Summary: His stance is that Star Wars the Old Republic is sexist because it allows you to administer electro shocks to a Twi’lek slave-companion named Vette.

That’s about as fair as saying SWTOR is racist because it allows you to shock an alien with long tails on her head.

Kain says: “So the inclusion of a shock-collar-wearing slave in BioWare’s Star Wars: The Old Republic, a new Star Wars MMORPG that released this past December, is not so much surprising as it is disappointing. And really creepy.”

Of course it’s creepy. It’s supposed to be creepy. If you shock her, you are a creep. The Sith are creepy. That’s why they follow the Creepy side of the force, and the Jedi follow the Asshole side of the force.

The game is full of morally questionable choices, so it’s weird that anyone would fixate on this as evidence that BioWare is morally broken. In one Sith quest. you have to pour poison into some slaves’ water supply. You can give them just enough poison to cause unspeakable torment, or you can give them enough to slaughter them all. And slaughtering them is the Light Side option.

While you have the option of torturing Vette with a shock collar, it’s clear from the beginning that this is the douche-bag path to galactic domination. And female Sith can inflict just as much pain as male Sith, which is exactly what’s happening with me and Devon. He’s being super sweet to her in hopes of getting into her pants, and I’m shocking her just about every chance I get to keep her in line. If BioWare would get around to allowing homosexual romances, I might be trying to get into her pants, too.

Maybe I’m a closet sociopath, but I doubt it. Roleplaying games are fun precisely because they let us be the kinds of people we will never be in real life. If I were shocking slave girls left and right in real life, I would be playing RPGs about underemployed crafters with a thing for steampunk.

I keep hearing how hard it is to be a female gamer. Maybe I grew up in an alternate universe, but I’ve never found it hard to be a gamer. We were pretty rare before the days of Team Unicorn, but I always found gamer dudes pretty welcoming. For some of them, I was one of the few girls who would talk to them, which probably helped. And we were all misfits with a love of looting the corpses of the imaginary fallen. The guys who were inclined to be assholes were assholes to everyone.

Which brings me to John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

To see this in action, check out every WoW PvP battleground chat log ever. There’s always at least one player bitching and moaning about how much you suck. He doesn’t care what you have between your legs. He’s just emo because he’s going to have to hold off on upgrading his armor a little longer than he’d hoped.

My use of “he” here is probably sexist. For all I know, battlegrounds are full of women roiding out because you insist on fighting midfield in Warsong Gulch.

This is a dragon curve. I don’t understand any of this Wikipedia article. Last night, I had a dream I argued with a former co-worker over independent clauses, so this isn’t my strength.

It’s true and you can see where this is going.

Pretty soon, we declared that we could sense a disturbance in the Ceiling Cat. The Ceiling Cat is with you, always. May the Ceiling Cat guide you. You’ve fallen to the dark side of Ceiling Cat.

And all of this is retarded, but it was hilarious to us. Donna was drinking excessive amounts of hot-buttered rum at the time, which I may or may not have provided for her. I was drinking egg nog without the booze, so I have no excuse.

The egg nog was probably the last time I’ll see egg nog until Christmas, which is why I had to beat that old lady down. I promise, the bruises will fade in a few days. I’m not a total monster.

Devon, upon creating his toon: “Twi’lek, really? A fucking cultural dance? That’s your special power? Fuck you!”

So far I’m fairly impressed, although my toon is still in newbie land, so there’s a lot more to see before I decide whether it’s going to be my new boyfriend. I need to roll a Sith and see what it’s like to be eeeeeevil. In a video game, I mean.

My Jedi Consular is kind of a dick. In one quest, I bust two young lovers for doing what they do. Jedi are not allowed to fraternize. I felt bad for about a minute before I realized two things:

1) This couple is so cutesy they make me want to vomit, and for that they need to be stopped.
2) The last time a Jedi got his groove on, it led to Episodes 1, 2 and 3. The Jedi are right. Love is a threat to galactic peace and should be squashed beneath my cynical boot heels.

Sorry, kids. You’re gonna have to go back to masturbating like the rest of the Jedi.

Maybe I’m more temperamentally suited to Sith. But that can’t be true, because busting those crazy kids is a light-side choice. Maybe the light side of the force is just an asshole, like me.

-- From The Domestic Scientist

The Deathwing Cake is not a lie.

This cake from The Domestic Scientist makes me want to slay dragons.

Me: I like this one. It’s nice. Relaxing.
Devon: It would be good for gaming.
Me: Yeah, for the forest scenes. Right before a kobold rapes your face.
Devon: <silence>
Me: You know how it is. You’re just wandering thought the forest, all “la la la la,” and then kobolds come out of nowhere and rape your face. It happens a lot.
Devon: I think you shouldn’t talk anymore.

+++++++

This shit is cool. Trust me:

Nigella Lawson’s amazing tits
This 26-pound party Gummy Bear is totally real
Food porn: Twix cheesecakes 

This is not an exhaustive list. I’m grateful for lots of stuff. But TLDR is no way to kick off Thanksgiving.

——

Friends: They make life way more fun. And they buy me things like this.

It’s a Star Trek phone that sat on my nightstand for a long, long time. A few friends bought this for me in high school, because they accept and nurture my geekiness. I love you guys so much, and I’m not even drunk. Much.

Family: Some family. Not all family. I would tell a few of them to kiss my ass, but I don’t trust them to stand behind me. But of the family that doesn’t suck, and you know who you are, I love you. You have convinced me that I should not move into in a cave with my cats and a case of Peak Organic.

Devon: Without him, I would have fewer fun things to blog about and fewer tasty omelets to eat. Considering the events of the last three years (many of which I can’t blog about now because weasels will eat my toes), I would have also thrown myself in front of a lawnmower. He handles my blog abuse with good humor and sometimes suggests things to abuse him about, which makes me worry for his mental health. He also fits into categories #1 and #2, which is pretty sweet.

Roleplaying games: Gaming might have ensured my virginity for far too long, but as an adult, DnD and Pathfinder are reasons to drink excessively and hang out with awesome friends (see #1). It’s also the only chance I have to be a badass half-orc fighter/cleric. It’s hard to take yourself seriously when you’re summoning a dire rat.

Cats: My cats complete me. Sahrah plays hackysack with my hair bands. Fatass punts Sahrah off the table with her paw. The both demand fuzzy love whenever they damn well please, and they hovered close when I was alone the night Dad died. Cats are so much better than iguanas.

The Internet: Without the Internet, I would have to talk to people face to face and shop in real stores. Many of these stores aren’t close to me, which seems like a design flaw. Also, I wouldn’t be able to write this blog. I don’t know what I would do with all that time. Maybe count really high on my abacus, then shake it up and start over.

What are y’all grateful for?

This shit is cool. Trust me:

When parents learn to text
Cats and dogs, living together
My liberal bias is clear: Abortion laws 

Devon:  What the fuck does a wrist mounted crossbow need with a LASER?
Me:  Why DOESN’T a wrist-mounted crossbow need a laser?
Devon:  It doesn’t even hit where the laser is.
Me:  Who gives a shit? It’s a WRIST-MOUNTED CROSSBOW. It doesn’t need to take your crap.

Sigh. He just doesn’t understand my needs.

+++++++

This shit is cool. Trust me:

Everything you want, you can get in pewter
Dream job for getting the hell away from your family
Read the comments

On one hand, people who like to pretend they’re vampires and gnomes don’t have to pay for sex anymore. Now we have hot chicks rolling a d6 and guys bragging about the Gandalf quarterstaff replica they scored at Ren Faire.

On the other hand, I want children to suffer as I suffered. Because I’m an asshole.

I was born in the wrong decade. When I was a kid, the rules for popularity were clear: You had to stuff your bra and wear tight clothes.** I chose to ignore these rules, but God, the text-adventure games I wrote were awesome.

I didn’t even realize I needed a bra until I was 12 and a friend suggested I think long and hard about it. Probably because my brand new boobs, which showed up out of nowhere while I was eating Cheerios one morning, were distracting in those paper-thin white t-shirts they made us wear for gym. These shirts were like boob alarms for preteen girls.

You’d think that would have gotten me past the “wear tight clothes” rule, but in high school, I was convinced that wearing clothes three sizes too big made me look thinner. I also believed this haircut was a good idea at the time.

High school, 1992. I'm the goober on the right. No, I don't know what I was thinking.

I don’t even know what constitutes a social misfit anymore. How weird do you have to be before the jocks stuff you into a locker? And what makes a kid weird? When geeks go mainstream, does it come down to a turf war between vampire LARPers and Civil War re-enactors?

** Stuffing your bra and wearing tight clothes is still a pretty solid path to popularity, from what I’ve heard.

Now look at the bottom. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

I won’t even start with the supposed necessity of labeling toys like this a choking hazard or the redundancy of pairing these labels. Fine. I give up. You win, minions of the obvious. There might be people who aren’t aware that young children divide the world into shit they can fit into their mouths and shit they can’t. If my sister’s quaaludes had been labeled when I was 2, she might not have left them around for me to munch on. Who’s to know, right?

What baffles me is the need to label this “14+.” It’s not like these are figurines of half-orcs giving blow jobs. I’ve seen more offensive minis in my Lucky Charms. If your children can’t handle these minis at 13, 12, hell, even 7, you need to return them, because they’re all broken.