I see your point, but disagree with your premise. All of what you said are superficial trappings of what a sport is. I posit this to you: What if the IOC were to completely buy out Riot Games (or vice verse via "donations"), and thus League of Legends became the official, standardized MOBA for international…

Seriously....what the heck does "open source" mean in this context, anyway? I can do that too! I don't have to buy slope time to play with my dog, which is why playing with my dog is recreation while skiing isn't.

What about ones like League of Legends or DOTA2, where the only annual changes are comparable to rules updates in sports (which happen all the time). Using skiing is a particularly awful example too, because the equipment is damn expensive, and you have to buy time on the slopes, as well as travel expenses, unless you…

So, two teams of five are put on a well known and in theory even (in practice...not touchin' that) playing field. The goal is to get past the enemy's defenses while trying keep them from getting past yours. In the meantime, it's a fast-paced, tense match that is completely impenetrable to those unfamiliar. It can be…

IT is confused!

Funny to bring up sodium pentothal, as laughing gas has the effect of a "truth serum" on me. I absolutely cannot stop talking, and the thought that maybe I shouldn't be telling the dentist every excruciating detail of my romantic difficulties didn't cross my mind.

As someone who possesses a well-developed quip reflex, my immediate response to that line was:

Not to mention the weird tendency for homophobes in particular, but conservatives in general, to say anything that they disagree with is being rammed down their throats. Every time. Rammed down their throats. Sometimes shoved. Sometimes forced. But always down their throats.

Given that Brian is generally viewed (rightly or not) as his mouthpiece, I think this bit where Quagmire of all people just verbally destroys Brian is a commentary on not just his public persona, but perhaps indicative of a greater awareness of his own failings than he is given credit for:

I'm a Christian (albeit a fairly liberal one), and my feelings about the movie are...mixed. I think it did an excellent job of portraying what is generally just glossed over in modern tellings, and in the Bible itself is just given a few sentences (presumably, because the audience would know what it meant). The level…

If you think OUAT is horrible...well, I understand. But I even enjoyed the Frozen arc. It has really good actors who can make the most ridiculous shit sound like it has dramatic gravitas. And it's the rare case where the characters are constantly making bad decisions, but those decisions make sense for them as…

Yes! That too. Forgive me for coming at it from a different (privileged) angle and missing that obvious bit. I'm male, and a good person at heart (though I will admit, occasionally a pig, albeit a gentleman pig with like a moustache, monacle, and top hat), so I often forget how awful the rest of my gender can be. And…

And a 5-year old shows more understanding of consent than most Redditors and of empowerment vs. objectification than most posters on Jezebel. (not you reading this, you're cool)

I did, but she got the details way too wrong. Cereza is not Bayonetta's daughter, for example. She's Bayonetta herself as a young child, meaning she is her own role model.

I feel like replicating the scene with both a male and a female friend (I'm male) to see if under any other configuration, you can say they aren't a romantic couple.

I know it's only tangential, but here's something I've been trying to figure out. My critic skills lie more in literature than art, so I need help with why Milo Manara's Spider-Woman is bad (which it most certainly is) while this piece of art from Magic: The Gathering, which shares many elements with it, is highly…

Crap. Missed the edit window and had second thoughts. Ignore the first post, or read it, but I dwelled too much on the wrong subject. Here's what I meant:

Oh hell yeah, there are problematic elements. But like I answered someone else, is it possible for something to be both problematic and empowering? Are those opposite ends of the same scale, like karma in Fallout? Or are they separate values, like Paragon/Renegade in Mass Effect? I feel the latter, but I also…

Eh, that chart was mostly born from frustration and pre-coffee brain haze/grumpiness. Virtually however a female character is handled, someone will be offended. In my own writing, I tend to second-guess myself a lot on whether this presents a strong female character or not, and it often seems like any option at all is…

Yeah, it is. We've all gotten so used to pre-rendered, scripted "test" footage and other forms of bullshots that showing something that's incomplete as actually, you know, incomplete is almost unheard of now.