Might be a cultural divide there too. Western dudes (especially in America it seems) tend to have very nonphysical, almost standoffish friendships outside of specialized areas like the military. Obviously every friendship is different, but it's just like a general cultural thing.

Oh, that's totally fair. You like what you like. For me, I like GoT because I like fantasy in the first place, and the whole deal with that series is subversion of the usual fantasy tropes. That's not to say that the source material is perfect though, and the TV show necessarily loses even more nuance.

The "cheap brutality" aspect is a valid concern (I mean at the end of the day it's a show that caters to its massive popularity).

Billy Eichner is looking so damn fine this season. Purple is his color and that cardio + scruff is doing him quite well.

I know, hence my second paragraph. But I decided to add a clarifying phrase to my first to make it absolutely clear that yes, I do know what the discussion is about.

Some people happen to prefer certain games to others and aren't in love with violence in games even though they understand that it's simulated. That doesn't make them puritanical jerks who hate kids having fun. At no point did either of those posters criticize others for liking violent games. I don't know how you got…

Agree. She's perfectly serviceable and has an interesting look, but I honestly can't see her carrying a movie anytime soon.

I didn't say it wasn't integral to the series (I mean I watched it and of course intellectually understand where everything ties together). I just said I thought it was boring.

Sad thing is that if they wanted a gritty Oz reboot, I mean Wicked is right there. It would be awesome to see a serialization that's faithful to the darkness and intrigue of the original book.

I find S1,3, and 4 of the Wire incredibly rewatchable (the season with the schoolkids is probably among my favorite TV seasons ever). But S2 is boring and S5 with the dead-hobo subplot is jump-the-shark territory for me.

Again, it depends on what you read into it. Plenty of people read "I'm with her" in a feminist (and therefore 'change'-oriented) way. For a lot of people it was profound, but like most political slogans (including 'Change') it was a profundity that was supplied by the supporters themselves.

I believe Obama's "official" slogans were "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In", and the ever-popular "Yes We Can" was a chant (although of course it has since ended up on t-shirts and mugs and stuff). Just goes to show the calculated boringness of the actual slogan.

To be fair to Clinton, that's sloganing 101 for politics— pick a boring slogan that people read their own feelings and perspectives into. Let's not pretend "Change we can believe in" was any more profound.

Scarecrow as a sexy Fire Island circuit boy makes me uncomfortable/aroused

The thing about Girls is that I honestly think it's a riot when viewed as a satire of those really vapid, childish NYC transplants. Lena has nailed down how insufferable those people are. Maybe it's one of those death-of-the-author situations where you don't pay any mind to what Lena actually thinks about the…

As a member of the community, I definitely get why people would be offended— on the other hand, SNL's writers and actors very clearly skew "young liberal." In that context I feel that jokes like these are pretty clearly satirical. It honestly reminded me a little of a Colbert Report joke.

You should read that Mother Jones profile on that Neo-Nazi dude. He's called out on having several Asian girlfriends and he's basically like "yikes, I hope my members don't hear about this", and then there's an aside about Hitler having had a hard-on for East Asian culture. So yea, it's a thing.

One of the small things I've found funny since moving to the US is that a misspelling for uncommon/'difficult' words that have t's in them is to replace them with d's, because 't' becomes an alveolar flap between vowels in standard American. I noticed it when my little, American-born cousin spelled 'compuder', which…

While I can see the "punching down" argument against making the joke (especially by a cis white guy), I thought the satire and the idea he was making fun of— i.e. not trans people, but the kind of exaggerated Breitbart perception of what the democratic party is— was pretty basic. Still, it remains the case that this…

Isn't the joke precisely about that (false, exaggerated) perception? While I kind of agree with the whole "punching down" argument, I'm lgbt and I thought the actual satirical point was pretty basic myself.