Your creators

I recently pledged $1 per month to a youtube channel that redubs old episodes of the pokemon cartoon to change the plot and characters to something completely different. It's not Ibsen, but it makes me laugh a lot, enough that I still feel like I'm kind of ripping them off by only giving a dollar a month.

But they sent me this nice email with the heading "Thank you for supporting your creators!" which I thought was kind of an amazing way to phrase it. I've never equated the act of creating something with the idea of "my" creators, but it's kind of the same thing. I'm the sum of all my experiences, so if some of those experiences were designed by other people, in a way that places those people among my creators.

I watched an interview with Ashly Burch from the Hey Ash Watcha Playin series of internet videos, and apparently she's playing the hero in some new big budget open world game that came out recently. She mentioned the female Commander Shepherd from Mass Effect as one of her inspirations, which reminded me of that one time when I learned from Saints Row 3 that all you need to do to write women well is write them as men and swap out the model for a female one.

I'm reminded of Jack Nicholson's character from As Good As It Gets. When I was a teenager my mum took me to see it at the cinema, and I don't think thirteen year-old me understood half of it, but it ended up sweeping the oscars. Anyway the point is his character's talent is writing romance novels, which is something that comes across in no aspect of his personal attitude. When a woman asks him how he's able to write women so well he responds; "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability."

It's no struggle for a man to fully empathise with a woman, all he has to do is forget that he wants to have sex with her.

Attractive people are blinding in a way. I'm not sure there is a better way of saying it. The question becomes whether to embrace this higher imperative or suppress it, and try to shield your eyes.