That's really my big complaint about George; he writes very competently, but not beautifully. As compelling as the story and characters may be, his prose is really . . . dry.

So it begins . . .

That's an interesting comparison. I hadn't though of it before.

On that vein, I DID rage quite Mass Effect after beating #3. I had planned on playing through as Femshep, making some different choices and with a different class, but I just didn't feel like it was worth it—the time I would need to put in wouldn't…

Defiance Industries > Cerberus

Meh.

Coming from a romance language speaker, it really doesn't seem to be a big deal to me. The Latin-derived tongues infuse gender—which is different from sex—into every single object, and often lack any sort of gender-neutral term. Because of biblical literary tradition, English used the male as the gender-default.…

That's a valid point, but I think what Ogre is saying is valid as well. At some point, we need to accept that society will never be and do what we think it ought to, precisely because—collectively—we do not agree what it *should* be and do. And to an extent, that's okay, and we need to live up to the reality that *we*…

The sons grew up with the ages that the father created. They came to see themselves as above the creatures in the books and started to exploit the different ages, eventually destroying or damaging a great deal of them. Atrius returned, trapped them in two different books (the red and the blue), but them went to…

Spoiler or non-spoiler version?

Hear hear. It's still one of my favorite games ever.

You know, I could care less what people want to wear, but some things just aren't very good looking. I think this is a good example.

Somehow that's incredibly okay by me. I'd love it if this were set in the same universe, though the Chinese would suggest that it's not.

No, this is pretty typical. The vast majority (the thousands of readers who haven't commented) are either courteous enough or indifferent enough to not need to add anything, the angry minority rant, and a few people, like yourself, have honest comments or questions.

Appreciate the post, Dennis. Thanks for sharing, and congrats on being able to shake the habit.

Well, there is everything which Bioware and Bethesda have put out. I wouldn't exactly call Mass Effect, the Elder Scrolls, KOTOR, and Dishonored "poor."

Hmm. . . this has never been my experience. I've seen assertive people and timid people in about equal numbers across the genders. The only place I've seen women be more apt to "be sorry" for thing is when they interact with other women. But hey, maybe that's because of where I live.

This kind of thing happens a lot. Several words in Spanish are were originally phrases containing old Latin words and newer Spanish ones which, without writing, the illiterate populace amalgamated over the years.

KertysL is absolutely correct; it totally depends on who you play with. A lot like a game of basketball, actually. I've had the best luck with people who enjoy the story aspect of games and with actors, actually. Keep looking around.