Wow. Seriously. You should've bought a lottery ticket or two while you were there.

If you look, there are guides on the internet to picking all the figures of each series by feel alone.

(It's actually not that hard; usually, there's one feature that makes it pretty obvious, like if only one of the characters has a spear or something.)

It is, however, time consuming and sort of humiliating. Also, your…

Wow, that's surprisingly nice of him.

When everyone was looking for "Mr. Gold", the super rare one, I know the staff at one local LEGO store would actually go through new boxes and pre-crinkle each package so people couldn't tell which ones had already been searched and which hadn't.

It struck me as simultaneously kind…

It doesn't actually involve a lot of duplicates...

...if you're willing to humiliate yourself by standing around for a long time manhandling little plastic bags to determine the contents by feel alone.

I have gotten depressingly good at doing this.

But anonymity isn't inclusiveness. They're two different things.

The thing about abuse towards LGBT people is that the person hurling the abuse doesn't even need to know that you're LGBT. They're going to hurl terms like "faggot" and other, even less pleasant stuff, freely. If you're straight, well, that's a minor…

"I don't demand the whole community change to accomodate me"

This seems like a weird statement, both in terms of how it's phrased ("demand") and in terms of the nature of accommodations being discussed (ie. "not being an asshole bigot").

"As for video game protagonists, well, their biggest market is straight white men."

E…

Well, yes. Again, death threats and the like are so self-evidently inappropriate that I think it really goes without saying, you know? But...it's the internet, so that's gonna happen. It's not right. It's certainly not helpful. But it's gonna happen.

And if your reaction to that is to further attack an…

"But a lot of people would tell you that gays could choose to stop being gay."

To which I always ask, "Could they choose to stop being straight, right now?"

Generally, the answer is "No", which I find interesting. But anyway:

"Anyway, what does this societal oppression have to do with PAX and video game culture again? "

Be…

Hyperbole? On the internet? You must be joking!

Yes, comparing Penny Arcade to Jim Crow in any sort of serious way is over-the-top.

Comparing the treatment of trans people in general to that (including housing discrimination, employment discrimination, massively increased risk of violence, etc.) is...still hyperbolic,…

"The constant influx "Muh [insert thing] defines me" shit of late has gotten on my last nerve. "

That's because you have a choice. A lot of people don't have the choice to define themselves that way; society does it for them. A trans person doesn't get to say "Oh, I'm trans, but that's not really a big deal", because…

"An interesting argument FOR this is that it will allow attendees who ARE averse to LGBTQ/feminist/other minority groups to stay away from that section, not accidentally stumble upon someone/something they find offensive."

To be honest, I could not care less about catering to those people. "Hm, how can we make things…

I think it's kind of funny that you simultaneously complain about people speaking for you elsewhere and then presume to speak for the "overwhelming majority".

I mean, I'm not totally down on this idea; I'd need to hear more and see how it works in practice. But flat-out dismissing people's concerns is kind of tacky.

I'm trans too. What "craziness" are you referring to, specifically?

If it's, like, death threats, then...yeah, that's obviously beyond the pale.

If it's criticizing them for their (at times) clueless, offensive bullshit, though, I don't see why that's a problem.

People can run a charity and -also- be assholes about completely unrelated issues.

People are complicated. It doesn't take people "looking for persecution where none exists".

Just for the record, I'm not sure what choices you're referring to specifically, but just to be clear: being trans isn't a choice. I mean, it's totally possible that's not what you were implying, but I just thought I'd mention that.

(Hell, transitioning is only -kind of- a choice for a lot of people, since the choice…

How often are gun owners beaten up or murdered solely because they're gun owners? How often are they denied housing or employment for that reason?

Hint: Nowhere near as often as, say, LGBT people.

Also, that's kind of an odd example, since one -chooses- to be a gun owner, and can stop by selling/giving away said guns.

The Dreamcast is the perfect example of the "too beautiful for this cruel world" idea.

Ugh, yeah. I should probably break out the "Clueless Asshole" Bingo card now, shouldn't I?

I like how "diversity lounge" sounds like some kind of dystopian euphemism. Zoos don't have "cages"; they have "wildlife safety enclosures"!

Well, they're trying. I'll give them that.

It's just...yeah. At first glance, it does seem kind of tone-deaf, doesn't it?

Oh, well. Maybe it'll work out better than it sounds.