A Perspective on the Morgan/Mock Debacle

I really do like Piers Morgan. I think he can be prudish, dismissive, and embarrassingly ill-tempered, but I really do like Piers Morgan. He seems like a well-intentioned, passionate, and generally kind person. I especially admire his strong passion for gun control advocacy, even though I have issues with some of his approach on that issue.

Whenever I saw this tweet, I was puzzled:

What did I miss? I thought. Don't tell me he's transphobic...

And then I saw this tweet:

Oh boy. Is he joking or is this for real? What the heck happened?

Eventually, I got myself educated on this controversy Morgan had stumbled into. Janet Mock, a trans woman and trans rights advocate, was recently on his CNN show to discuss her new book Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More. His interview was very supportive of her and her cause, and the two had a friendly discourse about mostly her growth to her current state as a fully-transitioned woman.

It turns out, this exchange of their's caused some controversy; most notably from Mock herself in these tweets:

After the drama on Twitter, Mock was invited back on the show by a disgruntled and slightly vindictive Piers Morgan:

"I'll deal with you." Yeesh.

You can watch the videos here and here to catch up for yourself if you are not already caught up.

Overall, I'm very disappointed by Piers Morgan. My central problem with how he handled himself is that he did so very much in a fashion that showed much more concern for saving face than actually caring for the struggles of the trans community. He brought up his support of the gay community, as if that somehow gives him a pass on offending a different group of people. He brought up an old article in which she seemingly labels and characterizes herself just as he did, when in actuality, that article wasn't something she was responsible for, as she wrote about at the very beginning of her book, according to her.

It seems very obvious to me that he made a mistake when describing her life, and is too obsessed with maintaining his righteous self-image to admit to his mistake. He's missing the distinction between gender, something very nuanced, and sex. It's not appropriate to call her "formally a man" and "born a boy" because ever since she was able to fathom such a thing, she didn't identify as a boy, despite her sex and assigned gender.

She also makes the point that focusing on her transition in relation to her very committed relationship with her boyfriend "sensationalizes" her life history in a way that cheapens the struggles of the trans community. While I don't blame Piers for spending a lot of time on this, because it is very interesting and new to so many people, I certainly get her point. Framing this as her being a "former man" certainly takes that discussion to a bad place, and there are a lot of meatier, larger issues that could have been discussed. For example, check out these statistics in this screen cap from a "Pantheos" article:

Piers Morgan's main critique of Mock seemed to be that she did not call him out and correct him for his apparent mistake, to which she replied that sure, she probably should have, but that she didn't because she was afraid. I think this fear is obviously understandable. If this fear wasn't understandable, the argument between the two over Morgan's [mis]representation of trans people wouldn't have happened.

Janet Mock came off as a coolly intelligent and warm woman. She didn't handle the situation absolutely perfectly, but her failings were not only understandable, she also personally admitted them. 

With all of that being said, one of the main reasons I found this controversy so fascinating was that I really identified and sympathized with Piers on an emotional level. I identified and sympathized with him not because I feel I would have also misrepresented trans people in an offensive manor (although, to be clear, I would be open to the possibility of this article showing some kind of ignorance on my part), but generally because I could picture myself putting my foot in my mouth in a similar way. 

I sometimes say things that are ignorant, or offensive, and my ignorance/offensiveness should be apparent to me. But it isn't, because of a kind of worried attempt on my part to make myself seem morally and intellectually righteous at all times. It can be tough to admit you screwed up.

I really think I know the mental process he went through when the controversy started on twitter. The rapid dash for sources and arguments backing up his claim that were attractive for simply confirming his opinion rather than for their credibility, as her counter-argument in the second interview showed; the bringing up of other, clear moments of moral/intellectual righteousness, that really aren't relevant but absolutely are to him, in his deluded state of mind; etc. He just knew he was in the right, because he just knows he's a good, smart guy. 

I get it. I feel bad for him. He made an unfortunate, offensive mistake in discussing a complex issue. While labeling him transphobic may be a stretch, he's in the wrong here, folks. I only wish that he quits being bullheaded and admits that he goofed.

Top Ten Favorite Games of 2013

2013 was an absolutely phenomenal year for video games. It is absolutely the best year for games out of all of the years I've been the kind of gamer to follow new releases like I do now. Despite the launch of two brand new platforms in the form of the Playstation Vita and Wii U, both of which I picked up, 2012 was quite underwhelming for me. We did have the emotionally-gripping Walking Dead game, and the totally fun Playstation All-Stars, and the gleefully ridiculous Lollipop Chainsaw, but not much else really stuck out to me. This year, I have a strong list of ten video games. These ten video games are only my personal favorites; this is in no way a list of the top ten best games. Entirely subjective reactions to these games - such as a game being better than I expected, or a game having personal nostalgic value to me, etc. - are taken into consideration.

This is just a list of the top ten games I enjoyed the most, for my own personal reasons, ranked from least-loved to most-loved. Let's begin.

Frozen (Film) - Review

I was taken by surprise at the decent acclaim that Tangled garnered, and so too was I taken aback by the response to Frozen. The trailers make Frozen out to be nothing too special, but that isn't the case. This is a special movie that will almost certainly go down in history as another Disney classic. With Frozen, Disney has crafted a self-aware, forward-thinking, and also very enjoyable film.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (Video Game) - Review

When The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds was first announced, many reactions were quite skeptical, including mine. A handheld, button-controlled, top-down Zelda instantly sounded like a good idea to me, but I was unsure about its decision to harken back to A Link to the Past as strongly as it seemed to be. As more information about the game creeped out, I continued to fear that the game would be overly dependent on the past. The game is out, and sure, I wish it didn't borrow as much from A Link to the Past as it does, but that doesn't come close to stopping it from being the absolutely fantastic and innovative game in the series that it is. 

Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai (3DS) - Review

2010's Jett Rocket went under the radar when it released on the WiiWare service from Shin'en, but it did receive positive reviews. It was a 3D platformer that sparked comparisons to Super Mario Galaxy, despite it not including any gravity-based gimmickry.  I never got to play this game even though it always interested me, so when I saw its sequel, dawning the quirky subtitle The Wrath of Taikai, while randomly deciding to browsing the 3DS's eShop, I decided to give the 3D trailer a watch. The trailer very much impressed me, so I went ahead and bought the game that day and was overall pleased with what I played. Jett Rocket II: The Wrath of Taikai is a good little game.

"Ramona" - Fiction

I'm in Creative Writing this year, in high school. Like the last time I was in the class, two years ago, the first grading period has you writing a multiple-assignment story about one character. Five assignments: one character biography and four stories. Think of each assignment as a chapter. 

That's all done now. I threw together my assignments and edited them some. I think this is pretty alright. Please enjoy.

Rayman Legends (Video Game) - Review

2D platforming is such a simple genre and one so full of games, that I sometimes worry we'll eventually reach a time when the genre as a whole grows stale. After each time I play one, I get more and more concerned that developers will just run out of ideas. Rayman Legends is the kind of game that restores my faith, but with some strings attached. Rayman Legends is a great game rife  with clever design and superb aesthetics, even though it left me without a proper sense of satisfaction after the credits rolled.

Rayman Legends is a joy to play. The controls and physics are very solid, meaning that the inputs are merely an expression of your skill. There are some hairs to split, like wall-running getting a bit disorienting in terms of which direction to move the stick/d-pad, but overall, again, very solid overall. The level design is truly remarkable. Most levels are designed to be ran through quickly in a sort of rhythm. This makes things exciting and fast-paced, even though technically only some levels actually force you to maneuver quickly. Throughout the duration of the game's main five worlds, original concepts are sprinkled into the bowl. The best example is the stealth portion that is mixed with swimming, which offers a pretty unique experience. It's also the little things that really stick out, like the cleverly-placed hidden collectibles. 

Rayman Origins got the attention it did thanks in large part to its gorgeous visuals, and the ante has only been upped in Legends. This game is beautiful, with intricate and fun animation and bucket loads of color. The music is also quite good here, offering enjoyable tunes that both enhance the feeling of playing and are good in their own right. The aesthetics are remarkable.

Each world ends with a boss and then a music level as a bit of a reward, essentially. The bosses are polygon-based 3D, which is a cool way to contrast them off of the rest of the graphics. Taking down the bosses is good, patterned-based fun, even though none of them are particularly anything to write home about. The music levels are definitely cool, offering a really entertaining mixture of level design and music to enjoy, but they are somewhat lazily put-together. Gameplay footage makes it seem like these are interactive-rhythm segments, but they're actually a fake version of that, as your interaction doesn't create the music, it just goes along with static music in the background. A string of lums (coins) is set to a series of guitar strings, for example, but if you don't collect the lums, the guitar strums still happen. I did enjoy these, even though they don't involve the player in a way that makes game like the Bit.Trip series so neat.

The big disappointment here, though, is just that the main game ends abruptly, leaving me still wanting. The story is a load of nonsense, which means that there is no added sense of satisfaction at the conclusion because there's basically nothing here. Narratives in games like this don't need to be anything more complex than a hero saving a princess from a monster, but something should be here to give a sense of purpose and conclusiveness to the adventure. It would probably seem silly if that was the thrust of my explanation of my biggest problem with the game, but that is just secondary. The short feeling of the main game adds much more to this abruptness. These five standard-length worlds don't feel like enough. I wanted more.

That's not to say that there isn't a lot of content here, because there is. Legends does a brilliant job of constantly holding a carrot in front of your face, giving you new challenges like short time trials (as well as daily ones that are ranked online!), and new rewards like character skins. It's quite addictive! There's nearly an equal amount of remade Origins levels here, which are still incredibly fun despite feeling jarring and useless, considering this game is lacking on new levels and since Origins was so recent. 

I get the sense that Rayman Legends could have so easily been an incredible or even masterful game, when it's really just a great one. So you could fairly say that I'm disappointed. But really, I love this game. It is an absolute blast and very smartly designed. Its aesthetics are wonderful. It's great.

***

~  Reviewed on Playstation 3, single-player ~