I was really surprised by Valentina, since nothing I'd seen in the show before suggested she'd be any good at Snatch Game, and I was pre-emptively cringing in anticipation of a potential Maxtastrophe. But she was actually pretty funny!

That "best cast" line gets trotted out every subsequent season (and, so long as Seasons 4-6 aren't Terminator'd out of existence, it's categorically wrong) and this was a pretty weak Snatch Game, but I was more bullish on it than Oliver.

Once she was in the bottom, Charlie deserved to go (sweet Christmas, that lipsync), but I'm still mad the producers didn't contrive to keep her around at least until Snatch Game. Especially considering what we ended up with…

Eh, there were no real winners, though. Michelle came the closest to greatness, but even lacklustre Snatch Games are usually redeemed by one brilliant breakthrough performance. Here we just had some good efforts, a whole lot of safes, a few flops and zero entertaining disasters.

I did enjoy that such humiliating indignities as "sleeping in tents" and "eating cheese sandwiches" were presented as on par with the Rwandan genocide.

Recasting after one day of filming =/= recasting after four months of filming

Considering she was just on RuPaul's Drag Race and was treated like living royalty by the queens, it might to be overstating the case to say that queer culture "wants nothing to do with her and has never accepted her".

Oh, the dialogue is very twee (everyone's supposed to be at university but they sound like they're in middle school), the narrative is underdeveloped and the time-changing mechanic turned out to mostly be the ability to rewatch cutscenes, but I still love Life is Strange and I wish there were more games like it.

As one of the rare-as-unicorn's-teeth people who just hated Boyhood, "precocious and annoying" appears to be Ellar Coltrane's default mode.

I agree with this to an extent, but isn't there also shades of "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" to this argument? It's all fine and well saying that the new technology is not harmful per se so long as it's not abused, but isn't that abuse more or less inevitable?

The thing is, this is true of all video gaming discussions - hell, of all pop culture. Unless you're at a developers' conference or you happen to be president of EA, the people you're speaking to aren't going to be in positions of power to do anything. Yet people will still spill much digital ink over everything…

Why don't we get it straight from the horse's mouth?

They are absolutely part and parcel. Representation is crucial because visibility is the only real defence that a numerical minority like the LGBT community has; that, and legality, which is not the sturdiest shield when laws can be altered. It's representation which enables human rights abuses to be exposed,…

The point is that, in this particular instance, the protagonist is not an actual 'character' but a vessel for player choice, so it doesn't make much sense why that choice should be arbitrarily limited when it comes to sexuality.

It's relevant when the people criticising those who want better representation for their communities as being 'entitled', 'demanding' and 'unrealistic' are the same people who will never, ever have to worry about under-representation in their entire lives - because that's what entitlement actually is.

I can't think of a single protagonist in a mainstream video game series who was written as LGBT, and there's barely any secondary LGBT representation in AAA gaming beyond a handful of RPGs.

But you are acting as if you can speak for all Japanese people.

I refuse to believe that anything can be worse than the monotone dronefest that was "I Do It So Much Better Than You" or the sheer mind-crushing inanity of "Sugar Babies", although if he did that Bitch Perfect medley last season, I'll give him credit for that.

Stylistically, it wasn't anything like Hamilton, but they were laying on the references with a trowel. The cheeky reference to "New York's hit musical", the logo with the silhouettes, the interstitials to different locations being spoke-sung, the Kardashians basically being the Schuyler Sisters, etc.

It's ironic that you've steeped this comment in accusations of ethnocentrism, since you seem comfortable making massive generalisations about US (and Japanese) attitudes towards LGBT rights. There are Americans who, sadly, would view the portrayal of gay men as aggressive ephebophiles not only as uncontroversial but…