Focus On the Fail

When I feel like facepalming and loling at the same time, I read Focus on the Family's videogame reviews (under the name of  "Plugged In", but it's Focus On the Failmly, who epitomize "strict parenting", all the same) ... they never fail to entertain me in how backwards and idiotic they come off as in their quest to make the world "family friendly"

But TRUE hilarity is when the reviewer starts describing any 'sexual' content (read: cleavage) -- here's an example:
"Besides the ridiculously buffed guys with their shirts off, at least one woman flaunts her cleavage. A central character wears a dress that's slit up to her hip, revealing her massively muscular thighs. Cammy dresses in a high-cut leotard that leaves her backside completely exposed."

Somebody has a major boner for Chun-Li. I mean, wow... dude...  I wonder if this guy was the kid who fapped to Sears catalogs.

Additionally, their complete and total vitriol towards anything that's mythological or magical -- it's even funnier when you consider that C.S. Lewis, one of the most celebrated Christian authors, hell, just a damn good author, period - heavily drew upon mythology and magic in his works.

I wonder what Lewis would think of these folks.

For the lulz: A Guide to Christianese

I was raised Evangelical (currently some form of heretic and/or apostate) - some good things came from this (sense of honor, be loyal to your friends, don't let others decide what you believe, keep your word), and some bad things (a deep, deep, deep sense of shame about half of what I do, irrational fear of God) - one hilarious thing is the lulzy slang they used.  So here's a quick guide:

Nonchristian - There's some derision and pity behind this. while it does mean "a person who is not a Christian", it also includes: Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons, etc. etc.
The World - Anywhere that's outside of a: Church, Church Function, Bible Study or a Christian's home.
Secular - Sinful
Sinful - "I don't like it"
Sin - While it technically means "imperfection", and this is how it is used in the Bible, it usually just means "sexual impurity" when an Evangelical says it. It also means "Icky"
Sexual Impurity - Sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, sex when on The Pill, blowjobs, anal, bondage, piercings in funny places, doggy style, sex in a chair, masturbation, and suchforth. (tl;dr - Anything fun)
Thought Life - Particularly annoying phrase with a nebulous meaning, it functionally refers to this abstract world of your thoughts; and how you can't think about certain things.
Fellowship - Potluck dinner
Outreach - Potluck dinner with preaching.
Pornographic - Anything mildly titillating.
Violent - Anything mildly aggressive
"I was in the Spirit" - I was in an irrational, delirious state.
"I'm on fire for the Lord" - "I'm going to go to every church function possible, mention Jesus as much as possible,  and stop associating with you because you're not as good as me."
Retreat - Basically a day or more of feeling horrible about yourself.
Youth Retreat - A Retreat for kiddies where they're yelled at about how God hates them because they touch themselves. (...they'll stop for a few days, but then resume after that)
The Flesh - In the Bible it roughly means the inherent weakness of human beings. Christians use it to indicate things like: Individuality, Own Desires, etc. etc. that must be squelched.
Fasting - Starving yourself to win some Jesus Points
Speaking in Tongues - Starving yourself/working yourself up into such an emotional lather that you start blabbering. This is a sign of...
Baptism Of The Holy Spirit - Some nebulous concept that indicates that someone is better than you.
Purity - Virginity. Also includes not touching yourself.
The End Times - A period of time that we're apparently in where the world is going to fall apart and then Jesus is gonna come back and kill everyone we don't like.
The Rapture - An unbiblical concept created from three passages in different books of the Bible, all of them referring to totally different things.  Basically Jesus is gonna beam us up and then the world's gonna fall to pieces.
Christian ____ - A watered down version of something 'secular' that's no longer 'sinful' because it mentions Jesus somewhere.
The Antichrist - "Whatever political figure we dislike at this moment in time." and/or The Pope.
Babylon - Current enemy of the United States, although some say it's the Catholic Church.
Saved/Accepting Christ/Born Again - Nebulous concept that is constantly argued about. Basically is the 'salvation by faith' doctrine.
Witnessing - Pushing your beliefs onto someone.
Spiritual Gifts - The idea that some people get superpowers  'gifts from the Lord', typically involves healing, prophecy, and the like. The original verse (too lazy to look it up) they use to support it actually is more along the lines of: "God's given you talents so you can use them to help people."
Hell - The bad place that bad people we don't like go.
Backslide - To fall into sin again, typically means you had deviant sex.
"How is your Walk with the Lord?" - "How you doin'?"
"She is a Godly Woman" - "I wanna do her."

In case you haven't gathered by now, Evangelicals are pretty fixated on three things:
* The Apocalypse
* Sex
* Being part of a super special group of super special people

--

I should clarify that I really don't hold any deep hatred for Evangelicals. It's kind of hard to when you realize that a good chunk of them are some of the most helpful, kind people on the planet.... but once either the Apocalypse, Sex or challenging their ideas comes into the picture ... hoo boy.

Miku Hatsune - the world's first artificial pop star?

Years ago there was a movie about a genius marketer(?) who spearheaded the creation of the world's first synthetic actress - as in she was just the creation of a computer, as opposed to an android. There was also something about her creator falling in love with her or some bullshit ... I never saw the movie, just the trailers/commercials.

Back then, I was all "HAH HAH LIKE THAT'D EVER HAPPEN"

Of course, pop stars and bands have been "manufactured" and groomed for the longest time -- even the Beatles were manufactured to a degree.  The image of many pop stars is tightly controlled.

Also: Bob Marley's image was the product of marketing. The real Bob Marley, not the guy on stage, not the guy high-as-a-kite on the album covers... wasn't as... Marley-ey as you'd think.  Jimmy Hendrix wasn't as wild and cuhrazy as his fans thought.

This is nothing new... but I thought the idea of a completely 100%, made-from-just-pixels actor or musical artist would never happen in my lifetime, or at least not until I'm 255 years old, chilling on Mars in my new 120-foot-tall Super Robot body. After all, people need something real, tangible, even if the act is fake.




...wait, she's obviously not real.  And she's in front of a real audience. Her voice is a very sophisticated synth bank.

She's completely synthetic.


I was wrong.

For the uninitiated, Miku Hatsune is basically the 'mascot' for the Vocaloid software, which is basically a synthetic voicebank.  And people ate it up - and now she's having freaking concerts in the form of a hologram. With a live band.  (although it becomes less impressive once you figure out how they're doing the trick - it's literally smoke and mirrors) Note the hilarious-looking guitarist.  And the stripper music/dance at 0:20 to 0:30. I was half-expecting her to start taking off her clothes.

You'll drink your veggie juice if
you know what's good for you.

There's other Vocaloids, and even a generic free knockoff called UTAUloid.  Occasionally people abuse the software to attempt to get them to sing english songs... with rather mixed results:



You can't read Ruko's Poker Face.


Quite honestly, I don't know how to feel about this - I'm all for putting Hannah Montana and Lady Gaga out of a job... but eventually we're going to end up with SkyNet.

I for one welcome our new Vocaloid overlords.

UPDATE:

TechCat (in the comments) mentioned the Gorillaz, I completely forgot about them... as well as the other 'cartoon bands' (Josie and the Pussycats, etc.) ... which I suppose were the next step towards Miku (after the manufacturing of pop stars like Britney Spears and 'idols' in Japan).

However, they did have real people behind the characters serving as the voice, and other than the Gorillaz, none of them were particularly popular.

Also: GODDAMMIT I'M STARTING TO LIKE MIKU DAMMIT DAMMIT

Why DeviantART deleted your picture of Sailor Jupiter

I figured this out the other day.

It's not out of any moral compunction.

Or a desire to oppress lonely basement dwellers who draw Rei/Asuka yuri bondage. (which I totally do not do at all, ever. No really. Why are you doubting me?)

It's to keep from getting their asses sued.

You see, while they probably don't care, some people care a lot about that stuff, and sometimes those people have the copyrights and distribution rights involved

"But [insert Japanese animation studio here] doesn't care!"

Yeah, but [insert American distributor here] does! And DA's servers are based in California, which last time I checked, was still in America. Which means they're subject to American laws.

Which means someone who owns the American distro rights to something means they can sue the shit out of DA if they wanna.

And some will.

ADDENDUM:

 There are sites that will let you post porn: Such as this one.  - Uber NSFW - but do I really need to say that?

Sure, it's a furry site, but when people are posting 12-foot-tall wolf-dragoon hybrids with 6 foot long wangs and 4999XXXXXX tits ... nobody's gonna give a shit that you're drawing Rei and Asuka having hot lesbian sex.

EDIT:

Remember LiveJournal?  Of course you don't. A while back LJ was almost going to get taken to court over some sort of fanfiction drama. While I hate fangirls, the entire thing was pretty hilariously absurd.  LJ started taking things down left and right, but it was only in response to potential legal trouble, much along the lines of this theory.

The Invincible Wonderbeast of Tomorrow Rises

This blog is basically a replacement for my LiveJournal - basically I will complain about things here so I don't fag up my sketchblog (the only one of my blogs that's really worth looking at) with being a whinefag.

LJ is a horrible blogging platform, plus it's home of buttsex fangirls and a bunch of commie ruskies.