jennegatron

So bizarre. I'm in Davis proper, but that zip code put us both outside, so now it looks like I live in farm fields. That's okay. At least I know someone else is in Davis with me.

I just keep hoping that Sean goes back to Hatoful Boyfriend to tell us about his experience.

I love these bee updates. Keep 'em coming.

Me too. RIP anything else in my life that isn't Pokemon or World of Warcraft.

@tabacco - I wore my Idle Vice and everything in hopes of meeting Idle Thumbs folks! Mostly I just saw Daphny (aka @PDOGGYBALLS on Twitter)

I went to Day of the Devs back in November (partially in hopes of seeing the Idle Thumbs people there; no dice, but Jane was there! And that was really cool!) and got to see Subnautica first hand! It was pretty exciting at the time and was maybe the second coolest thing I saw there besides the Dolphin Test Cheating Simulator.

I got a 3DS for Christmas, and will be going through to add a bunch of y'all. Currently I only have Pokemon X. 0533-6946-6140

I had a Tommy Timbertoes watch as a small child and I accidentally left it in my pocket & sent it through the washer and dryer. I think back on that and get real sad sometimes, so thanks a lot for that sad reminder Badfinger!

I don't play Dota 2 but my boyfriend loves it so very much, and is always watching tournaments, so I was exposed to a lot of the Summit 2. Mostly I just heckled about Aui 2000 being my favorite because of his hand embroidered "AUI 2COZY" Snuggie that his girlfriend made him. I listen to a lot of podcasts, (I have long commute times and was hoping to get some Aui commentary in this ep) and thought the mix was totally inoffensive. A ton of the podcasts I listen to use skype rather than than local recording and this one only had a slight skype sound to it. I think a new format with a regular/semi regular release schedule is pretty desirable. Keep it up Sean.

The McElroy brothers (from My Brother My Brother and Me) and their dad have started a D&D campaign podcast called the Adventure Zone. Episode 2 came out yesterday. I think it's really funny and worth checking out. www.maximumfun.org/shows/adventure-zone

YAY YAY YAY! That is fantastic news, thank you for sharing! http://craigsagerssuits.tumblr.com/ For anyone else who wants to peruse the sartorial expertise of Mr. Craig Sager. (My favorite television show is Inside the NBA, so this is fantastic news.) I thought the conversation between Chris & Sean was really interesting regarding Far Cry 4 & the responsibilities of representation. I like that y'all are willing to talk through your impressions & ideas, even if they're not yet fully formed.

This is maybe the greatest comparison I've ever seen. Craig Sager is my hero.

I'd never even heard of Beppo's before this cast, but this is the greatest use of quotation marks I've seen in a long time. Beautiful communication of exactly the "cuisine" served there.

I find a ton of what's been said her super interesting. I think a lot of this circles back on what Sean was talking about a couple weeks ago about feeling like being isolated from the marketing machine in a way that keeps things that may (or may not) be interesting to you off your radar. I know that I like to keep up with popular culture, because I spend a great deal of time on twitter, and if I want the context necessary to do so, I need to at least be willing to know what the conversations I'm seeing are referencing, but I can see why it may be energy not worth spending to others. I was talking about the whole Taylor Swift maturation process with my SO yesterday, and he was saying that he was surprised by everyone else's surprise of her image continuing down the wholesome good girl path into her adulthood. He isn't a country music fan, but growing up in Oklahoma forces you to be familiar with it. This is the same thing that Nashville country does to all of their pretty white teen girls & women, so for Taylor Swift to be a product of that environment meant it seemed natural to him that she would continue using that image going forward. And when I thought about it for a second, every solo female Nashville country singer I could think of was cast as the same wholesome woman no matter their age. I don't watch the CMAs or listen to country radio, but the image I have of Faith Hill is largely identical to what I would have had of Taylor when she was 14 and in a more "pure" country stage of her career, which is largely identical to what I think about Carrie Underwood. She may have made the (symbolic & physical) move to New York, but I doubt she shed her Nashville connections in terms of her publicist(s) & her straight up savvy of know what kind of person she wants to be seen as. You only have so much control as a famous person over what people say about you, but it would make sense for her to see other country acts grow up using this tactic, and be inclined to also do so.

Oh I totally understand. I don't like a good portion of her music, simply because the more country influenced stuff doesn't appeal to me. I think it's a lack of familiarity with the genre making it impossible to accurately judge what is being done by that section of her catalog. I think the marketing of her to be un-itimidating yet cool and hip is often times really gross, so I totally get that discomfort. I'm really interested in her transitioning from a teen star to an adult, and that so far she isn't using the appropriation of black culture (in her music) to do so, and also not going the X-tina route. (I agree with the poster above that the scene of her crawling through the tunnel of twerking Black Women made me supremely uncomfortable. I wish that they hadn't done that. I think that every white artist should be banned from including twerking Black Women in their music videos.) Not that there's anything wrong with Christina doing the whole X-Tina thing to shed her Mickey Mouse Club heritage if that's what she wanted, but I like that not everyone is forced down that avenue to remain relevant as an adult. Katy Perry did a weird thing of kind of doing both with California Gurls? She shot whipped cream out of her bra, but also used Snoop Dogg in a gummy bear suit to give herself some sort of weird street cred? It's totally bizarre. I guess Miley did that too now that I think about. I think T-Swift is a really delightful because she does have a handful of really really catchy fun pop songs that are designed to never leave your head. It took me a long time to come around to liking pop music, so I completely understand that conflict you're feeling. I often times hit that to this day, especially with acts that came out during my teen years, like the Jonas Brothers. I still have this weird scorn for them as a byproduct of those years, even though I have no reason to still feel that way.

As someone who spent my teen years consuming media that made me feel like I was subverting (White) culture's expectations of me as a girl (like the hard rock music my parents listened to or the moody pop-punk I listened to on my own, which I realize now was equally trying to market itself to me, and I was playing into exactly the image they wanted to build) and casting scorn on the things that I saw were marketed to girls (pop sung by young women, or the pretty boy boy bands), because everyone should understand that I'm cool and just like one of the guys, it's hard for me to view criticisms of things like Taylor Swift (and other popular acts targeted at girls like One Direction) as anything other than the scorn I felt toward them at 15. I had so much internalized misogyny and self-loathing for being a girl that it casts all of the criticism I hear through that lens, and it can be really hard to divorce myself of that to be able to hear it as anything else. So much of it reads as either gatekeeping (this isn't REAL music by REAL musicians, because she has co-writers) or "things that teen girls like are dumb, because teen girls are dumb." I know that pretty much everything said in this thread isn't meant to say either of those things, but I DO think that that lays at the heart of a lot of criticism of her. I think there are valid criticisms of her, as well as most pop artists, especially white pop artists who co-opt Black culture to transform their image (Lookin' at you Miley & Justin Timberlake) or to create a persona marketable to the masses (Vanilla Ice & Iggy Azaela) I think 1989 is a really good pop album, and that there is nothing wrong with performing pop music, whether you are sole creator, or just the voice singing the song on the local top 40 radio station. On a completely different note, I was fascinated by the old men & old woman living in a weird parallel world that is super distanced from Pokemon. I constantly think that I'm about the same age as everyone on the show, but in reality I'm 7-10 year younger than everyone on the cast. Pokemon was such a huge part of my life from the time I started watching the tv show on our local Fox affiliate in the mornings before school, then getting a gameboy pocket & a copy of Red for Christmas when I was 7 (second grade.) I encounter this actually all the time from my SO who is 3 1/2 years older than me. I will reference things from my childhood, and he won't have any idea what I'm talking about, and I am reminded that 3 1/2 years when you're 6 & 9 is HUGE, so yeah, he's not going to get my Blue's Clues reference, unless I make enough times that he's learned it from me, and he can sing the mail song by himself.

I think I speak on behalf of everybirdy when I advocate for pigeon talk in the future.

I'm with Sean on the 1989 T-Swift enthusiasm. It was on sale for 99 cents a week and a half ago or so on the Windows Music Store, and I said what the hell, why not. IT IS SO GOOD. In other Sean news, I hope we get Hatoful Boyfriend next week.

I really really loved this episode. My bf was really into Binding of Isaac, so I'm interested to see if h sinks another 200 hours into Rebirth. My personal highlights of this episode were def Sean's Wyoming stories. They were just so perfect. I cannot contain my excitement for Hatoful Boyfriend coverage next week. I don't know how many people watched/are aware of the Metadating show (and the following Mostly Walking show) but that is where I was introduced to Hatoful Boyfriend, and by extension re-introduced to the visual novel/dating sim genre. Here's that episode of Metadating: This was episode one of Metadating, and none of them knew VN/dating sims well enough to identify all the tropes that are made fun of in Hatoful Boyfriend, but is still very enjoyable. If you're really interested in exploring the various pigeon paths, you might want to wait on the metadating ep because I think they spoil the storyline with the school's pigeon doctor.

I was able to piece together the idea of babywalling Lindsey from a history of playing the Sims and knowing the wall to kill trick. But I went back to listen to episode 93 to get the in Idle Thumbs canon explanation of what babywalling is. The realization by Sean that what he is explaining is horrifying is just the best kind of moment. Highly recommend relistening to that episode.

The tweet aspect of 80 Days is actually really appealing to me. I loved it in Sword & Sworcery. I don't know if that's because of my affections for Robert Ashley extending to anything he's involved in, or that just no one follows me on twitter, so my tweets are 100% for me and not for anyone reading.

This was pretty much exactly my experience too. I regularly drop "You're not the Lord of the Rings!" or sing the tunnel full of dicks song. It was pretty much unbeliveable to me at 14 that there were people speaking critically, smartly, and thoughtfully about video games. Like when as an April Fools joke they decided to not attach review scores, and liked it so much thtat they just decided to keep doing that. Those dudes meant so much to me as a teen that I've continued following them & their careers since. The Olly Moss poster for ALWW #7 (Work) is one of my most prized possessions, and I contributed to the I Come to Shanghai kickstarter. I had to stop following Elliott on twitter 'cause he just made me mad more often than he made me laugh, but I wish that dude the best. I think he has a personality that works best in a cast rather than as a solo voice. Jeff Green's Dark Souls livestreams are A+ comedy. After the Brodeo ended, no video game podcast really stuck for me, either because I grew out of a show, or they would stop making it, until Idle Thumbs came into my life in November 2013 or so. Man, now I just miss all of the 1UP shows I used to listen to.

So pumped to have Danielle in my podcast rotation. I realized today that Idle Thumbs is the first video game podcast I've had in my life with a regular female cast-member since Legendary Thread on 1Up back in 2007 or so. You are all ballers so thank you.