seasleepy

I... totally read that question as "on PC" and went "I remember reading something about that!" (only the first game, battle.net account required). They aren't on the VC as far as I can tell.

This went around Twitter a bit yesterday but Sapkowski (the author of The Witcher books) rejected the idea of "Slavic fantasy" notably back in 1992 (Google translate will get you the gist of it, the main section in question starts around the header 8:33 and goes to the end, but it chokes pretty hard on some of what I assume is Polish wordplay -- here's a Storify of some translation). His perspective is that while there is Slavic mythology, due to the fact that it was associated with the pagan religion of the area, the bulk of it was lost and the remainder was twisted by the Church over a thousand years ago so no one can really claim to be writing Slavic fantasy because no one even knows what that actually is. And he considers most Slavic fantasy of the time to be cribbed from other (mostly better, in his opinion) foreign authors with local monsters and local names subbed in for some of the ones that might exist in the originals. I mean, he would also be the first to tell you that the game's writers and the book's writers are completely different but it's clear that he'd find the idea that he's remaining true to a historical version of Fantasy Poland to be laughable.

The ink mine seems really situational. It does explode on its own after a short period of time if no one triggers it, but it also takes a second to explode so if someone steps on one mid-stride and keeps trucking along, they won't actually be hit by it. I think it's one of those things that works better in Splat Zones than Turf Wars since you have a better idea of where exactly folks are going to be. I mostly found it useful to dissuade people from using a certain entrance to an area, but most of the other bombs do that just as well. I suppose it lets you do it without draining your ink during a firefight though.

For articles (longform and not), The Toast, forever.

They dated for 5 months. Non-consecutively. This whole fiasco has lasted longer than their relationship. And his only apparent regret is that he didn't go farther. I feel pretty safe in judging his character.

As the article mentions, this is Sad Puppies 3, as in, this is the third year they've tried doing this. It's been the most successful to date, which is why there's been the extra amount of hand-wringing from the SF community this time around, but this isn't GG trying to open a new front. The two groups do have remarkably similar complaints, but that's just because they're separate heads of the same hydra which has existed long before either of them and will (unfortunately) still exist after both of them die off.

They have indeed taken my freeze peach: (Genuinely super delicious and also sadly unavailable outside certain regions of the US.)

Hmmmmmmmm......

Dan often reminds me of some of the early descriptions of Sherlock Holmes -- he is laser focused on the things that are important to what he wants to do and everything else is not relevant. If it had been relevant, he would have learned it. Fortunately, unlike Sherlock, he has enough self-awareness/has had it impressed upon him enough times to realize that this is not the way that most other people operate (though occasionally he will bust out with "everyone just needs work hard and they will get the things they want" and "people that are into things that I am not are probably hippies or whatever"). He drives my husband up the wall. My reactions tend towards the occasional "oh, Dan...." but I admit I probably have a soft spot for him since my dad's from KC (and most of his family still lives in the area), and there are some sensibilities I recognize there.

I guess Breitbart went ahead and just released who was on that mailing list of games journalists and someone decided to send him an ask decrying him for "breaking countless laws." (Also, like Tegan pointed out, the list wasn't exactly a secret. I'm pretty sure Brad had mentioned in passing there was a list he was on on a Bombcast, like, ages ago. Fake gamer boys, I swear.) Edit to add: GB's now weighed in with a full editorial from Jeff.

Thanks! Now to post something (currently leaning towards the dad joke-y "ello, wot's all this then?") and figure out if I'm actually going to use it.

I'll take an invite to check out this thing if folks have some kicking around.

Hmm... this might be the "Hydrolators" at the Living Seas in EPCOT -- you would ride them "down" to take a ride through and then wander around an "underground sea base" and when you left, you'd then ride them back "up to the surface" (the Hydrolators were actually just mocked up to look like elevators and didn't go anywhere). They got rid of them when they changed over to a Finding Nemo theme a couple of years ago.

Dear Danielle, how awful is it that the queue reorganization after the introduction of Fastpass has ruined the ability of today's youths to be able to engage in knowledgeable arguments about the left vs right sides of Space Mountain? Also yes I have also had the same "oh we're going on vacation!" "ooh, where are we going?!" "Disney!!" "....oh. again? well, that'll be fun. I guess." conversation with my parents. (Joke's on me, I guess, since I've been back there like 6 times on my own.) Also this whole discussion prompted me to go try to track down my Walt Disney World Forever CDs, so thanks for that. (In the late 90s they had these kiosks where you could pick a bunch of park music (including like incidental background music, stuff that hadn't been released on any CDs and would likely never be) and burn your own CD which was super great as a kid who had been there Too Many times. Unfortunately they didn't have everything, some of the track names were relatively vague, and they'd cap you off at 10 tracks. I remember one of mine, I picked a track titled "Walt Disney World Railroad" which was like 15 minutes long (gotta max out that CD space!!) and was all excited to have the full spiel for the railroad, but when I got home and put it in my CD player it was just 15 minutes of NOW BOARDING calls from every single station in the park. )

Journolist 2.0: This Time The Subject Matter Is Even More Trivial

What a classy fellow!

I know this sounds like I'm making a Simpsons reference, but they were saying SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS.I hope they do post something and that it doesn't fall to Patrick because they already have him marked as an SJW that is dragging Jeff and the rest of the site unwillingly in his wake, despite everyone's comments to the contrary. Hopefully they would let Jeff take the reins (like the last time this happened with GB, though I don't know what he'd say that he didn't say there).

I appreciate that you guys have the sort of readers that might be genuinely confused that there was anything controversial in last week's episode.

You can see the PAX posters here. They are excellent.

Well, the comment about tone policing was in response to a different comment of yours but it's applicable to the first part too, I suppose. She disagreed with both the content (eg taking the harassers at face value) as well as the tone of the column you linked, and she provided several examples. You responded to her by saying "I think your interpretation is uncharitable." "People (women) would get farther if they were not so mean sometimes" is pretty much tone policing. And I mean, it has some validity occasionally, but it's demonstrably false in this whole situation. Sarkeesian's videos are as academic as they come. And yet.

I read it and had the same exact take. He's taking their claims at face value and his ultimate conclusion is "nah, you're totally right, this Zoe chick is bullshit." Tone policing sucks, man. People are allowed to have reactions.

Neither Anita or I are saying that using tropes means that you're necessarily writing a bad story. (Heck, one of my favorite leisure activities other than games is reading YA. Clearly I don't think that everything using them is bad! ) People are going to have different interpretations of things because they are different people and have had different lives and experiences. This is ok! This does mean that some people may be especially sensitive about certain tropes and feel certain characters fall into them while others may find that completely baffling. Like you say, in the example you give, if I only saw the first episode, I could easily say that it falls into the trope of "Something Bad happens to Girl in order to prod Boy into action," and I might sigh and stop watching because I find that trope really frustrating and it really is all over the dang place. "Ah!" you then interject, "She rescues herself two episodes later though!" But neither of us is actually wrong -- the show falls into the trope mentioned but then neatly avoids the "Boy rescues the damsel in distress" trope. If the creators had chosen to avoid that initial scenario, perhaps Theoretical Seasleepy would have kept watching. It doesn't mean the show is bad, it just means it is yet another drop in the ocean of things that use that trope. Which is probably why she (allegedly) used DMCA in this case.

The context is irrelevant because the point is that the trope is ubiquitous and limiting, not that any particular example embodying a trope is the worst thing. Women are sexy/victims. Black people are villains/comic relief. It tells the world that these are the types of boxes these types of people need to fit into, which has real-world repercussions, but probably most critically if you want art to be interesting, it's fucking boring. Seeing Stock Lady Character A and Stock Black Character B and just rearranged in different positions in hundreds of pieces of media is the most dull thing. There are certainly places where they can be executed well, or used to subvert expectations, or places where you could make the argument that the character is not in fact a Stock Character despite exhibiting some of the same characteristics, but the issue is the ubiquity.

You need to work on your reading comprehension, all of those are links to major websites discussing the subject. It is a pretty regular subject in most articles I have seen about the show in the mainstream press.

This was super cathartic to listen to. Thanks for being rad dudes. Yeah. I'm guessing that they've avoided direct comment on at least the Zoe situation to try to respect Patrick's fairly definitive statement, but they've all been vocal enough on twitter and whatnot about where they stand on this to the point where they might as well just get on the record. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if something doesn't come up at PAX (if only via some idiot trying to accuse them of something during the Q&A on their panel). The numbers weren't that much better when I did the survey here, sadly.