Twig

That's because most of the game isn't combat! It's either exploring or talking to people.

No I did not see that but that's excellent!

I did Deep Roads first so I actually liked it a lot but it seems like most people do it later in the game and are exhausted and just want it to be over. For me, it was Denerim. I was just like get me out of heeeeere. (final part of game spoiler) (I don't know how you spent 105 hours on it Zeus, I feel like I did everything and I only spent 70-ish! Only...) Awakening definitely did not take me 20 hours, but given how long you spent on the main game maybe it will. The rest of the DLCs are super duper short. Dragon Age 2 is considerably shorter, although much more repetitive, although with much better story and characters, although act 3 (the final act) sucks ass, although it's also the shortest of the acts.

Haha I tried to grab it off of Best Buy, too, but clicking the Preorder button didn't work. Clicked it periodically for like half an hour before the next refresh just made it say "not available" and I cried for days.

Yeah it ain't good. ):

It's basically a remake of Pitch Black, yeah, but with the addition of Dahl "Doll" Dahl, the gay woman who turns straight for Riddick after a movie's length of Riddick hitting on her despite her saying she didn't want it. It's pretty cool.

I entered the wrong zip code but whateverrrrr! We're a widespread (but still mostly American) bunch, eh. Though I know there are like ten people who live in SF (incl. the Thumbs themselves).

Patreon definitely hasn't received zero flak for directly funding 8chan. It was already removed. EDIT: Oh you edited.

Ebert once again showing his ignorance of (or indifference regarding) the angry nerd hordes on the internet.

Hahaha the Jojo opening and ending songs were so weirdly uncharacteristic. I had meant to bring that up myself. They're extremely mellow and just... don't fit the show. I have no idea what happened there. I don't think I agree that they're bad songs, though. I sort of like the contrast between song and show? I admit I'm weird, though. I was also thinking of watching Maria... But then I watched the PV and yeah it's just tits everywhere so I guess that's the show. If it ends up being good someone will tell me to watch it, but otherwise, I'm not going to go out of my way. Really annoyed that Kuroko Season 3 isn't on Crunchyroll. THAT'S WEIRD. It's on DAISUKI for some reason. Which I guess is a new thing, as their selection is pretty small. But hey, it's free, so I guess I can watch it there. More my nitpicky desire to be able to watch it all in one place and have that one place track it all that annoys me. Oh well. That's sad, re: Assassination Classroom. I love the manga, but if the anime sucks, well, that sucks, but at least I still have the manga!

I'd love to see a Weekend at Indiana Jones'. I would pay a significant amount of money to see that movie.

Yeah sorta, but she was also like that from the beginning. Has she ever done any fighting? There are actually quite a few characters who don't participate in any combat, and it's totally believable within this context, because in a lot of MMOs these days you can devote all your time to crafting or whatever. And I can't really fault the anime for having a character like that (i.e., the worrisome partner) when there's so much variety among the cast.

Haha there might be something to say there about how anti-social nerds who get sucked into a video game would obviously have trouble dealing with any real romantic feelings. That said, the relationship between Naotsugu and Marielle seems pretty solid and healthy. But... that's the only one, and they also don't really talk about it. It just kind of obviously exists. Maybe to serve as contrast to the ridiculous melodrama of the rest of the cast? (I'm almost certainly giving the anime too much credit here, since it's all super tropey and, at least so far, hasn't gone anywhere but tropey.)

I don't understand... ):

So many wrong opinions in that post! How do I cope?

But what about The Wire that's the best!!! (And has Idris Elba in it!)

The latest episode of Log Horizon was... superb. We left the usual cast to go and look at some other cool people. It was so incredibly dumb, but also so incredibly sincere that I loved it without reservation. Didn't quite top William Massachusetts' speech, but... can anything ever do that, really? The other cool thing they introduced was a character who had no personality and it turns out she was a farming bot being run from a computer in China. Only now she's not, obviously. She's an adventurer. Welp. If anyone described this to me and I hadn't watched it, I'd probably hate it, but it's all so sincere and genuine that I can't help but love it. Fuck me, I guess.

Yeah I mentioned it in that quote! (Although not by name.) I still haven't watched any of the second half of season two of Mushishi, but I'm working my way there. I can feel the mood-to-watch approaching. There, just over the horizon. I did start watching Gungrave, though. In IRC it was mentioned as another anime based on a video game that turned out surprisingly well. So far it's not bad, but it's not great, either. There's only two female characters in it. One disappears after the first episode and is the daughter of the other, who is one of those soft-speaking women that occur so frequently in anime, always seemingly on the verge of crying, or at least tearing up, serving no purpose but to motivate the main character. Fun. (I was also told to skip the first episode. I didn't, but I can totally see why someone would say that. Episodes two through five (where I am) are nothing like it in tone, and take place earlier in time.) Anyway Spice & Wolf is amazing so just gonna reiterate that. It's amazing. When I saw that she wrote that game, I added it to my wishlist. Didn't buy it, yet, though.

(Me too!)

That's also not true. Mass Effect. Nobody gives a shit about race (well, human race, anyway) in that game. I don't RECALL anyone giving a shit about gender, but I'm less hesitant to say nobody gives a shit about gender, because I know it happens for like the krogans, they're all male, you never see any female turians (until ME3, I'm told, though I have yet to play that) or salarians, and the asari... well we all know about the asari. Point is there are colored people in that game and nobody cares and you're interacting with them. In the second game, one of your companions is a black dude, and I don't remember it ever even coming up. He was just black and that was it. Hell you can make a black Shepherd. I suppose you could argue that, like, the alien race interactions replace what would be the human race interactions. Fine, whatever. Then I'd point to something like Freedom Force, a game about superheroes where you fight Nazis in the second game, and there are black superheroes and even though you're fighting Nazis, no one mentions that the superhero is black and... the game is definitely not brought down because of that. Oh but they're superheroes so that doesn't count either right. You get my point? Human interaction existing is not the barrier that prevents you from arbitrarily assigning race and gender. It's very specifically when you use that human interaction to make a point. A black lady and a white dude are completely interchangeable in most settings, until you build that setting into one where race or gender matter. Like, for example, Firewatch! That's a white dude, but presumably for a reason (as Sean has mentioned on the 'cast), and it also has historical significance. Some might argue that since it's just a dude in the woods, it shouldn't matter. But because it's a very specific point in time, in our history, it does matter. Meanwhile, The Dig is about a few space explorers getting stranded on an alien planet, and that kind of thing is so far in the future (ala Mass Effect, but sans the alien-racisms!) that they all could've been black women and the only reason it'd matter is because of our society making it matter. Within the context of the game, you can create whatever environment you choose. One where it matters, or one where it doesn't. This is one where it obviously doesn't matter and it's still two white dudes and one white lady (IIRC, it's been a while). That game's super old, but the pattern exists in basically most games that still come out today. This is really rambly because I just woke up but hey whatever! Also none of this means I don't understand where you're coming from. I do, and it's completely true in many cases. I just think in the vast majority of cases, it really doesn't matter. Also could you explain in what ways Uncharted would be different if Drake was black? I haven't played it, and have no plans to, so I'll admit I'm completely ignorant on the subject, but I have watched someone play through a good deal of Uncharted 2, and... I'm not sure it would've mattered?

There are a million games out there where it literally doesn't matter in the slightest what race or gender or sexuality the character is, because those games don't represent reality. They're just some dude jumping through a fantastical world with wacky creatures or whatever. And yet, they're still almost always white dudes (when they're human). In those cases, I see no reason not to do exactly what was suggested. Not every game has to represent reality, just like not every game has to star a white dude.

Social media has affected me in exactly the opposite way that you suggest. The more social media has exposed bullshit people being bullshit assholes, the more strongly I've come to believe that I have to fight against it. There are days when I want to just turn it all off, but I always, in the end, decide not to. Because as much as it depresses me (and I'm already a depressed individual, so it's... really probably not good for me?), I wouldn't want to go back to being completely ignorant of the state of the world.

I mean I understand where you're coming from but do you really think it's okay to ignore these issues that come up just because someone dying was the catalyst? I personally use humor - dumb or clever - all the time to cope with life's horrible shit. It's how I deal. I don't think that invalidates the point he's making in the slightest. I mean, fuck, people die all the time. It's not like he's celebrating their deaths. Do we need to wait a week before talking about this? A month? A year? When does it become appropriate to question the value of what they died for (assuming that even is the real reason they died, of which I'm still skeptical). And! The quote-unquote meme in the title if the thread is not moving these people who died. It's mocking the idea that free speech means it's okay to be shitty to other people.

People dying doesn't invalidate discussions that spawn from them dying.

Jumpman is so good though.