Double *Sigh*

In my last post I discussed a stupid editorial written by a talentless, clueless hack. I came by that editorial by way of Penny Arcade, who have now elaborated on the situation in comic and commentary form. The best part of the comic is the snippet of text in the last panel that apes the editorialist's style of writing. Brilliant.

So, apparently the writer has responded to the plethora of negative backlash he received from gamers, or as he refers to us - "Gamer-Nerds."

In his attempt to clarify/defend some of his remarks, the writer does a fantastic job of illuminating his own tragic sexual repression.
The best example of which is the entirety of his third point, where he defends his assertion that the characters of Mass Effect "hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of."
Leaving aside "form" and "format", since I'm not really sure what he means by that, we can automatically eliminate "multiple", and "gender-oriented" from the equation. The only number of characters that ever have an intimate moment at one time is two. And guy-on-guy action is not possible.

This doesn't stop him from defending his point and even taking it further:
"Again true (not that there are that many combinations of human sexuality to begin with.) But since the makers of Mass Effect decided to throw in a little alien booty both hetero and homo it seems to me that they covered the range. Would these gamers have preferred that the game included bestiality? Later in the column I make a reference to being able to perform sex acts, homo and hetero, with whomever... Ok - you can't have sex with every single character in the game... But between copulating with Aliens, girl on girl, guy on girl, and according to my gamer friends who I checked with - it does not take a great deal of manipulation to add a few extra 'kinks' to the mix for those who know a little bit about such things."

The best parts are in bold.
The first being his complete lack of understanding of the scope of human sexuality. There are nearly unlimited possibilities to the creative ways in which adults have consensual sex with one another. And that's not even including any illegal or harmful possibilities, or whatever else the writer seems to think anyone with the slightest kink seems to participate in.

Second, his insinuation that gamers are calling for more bestiality in their games. He is the one who suggested that all forms of depraved sex acts are possible within the game. He's the only one bringing bestiality to the conversation.
The problem is that the writer is the kind of sorry person who puts homosexuality and bestiality in the same category, and therefore concludes that where one exists the other must follow.
I also find his inclusion of alien sex in the list of perversions amusing, since it is complete fantasy (no different than wondering what sex with a wood elf would be like). It couldn't happen, so where's the outrage?

Lastly, he seems to fault the game for allowing creative players to add their own quirks into the mix. I'm not really sure how that is possible, considering the only creative control players have in the game is creating the character, and even then the options are limited. I wish he'd elaborated on this point more, but since he's pulling it out of his ass like everything else I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
The only sense I can make out of it is that he faults the game for the player's ability to imagine kinky situations where there are none.

I'm more saddened than outraged by all of this. I just feel sorry for the guy, and not just for his horrible writing ability. He has so many hang-ups about sexuality, and fear and lack of understanding about video games, he's taken something harmless and blown it up to 9/11-sized proportions in his mind.

The limited and brief sexual content in the game is PG-13 at best. The only safe assumptions you can make about the sexual activity in Mass Effect from the images you are shown, is that it was probably very tender and the characters likely spent hours cuddling afterwards.
It takes a deeply repressed individual to make the leap to the Caligula-style animal rape orgy the writer insists on warning us about.