Post #3623221
2026-04-11 17:11 UTC
@KurtHohmann@writing.exchange What I will say is that we watch and read and play games differently than most people. It's like watching sports with an athlete. We're not inherently smarter than anyone else. We've merely been trained to look for certain things that most people don't look for. So when I read, eg, Wells' MURDERBOT, I'm analyzing what she's doing with gender, how she's depicting neoliberalism vs. democratic socialism, how she's implicitly defining "human" against MB's nature as a sec-unit, etc.
Replies (1)
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@orionkidder@writing.exchange 2026-04-11 17:13
@KurtHohmann@writing.exchange So we might have really critical things to say about the genre fiction we watch and read and play, but that doesn't mean we don't love it or think it's beneath us. It means we're ~fascinated~ by the construction. Like, Anita Sarkesian was never *anti* video games. She was studying them with a critical eye. A lot of MALE gamers declared a crusade against her for doing that, but it was done out of a deep love of the medium of video games. They were too reactionary to understand.