Your Sexuality Is Not Love

I am finding news posts littering the internet claiming that homosexuality is not a choice. The claims state that many factors (from what I briefly read, external) contribute to a person's sexuality before they hit puberty.

This is disturbing on so many levels. To say that external factors can influence a person's sexual preference suggests that we can program all humans to behave in specific categories. If you want your child to be heterosexual then you will strive to have specific influences be much stronger. Say, corporal punishment to change the child's behavior. That may be an extreme example of a process but it is one that many people are very familiar with.

So what happens to the unconditional love that we, as a society, profess? What happens when the love we said we give and take with our life partners are really just a bunch of factors and chemical influences? What happens to our choices when we can boil it down to initial conditions? What happens when our freedom to choose who we love is no longer a freedom?

If homosexuality is not a choice, then heterosexuality is not a choice. The homosexual men and women who are raising children may raise a child heterosexual or homosexual or some other type on the spectrum. (I'm finding more articles describing more sexual orientations than I am currently capable of fully understanding.) What happens then?

I find that many people on either side of the debate equate social preferences with sexual orientation. A person can come to terms with their sexual orientation if they understand that orientation does not mean they not love and are less committed to their different-orientation partner. If any person says that love and orientation are intertwined they that person does not believe there is any choice in the world.

I will paraphrase what I have said before to clarify this subject: sexuality is not Love. Forget that and you forget why we are human.

What Did the Developers of "Hatred" Really Do?

I've heard all the controversy and the counter-arguments when people talk about Hatred. I was originally in the "Against" crowd mainly because I didn't want an example of why video games are bad for you.

A while ago I watched one of Total Biscuit's WTF videos and, after much contemplation, I not only agree with his views and conclusions but I must also admit my own complicity in Destructive Creations' scheme. They set out to distill a video game genre's assumptions into a nearly pure game, but they dressed it up and advertised it in the worst possible way. Did they make money? Sure; I'll give them that. Did they make a game? Yes; I will also give them that.

Did they prey on everyone's sensibilities for a relatively cheap influx of cash and lazily depend on those sensibilities? Of course.

The large part of this controversy is that people are looking at this game for a certain type of commentary on the state of video games. What the public got was a lazily built game using controversy to sell itself rather than sell itself as a video game. Total Biscuit's review points out the lackluster design in gameplay mechanics: committing "execution style" scenes for health does not make much sense in a Diablo clone game where fast action is the point of the play. The black and white coloring for the world makes the action look plain and dull in TB's review footage. I would have a hard time swallowing this decision to make nearly everything drab.

There could have been a whole lot more work done on this game. Destructive Creations could have worked hard on making a quality game that had substance and value to it. All the developers did was depend on angry rhetoric and lazy game making to bilk people of their cash.

If you are going to use controversy, be worthy of the fallout, hype, and conversations that go with it.

What Could Be Interesting Now That I Have Come Back

Courier font. Well, it's readable.

I was in the closed Beta for Heroes of the Storm. Today it went public and I am downloading the update.

I just thought of something. Each of the characters introduced is a part of Blizzard's past intellectual properties. Even 'The Lost Vikings' still belong to Blizzard.

In other words, if you play Heroes then that game could gateway you into World of Warcraft, or into Diablo, or into Starcraft. Or you could search for their earlier titles and play retro.

It feels both devious and logical at the same time. Kudos to Blizzard for planning their product line.

I'm sure that if Overwatch characters are introduced then that would be Blizzard's way of saying Earth, and ourselves, are really a part of their world.

*shivers*