Gormongous

Yeah, they're there. They're just not hidden where they can be easily found, for some reason: http://www.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/profile/past_broadcasts

All my relationships with women have failed by not lasting forever, so I'm probably at least half gay, too. I am really trying my hardest not to believe that he'll just find "the right woman" and that'll be enough for the writer(s).

They tend to remove C (books and comics) and S (most games) canon when it "directly conflicts" with newer or higher canon, and some editors seem to be taking a broader view of the term "conflict." It's supposed to be bumped down to the bottom of the article, under a separate heading, but it's been removed completely in some articles, at least to my eyes.

It's hard to back up now, because Wookieepedia has purged a lot of the C and S canon material since the big statement, but I'm almost certain that one of the novels had a Holocron that remembered Yoda and implied that his name, like that of Thrawn, was a nickname for a secret or unpronounceable name.

I mean, the excess of political theatre in the prequels is rightly criticized, but they're more a problem because Lucas doesn't really have an understanding of how to write and stage interesting political action, rather than space politics being innately boring. He repeatedly introduces stuff like the blockade in The Phantom Menace, the Clone Wars in Attack of the Clones, and Palpatine's dictatorship in Revenge of the Sith, all superficially dire, but there's never any effort to play out the consequences of those things. They're just stand-ins for generically bad stuff that requires heroic action, and the most effort Lucas puts into realizing them is having different characters tell us over and over that they're bad. Remember how the Clone Wars lasted three years and yet Obi-Wan and Anakin get off the ship from the Outer Rim like it's been a week-long vacation? That's why the politics are boring in the prequels. They have absolutely no consequence besides being literally just excuses for other shit to happen, yet Lucas devotes dozens of minutes in every movie to people walking down halls and talking about how bad they are. And, on a side note, Revenge of the Sith has gratuitous child murder by implication and a pregnant woman getting choked and thrown around. Self-immolation isn't that much heavier.

Two things: I know that, in the only review that I read about Dark Souls 2 translated from Japanese, the game got slammed horribly for the fragrant branches being a clumsy gating mechanism rather than a puzzle or a mystery. The decision to use one on a statue was trivial once you knew that there were more branches (two more, I think) than statues. With that knowledge, I'm not surprised that the remix tries to muddy the waters, although to not much avail. I know that "bigger multiplayer" is always a high-selling bullet point, but I have no clue why you'd actually go through with increasing player count in a game praised largely for its sense of loneliness and isolation.

I feel like that might have resulted from Lucas' alternate interpretation of Yoda's character. Watching the original triology, we assume that the whole "wars not make one great" has come to Yoda gradually after centuries of life, but apparently it comes from the last fifty years, when he tried and failed to stage a coup, even though Yoda is presented as being equally wise as when he later trains Luke. It all goes back to Lucas' obsession in the prequels with linking every character, event, and motivation to something else from the original trilogy, which is why Chewbacca is Yoda's liaison on Kashyyyk instead of another one of literally millions of Wookies.

Speaking of having no shame, said girl I'm seeing off and on has suddenly become "on" in a way that feels more right than anything in a very long time -- except that I've got longstanding plans tomorrow with another girl whom I've also been seeing off and on for quite some time now (although it's been mostly "off" since last summer, to be honest) and who, despite my attempts to be clear about us not actually dating, still seems to see our irregular hangouts as some type of commitment, if not necessarily an exclusive one. This entire weekend has been one big acid reflux attack, probably for that very reason, because I'm not looking forward to building up the momentum it'll take to spend three or four hours explaining these new developments to a friend who's in tears (which is what happened the last time that I made an effort to draw boundaries with her). I'm not particularly bad at closing the door on people with whom I've had a romantic history, but I'm so excited about this new girl that I've got to try. Besides, I know from experience that I can't be vague here at all, so... ugh.

It's got a really strong tone, a lot of which is wet tricorn hats and oversize muskets, but it kind of shakes apart by the end, so far does it go down its own rabbit hole of conspiracy-within-conspiracy. I'd rate it a high B?

I've always liked RedLetterMedia's analysis of it: Yoda is supposed to be living proof that the Force does not follow the obvious logic of greatness and strength, but then in the prequels, we have to see how Yoda has to work his ass off just to meet a Sith lord of unspecified but apparently unexceptional power on equal terms in combat, and then he loses anyway and Dooku gets away! It basically undoes everything interesting and different about Yoda's character in the original trilogy and reaffirms Luke's half-assed and impulsive way of being a Jedi as how every Jedi really is.

Yeah, "In the Pale Moonlight" is such a standout for the entire franchise, but it's unfortunately a standout because i) it's such a huge deviation from what Star Trek usually is, which means that ii) it's not very useful to show to newcomers because they lack the context. My other favorite DS9 episode is "Far Beyond the Stars," which is absolutely spectacular television but incredibly confusing to anyone who tunes in just to watch some Star Trek.

Katarn's not a Jedi until after the first Dark Forces... I know, I'm being silly. Katarn's a fine character, but the writers probably want to make their own mark, with someone named Meck Rontaloona or something.

Unless...

Oh, I have no doubt that Correia has had unpleasant interactions, potentially bordering on harassment, with some left-leaning sci-fi fans and creators, although that's much more certain now because he is the progenitor of Sad Puppies and that makes him a different kind of target than just being one of many right-leaning authors in sci-fi. What I doubt (and what warrants at least some proof, in the form of a name or a story the details of which are not generalized plurals, like Martin requests) is i) that Correia walked into the door at his first Worldcon in 2011 already labeled and hated by the majority of other attendees as "a racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned," thanks to the efforts of "a whole bunch of malignant lying bastards" whom Correia never names but of whose existence he is absolutely convinced, and ii) that the same malicious group who did their level best to chase Correia out of Worldcon a few years back has a stranglehold on the Hugos, despite Martin's inability to find any demographic or ideological trend in the awards of the past half-decade or in the all-time winners of the various categories, which warrants an unprecedented degree of electioneering and common cause with Vox Day, an actual racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned, just to expose. Typing that out, it's really hard for me not to imply constantly that Correia went to his first Worldcon after being nominated for a Campbell, found that his nomination did not make him a respected celebrity or anything, and then lost the Campbell proper to a more promising newcomer, which happens all the time, even to George R.R. Martin. Only, Correia became convinced that his loss was politically motivated, mostly because he has publicly talked himself into the belief that negative reviews of his book had to have come from people who didn't read it, and hence came up with Sad Puppies as a way to get back at those who wouldn't give him an award by using their own process against them, to force them to give him (and people whose situations resemble his) an award. That's the narrative, one of entitlement, that repeatedly arises out of everyone's comments, even if they're selling me something different, like Correia desperately wants to do. The really sad part, if you're prone to finding tragedy in hubris, is that now Correia will never win a Hugo, rightly or wrongly, unless through Sad Puppies. His attempt to game the nominees in order to give Hugos and Campbells to those he felt more deserving, even though entirely within the rules as they currently are, is all that anyone will ever think about when they see his name on future ballots. He's now given himself the blackballing that he believes he had already gotten "elite leftist sci-fi" and that he believed he needed Sad Puppies to overcome.

In a way, it's possibly the gentlest Godwin, isn't it? In general, though he doesn't seem particularly malevolent, Correia does seem to be fond of especially outsize rhetoric. In his response to George R.R. Martin's initial spread of posts, he describes the feeling of arriving at his first Worldcon already a pariah thanks to a "whisper campaign." He claims to have been berated by fellow panelists and challenged by belligerent drunks, which formed what he eventually works himself up to calling a "lynch mob." In turn, Martin says again and again that he has literally never witnessed that kind of behavior at a Worldcon, even when he was a nobody or when his work was getting some feminist backlash a few years ago. As he says, people disagreed with him, often emphatically, but he was never made to feel unwelcome, unless the word "welcome" is changed to mean "unequivocally loved and celebrated by all." Martin punctuates the different sections of his response to Correia with the repeated question of who these people that harassed him are and what did they say. Martin doesn't say it, but calling them out should probably involve actually calling them out, as opposed to making vague allusions to misdeeds and then starting something like Sad Puppies to "expose" the culture that permits them. I mean, maybe we should be fixing state and federal elections in the US to expose the undue influence of corporate lobbyists in the political process, knowing that they'll all lose their shit when their contributions come to naught, but probably not, because burning down a house to cleanse it of vermin that you just know are there yet can't seem to find is the acme of foolishness. Of course, Correia took Martin's indulgent credulity as naivete, saying in a later post both that Martin clearly is out of touch with Worldcon, which he attends almost every year, if he's not already aware of the harassment that Correia claimed and claims to have faced, but also that Martin is not responding in good faith if he won't take Correia's rough sketch of events as an objectively true basis for further discussion about the future of Worldcon and the Hugos. It's honestly been fascinating how many of the people affiliated with Sad and/or Rabid Puppies nurse grudges about their talent as writers being overlooked for Campbells and Hugos, but then post these nonsensical screeds in support of Sad and/or Rabid Puppies that exhibit absolutely no craft at all, let alone reason. On the other hand, Martin is not only a careful and thoughtful novelist whose books are marred mostly by excessive length and a slightly Old World sensibility, but he is also a careful and thoughtful blogger whose posts are marred mostly by excessive length and a slightly Old World sensibility.

For some reason, the option to travel east to Raedric's Hold instead of south to Defiance Bay wasn't presented to me early in the game, so I'm only making it back there at the beginning of Act 3. So far, it's been pretty great to have everyone shouting at me about how I'm dead meat, but then one-shotting every single one of them. I could probably solo it with my single character, if I wanted... so yeah, if you're having trouble with Raedric, go get a couple levels. It becomes laughably easy after a point, if that's the kind of revenge you're looking for.

I picked Tali in Mass Effect 2 but wasn't really impressed. I didn't play the last game in the series.

I'm not drunk, but eating some shitty truffles that a girl I'm seeing off and on gave to me because she literally couldn't stomach them. I'm a grad student and have no shame. I'll add to what you've said about starting with sex, which I do not because I'm particularly gay but because I've never learned another way to do it, really? Like, you can't beat the sureness of sex telling you that someone's into you... unless that's all they want (or you discover in the act that it's all you want), which is something I've never gotten good at.

Hah! Dude, it looks like you got a horrible electric shock maybe a dozen words in. I love it.

I would really enjoy a game that involves you navigating a randomly populated but categorically nested Blade interface for certain items in under a certain time. I can't believe I'm recommending a menu-navigation time trial, but I think something vindicating Allard's blades...

And the converse is that #GamerGate aggressively markets silence as support for their bigotry and hate. We've seen this just with Giant Bomb: first all of GB privately supported #GamerGate according to them, then everyone besides Patrick once he started speaking out, then when Jeff posted his letter it was still everyone except Patrick (who probably pressured Jeff into saying something he didn't really believe), and then a few months later it's everyone except Patrick and Jeff, the latter of whom might really just be confused about what #GamerGate really is... Like, I know that these guys are in the business of talking about games, not playing politics, but I can't help but feel that history will vindicate those who stated their positions as soon as they felt able and in a way that refused misinterpretation. I think treating #GamerGate as the bully that your mom assures you will just give up if you don't give him what he wants is damaging to GB in some way, but of course I can't prove that, so it's whatever. Really, I hope everyone who opposes #GamerGate in whatever way that they see fit are vindicated in their strategies. I don't know how that's going to happen, but I wish all strategies were equally as effective at dealing with the bullshit.

I apparently was a lot more passionate and articulate immediately after my comps two years ago. A lot of amazing things were being said in that thread, some of them from me, though I don't know how I came to say them that well.

chop some wet old men in trash london, throw rocks at a big dog. if you get scared or lonely talk to pioneer graveyard doll

I should also clarify, both Larry Correia and Brad Torgensen have each put out posts just recently condemning people for connecting them to and conflating them with Vox Day, which is not really the same thing as condemning Vox Day but maybe they were hoping that it'd be good enough. I admit, it's probably difficult to divest yourself entirely of connections to such a hateful misogynist and racist when he's just building off of your slate and your tactics, and when his attempts to shut works of liberal or broader appeal out of the nominees suddenly makes your original slate of nominees the best by default when compared to his additions. It's that ChainSawSuit comic about #GamerGate all over again. Anyway, I don't want to be misinterpreted here. Torgensen did say, "Maybe Vox is terrible," which is a brave stance to take. Of course, he hedged it by then saying, "But the Marxist politics of unpersoning is much more so." By "unpersoning," I assume he means a handful of conservative authors occasionally not winning awards and/or getting mocked by John Scalzi. David Gerrold, writer for Star Trek and one of the other frequent presenters for the Hugos, can take it from here. I mean, I tried my best to read it charitably too. I want Jim Butcher to be one of those people who didn't really understand the Puppies at first but is now horrified, not one of the people who decided to roll with it. But "things" that have become "politicized" so clearly refer to the Hugos, so it only makes sense if the "people" are sci-fi authors and not the Puppies. It really bums me out, which is why I came here to post it, gadfly of misery that I am.

Sad Puppies (if you distinguish it from Rabid Puppies, which isn't always easy when no one's willing to disavow Vox Day, because Rabid Puppies finished the work that Sad Puppies started) is basically conservative, but they're still predicated on the idea that there's either a passive or an active liberal conspiracy to flood sci-fi and fantasy with "message fiction" and boring over-literary works and then give them all the awards. The slate is an open conspiracy formed in response to "take back" the awards and make them about "damned good stories" again, rather than race, sexuality, gender, religion, politics, or whatever. I mean, that sounds about as great as "ethics and journalistic integrity," but George R.R. Martin makes it pretty clear in his excellent series of blog posts that Larry Correia (and later, Brad Torgenson) formed Sad Puppies after losing out on his (and Brad's) first Hugo. With regards to the slate itself, Martin's also said it best: Sad Puppies exists because a group of mostly conservative writers believed it impossible to see their favorite writers (which, of course, included themselves and their friends) on the list of Hugo nominees unless they gamed the system. It's an undemocratic "defense" of democracy, which is why everyone's worried about the future of the Hugos, even one of the all-time winners who usually presents them. I mean, it's possible that Butcher's not terribly articulate, but I saw the meaning as "People keep proclaiming their stance on everything, acting like politicians" (especially by putting "political" beliefs in books, unlike Butcher, I guess) "and then get all shocked when things become politicized" (when the "fans" mobilize against them to fix the Hugos). Whatever the word-to-word meaning, it's the same overall message as the Puppies: if you have the indiscretion to voice political beliefs as a creator, whether or not it's in your work, you're inviting mass action against you and your work. The upshot's to be apolitical, whatever the fuck that means in this day and age.