tberton

Why would a pretty alright guy not be blown away by Firewatch?

I'm disappointed that IGN didn't say they were blown away.

Yeah, I think it's that hope is not necessary if despair doesn't exist. Think about it: to hope is to wish for tomorrow to be better than today. If today's already perfect, there's not much to wish for.

Rad

I never realized that Are You Afraid of the Dark? aired in the States. I thought it was a Canada-only thing. Never seen the pinball episode though.

Nobody's mentioned that we've hit page 555 in this thread. I can't let this moment pass us by.

"My other fingers are also opposable" sounds like an Octopus bumper sticker. This episode made me release that the Robot Apocalypse has been a red herring all along. It's octopuses we've got to be worried about. EDIT: Man, I really want to write a paper about Nintendo in the context of Japanese and North American culture over the last thirty years. Unfortunately, Japan's pretty far outside my area of study and I don't read Japanese. But somebody should absolutely do this.

Chris, was the board game you were referring to Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullzfyre? If so, shame on you for not remembering the full name. Here's the art from that to remind me, in case I'm wrong about my assumption.

Do it! I loved Transistor the first time around, but I admit that it works a lot better the second time through.

I thought the discussion was "what pronoun should you use for a transgender person" and the answer was "ask and use what they want you to." I apologize if I was mistaken.

I don't think anybody's saying you should use something like "xir" if you're not sure that the person prefers that.

I think the answer is we should just all start speaking sign language.

Got the new The Wicked + The Divine, Bitch Planet, and Lumberjanes today. All three were great.

You obviously know more about animation than I do, but how do you reconcile the bolded statement with something like Toy Story 3, where the main characters stare into the mouth of hell, hold hands and accept their impending death?

I definitely agree that pronouns are more resistant to linguistic change than other word classes (although it totally happens - people don't say "thou" anymore, for instance), but we're not talking about changing the whole language here. It's about asking somebody what they'd like you to call them - or having them tell you - and then respecting their desire. That's totally different, and much easier. As far as languages that get around this issue, the one that comes to my mind is American Sign Language. Pronouns in ASL work just by gesturing the person, or if they're not present, gesturing to an empty space that represents them. I don't know if it's common to gender these references, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard not to.

Using the pronoun that somebody asks you to use is not a lot of work. It's making a slightly different sound with your mouth, drawing a different symbol with a pen or typing a different key on the keyboard. I can think of few things that are less work. Breathing, maybe.

Caveat: I have not listened to Hardcore History, nor have I played Bioshock Infinite. However, the early 20th century had a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric moving around the US and Canada. Anti-Asian sentiment is a notable case, showing up in such legislation as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the States. "Protecting ourselves from the foreign hordes" is definitely a big aspect of racism around this period, and it's not necessarily contradicted by expansive imperialism. Also, the Philipine-American War is not the second war the US fought. Even if we don't count the Revolution or the Indian Wars (which you probably should), there's the War of 1812, the Mexican-America War and the Spanish-American War. The US has fought a lot of wars.

I don't have any specific advice, other than that you should definitely do it, but as far as I know there shouldn't be any legal impediments. I've lived in Ontario my whole live, though.

Man, this conversation is really making me want to write/read a history of women in comics.

On that note, I'll take a break from defending Marvel (which I really don't want to do too strongly anyway), and point to some super awesome, ongoing, feminist-oriented comics that have women at the helm, namely Bitch Planet and Lumberjanes. What I love about these two in particular is how diametrically opposed they are in tone: one is a dark and darkly funny dystopia about an all-female prison planet and the other is about girl scouts chasing around mythological creatures. Both are great, both are headed by women (Lumberjanes' creative team is entirely women, I believe, while Bitch Planet has a mixed team, but is written by a woman) and both wear their feminism on their sleeves. It's pretty great.

What specifically was hidden? I think the answer would vary depending.

That seems like jumping to conclusions to me. You're assuming that this is a simple gender swap, but Marvel has a long history of featuring interesting women in their comics (and certainly a long history of treating them poorly too). I don't think anybody should get a pat on the back for simply switching the gender of a character, but I don't think they should be immediately derided for it either. To SuperBiasedMan, I agree with all those points, but those criticisms should be specific, not based on general assumptions about what comics - or, more specifically, superhero comics - are.

Not saying that they can't do better, but Marvel's actually done a lot in the past few years to make their line-up more diverse. Captain Marvel is a woman, Ms. Marvel is Muslim, Captain America is black, Ultimate Spider-Man is Hispanic, and the current line-up up the X-Men is all women. That's not to say that checking boxes is the way to better representation, and I'm certain a lot of this has to do with simply profit seeking, but there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on in comics right now - even mainstream superhero comics - and it's way over-simplifying to paint them with such a broad brush.

I haven't seen the other animated movies and I'm sure they're all fantastic and deserving, but How to Train Your Dragon 2 was not as mess. That movie was great!

Can't buy it, I have school. Can't buy it, I have school. Can't buy it, I have school.