Merus

Yeah, DK Tropical Freeze is pretty good. Captain Toad might be worth skipping, actually - if you don't play more involved puzzle games, it's fine, but if you do, the cuteness probably isn't going to be enough to distract you from how slight the puzzles are.

How could anyone hate J Allard.

Yeah, not having voice chat condemns this game to being a strictly casual affair. I don't know what its shelf life will be, but there's reason to believe it won't be long. The 12-year-olds rated R for foul language aren't likely to be caught dead playing the game.

Sure, but she never trained as a nurse. If she was going to play doctor, wouldn't she put on a lab coat and actually be a doctor because that's what she was?

The Book of Life was sent out to die here, and like ParaNorman before it, it feels like it's a piece of animation that's leaning heavily on cultural references we don't have here. I really did not need the main character to sing a few lines of Radiohead's Creep. I am absolutely ready to see more of Mexico than the Day of the Dead, luchadors, and all of the Mexican culture that's been adopted by the US, as well.

Yeah, but I think calling yourself a feminist necessarily implies a level of influence over what that category means - at the very least, you have the authority to determine what it means for you. Same with any other label. It's not really an important distinction for men, anyway - feminist thought's still interesting, and most of what feminism wants from men is signal boosting, respect and letting others speak anyway.

Yeah, I recently decided that I agreed with the argument that white cis males can't be feminists, even if they have an interest in feminism or feminist thought, because part of the point of feminism is the erasure of women's identities and beliefs in favour of men's. The messenger is as important as the message, so as much as we might agree with feminist thought, if we call ourselves feminists, we're subverting it by making it our message. Like, it's a problem that when the Sad Puppies point at prominent feminists and SJWs in sci-fi, their most prominent target is a white, cis, happily married man who lives in Ohio.

I'm appalled that I did not hear about this because Jaden Smith's tweets were comedy gold. What the fuck are you doing, world.

That Harley is wearing revealing clothing (they're shorts), or that a female character is wearing revealing clothing? Because Harley is a Jersey goil, and Harley seems more or less in line with the terrible fashion decisions of her homeland (as opposed to, say, Arkham Asylum, where Harley's in a corset because I guess she's being... a nurse? Except a sexy nurse? What does that have to do with Harley?) I'm hoping that the character design is 'Harley is definitely not taking this seriously' because that's the only way you can justify sneaker stilettos.

I don't buy that "feminists" had much to do with this wave of abuse (I know The Mary Sue was a little upset at Whedon recently, but the proof is in the pudding). However, if Katherine Cross can be believed, there was a surprising amount of justification of the abuse coming from that direction. Certainly there seemed to be some feminists delighted that Whedon, who was fairly progressive in his youth but not these days (a fate we shall all share), seemed to have been finally punished. Apparently there have also been arguments that harassment of privileged targets isn't a big deal because they're essentially getting a taste of their own medicine. Randi Harper was getting accused of conflating aggressive people with people participating in call-out culture by someone who certainly appears to have an interest in social justice. I imagine these justifications were offered before it became clear exactly what directions this abuse was coming from.

So I've been developing an idea about a young evangelical cult member who gets pulled into a fantasy world and drafted into an actual culture war, and I decided recently one of the villains, one who exemplifies black-and-white morality and the use of guilt and shame as a tool of control, should use social justice language. I felt I was drawing a bit too much from the right wing - many of the more powerful villains draw from the right - and it turns out that there's plenty of material to work with, and having groups to the left of the heroes gives the world the kind of texture it didn't have. Also apparently my storytelling style is to steer directly into minefields and accelerate. This Joss Whedon being hounded off Twitter thing is conveniently timed, because it gives me a bountiful harvest of left-leaning, self-justifying excuses I can put into the mouths of the villains. Danielle retweeted one about how anger is an appropriate response to oppression and bigotry, which strikes me as exactly the kind of excuse Mother Xin* or her followers would use to justify their execution of people who don't live up to their (unrealistic and inflexible) standards. Anger might be a natural response, but being angry doesn't mean you're righteous. I expect, if I finish with it, I'm going to draw some flak for having a villain that uses that social justice language, although I suspect it will probably pale in comparison to some of the other plot elements I have planned. *it's set in fantasy China

Yeah, it's interesting to see how good the Double Fine Adventure is by seeing a documentary that's not quite as good. You get a better sense of the actual process and the mood of the team in DFA.

I don't necessarily have a problem with this Harley either, although the Daddy's Little Monster shirt is pretty lame.

And... 4th of May be with you? Is this an early Cinco de Mayo thing? (i'm being facetious but it doesn't work outside of the US)

I'd vote Original Cut because that actually is the director's cut, but do we all need to watch the same version?

Yaaaaaay Copy-pasting my thoughts from the feminism thread here to spark the discussion: It's a horror film where the monster is essentially a rape analogy, and most of the characters embody a rigid patriarchal archetype that's completely ill-equipped to handle the existential threat the alien presents. The gung-ho he-man is the first to die; the stern iron-willed leader, the deferential woman, the paternal robot (an actual device created by the Powers That Be) that uses rape (shoving a porno mag down Ripley's throat feels like a clear rape metaphor to me) as a tool of control... all of them are inadequate, all of them unwilling to accept that this danger exists and should be feared. I can imagine that there were some happy accidents along the way, people coming up with ideas that "feel" right for the movie's tone that no-one consciously realised extend the metaphor. Edit: oh yeah, lots of happy accidents. The alien as rape metaphor was in the original script, but all characters were originally written without a specified gender with the exception of Ripley, who was also written unisex but the writers thought of the character as a man. Ridley Scott reportedly showed women in the production office the casting material to get their perspective, and they mostly settled on Sigourney Weaver. Ash as a robot was part of a rewrite. It's interesting how that guiding star realigned the movie to be in harmony with its most potent elements, and I think it emphasises just how far we've slid back since the 70s, . I also like that its heroine is a survivor - and what made her a survivor is not her being attacked by an alien. She's not defined by the attack, and Alien (as well as its action movie sequel) does a good job of saying that she has more to offer than surviving an alien. If the alien is a metaphor for rape, then I think Ripley is a metaphor for a rape survivor as they should be treated, in a way that popular culture almost never manages. The working-class aesthetic is really distinctive, and I'm surprised that it doesn't turn up more. Only real example I can think of is Firefly, and even then it doesn't really feel right.

Borderlands 2 has a quest called "Shoot Me In The Face". Guess what you do to the questgiver. Borderlands uses a slightly more sophisticated quest mechanic where some objectives can be marked as fulfilled, and the mission fails if those objectives are no longer true. Shoot Me In The Face uses this to ensure that the questgiver is not shot in the chest, legs or arms.

To be honest I'm not unhappy. I think Trank needs a little more time doing his own stories and finding his voice.

i don't know about that, that's an awful lot of good movie to watch and then one bad one. however will we cope other than not watching the bad one we shall have to struggle on somehow

Vasquez doesn't really make up for it - like, yeah, bad-ass lady soldier, but it doesn't go down into the bones the way it does in the first one. Vasquez exists because the world created in the first one needs Vasquez to exist.

Of the two, I think Alien-no-S is a much more feminist film, to be honest, but Alien is also a straight-up horror film where Aliens is not.

Yes I don't know what it is but I can guarantee you it's better than Gimp. I've heard Graphics Gail and PaintTool SAI are good? I don't know if there's a much better one. As for the original question, I'd ask what's so special about surrealism.

I think it is a human thing, because my mum does it, except my mum is also capable of getting shit done and going on long after any reasonable person would have said that whatever this is isn't happening.

The implication is that Chozo were once powerful, but they are very clearly dying out. Like, she lived on Zebes. I really like the idea that Samus has, in some form or another, been living in the ruins of better days for her entire life. I'm with you on the suit, though. I think it is a shame that Nintendo don't sit down and work out exactly what tone they're trying to hit with these games, although I recognise that having a consistent tone across installments is not really on the cards for any Nintendo games.

I initially got into Homestuck because it looked like people really enjoyed seeing how crazy Problem Sleuth ended up getting and that seemed like a good thing to be in on the ground floor of. I checked out when the bullshit started to ramp up, as I typically do, and thus got to enjoy everyone else having the cognitive dissonance of seeing something that was potentially interesting blossom into something that you needed to be in the fandom to appreciate. Everyone either checked out or got weird.