Gormongous

I meant to reply to this comment, but I didn't! I know a few, at least in my discipline, but they're incredibly specific works on confined topics with limited source material, and they'll stop being the "last word" the moment that more material is uncovered, although that doesn't happen particularly often in medieval history. I'm thinking Guy Perry's recent biography of John of Brienne, Harriet Flower's Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture, and maybe Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error. I don't expect that I'll read anything new on those three topics in my lifetime, but they're all staggering works of scholarship and genius, and that's rare enough that it can't be counted on. Anyway...

That is incredibly disappointing. I bought the game on the strength of the Three Moves Ahead podcast, wherein both Rob and the designers of Invisible, Inc went on about how they hated FTL for having an endgame that required a very specific kit to beat and how Invisible, Inc didn't have anything like that. Oh well, I'm still enjoying it, and once I know what the endgame expects of me, I'll be able to focus on that.

Not just puritanical, but literally the direct ideological descendants of the Puritans. The mind boggles!

I mean, your first paragraph is really astute. Maybe the cultural miasma of Evangelion is just that thick? I can't tell, I'm drowning in it. With regards to character tropes, Evangelion definitely represents this kind of Cambrian Explosion, because everyone watched it, including many future directors, writers, and artists, and almost all of them had similar thoughts about how the characters from Evangelion could be lifted out of the show and maybe even improved. I know that it broke Anno's heart that he made a character expressly about how, if a woman is a doll, she can't love you, and how, if you try to make her a doll, she won't love you, and then that character gets put on body pillows and in dating sims everywhere. It's like your entire culture is telling you, in the clearest possible terms, that they're happy to consume your work but they'll never understand it. No wonder he was talking about "killing" Evangelion when he first started making the Rebuild movies.

Yeah, sorry. I get what you're saying with the Punpun stuff, but I haven't read the manga and am not particularly acquainted with its position within that separate medium, so I've just been responding to what I do know. I'm sorry if that strikes you as passing over good points. Also, Shinji was deliberately drawn to be feminine. Anno and Sadamoto took the usual character setup from mecha anime (firey dude, cool dude, and indecisive girl) and flipped them (firey girl, cool girl, and indecisive dude). It probably could be argued that, as an incredible successful subversion of the stock male protagonist in anime, Shinji became the grandfather of the gutless Potato-kun who's now ubiquitous in every anime with more than one female character to lust after. He's certainly the grandfather of Araragi, in his own way. Anyway, here are Sadamoto's own notes from the back of one of the Evangelion manga:

Talk about callbacks, from an interview with Jon Hamm:

Eh, the design is mostly the Shinbou's typical take on the Shaft house style. He likes that overproduced look to his characters, which comes off as them industrially screen-printed in Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei but is really wet and plump in Bakemonogatari, and it's present in all of his characters in the latter show. For instance, Araragi's hair gradually grows longer over the series and eventually gets drawn like it's torn strips of wet pleather. It's gross, but I think it's only partially plugged into the unique themes of the series. Shinbou just likes his shit lush as hell. I think you just might like Oyasumi Punpun a lot. I don't mean that dismissively. If something's really good, everything else just pales in comparison. That's okay, too. I hate that so many shows use the girl-as-doll tropes pioneered by Evangelion but don't include the multiple episodes of systemic cultural criticism that make it conscionable in that context. I think Shinbou's extraordinarily talented, but he's too much of a jokester, a wag, and a troll not to let you ogle the women that he's saying you shouldn't ogle. I know that's a little disappointing, but...

Well, the kicker there is that all the characters (bar a couple of incidentals) are introduced in the first season. They then serve as a static and recurring cast for all future seasons, wherein we learn more about them as they gain distance from Araragi and build relationships with characters other than him. It's really misleading, I know, and if I were to give the writers feedback, I'd recommend some way of reassuring the viewer that these characters they're being repeatedly forced to learn aren't disposable but are part of extremely front-ended worldbuilding. The idea, I guess, is that we are introduced to all of these women as discrete sexual fantasies of Araragi, only to have that assumption gradually betrayed as details accumulate outside of his limited perspective of them. That they come off as flat fucktoys on first encounter is ultimately an indictment of Araragi, not of the women, and I think the show becomes fairly unequivocal about that by Monogatari Series Second Season, when characters start openly circumventing Araragi in order to preserve their own agency and get shit done without his martyr complex getting in the way. You get more of it in the so-called second season, which aired the year after Nisemonogatari, but you're right that the bond between Araragi and Senjougahara is handled weirdly throughout the show. By the end, I got the distinct sense that Senjougahara was with Araragi because he was the first man who was truly open with his intentions toward her, after years of abuse and neglect, and that Araragi was with Senjougahara because he felt entitled to be fucking someone out of the cast of cute girls and it might as well be the one who'd staple his dick shut if he didn't choose her. It's really just weird that Araragi turns out to be the lightweight character, after the dynamics of the first season discussed above.

Bakemonogatari is doing something more than that, but it's a slow build that doesn't really pay off until subsequent seasons, when it slowly becomes clear that the anime itself thinks that Araragi is full of shit and that his heroics do not actually make him a good person or worthy of the female affection that seems to surround him. I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone because it's such a delicate balance that's got no guarantee of paying off for everyone, more so that (say) Mad Men, where it's much more quickly made clear that you're not actually supposed to like or identify with the nominal protagonist. I initially found Bakemonogatari disgusting as well, despite loving other stuff from that director like Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei and Arakawa Under the Bridge, and didn't try to watch the second season (well, technically the second half of the first season, as Aniplex has chosen to market Nisemonogatari) for over three years, so it's not really a matter of experience either. The series just plays its cards so close to its chest that it's hard to distinguish from something truly bankrupt and exploitative, but it was worth it in the end for me, at least.

Okay, I take back my comment about this dude earning a C- in my history class. He's just straight-up playing madlibs with historical people and events to twist the past into an ideal that legitimizes his obsessions. "Social justice warriors" are modern-day Puritans, who've spent hundreds of years, since before the English Civil War, waging a secret war against right-thinking societies across the globe to destroy all human progress? Okay... Uh, no? The thing is, if this conspiracy really is centuries old and overwhelmingly successful in all modern cultures, what exactly makes #GamerGate think they're going to beat it? Do they really think they're going to fight harder than the Royalists or the Confederates did? Maybe they're assuming that, now that progressivism is widely accepted as the dominant ideology and effecting actual changes in society, it's grown decadent and weak, so now's the time to strike? "Evacuate, in our moment of triumph?" Something like that? God, these guys watch too many movies.

I saw it the same, that Don has achieved a moment of personal happiness that was both profound and earned, but no matter how he feels about it, it's still something that can be put on a lunchbox and sold, by someone else if not by him. I especially enjoyed the ambiguous tension over whether the juxtaposition of Don's smile with the Coke commercial was in the episode's editing or in Don's head (that is to say, after years of cynical advertising, is Don's experience of nirvana just that Coke commercial playing in his head), but it never occurred to me for a second that Don smiled and thought of that ad, then flew back to New York to work for McCann again and make his thought a reality. It completely disregards the guru saying that the dawn can make you a new person, unless it is to say that Don can be happy but he can never change, and that's accomplished as effectively whether or not he actually makes the ad. Also, I'm glad everyone else found the scene between Peggy and Stan to be abrupt and forced. I thought Stan's confession was great, but then I watched Peggy go to pieces, which I also loved to watch, and the last place I expected her to end up was agreeing with him. I liked Stan and Peggy because it pointed to something besides romance as a source of personal happiness for a career woman. I guess we got that with Joan, but still... Really, the best interpretation came from Linda Holmes at NPR, where she suggested that Peggy deciding not to do anything about Don and instead choosing to reciprocate Stan's feelings in a way that was honest and real shows her letting go of Don's approval, but I'm not sure the latter was as strong of a motif for her character as Holmes seems to think.

Nah, I hear you. I was just caught up in imagining Blow's thought process while reacting to the article. "Plaid shirts and jeans are a sign of a lack of diversity in the industry?! But I wear plaid shirts and jeans and I'm certainly not part of the problem. The article must be frivolous bullshit! Look, its title even uses 'dress code' instead of 'informal but still dominant paradigm of dress.' This is why people hate on feminists, for real. I should let them know." I think we've also seen that, in the case that an article really catches fire, its title will also probably be misremembered as more sensational than it actually was, so there's sometimes not a point in holding back out of a desire to please concern trolls. See "Gamers Are Dead," even though Alexander's article never even used the word "dead," "death," or "die" in its title or body.

I mean, I hate to be reductive, but it feels like Blow would rather shout down feminists than admit his wardrobe is all plaid shirts and jeans. He's got this hugely intellectualized and rationalized framework built on top of that preference, but it still boils down to an incredibly successful game designer prioritizing his own minor comforts over even the possibility of a conversation about the major comforts of others.

I will never get tired of #GamerGate assigning arbitrary goals to massive and ancient institutions like academia, usually based on vague STEM fanboyism, and then blasting them when those goals seem unfulfilled. "The goal of government can generally be summarized as making sure all of its citizens are happy at all times. Well, I'm unhappy right now, the government has failed! It should be our goal now to forcibly attack government influence on society and industry." Personally, I think the goal of academia, if there even is one, is to broaden and deepen our understanding of the human condition, not some positivist bullshit about progress. See, my definition actually includes the humanities and explains why people care a great deal about "the feelings of utterly unimportant individuals." Naturally, his knowledge of the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany is incredibly defective. If he's a history student, he's probably clearing his classes with low Cs, owing to uncritical thinking and fuckin' Nazi apologia. Hitler wasn't "acting for the good of his nation" at any point in his political career. He took advantage of the Great Depression, which was worse in Germany because of war reparations and American loans, to seize power and abolish democratic rule. He was backed initially by capitalist concerns that thought the fall of the government would increase their bottom line, so they were mollified initially by Hitler's war on the trade unions as he was cleaning house of rival political parties, but make no mistake that Hitler's consolidation of rule and purge of society in Germany was from the first and to the last a means for making Hitler more powerful and nothing else, even if it did help the economy. The only way that he had Germany's interests at heart is if Hitler was Germany, which he seems to felt to be the case, so... Also, as an aside: fuck you, #GamerGate. The Weimer Republic was a golden age of cultural innovation and expression. Most of the "cinematic" techniques used in your vapid blockbusters and AAA games comes from that time, and you cry rivers when people talk about how there need to be less of those. Meanwhile, have you created anything of value in your nine months of existence, besides pictures of your imaginary gamer girlfriend Vivian and some of the worst writing ever to grace the internet outside of TimeCube? Of course not, so just keep talking about Nazis, because they're a perfect analogue to your movement. You're all just a lump of reactionary and toxic hate that can fool people temporarily into thinking you have some kind of goodwill towards society, but that ultimately is only in it to perpetuate its own existence and the hate that justifies it. An actual minority of your number would have your ideological enemies rounded up and executed, had you the power, and that is something that I can say about vanishingly few people in this world, especially your vaunted "feminazi" stereotype. The irony and ecstasy is just too much for me here.

I miss them being into Crusader Kings. It made me feel relevant.

The thing is, the Nemesis System sounded like complete and utter bullshit, on the level of Radiant AI, until people could confirm that it actually did what it says on the back of the box. That's a rare enough thing that I don't consider the act of doubting that it'll happen to be pessimism, but then I'm a bit of a cynic. Who knows if "bwild ya cah" is going to be the same surprise or not?

I believe that the episodes from the first season of Mushishi were selected specifically from the ten-volume run of the manga for being especially good and filmable. As excited as I am to watch the second season ("Zoku Shou" just meaning "next chapter" or something), I do wonder if the episodes are going to be slightly but constantly decreased in quality as time goes on, since the source material's being mined out. I also wouldn't be surprised if a ten-year gap was enough for the crew of Artland, especially the director who's not had much to do in the meantime besides Detroit Metal City and Flower of Evil, to lose a grip on the show's special strengths, especially in tone. Man, JonCole. That's twice you've pulled a Jake here, holding back comments that you feel won't contribute to a conversation that you suspect has happened but still isn't being had. First question: Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood splits sharply from the original series after a half-dozen episodes. Overall, the tone is more consistent in being less dramatic/maudlin and more apocalyptic, but I've found that the difference between the two is honestly to taste. However, they share a lot of characters, places, and events (although not the overwhelming majority that you think) that make them extremely inadvisable to watch back-to-back. Brotherhood would be a weird mix of confusing and disappointing like that. Instead, it's the perfect kind of show to watch once you've forgotten specific details of the original. For example, when you can no longer picture each of the seven of the Homonculi in your head, it's probably the right time to watch Brotherhood. Second question: I have a confession. I like Conqueror of Shamballa a lot. I found the ending of the show itself to be very weak, particularly in its reliance on extreme internality to make the emotional gut-punches land. Conqueror of Shamballa tears back into the story with the big picture, as well as some interesting sci-fi stuff that seemed to drop out of the show. It gives it a real ending, so I find it essential, but it was really poorly received, for reasons I don't remember at all but probably have to do with Character X or Character Y not getting the ending they "deserved," so FUNi printed a relatively limited run and did not reprint. Three or four years ago, it cost ten bucks for the Blu-ray, but I guess they're out of stock everywhere now. Wish I'd known, really. Either buy/rent the DVD or torrent a copy. It's an early-cycle FUNi Blu-ray, so it's not worth busting your hump or your wallet for an HD transfer. Don't even both with the other movie, the one for Brotherhood. Sacred Star of Milos is at the same time a boring slog of a story, a rushed mess without any sense of pacing or stakes, and a violent affront to the continuity of the show into the chronology of which it's been inserted. It's a two-hour mid-quel OVA with all the flaws of the format, so don't waste your money. The compilation of omake OVAs is a better treatment of the series.

Also, it's worth pointing out that we only really planned Episode 00 as off-the-books practice, to identify any serious snags. The snags we identified were: i) going too long on our Whatcha Watchin' segment, mostly just because everyone tried to talk about ever show they were watching; ii) generally bad practice with sound recording, including a bunch of typing, clicking, and creaking; iii) keeping consistent with what we introduced ourselves as; and iv) a bit of perfectionism with the editing. Future episodes should be improved just by the awareness of those things.

Yeah, and that problem's further complicated when the show in question, like many HBO shows before it, derives much of its popularity from its transgressiveness, brutality, and occasional bigotry. From a purely cynical perspective on business, HBO has an investment in people being offended by Game of Thrones or The Sopranos or whatever, only just slightly offended and never enough to trump the quality of craft in the show's performances and production. It's a knot that's tangled enough that I just try my best to raise awareness (eg, call it bullshit when people try to use Game of Thrones to describe "how it really was" or whatever) and be conscious of how I'm consuming it myself.

I'm glad that so many people are into Hardcore History, because anything that gets people thinking about the past in new and different ways is good just for that, but I personally find Dan Carlin to be very frustrating to listen to, at least when it comes to anything about which I have any professional expertise. As I've said elsewhere, Carlin has a talent for rooting out the most extreme interpretations of any historical figure or event and a penchant for employing those interpretations because they're interesting rather than necessarily true, which are both things against which I've struggled myself in my own career as a historian, so they're really hard for me to take in stride. I honestly think that the "hardcore" part of his history holds him back from doing "good" history more than you might think, if only because the large-scale, often cataclysmic nature of the narrative that he's telling doesn't always leave room for the mundane or personal moments that are often just as important to our understanding. No, everyone's a rock star or a badass or whatever, and that really turns me off. Don't get me wrong, Carlin's engaging in a way I wish I could be and has an incredible nose for stories, I just can't enjoy him or recommend him to anyone myself. Also, people intrigued by how Twilight Struggle models its political landscape are strongly encouraged to check out Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?. Like Twilight Struggle, it's a two-person card-driven "wargame" that begins immediately after the invasion of Afghanistan and pits the United States against an international jihad. The amazing thing about it is how completely different the two sides' methods and objectives of play are. Rather than two superpowers with similar ways of waging war, you have just one, conquering countries in the traditional way in an effort to stabilize the Middle East for the values of liberal democracy, while jihadists don't even really have troops, since their objectives are either to smuggle a nuclear device into the US or to exploit US blunders with sleeper cells to sap the energy of its coalition and spread fundamentalism in the Middle East. Both players are taking turns and using cards in the same way, just like Twilight Struggle, but the feeling of playing two completely different games that only occasionally intersect, even though the objective of one is always the destruction of the other, is pretty damn cool. And then you go from there to the COIN series of games, which are all three- or four-player games that use card-driven mechanics to model the many-sided politics of civil wars. One person plays the government troops, one person plays the local warlords, one person plays the religious fundamentalists, and one person plays the international peacekeeping forces... They're all great, although it's a deep rabbit hole.

No need to apologize. I'm having a lot of trouble reading it right now, just because it's so hard to watch him talk himself around someone's carefully limited and framed criticisms of certain elements in the game, in order to turn them alchemy-like into a wholesale condemnation of the game and thereby an attack on the developer, which he can then indignantly dismiss out of hand. Congratulations, you've replaced subtle and interesting points with your own stupid and inane ones, which of course have serious problems. You don't get any points for knocking over strawmen. In a way, I like the fact that the Witcher games have always contained brutally oppressive worlds, usually to make a series of allegorical points that are often imperfect in their execution, valid criticism of which can be used as dog-whistles for knuckle-draggers like Chmielarz who don't have the ability to distinguish between creator and created.

I thought about putting this in the Comical Picture thread, but it's going to be so damn useful whenever someone specifically starts raving about feminist indoctrination in the media...

Okay, reading an account of the scene in this IMDB thread, of all places, I'm convinced that the ambiguity is intentional. It shouldn't take two hours for four men to dig a pit and get shot, but it's surprisingly quick for four men to get carved up and eaten. One of the two happened, but neither is presented in an entirely plausible way, which leads me to lean towards the darker outcome. Anyway, like another commenter said:

I was almost certain that the story was headed towards cannibalism, but I'm pretty sure that they just (just!) made the Germans dig their own graves and then killed ("bounced") them, the implication being that they did so because they didn't have enough food to keep themselves and their prisoners alive. It's a confusing way for that character to have told the story, and maybe the confusion is intentional, in that we're supposed to feel like there are holes in his supposedly "tell-all" account, but I don't think there's anything in the actual dialogue to support his cannibalism, besides the opening lines about extreme hunger.

I just noticed that, in their massive site redesign, MyAnimeList.net removed the subheading of fansub and scanlation listings for anime and manga titles. You can't search their site by fansub groups anymore, either. That's a whole lot of information gone from the internet, probably because they got a C&D letter simply for acknowledging the existence of such groups and their output. At least AniDB is still around, but their interface sucks and is not as information-rich. Seriously, fuck capitalism. I know it's a tiny little thing to get pissed about, but someday, someone's dissertation is going to be on fansub culture and it's going to be hard going for them (and for any digital humanities initiatives in media culture) because modern corporations have such a slash-and-burn mentality about everything.