Danielle

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Posts posted by Danielle

  1. Posted

    I've talked about this on the podcast, but I really can't stop playing. I'm about 68 hours in, currently determined to catch every single Pokemon in the game (and trade for at least most of the others). And find every hidden item. 

     

    And then, finally, I will check out some of this breeding business!

  2. Posted

    It bugs me that you all agreed that Nintendo iterates very slowly and deliberately but also wrote off Pokémon sequels as being more of the same. They're admittedly pretty samey, but they do make a lot of changes and additions that affect the metagame.

     

    Also, I appreciate the irony of bringing up the Alien vs Aliens horror movie vs action movie argument, then later trying to compare Alien Isolation with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

     

    EDIT: Also Shantae was totally the best platformer of the year and nobody from Idle Thumbs OR Giant Bomb played it and that BUMS ME OUT.

     

    Given my current obsession with Pokemon, I regret not defending it a bit better. I'm sorry, Tegan! 

     

    Also, Shantae - this is a game I need to play ASAP for GOTY consideration, thank you!

  4. Posted

    It still reads as basically gross to me because of orientalism, though. 

     

    I think you're right about a lot of this. Sorry, I should've clarified that I don't think there's nothing gross about Pagan Min/Far Cry 4's representation issues, more that I found the cover art somewhat less gross than it would've read to me if Min were a white dude.

     

    Levels of grossness! I should make a chart or something...

  5. Posted

    If Danielle's Toad voice and Sean's Yoshi grunt become Idle Thumbs memes, I will be a happier person living a happier life.

     

    Also, and I'm already regretting dragging this talk into yet another thread, but is someone able to walk me through why a blonde white guy in a Western suit sitting on a desecrated Buddha and using a person of color as an armrest is worthy of discussion and maybe criticism, but a blonde Asian guy in a Western suit sitting on a desecrated Buddha and using a person of color as an armrest isn't, when both hypothetical images are made by the same mostly-white and Anglophone game studio? Multiple people on the podcast (well, maybe just Danielle and Sean) have said that the "revelation" of Pagan Min as Asian somewhat defused their misgivings about the racist and imperialist imagery of that depiction, and I'd frankly like to experience the same.

     

    My secret wish: to become a Nintendo voice actor...

     

    Ok! Here's my explanation, and again, this is only based on having played a couple of hours of Far Cry 4. My initial mistake - and I admit, this was my mistake - was that the cover represented a white dude basically shitting all over both a culture (the desecrated Buddha statue) and a living people (the guy kneeling before him). If he reads as a white guy, then the whole "crazy but also sort of cool!" bad guy schtick that Ubi has been using for the last two games is full-on disgusting. It reeks of white imperialism, but worse, of appealing to some base instinct that celebrate the things that allowed that imperialism to grow (the desire to conquer, etc.)

     

    If he reads as a person of color, the context is slightly different. He's not all of a sudden a totally cool, nice guy, but it no longer reads (to me) as a racially charged statement. I look at the current cover art and say "look at that smug asshole!" instead of "Jesus Christ, that's gross!"

     

    Again, I think Ubi is trying to sell their chief antagonists as crazy, cool, fascinating, dangerous dudes. There's an appeal to them (or, at least, Ubi *wants* the audience to find them appealing, on some level). Ubi wants us to at least think they're cool and badass.

     

    This is all completely subjective, obviously, and other folks are free to read other things into it. Pagan Min is a pretty horrible person. Is he a stylish, more-interesting-than-usual horrible person? Yeah. 

     

    I hope to have more substantive thoughts on this when I actually finish the game, but I wanted to clarify my thoughts here, since folks wanted to continue the discussion!

  7. Posted

    Short answer: skip all the old games and go straight to Pokémon Omega Ruby when it comes out on Friday (it's one of the few games Nintendo allows you to download at midnight, even). My personal favourite in the series is Black 2, but the servers for all the DS-era games have been shut down and I'm fairly confident that the new games are going to be a more complete experience than X/Y, the most recent games. Turn the text speed up to maximum, turn the 3D off because it's terrible, and get ready to deal with a somewhat dated and clunky UI. Consult Bulbapedia when you think you need help (like if you're not sure what a certain ability does or why one of your Pokémon isn't evolving), battle and trade with Danielle at your convenience. If you're having trouble with a particular area or boss, swap some of your Pokémon out or give them new attacks and items instead of just grinding. Keep this type matchup chart handy until you internalize it:

     

    2z62PdE.png

     

     

     

    Long answer:

     

    So Pokémon is a weird game, because it's really more like two games: there is the friendly, approachable veneer of "you're a kid in a fun world full of cool monsters" that the games sell themselves on; and then there is the crazy hardcore underbelly of competitive Pokémon that the games gently hint about and nudge you toward without ever actually spelling it out for you. Competitive Pokémon requires a lot more dedication, but is a more satisfying experience with the potential for much more dramatic styles of play. I'd say that the best way to approach it from a newcomer's perspective would be watching replays of matches on Pokémon Showdown, a popular battle simulator that's easy to set up and gives a bit more visual information about what's going on than the games do, and reading articles on Smogon (like these slightly dated but still fairly comprehensive articles from the previous generation of games). I also recommend viewing

    -in which Korean player Se Jun Park used a team built around a weak, obscure Pokémon to take the title- to see how a clever strategy and being able to get into your opponent's head will take you further than just picking the strongest attacks.

     

    I do a lot of Pokémon breeding and have a complete Pokédex and a fairly comprehensive knowledge of the game's mechanics, so PM me if you're interested in learning more about high-level play, or if you just want me to breed you a Pokémon to add to your Pokédex or team.

     

    Tegan, you made my DAY with this chart. I've had a visually clunky version of it open in a browser window for the last ten days. 

     

    Also, I think I didn't properly mention on the podcast, but! I have been unable to stop playing this game, to the point where it's 4am every night and I'm still feverishly hunting Pokemon. Is this normal?

  8. Posted

    Friends! Gritfish on twitter suggested I post my completely dumb little experiment (my dad joke game) to the forums, so here I am!

     

    http://danielleri.itch.io/the-wonderful-world-of-dad-jokes

     

    It's very short, and very silly. It's also quite rough - I basically made it to teach myself a bunch more C#, and to create my own framework for an adventure game (with a basic dialogue system, inventory system, etc.). It was actually a lot of fun to work on, and I felt releasing it on Halloween was really appropriate.

  10. Posted

    dont forget "Shithead" - a moron or asshole (which is shit adjacent really)

     

    On the shit discussion! There's an entire section of the novel I Am Charlotte Simmons that describes the entire "shit patois" as Charlotte, the protagonist, encounters new uses of "shit" as a super naive (but gifted) college freshman.

     

    http://books.google.com/books?id=1EPdr5xFKfsC&pg=PA471&lpg=PA471&dq=shit+patois&source=bl&ots=4rtW1SrCSs&sig=AulO5BnR_enT0SyS9fHuPwmufFo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YeNNVIX7KoquogTo5YLICA&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=shit%20patois&f=false

     

    It's possibly the best part of a book that is rather depressing in its dim (though not necessarily undeserved) view of college life in the 2000s.

  11. Posted

     

    We didn't! We're a few episodes into Season 2 now, and I'm really glad we went all the way through 1. I agree that there is a lot of unevenness there, but there's a ton of character development that I think would ultimately be lost without going through it.

    Does the show return to some silliness going forward? Starting around Durka Returns (S1E15) through The Way We Weren't (S2E5), there's a whole ton of dark, serious stuff going on. There are some great episodes, many of the best so far, but at the same time binge watching this, it's like I need the show to dial back a bit into some fun and goofiness a bit more to provide some breathing room.

     

    I didn't realize until most of the way through S1 that Pilot's voice is the same actor who plays Crais.  Which is pretty freaking incredible. 

     

    Out of S2 so far, I've particularly enjoyed The Way We Weren't, as it firmly establishes Pilot as a full fledged member of the crew, someone who is as broken and fucked up as the rest of them. 

     

    "Taking the Stone" (S2E3) is probably one of the worst episodes for me so far, but I still love how it subverts the structure of what could have been a classic Star Trek episode.  

     

    Particularly in TNG, there's no way Pickard just leaves a planet with a suicide cult continuing to kill themselves completely unnecessarily.  But the Farscape crew are just like, fuck 'em, we tried, time to move on.

     

    In general, a ton of episodes so far feel like they've taken the structure of classic sci-fi TV, and then done something quite different with it. 

     

    One of the best things about Farscape (aside from all the subversive stuff you mentioned, and its attitude towards gender + sexuality) is how nuanced the tone can be, in balancing silliness with seriousness/darkness/trauma. There's an episode coming up for you (A Clockwork Nebari) that has very, very dark themes, some of the darkest implied stuff in the entire series, but Chrichton basically has to pretend to be high the whole time. Crackers Don't Matter is as hilarious as it is deeply disturbing. And Won't Get Fooled Again is... well, a masterpiece of mindfuckery, with a lot of goofiness thrown in. Watch for the pumps!

     

    (and this is all second season stuff. The third season of Farscape is my favorite 22 hours of entertainment ever made, bar none. I'm excited for you that you're experiencing it for the first time!)

  12. Posted

    One of the tricks here is that Qantas operates a low-cost carrier, Jetstar, and there's a theory going around that Qantas management has been diverting resources to the more profitable Jetstar in order to rustle up government assistance.

     

    Obviously I'm not claiming that price competition doesn't happen, this is capitalism, but there seems to be somewhat higher expectations for what you get for your ticket. (I know that the ACCC has had concerns about 'additional' fees in the airline industry for a while now; I'd imagine that, like the mobile phone industry, eventually it's going to end up with Qantas and Virgin dobbing on each other to the ACCC.)

     

    On the idea that you get more for your ticket in your neck of the woods - I was genuinely *shocked* by how kind and considerate security and other airport staff were when I traveled to Australia and New Zealand. Smiling, friendly folks actually helped me with my bags instead of, say, berating me for opting out of the scanner machines. It was the best flying experience I've ever had in my life.

     

    I flew... ten times in two weeks during my trip to NZ and Australia, and it was consistently wonderful.

     

    I say this as a fairly frequent flier. I also used to fly from Boston to SF and back at least once a month and have many wonderful and terrible airplane stories. But that 22 hours at LAX was pretty annoying.

  13. Posted

    This thread makes me so happy, I don't even know where to start.

     

    Season 1 is really, really rough, but as a superfan, it's always interesting for me to go back and watch the show learn to crawl, then learn to walk, and finally (towards the end) learn to run. 

     

    But if you're a first timer, use that skip list!

  14. Posted

    The Star Trek thing is weird. There really was a core ideal in the early goings that involved using the wacky aliens in an almost allegorical way to promote understanding, but it gets very muddied. Likewise, the push to have prominent women and people of color on the bridge (including Majel Barrett as the first officer in the first pilot) was constantly undercut by insanely sexist shit left and right.

     

    It was a product of many collaborators and of course of its time, but holy cow. If you marathon Star Trek, you'll get whiplash from how quickly it swings between presenting a progressive message and leaning on the worst shorthand.

     

    So much good ST discussion in this thread!

     

    All of the Treks have wonderfully progressive elements, and plenty of sexism, racism, light homphobia (or at the very, very least, excessive heteronormativity) and other deeply problematic elements. I am a massive Trek fan, but it's difficult to ignore the issues.

     

    The original Trek put a woman of color at the controls of a spaceship's communications board in the 60s! That's so amazing I am still awed by the decision. But, in every other episode, there's a lady in a miniskirt screaming and clinging to the nearest Heroic White Guy (often Kirk, but any HWG will do), instead of acting like a professional officer.

     

    TNG had some remarkable episodes about race and sexism and gender identity. And it also positioned Worf as The Klingon . Even Worf had weird ideas about gender. In one episode, he tells a human boy something along the lines of "human women are equal to men," and in another, he talks about the use of trickery/acting as a weak "woman's exploit." I'm paraphrasing, but there are huge inconsistencies wrt race, gender and sexuality within each show.

     

    DS9 probably has the better track record here, since it actually humanizes some of the Ferengi characters (like Rom and Nog), and actually presents a feminist revolution in Ferengi culture (they are known as being a very sexist culture). 

     

    Even DS9's big "gay allegory" episode - where Dax meets up with a former lover, only they are now both in female host bodies, and there's actually a really awesome lesbian romance angle to it - has a few lines that are pretty icky, hiding homophobia/intolerance behind the shield of cultural relativism.

     

    All of Trek is fascinating, from this point of view. Each show is generally progressive, and each made huge strides for TV. But each is also shackled by the constraints and crappy reigning attitudes of its era.

  15. Posted

     

    (It is, in fact, on Art of the Title, and even more amazing, one of the animators is goddamn Andrew Stanton, from WALL·E)

     

    I recently re-watched Honey, I Shrunk the Kids while one of my observing nights was weathered out a few months ago. As I watched the film I realized that I had it entirely memorized from my childhood.

     

    Have a ball, baby.  

     

    Oh goodness, this brought me back. I just realized that Honey, I Shrunk the Kids was one of the first (maybe the first) movie I actually remember seeing in the theater as a child. It also had a Roger Rabbit Cartoon short - Tummy Trouble, I think? preceding it.

     

    Hooray, 80s babies!

  18. Posted

    Some things-

     

    1. Anita is an incredible bad ass with super human perseverance and it was really cool that you invited her to be on the cast. 

     

    2. I have, at times, been annoyed with how much you all talk over each other but, in this case, I feel that adjusting that for the sake of your guest would have come across strangely seeing as that really hasn't been a thing in the past. Thank you guys for just being yourselves.

     

    3. I was on about it on twitter earlier but, Danielle, Amateur Boxing. Fuck yeah. After hearing that and having the idea of Idle Thumbs boxing gear put into my brain, I sort of drifted off for a while into a daydream where Chris introduces you with a theme song sung to a confused audience while you enter the ring wearing a monogrammed S.J.W. robe, Idle Thumbs trunks and boxing gloves that say 'GOLD' 'BLUM' on the pads. Your opponent coalesces from the tweets of a million trolls- into an actual troll made of tweets who you proceed to battle. Sean and Jake hang out in your corner of the ring between rounds and offer up well meant but inaccurate advice on the fight, Nature Box snacks and water. This is totally how amateur boxing works, right?

     

    So, yeah, that happened in my brain this afternoon. 

     

    All weird Idle Boxing thoughts aside- If you do end up trying out the Amateur thing, good luck and kick all the asses!

     

    Some how, some day, I would really, REALLY love to make this happen.

  19. Posted

    Danielle, *please* share that Farscape skip list.  I've been meaning to watch that show for ages, was never able to stomach going through all of season one.

     

    Ok! I shared this on twitter a few moments ago, but here it is. The DEFINITIVE Farscape skip list. The first season, I've highlighted what to actually watch - skip everything else.

     

    Farscape is my favorite sci-fi series of all time. It's creative and weird, it does interesting, progressive things with gender and sci-fi tropes, it's colorful and funny and sometimes incredibly dark. Star Trek, it is not (though, John, the central human character, LOVES Star Trek).

    But! The show really fumbled around to find its footing early on. So here are my recommendations for Watching the 1st season. Skip everything not listed here.

    1. Premiere (note: this episode sucks. But you should probably watch just because it does, however clumsily, set up the entire premise of the show.)

    2. P.K. Tech Girl

    3. DNA Mad Scientist

    4. They've Got A Secret

    5. The Flax

    And then, from episode 15 -- Durka Returns -- on through the end of the first season.

    Alternatives! If you are enjoying yourself, and can stomach some season 1 goofiness, there are a couple of episodes that have *some* importance for later events, and they aren't bad. Add episodes 11: Till The Blood Runs Clear and 12: Rhapsody in Blue back in if you think you can handle some intense goofiness and are starting to actually like these characters as you go along.

    Season 2 has a few clunkers, notably Vitas Mortis, Picture If You Will, Home on the Remains and Dream a Little Dream. Feel free to skip the hell out of them, but the show is remarkably strong outside of those outliers.

    Don't skip a second of season 3. Season 3 of Farscape is my favorite sustained sequence of entertainment/art in the universe. I'm completely serious.

    Season 4 has some rough patches, though by this point, you'll know exactly what you love and hate about Farscape. If you *must* know, A Prefect Murder was the only Farscape episode to bore me, and while I find Coup By Clam campy and entertaining, it's not the show's finest hour. 

  22. Posted

    Danielle, can you talk about Sunless Sea next time?  You teased it a couple of times, but then it never came back up.  I briefly got into Fallen London (before deciding that all it was going to accomplish was interrupting my work day), but I'm super curious to hear all the Thumbs talk about Sunless Sea. 

     

    Yes! I'll play some more this weekend and come prepared for the next episode!