BobbyBesar

From the perspective of character deaths, Attack on Titan does earn them with their setting. The initial attack kills of something like 50% of the residents of that region? And the scouting corps has like a 95% casualty rate in 5 years or something? Having the show be about desperation almond the cannon fodder would have been interesting. Instead, we get Eva with naked people.

Ken's desire for work/life division has been pretty long established, and the sci-fi stuff was part of that. He was also the most reluctant to exploit his family connections for clients. At one point he flat out refused to solicit his father in law for business. Ken was horrible to Joan, but he was totally in the weeds. He's far from perfect, but as I mentioned, I think he's among the least bad people in the office in terms of terrobleness.

BenX's business model involves quoting and reposting posts as cheap as possible. He operates in a cheap city, and he hires non-union post writers and there's only a few who'll put up with his shit.

Strictly speaking, Kenny Cosgrove wasn't driving the lawnmower that ate that Brit's foot. It was the nervous, mousy secretary. I believe Ken did ride it into the office though. I liked that somebody was happy to see Don. They've established before that Ken is pretty much the only person at the company that isn't a terrible human being, but he also almost uniquely has nothing to lose if Don comes back.

I got to the same place. One issue I had is that there are several places (secrets, I guess), where you can manipulate something, but can't actually progress. Especially after you've stepped away for a while and forgotten exactly what you've done and haven't done, it makes it quite difficult. Also, for one of the more un-intuitive puzzles, I "solved" it, but didn't solve it enough, because I got bored and assumed there was nothing I could do with it*. I eventually looked at a FAQ for that bit of it, did what I'd attempted (only more so), and played through to the end. The ending isn't essential, but there are one or two really good puzzle rooms towards the end, and they're entirely self-contained, which solves the backtracking problem. Depending on where you are, it might be worthwhile to spoil yourself to get to the end. *the bit I got stuck on...

Some baking, and also general portioning. You can eyeball it, but it's nice to know your burgers are evenly weighted once in a while. Also, makes it easier to buy things in bulk, use what you need and freeze the rest. If you buy larger cuts, or a whole primal, you need it to portion to human sized. Mine doesn't stay on the counter, but I keep it in a convenient cabinet, and pull it out every so often. It's not essential, but it's nice to have. I try not to covet shiny kitchen gadgets so much anymore, since they're expensive and often don't get much use. The only really decadent uni-tasker in my kitchen is a Whirley-Pop stovetop popcorn maker, because specialty popcorn is really much, much better than the microwave stuff.

Immersion circulators are more attainable than ever, in that you can get one for a couple hundred bucks, as opposed to $500+, which is what they cost just a few years ago. You can even hack one together for under a hundred bucks, if you're a real DIY type.The problem is that using them is a necessarily elaborate process, for meat at least (since it requires an additional cooking step to sear). I'm more interested in one for degree-perfect runny boiled eggs, but I really can't justify $200 for soft boiled eggs. It probably isn't the sexy kind of gadget you're thinking of, but get a good meat thermometer and kitchen scale. I rarely use a thermometer for familiar things, but for trying out new dishes and ingredients, it's vital. A stick blender is a fun gadget, although I admit I pretty much only use mine for making mayonnaise. In my experience toasters/toaster ovens are disposable goods: buy the cheapest one you can find that does the job, and expect to replace it every couple years. Expensive ones seem to break just as often as cheap ones, you just spend more for the privilege, and for features you won't use. Get one with a clean-able (removable) crumb tray.

I'm pretty sure I played Assassin's Creed 2 with Italian audio and English subtitles.

This is true, traditionally a girl's first love is supposed to be an older girl. There's a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it's because that relationship lacks stakes, both sexually and socially. Once boys and girls are interacting socially, there's a whole set of rules and expectations regarding how they are supposed to act. "Practicing' with a girl allows them to make mistakes without compromising a potential marriage pairing. (The idea of "safe" social spaces in Japanese society, where it's ok to screw up, is a fairly ubiquitous one, given how circumscribed "real" social interactions are). As for the rest of it, the short answer is that gender politics in Japan are very, very complicated. See, for example, the entire hostess/host club phenomenon. I will note that a lot of cultures that have a very strong cult of masculinity seem to similarly have some culture of transgenderism (I'm thinking of some Latin American countries), so it's probably a sort of reactionary phenomenon (although Japanese conceptions of masculinity differ from Western ones, so a direct comparison gets complicated). I'll also note that you're sort of treating the Anglo-American relationship to transgenderism as the default, and trying to "explain" deviations from that, when that probably isn't the most progressive approach to take. (I assume that transgenderism is less acceptable in Judeo-Christian tradition because of the emphasis on the 1 man, 1 woman creation myth - anything else being an affront to God, which Hindu / Buddhism traditions have to the same degree). There are plenty of other examples, notably Thailand's ladyboy culture, and the complex status of transgendered individuals in traditional Hinduism. That being said, there's probably something to the view that transvestism in Kabuki plays a role in the portrayal of the same _in anime_ particularly. Japanese entertainment and media creation has a tendency to see traditional forms as almost platonic ideals, and so new material that is created is often created explicitly in the model of traditional stories* Thus, the transvestite characters can probably be traced directly back to a particular dramatic character / archetype that they're meant to embody, the archetypes having originated in Noh or Kabuki traditions. * You'll argue that this is true in Western dramatic tradition as well, as you can draw a line directly from Greek new comedy to modern romantic comedies. See: Menaechmii->Comedy of Errors->The Importance of Being Earnest. My only response is that the connections are less explicit and less intentional in the European tradition.

The preference is perfectly reasonable, and doesn't really apply to the amount of anime influence in the work per se, for the reason listed above. It's not just a matter of animation, it's a matter of the structure of the language in general. Japanese in particular has a wealth of interjections that don't have any direct analogs in English. A barely audible "kore wa..." does not mean the same this as "this is...", let alone the fact that it would never be used in the same way. "Itadakimasu!" doesn't have a direct translation, but it requires very little context to understand what the meaning and usage is. Japanese also has levels of formality, which are difficult to translate into English is any form, but they're subtler, so you generally don't miss much except when standard usage is being deliberately flouted. Also, in many cases, even if the actors aren't any better in the original language than the localization actors are, your lack of ability to understand the nuance of the performance means that they _seem_ better. I find subtitles almost exclusively superior to dubbing, but when I was growing up, subtitles were ubiquitous on TV and movies, so I'm pretty used to them.

Gauche self-quote to note that this is conveniently illustrated in discussions around Julia Louis-Dreyfus's recent PR push for the latest season of VEEP.

VC 2 is not great. The setting is a little more anime-y (Academy), and the characters are a little more anime-trope-y, which irritates some people. Although they did a pretty good job getting the VC experience on a handheld, the clear technical limitations of the PSP hurt the game a lot. Maps are very small. To mitigate this, each missions uses up to 5 maps linked together (you can transfer from one map to another at capture points). This means that you see the same mini-levels a lot, and since they're self-contained, each iteration of the same map plays out almost identically, which gets tedious. The core of the game is still there, but it has some obvious problems. They mitigated some of the more easily abuse-able mechanics (Super-Scout Alicia problem), but didn't solve them entirely. There are some major issues with the character progression system, too (several branches are useless, and traits are random procs, so you need to grind a lot to max out a specific character). VC 3 is apparently much better, and considered the true successor to VC 1, but wasn't localized to the west. I haven't had a chance to try the fan patch above, but I intend to soon. If you loved loved loved VC1, you'll probably find something to like about VC2 (I was in a similar situation, and played most of VC2, but stopped at the final mission because of the character level up grind). It's not essential though, I'd probably wait for another iteration or 2 on the VC3 translation, then try to play that.

The Heat is kind of an interesting case, because as much as women are dismissed in drama, it's even worse in comedy. Bridesmaids (Melissa McCarthy's breakout role, which lead directly to The Heat) was a big deal because it "proved" you could do gross out bro comedy with a female cast. There's still a lot of major issues there though, particularly with body issues. Women can't just be funny, they need to sexy funny or weird funny. See Aidy Bryant on SNL, who gets a disproportionate amount of "weird desperate horny girl" simply because she's plus sized. There are some exceptions, particularly in female produced material, but that's mostly TV stuff, because it's less risky to buck the "accepted wisdom" there. Contrast Tina Fey, who the media rushed to make into a sexy-funny actress with Amy Poehler, who is allowed to just be herself (probably due to less overall exposure).

If anybody's interested, there's a fan translation for VC3 (PSP), which wasn't released in the US. It doesn't appear to be mentioned in this thread. http://vc3translationproject.wordpress.com/ They just provide a patch, so you need to acquire your own Japanese copy of the game. Which can be done by importing or creating a fake japanese PSN account, among other less savory methods. It appears to be playable on the Vita? although I don't know anything about the Vita custom firmware scene.

I'm excited for American Anthropology PhDs trying to explain the Dinosaurs TV show in 50 years. I was reading/listening to something a little while ago that noted that today's children know the Flintstones purely as hawkers of cereal and vitamins. We're 50 years out from it airing on TV and 20 years out from the live action films. And with the wealth of content available, kids are less likely now to experience them on TV reruns, etc. They likely won't ever have any context for them other than "that fruity pebbles guy".

I've been thinking about the Princess line recently (because I have a daughter and also, it's sort of fascinating). From a pure brand management perspective, it seems like they should consider adding some more ethnic princesses. I would think they'd want an Asian princess that isn't defined by being butch, but maybe their sales numbers say that isn't an issue.

Frozen is fine. It's more explicitly a musical than other recent Disney outings which were more just cartoons with musical interludes. This was probably written with a specific eye to the success of the Broadway versions of the Lion King and Little Mermaid, I'd be amazed if we don't see Frozen on Broadway within the next 5 years. It got a little oversold, but it's fine. The main selling point is the trope inversions and the music. There's some cute visuals, but it's otherwise somewhat pedestrian. My main complaint is that the world' rules fall apart a little during the finale, but that's more or less expected. The villain is closer to person with a human brain than most classic Disney villains, but not as good as Rapunzel's mother in Tangled, who is in my opinion the best Disney villain since Maleficent (her primary weapon is guilt! How awesome is that?). The reindeer is just a pale imitation of the horse in Tangled. A lot of people complained about the snowman, although I actually liked his writing just fine, I just don't care for Josh Gad's voice. Honestly, my biggest interest in it is who becomes an official Disney princess. Anna, presumably, but will Elsa also?

Fun Fact: Singapore has (or had, until recently) what is basically a President Emeritus system. Well, kind of. Lee Kwan Yew was the first Prime minister of Singapore. He's kind of like their George Washington. So, when he stepped down after 30 years, they invented a new position for him: Senior Minister. The new Prime Minister (Goh Chok Tong) ruled for a while, but when he decided to step down, they had a problem: nobody gave a shit if he stuck around because he was just some dude, not George Washington. But in order to maintain the appearance of an actual succession (the new PM, Lee Hsien Loong, is Lee Kwan Yew's son - they had Goh in there to pretend that it wasn't just a dynasty), they had to make Goh the Senior Minister. So, they invented ANOTHER new position for Lee Kwan Yew: Minister Mentor. After a while, I guess Lee Kwan Yew realized he is super old (plus his son is now in charge, so, yeah), so he decided to retire completely. So, in 2011, he abolished the Minister Mentor position. However, Goh Chok Tong also abolished the Senior Minister position at the same time! He totally wasn't a stuffed shirt placeholder, see. Because, uh...reasons. Anyways, I guess they felt bad for Goh Chok Tong, because they invented another new position as a consolation prize. The new position is, wait for it, Emeritus Senior Minister! Long story short: The Lee family are totally the emperors / dictators of Singapore, but put a patsy in between to pretend they weren't, which literally nobody believed, but everybody pretended to play along anyways.

If an annual event, bad jam could be all of these things! I'd vote for games inspired by Michael Jackson's Bad, but I feel like that's a joke you have to use after a couple of iterations.

Hmm...this is fun, although maybe that's because I'm not doing much coding these days. It's somewhat awkward because while I have a Java background, I've never actually done anything in javascript. The lack of object types is making me a little batty. What did anybody else do for level 13? I just spent way, way too long on it...

Did the Wii Punch Out have that cell-shaded-y brushstroke-y style, or was that just to make it look intentionally like SF4 as trolling?

It's a "the personal is political" kind of thing. Civilization is the easy target because its content is inherently historical-political. But it isn't limited to that. You play as Dante in Devil May Cry? You're implicitly reinforcing the societo-normative conception of men as action heroes. So, you include a man with a gun, but exclude pedophilia? You're implicitly representing a worldview where guns are more common, or more central to the human experience, than pedophilia is. Everything that exists in the game IS a deliberately created artifact of art, sound, or code. (something they share with literature and animation but not, say, film). So, literally everything that you see in a game could have been anything else. Every time you justify something as "well, that's just the way real life is" what you're also saying is "my game is reinforcing the status quo of our current society." The decision to _not_ say anything is actually saying something. It's easy to get carried away with this kind of thing, so I'm not implying that every single decision is carefully considered to have some greater meaning, nor am I saying that every game has a responsibility to buck the current social norms in favor of any other theoretical social norms. That's a very weak form of the argument. The stronger form of the argument talks about SpennyDubz's position in refernce to Bogost's article (which I haven't read yet). They strong form states that by tying implicit valuation (rewards) to game objects, you're inherently creating a hierarchy by which you've placed value and meaning on different elements. When you ALSO attach those to analogs to real life, you're also creating valuations on those analogs. I'm being a little intentionally obtuse here, so for a more concrete example: take checkers. in checkers, any piece can take any other piece. This supports a basically egalitarian world-view purely via mechanics. Compare this to Chess, in which pieces are all inherently unequal and have different value. This standard applies even before you start attaching words like "Pawn", "King", "Bishop" to those pieces. Relationships can be expressed via mechanics themselves. Now, if you take one more step back, you get to the strongest level of the argument, the narrative/mechanical level - it's also the most explicit. You're presenting a position via the interaction of the mechanics. This is where things like the Chess King being very important, but also pretty much useless for actual combat, which is a nice little bit of subversiveness for a Medieval court. The longer I talk on this kind of topic, the more wrapped up I get and the less sense I make, so I'm going to stop now while there's still a chance of my being understood.

I don't see his point as especially controversial. Game design (particularly but not exclusively simulation) is about modeling, and modeling is fundamentally about deciding what NOT to represent. There's a Borges story about it. There's an old joke about a dairy farmer that asks some scientists to help him increase his milk yield. The psychologist recommends painting the barn blue to simulate the sky so the cows are happier. The chemist recommends adding supplements to the feed to increase calcium intake. The physicist stands up and draws a circle on the blackboard and says: "Assume the cow is a sphere...".

They apparently came to the decision to convert to B&W partway through development, so many assets had already been created. I imagine there would be some benefit to creating intentionally B&W assets vs. image-processing color assets, but I don't know enough artistically to guess what it would be.

Nah, it just opened a rift to the ghost universe. INFINITE POSSIBILITIES! PROBLEM SOLVED!