Roderick

I need to own a shredder now

That's almost a truism, but there's a deeper reason why referential humor seems a 'lesser' form of comedy. For one, you're necessarily borrowing some pre-existing expression. Unless you adapt that material to add something humorous to it (in which case it is more akin to satire), there's less creativity involved than with coming up with something fresh. A big downside of referential humor is that it ages incredibly fast. If you look at the performance of, say, Jim Carrey as the Riddler in Batman Forever, there's a ton of references to all sorts of 90s things in there: either incomprehensible or just lame at this point. It's also quickly overdone: you wouldn't in a million years re-enact the Matrix bullet time sequence, yet it's in a ton of comedy films spanning at least three years after its release. You might be able to counter that by being obscure (or fast) enough that no one else is doing your particular reference, but then you run the risk of no one getting it. Alternatively, you can make it 'your schtick' and go full Mel Brooks (whose films I find not particularly funny, barring The Producers), or worse, 'Scary Movie' and its ilk. Airplane! and The Naked Gun also employ referential humor, but it's their weakest part and they offset it with tons of original jokes (as you can read here in this completely unbiased and wholesome article: http://www.filmadeus.com/2013/10/the-naked-gun-david-zucker-1988.html).

And the easter egg where you hear Jake's pig noise for a solid ten minutes

It should've read « Aiden's icon-bearing cap » in that case, Ben! There's no weaselling out this one, Ubi

Neither did I have a misogyny-phase, I grew up in an environment where from the start men and women were (at least at surface level) treated as equal. I never realized until later that women were at a disadvantage, culturally speaking. I did go through a mild nice guy phase, which I thankfully grew out of by reading up on it and improving myself. I think a nice guy mentality is very easy to slip into, even without outside ideas. I was raised, and I assume many people are, with the idea that you should be friendly to people. It's not a weird thing for that to become your tactic when you want to seduce a person. Couple that with a youthful loathing of everything that was 'cool', and you can see how this recipe works out. Again, it was mild and thankfully I had the right resources and friends and online communities to get rid of those ideas. I think basic 'love education', such as the Dr. Nerdlove articles on Kotaku, or Captain Awkward, can be a huge force in this for tons of adolescents dipping their toes in courtship.

There's an Argodale brand in the kitchen, for one. But this is all not in the service of humor, it's a playful nod to friends that's 100% unobtrusive if you're not aware that it is.

Yeah, it's depressing. In the Netherlands there was this whole sentiment that not voting would send a signal that Europe needs to do things differently, but all it communicates is apathy and lethargy. The EU sighs under a huge smear campaign running for decades now. I'm sure there is some waste and corruption at the top, but I don't believe it's as bad as a lot of people claim. Nor is the EU that terribly expensive or restrictive with a great many perceived weird rulings on the shape of bananas. That stuff is either made up, exaggerated or willfully misinterpreted. If the EU were to collapse, it would be hugely destabilizing for the continent.

Yes.

It's very upsetting, ugh.

It's not implausible! It has a certain tone-deaf insistence that I've seen before from people with Asperger's.

Let's set the record straight here: Batman & Robin is fantastically entertaining. It's 100% camp, it's all recycled and poorly done, everyone in that film is having a blast and so should you. The only thing that falls flat is all the Poison Ivy/Bane stuff. Uma Thurman just doesn't pull the cheeseball off the way Clooney and Schwarzenegger do, which detracts from an otherwise 10/10 movie.

That was a damn swell article, Niyeaux! Very interesting to see the seedy underbelly of Steam so exposed.

I have now officially been reading about toilets and poop all day. Well played, Thumbs.

Continuing the theme of this already excelsior thread:

Now hold on, there is no such thing as the 'right' batsuit. There are only infinite variations, and that's the beauty of it. I have to get used to the short ears, but otherwise it looks fine. Definite Frank Miller vibe with the bulky bat logo on the chest. I'd be happy to see a blue/gray version, but that's probably not grimdark enough for a universe where Superman

There's some beautiful imperative prose in that post.

It was pretty great to hear Chris struggle with words like 'doujinshi' and 'touhou'. Of course not a big deal, since they're largely unknown unless you're way into Japanese stuff. The podcast was somewhat of a minefield for me, since I don't want to hear anything about Transistor yet. I had to skip ahead whenever it came up, and dammit if Sean didn't keep returning to it again and again, like some goddamn Columbo, « Oh, and one more thing about Transistor... »

I read a lot of the first batch of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo books. They were all of them pretty low-brow adventure pulp, though some were better than others. A hated a few of them, since they even got the characters wrong, which seems weird. I'm interested in the Mass Effect: Retribution book, but beyond that not much else. I do think there's an opportunity to write a good book based on video game series though, but that's just like any book: it depends on the writer how good it is.

Hooooooly mother, I want to drive on the ceiling

You hate jazz? You fear jazz.

« An eldritch wind arose... but you've probably never heard of eldritch. »

Doritos and the Tretton Mic Drop, what a year it was last year

Despite all of this, I am looking forward to Gotham. DKR was a low point for me, but the Nolan thing has ended and Batman has always excelled at reinvention. Who knows how Gotham will play out? It's entirely possible that they're playing up the inclusion of bad guys and Bats for the marketing, to rope people in, much like how Sean Bean was the main attraction in Game of Thrones since at that point, no one would give a toss about Peter Dinklage. On the other hand, be careful what you wish for: Agents of Shield went with all new people and I'd much rather would've had old faces there.

Ironically, the area right before that, the Gutter, is the best in the game.