Gormongous

Yesssss. Campo Santo lore department confirmed.

But everyone who backed thirty bucks or more should also get it soon, right? I mean, I had no money when this kickstarter happened but that's why I pitched in thirty anyway and ate ramen for a week.

Yeah, I love peeking into this thread and feeling almost no need to chime in because you're all being so excellent to each other and talking about complicated stuff in good faith.

Yeah! I think fascism is so interesting because it's basically the fruit of seeds sown by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that could only bloom in soil watered by the blood of millions, which no one saw coming of course, but I can't get too excited about the historical implications because then I lose the appearance of impartiality. Like I was telling to my date last night, I have mostly coped by cultivating the sense of not taking anything seriously in order to insulate myself from looking like I have any political beliefs, which isn't hard because human history is really just people being terrible to each other over and over while telling each other that things are getting better, but it's a shame that I can't get too engaged in anything without risking the loss of someone's attention or respect. Speaking of taboo, here's a great series of books called Reacting to the Past, which are little one-shot roleplaying sessions for important historical moments. You'll notice that, of the ones that have been published as opposed to the ones still being tested, there's only one from the twentieth century and it's a very safe topic with a fairly positive outcome, Indian independence. I don't think it'll ever happen, but I think it would be really instructive to have someone roleplay the rise of the Fascists in Italy or the rise of the Nazis in Germany (or even the rise and then collapse of the Blackshirts in Britain). They were seductive ideologies at the time and, since they're so taboo, there's not much danger of anyone being seduced anymore, at least not at a modern Western university, so I think it would help to be forced to see why they were so seductive then, through roleplaying or any other means, rather than just taking it as self-evident that they were abhorrent and unsustainable ideologies, which... I don't know. I actually need to go to class now, but it is food for thought. I'm still learning myself, really.

I am going to go way out of my depth here (and also sound like a fascist), but yes? I mean, fascism and post-modernism as political ideologies are both answering the same question, the failure of "modernity" and more pointedly the nineteenth-century liberalism that created and informed it. Fascism does so by rejecting divisive ideologies that detract from the presence and strength of the state, the oneness with which is the ultimate point of human experience, while post-modernism embraces diverse ideologies as the point of human existence. But yeah, Mussolini would reject post-modernism for doubling down on the failures of modernism and especially for undermining the reality of the state, which is the engine of progress and well-being for humanity. All that said, it doesn't mean much, because fascism is virtually political solipsism. Every other ideology, unless it exists solely to support the state as a single collective entity, is in some way deficient. Communism seeks the destruction of the state and therefore is antithetical. Socialism privileges socioeconomic class and therefore divides people from the state. Democracy oppresses the minority and therefore divides people from the state. Only fascism, an ideology specifically designed to subordinate people to the state, is a truly effectual ideology.

And the digital EP!

I am so excited to talk to my students about fascism today! Saying as much to my date last night almost blew it for me, but I don't care. So much of the modernity that we've been talking about for months now leads directly into fascism, which is basically just every "modern" concept smashed together into a single semi-coherent philosophy. FASCISM is the RELIGION OF EFFICIENCY in which the STATE IS GOD. INDIVIDUALS ARE FREE to REJECT FAILED IDEOLOGIES and BECOME ONE WITH THE STATE that is the source of ALL HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT. Also, it's very difficult to write or talk about fascism without sounding like you're buying into it. See aforesaid sentence about my date. Ugh, STEM people.

I wanted to respond to Thrik's post, but damn you guys move so fast. I think the problem here is that connotative meaning is so fluid. This is just me, but if I were to call a man a bitch and a woman a bitch, that word would mean completely different things. When a woman's a bitch, she's cold, cruel, unpleasant, mean, and all the other things that women aren't supposed to be. When a man's a bitch, he's weak, wimpy, scared. There's a gendered dichotomy of emasculation going on here that doesn't exist even with male-specific insults like "dick" because being a dude isn't and has never been the grounds for oppression and therefore an undesirable thing to be. To go a bit deeper, the normalization and attenuation of insults is a weird and scary thing. It's very affecting to go back even fifty years and hear racial language being used to describe completely nonracial things. "That's awfully white of you" used to be a very common compliment, "I'm sorry I've been so black" used to be a very common apology. I guess I'm saying that common usage is dangerous and oppressive because we live in a society that oppresses people as a matter of course. Very rare is the insult that doesn't put someone down by associating them with a group currently or formerly considered undesirable to be a part of (which is what makes asshole so impressive, because poop is apparently apolitical, although it's getting close to "trash", which has overtones of socioeconomic discrimination, so I don't know). You just have to be careful about what you say and about all possible meanings for it. This is currently the battle I'm fighting with the ableist language I still use too much. I don't see as much of a problem with male-gendered language, for the reasons Ben gave, but I still avoid it whenever I think to do so because I feel self-conscious about the gender politics I'm inadvertently deploying when I call someone a dick. As for the conversation actually going on now a page later, I think that a bark that doesn't work with Batman shouldn't work with Catwoman. They're the same mechanically and narratively, so why shouldn't there be massive overlap? I actually think the excessively gendered nature of AI barks for Catwoman are because the developers wanted hers to be a different experience and so focus on the main (albeit superficial) difference between her and Batman, that she's a woman. In a way, it goes under the same umbrella as the hyper-feminization/sexualization of female characters in Arkham City that does make you uncomfortable, SAM. The defining characteristic of them all is that they're women, so it has to get as much play as possible, even if it's just that Catwoman is a "crazy bitch" instead of just "crazy". I'd really, really like Batman to be called a "crazy bitch", if only because I know it'd never happen. Batman is half bat, all man, so no one would ever undermine his masculinity with a female-gendered insult.

Nah, a year is too close to admitting defeat. At the very least, they'll run it as close to a loss to get to eighteen months, the threshold for no longer being "almost/barely (more than) a year".

It might be automated Google+ Hasselhoff photobombs. It was announced on March 31st, after all.

Yeah, but I think it's deeply political to lump all those topics under one umbrella of "contentious" and exclude them from a game that would otherwise address them. I mean, Crusader Kings 2 can't leave out religion, because religion is one of the most powerful forces in human history, yet all Civilization games have tried their hardest to marginalize it. Likewise, most games would rather leave a gaping hole where "race relations" would be. It all reminds me of Tevis Thompson's excellent article about Bioshock: Infinite and video game reviews, where he talks about the idea of something being "apolitical" as a special kind of subjectivity only available to a select few gamers, mostly white and male.

Fair enough. I see a continuum between the two positions, but maybe there isn't one. Certainly, definitional gatekeeping is sophistry and I wouldn't read a single word more of anyone I caught doing it outside of a textbook or something actually germane.

Chrome for Android has a built-in translator that changes common words to emoji. These are the kind of innocuous, easily ignored jokes I like for today.

The Half-Life3 thread exists on this forum to show to everyone how hard it is to get a thread locked here.

I'm thinking the N'Gai Croal article, which definitely had some "Gone Home is not a (very good) game (mechanically)" in it. Beyond that, I can only conjure up a vague recollection of various reviewers and critics whom I acknowledge, if not respect, doing some "mechanically sparse" or "closer to a visual novel" soft-shoe, so maybe you've got me there. It's just given me the sense that a good chunk of the video gaming press has hedged their bets by having these "debate" bits, either on their own or in a review, that ostensibly score points on both sides of the issue, which wouldn't even be an issue if said press didn't feel beholden to reflect "popular" opinion to some degree.

I sometimes use "pendejo", but it always comes out sounding like John Turturro from The Big Lebowski.

Your comment made me think. When Empire was filmed or Tristram Shandy was written, the people contesting them as films or novels were the old-guard critics, who were invested in preserving a status quo over which they were confirmed to be arbiters. That's sometimes the case with the people rejecting Gone Home as a game, but the criticisms are also coming from many younger and more avant-garde critics too, who are using the opportunity to hone their own self-made definitions of what a game is? Is it just the relative infancy of the medium that makes all walks of life willing to dissect Gone Home's inadequacies? Is it PoMo or something else in the culture at large?

The "religious upheaval" modifier is confirmed as bugged. Most of the events that remove it are missing their triggers, so it never goes away unless your moral authority is high enough to get one of the few working events. The fact that moral authority is virtually impossible to sustain at high levels among Jainism is a balance issue has not been confirmed but is widely commented upon, as is the fact that the Hindu caste system as coded does not allow for merchant republics or handing out territory without creating every lower-level vassal first. There's actually a really heartening thread going on the Paradox forums about how bad the QA has been for the past year or so, culminating in Rajas of India being generally unpolished and without basic testing (with the community manager actually commenting that yes, they're aware of standards slipping, but not what they're going to do about it). I find it a little funny that it's almost confirmation that the "new Paradox" of CK2 , which only published games when ready, has only really lasted a couple years before reverting back to the "old Paradox" of EU3 and before, with its publish-and-patch mentality. Anyway, hotfix by the weekend, maybe then I'll upgrade from 2.0.4.

Someone does something you don't like on the internet? Tell them how you wish they were dead, possibly also how you wish to make them dead. This is our culture right now.

Nah, I think you're totally on target. I do listen to the podcast and you're right that he's a lot more candid about what doesn't work in a given board game there. I guess the time they take to film the videos allows him to sand off most of the sharpness from his opinions? Anyway.

I saved fifteen bucks when I built my computer in 2010 by not buying a modular PSU, so now I experience it constantly. I don't even really get why they sell non-modular PSUs!

I am embarrassed to say that I forgot movies when formulating my statement. They almost hold a different category in my mind. Your point is taken and your revision is probably more accurate. I will say, a lot of the more contrived moments in Gankutsuou seem to me to be a deliberate thematic choice to construct an atmosphere of unreality and inevitability within the anime, but that might just be me. It's certainly a show where things happen because they happen, but that's the case with the source material, too. It would be fair to say that Gankutsuou should improve on that, like it improves on a lot of other things. Side note, I don't know if I'd count light novels wholly as literary. It'd probably be on a case-by-case basis. They occupy such a weird liminal space. Honestly, I don't like to stop watching things once I've finished them, plus I was secretly hoping that Chu2Koi 2 would turn it around in the last couple episodes, like the first season. I also think, with the amount of truly great anime that I watch, that occasionally it's healthy to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to know it's there. I'd say that fan service is just as bad as moeblob, because they're both the same problem. At least, they both cater to the same thing, contentless satisfaction/pleasure for the viewer. Anime is at its best when it surprises and challenges its audience through fantastic settings, dramatic conflict, or outlandish premises. As much as I love K-On!, it feels like soma that's meant to entertain the viewer without any artistic effort actually being invested. I get just as uncomfortable when people talk about anime as watching underage girls doing nothing as being Bible Black, because both are more or less inferior to the vision I have for anime as a growing and promising medium. The funny thing is, there's only maybe a couple of pages from the light novel animated into the second season, but they're good! Satone shows up, discovers that the boy she's loved all her life is dating an eerily similar version of herself, and tries several different ways to get over him and herself. It's actually a good arc, with this interesting Zhen Bao-yu feel from Dream of the Red Chamber, but it just makes the rest of the show so depressing, because apparently now you can "adapt" a light novel in a way that doesn't actually resemble it at all and yet still be a smashing success, because most people tune in just to watch a girl go "uguu". That's really great to hear! I'd looked at Nisekoi a little because I liked the art, but backed off when I saw the "harem" premise, which can sink to such depths. If it's one of the better examples, I might bump it back onto my "maybe" list.

To add some anecdotes to the mix, I have a Palit GTX 470 and I'm really not impressed by the build quality. I bought it because it had a highly rated custom heatsink and a higher clock speed, but it was definitely an either/or proposition in the end (as in, the heatsink worked great at base clocks, but didn't take kindly to the factory overclock). I've never known anyone to be disappointed by their MSI, you can barely hear my friend's GTX 570Ti in his case. I've also known Seagate PSUs to fail, but never firsthand and it may just be Corsair propaganda.

Like the tentacles of the sea anemone, they wave playfully, inviting humans to come near in order to be grasped and dispatched.

This requires a separate post became I'm mad as hell. I just finished Chu2Koi 2 and it is easily the worst show I have watched since I started watching anime seriously in 2009. It's a show where nothing happens, but not in the Seinfeld way that's interesting or entertaining. No, it's just about a bunch of people doing nothing because doing something risks something else being different and different is bad. And in the anime! I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating, but the twelve-episode season takes place over an entire year and is entirely about whether or not a couple that's dating at the start of the season is going to kiss at the end. Spoilers, after all their effort not to decide if they want to kiss but just to get in the same place to kiss, they decide not to kiss, because that would change their relationship and change is bad. It's this sort of infantilizing garbage that's ruining anime. I'm totally serious. The first season was all about Yuuta having a crush on Rikka, who thinks she is a wizard. He spent the entire season trying to help her come to terms with her delusions, which involved deep childhood trauma that she still hasn't faced, but then he decided in the very last minutes of the very last episode that he actually loves her all crazy(?) and so made a promise always to play along with her delusions(!). Now we have a season about them trying to be intimate, but Rikka is still effectively a six-year-old high schooler who thinks she's a wizard and is scared of the opposite sex because somehow that's how Yuuta likes her, so we have another show that's actually about enabling your partner's mental illness because being able to say that you're dating them is more important than actually achieving any kind of connection or intimacy with them. It's disgusting, although I'm kinda glad they didn't hook up, because Rikka is the ugliest moeblob you've ever seen. Promotional art might have led you to believe she's a Rei expy, for which I admit I have a thing, but she never actually looks like Rei when animated, because she's always making the face of a baby about to cry: Also, and in sum, it's really telling that the only two characters I could stand for more than a few seconds, Kumin the senior girl who just doesn't give a shit and Satome the Joe Pesci who has a crush on Yuuta that she actually does something to overcome, are the only two who think that kissing and even sex are no big deal if the couple loves each other, which the show tells us over and over that Rikka and Yuuta do, even if we never see what that love looks like beyond just saying each other's name while sad/romantic/joyous music plays. I have a couple other high school romance shows cued up, but I think I'm going to watch Golden Time before them, because it takes place between two college kids who hopefully won't be gyno- and androphobic imbeciles that should just grow the fuck up and hold their date's hand if that's what they want. Ugh, but I don't want to stop there. I seriously can't rant enough about this show! I keep going back and adding more nitpicks to my post. It's like Chu2Koi 2 was made in some secret government laboratory to be the ultimate in content- and friction-free entertainment that can just go on forever. I find it abhorrent to think about. It's even the kind of show that presents itself like it's a comedy, but it's got no jokes, just the occasional situation that feels faintly absurd, I guess those are supposed to be the jokes. It's so bad!