression. He rests his head on her breast, still breathing hard.

So, Joss Whedon refers to rapist/fuckers who buy women as sex, as ‘eager, inexperienced but pleasingly shaped’ who ‘make love’ to women in prostitution. Obviously, ‘love’ to men like Joss Whedon, requires female powerlessness, force and coercion."

Whoa, since when does a woman who picks and chooses clients carefully become "powerless" or "forced"? Isn't the whole point behind Inara's profession that she gets to choose her clints and always, ALWAYS remains in a dominant position? isn't that kind of the whole point behind "Shindig" where she uses her status as a Companion to blacklist Atherton Wing for calling her a whore? Isn't that the whole point behind the scene in "The Train Job" where Inara literally uses her status as a Companion to strong-arm Mal and Zoe away from the law? Is Inara powerless when she traps Saffron in "Trash"? Is Inara weak and helpless when she takes a fucking knife to Rance Burgess's throat in "Heart of Gold"?  Her entire speech to Fes in "Jaynestown" about picking and choosing her clients alone shows that she is free to sleep with whomever she wants.

Companions have a ludicrious amount of social clout in Firefly, and Inara has a goddamn spine of steel, but you can't seem to see that.

"In Joss Whedon’s future world prostituted women are powerful and respectable. They go to an Academy, to train in the arts of being a ‘Companion’. They belong to a Guild which regulates prostitution, forces women to endure yearly health tests and comes up with rules to make prostitution sound empowering for women. For example, one Guild rule is that the ‘Companion’ chooses her rapist, not the other way around. "

That you are calling a consentual sexual relationship "rape" just makes 99% of humanity laugh.

"But there is one really big question that does not get answered. The women who ‘choose’ to be ‘Companions’ are shown as being intelligent, accomplished, educated, well-respected and presumably from good families. If a woman had all of these qualities and opportunities then why the fuck would she ‘choose’ to be a man’s fuck toy? Would being a fuck toy for hundreds of men give a woman like Inara personal fulfillment? Job satisfaction? A sense of purpose? Fulfill her dreams? Ambitions?

Money doesn’t seem to be the motivation behind Inara’s ‘choice’ to be a ‘Companion’, presumably she just ‘enjoys’ swanning around in ridiculous outfits. And being used as a fuck toy by men is seemingly a small price to pay for the pleasure."

And this is a problem why? Forgive me, but Inara's lifestyle is her choice, and the power and social standing of a Companion is not inconsiderable. When she can literally walk into a police station and grab two suspects without even being questioned, solely on the merits of being a Companion, that is power.

(snipping long paragraphs about Inara's rules being violated)

You seem to be physically incapable of understanding the idea of a healthy heterosexual relationship, because you don't seem to be getting that the entire reason behind why Inara tolerates Mal's repeated breaking of her own rules is because of the blatantly obvious physical attraction between their characters.

(snipping sections explaining how Inara "services" the male crewmembers)

If you can't  tell that Inara meant sexual service when she outlined their agreement, you need your face smashed on your desk. Helping other the crewmembers and passengers emotionally and spiritually isn't a "service;" it is what most of mankind calls "being human."

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way. Expects her to clean up his emotional messes. Expects her to be there, eternally supportive, eternally subservient and grateful to him in all his manly glory. I hope the money is worth it, Mrs. Whedon. But somehow I doubt that it is. No amount of money can buy back wasted emotional resources."

lol wut

I can't help it, but I'm laughing enormously at this baseless femnazi spewing.

"Aside from women being fuck toys, property and punching bags for the men, the women have very little importance in the series. I counted the amount of times women talk in the episode Serenity compared to the amount of times men talk. The result was unsurprising. Men: 458 Women: 175. So throughout the first episode men talk more than two and a half times as much as women do. And women talk mainly in questions whereas men talk in statements. Basically, this means that men direct the action and are active participants whereas women are merely observers and facilitators."

Okay, let me lay this out for you. Of the female characters, we have four, compared with five male characters. that automatically means that the male characters are going to say more. Of the female characters, Inara and Kaylee are the most talkative. Zoe isn't talkative, not because she's weak or anything, but because she generally talks with her fists and her guns. The last female character is River, who doesn't count in this as she's insane.

Further, the only person who really directs the action in Firefly is Mal, because HE IS THE SHIP'S CAPTAIN. IIRC, the Captain of the ship usually issues the orders, and Mal spends just as much time browbeating big bad mercenary Jayne into submission as he does tot he women in any of this fake, pretend world of Firefly you've conjured up.

Lastly, if you've watched the Serenity movie and come away still believing that women in Firelfy are passive characters when the one who pretty much directs all the action in the entire series, either directly or indirectly, is the seventeen year old nintey pound girl, then I reiterate that I do not want you fucking up my perfectly good gene pool.

"Completely unnecessary and unprovoked violence is a spontaneous result of this hypermasculinised male character. In Serenity, Mal enjoys using a character called Simon as his personal punching bag. In one scene he walks up to him and smashes him in the face, without any provocation or logical reason."

Did you even pay attention in the previous scene, where Wash informs Mal that they have a mole on the ship and Simon just happens to be violating the rules Mal laid down about wandering into the cargo bay without another crewmember present, and is fiddling with a large, mysterious device?

I shouldn't be surprised, but you're resorting to outright fabrications and lies now.

"In another scene Simon asks Mal a question and Mal smashes him the face again. No reason, no explanation, just violence."

Again, you seem to be physically incapable of paying attention to character motivations, as any fuckwit watching that scene would understand that Simon equated Mal with being a member of the Alliance, which automatically triggers the ire of a man who hates the Alliance with a passion. If I called you a man-loving whore, you'd probably get pretty damn pissed off too.

"Zoe, the token black woman, acts as a legitimiser. Her role is to support Mal’s manly obsession with himself by encouraging him, calling him ‘sir’, and even starting the fights for him."

Considering the presence of two black people on the ship, caling anyone "token" is rather silly. Second, Zoe calls Mal "sir" because he's her superior officer and the ship's captain. You tend to call those people "sir" no matter what fiddly bits are inside  your crotch. Third, Zoe never starts a fight for Mal. Ever.

"Zoe is treated as a piece of meat by both her husband (Wash, another white male) and the Captain. Wash and Mal fight each other for Zoe’s attention and admiration, both relying on her submission to them to get them hard and manly. In fact there is a whole episode, War Stories, devoted to Wash and Mal’s ‘rivalry’. By the word rivalry, I mean violent, homoerotic male/male courtship conducted over the body of a woman."

Wierd, because I remember that episode as quite clearly showing that Zoe outright disobeys Mal's orders, along with her risking her life by marching unarmed into a den of gun-toting criminals to save a man who himself admits that he would have died being tortured if Mal hadn't been arguing with him (gee, I guess the episode never makes it clear just why they were arguing, does it?) and then proceeds to lead a balls-out assault straight into the heart of that same den of criminals, giving orders to the entire crew, including lots of large, burly, gun-toting men.

Yeah, Zoe's real submissive in this episode.

"Zoe is not shown to have a personality of her own. She has no outside interests, no ideas or beliefs, no conversation with anyone other than Wash or Mal."

She is quiet, she's direct, professional, military, she kills people, she beats the shit out of people, she's married to a man and determines whether or not they are going to have a child regardless of his objections. I'm sorry you seem to be incapable of noticing that, like Mal, her primary concern is completing the job and keeping the ship flying, as well as devotion to a husband just as devoted to her. Since you seem incapable of understanding that a heterosexual marraige is normal and healthy, I'm not surprised.

'She has no female friends,"

Yeah, she's always raging and beating the hell out of all those other female crewmembers, like Inara and Kaylee, who she talks with and relaxes with and treats as family and coworkers.

"in fact she tends to dislike women. For example, she is the first one to insult Saffron in the episode Our Mrs. Reynolds, calling her ‘trouble’."

Random woman shows up out of nowhere, married to the Captain, and gets him all flustered, complicates business on the ship? Yes, she is trouble. And for the vast majority of the episode she's glaring at Mal or making light of the absurd situation, too, which is something a submissive sort of woman shouldn't ever do around her big, manly, dominating Captain.

"Zoe, of course, is meant to be our empowered, ass-kicking sidechick. Like all sidechicks she is objectified from the get go. Her husband, Wash, talking about how he likes to watch her bathe."

Since when has a husband liking how his wife looks objectifying? The fact that you consider this as such is rather telling as to just how you view male/female relationships.

"Let me just say now that I have never personally known of a healthy relationship between a white man and a woman of colour."

I've worked with several different men and women who have had healthy interracial relationships myself. So, your own personal experiences are worth about as much as a sack of shit on fire.

"I have known a black woman whose white husband would strangle and bash her while her young children watched. My white grandfather liked black women because they were ‘exotic’, and he did not, could not treat women, especially women of colour, like human beings. I grew up watching my great aunts, my aunty and my mother all treated like shit by their white husbands, the men they loved. So you will forgive me for believing that the character, Wash, is a rapist and an abuser, particularly considering that he treats Zoe like an object and possession."

Of course, you have to base Wash's actions and attitudes on your own personal experiences, rather than, say, the actual relationship portrayed in the actual show, which, despite all your insane attempts to distort, is a perfectly healthy one.

"Joss Whedon does not share my view, of course, and he paints the relationship between Zoe and Wash as a perfectly happy, healthy union. "

No shit. It is a happy,  healthy realtionship, because, surprise and awe, that happens in real life too.

Somehow, I still have some bile left over after i read through your up-chuck enducing pile of mental sewage, so let me just say that I find everything you've written in this post to be uninformed, distorting, ignorant, racist, or outright lies. Get sewed up, please, I do not want you polluting my perfectly good gene pool with anymore of this insanity. 

Just saw this movie today. Holy shit, it is awesome.

Its pretty much about a collection of ultra-hardass Hong Kong police officer assholes trying to take down this ultra hardass Triad asshole boss, Wong Po, played by Sammo Motherfucking Hung, the Samuel L. Jackson of Asia. Then, partway through, the "new guy", Ma Kwan, played by Donnie Yen, shows up, and sees the dickery going around, and decides to set things right by beating the shit out of everyone and their mothers. Ma Kwan is such a badass that with a single punch he can make you a complete retard. Also, detective Chan, leader of the group of hardass cops, takes a giant hunk of glass to the back of the head and seems to only be annoyed by it.

Starts off kind of slow, with the odd assassination, wordy confrontation, and murder, up until the asshole cops arrest and try to frame Wong Po. All the shit hits the fan as Wong Po's personal hyperactive and ultra stylish assassin Jack starts knifing bitches in public, and none of this silly Assassin's Creed stealth shit; he runs straight up to guys, stabs them in the gut, puts his own sunglasses on their face, and then proceeds to ginsu them in the open.

Well, Chan gets pissed that all his boys are getting knifed by Neo Super Saiyan Hong Kong Altair, and he rolls up to Wong Po's base with his giant detective manhood waving and a single dinky .38 special, and he starts Matrixing the shit out of Wong Po's entire bunch of goons, until Jack bitch-slaps him down. You don't bring guns to knife-fights in Hong Kong.

Ma Kwan is pissed at this point, because he's found the dead bodies of all the other cops, and he's raging over how much honor the police force has lost. He goes to Wong Po's giant skyscraper doom fortress to throw down, but Jack gets in his way, because Jack is an asshole. They meet in an alleyway, and Kwan is ultrapissed at Jack for killing his buddies, and Jack is a psychopath who just likes killing people in funny and interesting ways. At this point they have this absolutely insane epileptic knife/steel baton fight. Imagine two squirrils on PCP, crack, speed, and gallons of liquid sugar, then given Flash speed powers and Matrix-uploaded with ridiculous kung fu mastery, and have them throw down, and you've got an idea of how ridiculously fast this fight here is. I mean, if Reno in FFVII had a tenth of Donnie Yen's skill with the steel baton, the game would have been "Final Fantasy: Reno Sticks a Baton up Sephiroth's Ass: the Game."

Anyway, Kwan rolls past Jack after eviscirating his ass, and then confronts Wong Po. Wong reveals just how badass he really is when Kwan flips out his baton and Po simply kicks it across the room as if he's ordering coffee. Po and Kwan have a hyper badass hand to hand showdown that can only be described as "Donnie Yen is fighting Sammo Hung why the hell are you reading this go on youtube and watch this shit." It ends with Kwan doing this insane backflipping over-the-head body slam of Wong Po straight down onto this giant-ass pile of beer bottles and glasses.

But hell, I'm not spoiling the rest of this movie. The ending is just fucking badass. You need to watch it.

The best part about it is the human side of everyone, when they aren't gutting each other like testosterone-packed Viking berserker fish. Everyone has a background, a human aspect to them; Po has a wife and a one-month old son, Chan is takign care of an orphaned girl, Kwan is hit by guilt over the man he literally punched stupid, and all the asshole cops have kids or family issues that rise up over the movie. Everyone has deep, sympathetic issues, so there's no truely black and white going on here, except when Kwan and Jack have the Alley Fight of the Millenium. By the end of the movie, if you're not feeling sorry for even Wong Po, man, you ain't human.