tberton

Listening now! I love the subtle "Congrats Nick" Sean gives by not mentioning that Nick was one of the founders of the podcast.

Mangela's points are good, but I'd like to add something else: the focus on "bad actions" and "good actions" is misguided, I think. The goal when talking about appropriation is not to unilaterally condemn it (although I think there are some blatant cases where that's appropriate), but to consider its dynamics. In a world with uneven power balances among different cultures (a concept I think is more useful here than "race" because it be both broader and more specific) and constant mixing between cultures, appropriation is inevitable and often benign. But in aggregate, appropriation reinforces the idea that certain people define what's important or relevant and others, though those notions might originate from them, do not define those things.

Intellectual property was an analogy that you brought up, not me. It's not perfect, I agree. The "victimless crime" argument has the same problem. Appropriation is not a crime. This is not a legal issue we're talking about. It does not have the thick-lined contours of a legal problem, nor does it need to. It's a hazy, confusing, complicated issue.

It stills looks goddamn gorgeous to me, although I haven't played any games of the current consoles yet, so maybe they blow this away.

That's a good analogy, clyde. Actually, Common People by Pulp sums it up pretty well.

That's part of it, definitely. I think another part is the implicit message of "I don't care about who you are - I care about this image/proverb/decontextualized ritual that I think is neat." Appropriation, at its worst, values the superficial , material aspects of a culture over the people who belong to it.

I will say that it's still unclear how all that will work systemically. Ueda's games, while heavily reliant on atmosphere, are also really reliant on clean, simple systems. Everything in that trailer felt very scripted - or at least, looked too good to be entirely systems-driven. So who knows how this will actually play. It still looks awesome though. Also, Twig, we joke about how long this game's been in development, but it's still just been 8 years and only 6 since it was first publicly shown. That's a lot, certainly, but not any more outrageous than the other big vaporware titles.

So with Firewatch at the Sony show and Tacoma at the Microsoft one, have the Idle Thumbs Console Wars begun?

It looked like Ico with a giant dogbird instead of Yorda. That is exactly what I want. I may need to go back on my promise to myself not to buy a new console.

Cultural appropriation, to my mind, becomes a problem when it's combined with power structures and commodification. Random YouTubers singing rap songs isn't a huge deal - the Chicago Blackhawks, Atlanta Braves and Cleveland Indians selling brands based around images and actions associated with Aboriginal peoples is something different. Essentially, the questions to ask around appropriation are "what did this thing mean in its original context?", "what does it mean in its new context?" and "who is this new context helping or hurting?" The other thing about appropriation is that it tends toward essentializing cultures. It's usually about snatching bits and pieces of other cultures that are aesthetically pleasing or saleable and ignoring anything complicated or difficult about them. It's easy to wear smoke pot and wear dreadlocks and listen to Bob Marley; it's harder to understand the Rastafari movement and its tenets and its relationship with colonialism. It's easy to wear a Che Guevara shirt; it's hard to engage with Che Guevara's ideas and actions. Of course, the other side of discussions about appropriation can tend toward essentializing as well. The tendency to shout "appropriation" at any moment of mixing can end up freezing cultures in place, which ends up hurting those more disadvantaged groups, since our collective vision of "Western" culture defaults to "dynamic and ever-changing," while Other groups are made up of a handful of more specific stereotypes. If all cultural dynamism is deemed appropriation, then the only people who are allowed to be dynamic are Westerners. That's why power is an important component - considering power lets us distinguish between people trying to break out of their boxes and people who are trying to steal and sell somebody else's box.

Just say that Outsider has chopped off Corvo's tongue, so he can't speak. I hope Emily speaks. I would love for Dishonored to incorporate some of the conversation stuff from Human Revolution.

Hot Scoops fulfilling his destiny, as it was foretold in podcasts long ago.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Looks awesome! I took a minute to transcribe the (wonderfully animated) fingerspelled password. For those interested, it's Not sure if that has any significance, but I think that's the first time I've seen sign language in a game and it's really cool.

I sort of agree here. I do want stealth and combat playstyles to feel like they affect the world differently (as per my comment above, I want enemies to wake up if they've been knocked out). But I agree that the passive admonishment was kind of lame. I think I want it to be a more active difference, like a bigger effect if people find dead bodies or something.

Super pumped about this. List of wants (haven't played the DLC for the first one yet, so maybe some of this was addressed there): -More missions like the ball. -More non-lethal options. -Bigger difference of effects between non-lethal takedowns and lethal takedowns. -More interesting/useful information-based skills than just "see through walls". -Better finale.

Also, podcast advertisements are only useful (and will likely only stick around) inasmuch as people actually use the offer codes. If you lie on a survey to attract advertisements that won't cater to the people who actually listen to the podcast, those advertisements aren't likely to stay on the podcast for long.

"Raises hand."

Reboot also made me think about who was controlling the enemies in Sonic the Hedgehog and stuff. Every time I defeated Robotnik, was I destroying some computer-person's neighbourhood, or sending a child on a years long odyssey to rediscover his home? Heady stuff.

We need a Reboot Rewatch. Also, Reboot was great*. Such an iconic show of my childhood and, like most 90s kids shows, it had a lot of crazy weird references. When I first saw Evil Dead 2, I was like "Holy shit, it's that Reboot episode". *Warning: I have not watched Reboot since I was a kid and it's probably not actually great. But it's super interesting.

Catcher in the Rye is my favourite book ever and I read it in high school, but I don't think it's was until I was a bit older that I realized how much I really liked it. Holden Caulfield is one of my favourite fictional characters, but never have I aspired to be like him. In fact, I think I like him so much because of the things I dislike about myself that I see in him. Every time I read the book (around 6 times now, I think) I'm struck with an immense sense of pity and sadness. He's just a little boy pretending to be an adult and terrified of actually becoming one. Heartbreaking.

I really like The Great Gatsby and haven't read it since I was sixteen. I actually liked most of the books we read in high school, or at least the ones I finished. I may be an outlier though.

I haven't read The Scarlet Letter, but I've heard good things.

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