Stickfigures vs. Matriarchy

Wanting to run your own webcomic is all well and good, but if you’re too lazy to draw your own stickfigures then it might be time to reevaluate things. Alternatively, you could turn to Toondoo.

Do you have that female friend that you’re hopelessly in love with that unloads all her problems on you, only to end up back in the sack with that loser ex that cheated on her with her own sister, leaving you high and dry?

The Nice Guy is an online comic strip (and a comic book…and hopefully soon to be a sitcom or major motion picture if we can sell out fast enough)…

What, you mean it isn’t already? Because I distinctly recall sitting through God knows how many sitcoms and major motion pictures about a passive-aggressive creep’s unrequited love for a woman who’s got no say in the matter; surely at least one of them was fingerprint identical to The Nice Guy, if only inadvertently? Sorry, I shouldn’t be interrupting things this early. Carry on.

Panem et Circenses et Exploding Cars

Bettina Arndt full of shit; Bear-Pope remains Catholic and opposed to use of portable lavatories

It was a dark and stormy night, and successful sex therapist Bettina Arndt was seated before the fireplace of her sprawling, baroque castle, supping special champagne made from the tears of orphans. “You know whose needs are being ignored?”, she thought to herself, “Men’s”. Gazing deeply into the fire, she pondered why this was. They seemed much, much happier before women had any semblance of independence,  and since men are always right about everything, obviously this couldn’t be their fault. Suddenly, inspiration hit her like a lightning bolt, and she defiantly sprang to her feet. “Eureka!”, she exclaimed,  “I shall write a book about how marital rape is awesome!”.

Within 48 hours of putting myself on Google…

Building bridges

After saying that their arguments are at best illogical and at worst the incoherent ravings of paranoid misogynists, then refusing to take their inane comments seriously (having a problem with the phrase “nigger crime on the rise” means I’m “playing the race card”, apparently), I kinda got off on the wrong foot with Antimisandry.com. Because life is short and DrunkDuck has no quality control filter, I’ve started a webcomic to cheer them up.

Jonathan Swift is not amused

We released a new shirt a couple weeks ago that says “It’s not gay if you beat them up afterwards”. I will not explain the irony or the social commentary of the slogan because anyone with half a brain should be able to handle that on their own.

Hey folks, meanwhile in GEEK CENTRAL, hehehehe etc.

Star Trek Barbies? That’s how to make future babes geeks!!!

Hey folks, Harry here… with a brilliant concept. TREK BARBIES!!! Yes, every little girl in the world needs Star Trek Barbies, so that in like 15 years all future geeks will have excellent geek brides. Either that… or geek boys will be seen playing with these and get pummeled mercilessly until they are very nearly dead. That said… Look at Kirk’s hair!!! Do you think that there is ANY CHANCE that it will stay like that? That’ll fray and get crazy Einstein looking hair quick… won’t it? Uhura is looking good, I might have to pick that one up… for Yoko. Yeah. For Yoko!

It’s three in the morning right now, so let’s stick to dot points.

• Women – not having minds of their own – can’t be legitimate geeks. Rather, they must be brainwashed into doing so by using Trojan Fashion Dolls.
• The only reason for the existence of women geeks is to be the future brides of geek men. Like The Stepford Wives with even more robots.
• Playing with plastic figures of SF characters is only feminising, and thus degrading, if they have the Barbie logo on them.
• If you want to get women involved in geekdom, a better strategy would be not to perpetuate the above three ideas on a popular website.
• Can you look at the last sentence without entertaining the thought of what Harry Knowles-on-Uhura slashfic must be like…?

The inevitable Matt Smith post (slightly later than planned)

See, if there was ever a time when the idea of re-casting the Doctor as somebody other than a young white dude was likely to be taken seriously, it was during the search for Tennant’s replacement.

Advent Calendar, Day -1: Operation Matriarchy, The Non-Review

The original plan – original as of five days ago, anyway – was to review a free demo the PC game Operation: Matriarchy. Sadly, the demo crashes every time I try to load it, which is either a fault with the program itself or (more likely) my machine just can’t handle that many bikini cyborgs at once. The size of the demo also had the effect of maxing out my download limit, so I’m reduced to worse-than-dialup speed until January, meaning I can’t dig up anything else in place of it. Nevertheless, I can still mount an expedition into the game directory and attempt to piece together the experience from what I unearth.

An unknown extraterrestrial virus attacks all female population of
Velian planet and makes them unrecognizable. Their bodies change,
and their minds fuse into a collective intellect, probably
controlled by some non-humanoid creatures.  Male population,
though virus-resistant, are no longer independent sentient beings
and serve as bio material sources for further genetic experiments
and as part of complex biomechanical systems. Society transforms
into sort of a matriarchal formicary.

Without warning, the alarmed figure of Dr Glenn Bench, his face white with fear, staggered into the laboratory, one sweating palm held to his chest, the other clutching a computer print-out in a vice-like grip. “Professor Stamp”, he gasped, “all the female Velian colonists have fused together into a collective hive-mind and the planet has become…” he squinted at the print-out “…a sort of matriarchal formicary. What could possibly have caused this?”. Professor Gavin Stamp lowered his space pipe from his lips and stared thoughtfully at the lunar surface for what seemed an age. “Some non-humanoid creatures”, he said, returning his gaze to Dr Bench. “Probably”.

You are a private paratrooper of the Government expeditionary
corps attaching Velian. As you fulfil missions, headquarters send
you more along with corresponding weapon and equipment options,
and you grow better and better informed about where the Velian
human anomaly roots in.

Yes, not only do we have every single first person shooter cliche imaginable, but every single antifeminist cliche imaginable as well. A Space Marine is stranded in the ruins of a former human colony planet that was assimilated by an alien techno-virus, but it’s a matriarchal virus that turns men into lifeless drones and women into (literally) man-eating monsters. Thoughtfully, the virus at least made them sexy monsters. Maybe it’s a nanomachine offshoot of the magic feminist gas from The Wotch.

I don’t like to be reminded of Torchwood at the best of times, but just looking at this screenshot is giving me flashbacks to “Cyberwoman”. Surely if ever there were a premise with a built-in safety net, it’s cyborgs fighting dinosaurs while the main characters randomly cop off with each other, but Chris Chibnall is a very special man (with hindsight, at least nobody gets buried alive for 1300 years before being dug up and continuing the exact same conversation they were having when they got buried). What is worth noting about the enemies, though, is that – if the screenshots I stole from Gamer’s Hell are anything to go by – they’re not all Gieger Barbie.

What the hell is that thing supposed to be? The thing at the front looks like a snout, and sticking out of the head are either ears or horns. Is it a minotaur? A matriarchal minotaur? I’m surprised more MRA screeds don’t compare women to minotaurs, actually; beyond the obvious “cow” comparison, women are well-known to trap men in labyrinths of deception and emotional manipulation from which the only escape is to slay the beast and retrace your steps using the string of empowerment. Escaping from the Minyos that is the matriarchal west, however, men may fail to hoist the white sail of activism, causing a despairing Warren Farrel to hurl himself into the ocean. It’s worth a shot.

Exploring the directory also yields hundreds of sound effects in .wav format, including what I assume is in-game dialogue. Sadly, none of it is particularly matriarchal in nature, so you’ll need to go back to your copy of The Wicker Man if you want your fix of “The drone must die!”. But we do get…

• “Hey, wake up, soldier! Time to knock those scoundrels into… … … …WHATEVER YOU LIKE!” (A woman’s giving you orders, so the game’s not sexist anymore, phew!)
• “Look … Pavil … drag me to that … control … panel … … … … over there“
• I asssume this is a monster sound effect. It’s incredible, whatever it is. If the sexy matriarchal minotaur in a thong makes this noise, it may well justify not only the existence of Operation: Matriarchy, but the human race itself.

Bored over Christmas and have a computer capable of running first person shooters more complex than Wolfenstein 3D? Why not try Operation: Matriarchy for yourself!