In the HBO documentary they have footage of the judge at one of the early hearings saying exactly that - he wasn't willing to have the case tried in juvenile court because a crime of that severity shouldn't be expunged when the girls turn 18.

They both have specific mental illnesses, at least according to the documentary about the whole sorry mess. It's very sad that this is how those illnesses manifested, but at the end of the day the lesson in all of this is "don't let two mentally ill teenagers create an elaborate fantasy where homicide is rewarded by…

Both the girls are mentally ill - per the documentary one has schizophrenia and the other has a less severe but kind of similar disorder. The fact that two girls with "complimentary" illnesses (pardon the term) met, fed each other's delusions with internet fantasies, and then attempted to murder someone based on…

Except then you would miss the part where it turns out the girls have mental illnesses that make them delusional, and Slenderman was really incidental to the improbable and deeply fucked-up friendship they developed.

It's kind of an interesting failure of a movie. They spend a lot of the first half talking about the origins of Slenderman and the backgrounds of the girls involved, which includes "expert" interviews (which include a truly batshit Richard Dawkins interview about how memes are like mind-viruses) and with the girls'…

The documentary is interesting - I didn't love it because I think it really buries the lede, which is (SPOILER for a documentary, I guess?) that one of the girls has schizophrenia and the other has another delusional disorder (schizotypy, I think?) - it seems like they actually believed that a) Slenderman is real and…

It's a little confusing to read all of this, because when I played that game it was free. And I'll be damned if I'm going to spend one minute of my 30s googling shit about the Slenderman.

I downloaded the free game where you wander a forest with no map in the dark looking for pages, and each page you find triggers a layer of menacing ambient music and makes the Slenderman more aggressive. Even playing it with my wife and cousin we got too scared to finish. Of course this was years ago when Slenderman…

Now I wish the movie ended with Morrissey and Johnny Marr backstage at their first concert, and Johnny Marr says something like "Looks like we're on," and Morrissey steps out of a dressing room, finally sporting a stupid 80s Morrissey suit and 'do, and says, "England is… mine." Smash-cut to the credits, which…

That scene where they improvise the title song (including three-part harmonies on verses no one has ever heard before) is one of the most perfect parodies I've ever seen. It's hilarious because it's just barely more ludicrous than the equivalent scene in Walk the Line.

It's kind of a funny quirk on this site - when they reviewed that Ian Curtis biopic (Control, I think?) years ago there was a line about how it's frustrating that the movie doesn't hint at where his genius came from. And it's sort of like, the fact that some people are just better at things than others is a…

(A really surprising number of Latinos in their 20s and 30s raise their hands.)

You took the words right out of my mouth.

Supporting the legacy of the Confederacy as anything but a legacy of shame in 2017 is inherently racist. Likewise the "White Lives Matter" slogan is innately racist in its implication that "Black Lives Matter" somehow steals social capital from white people. I'm not sure whether these yahoos self identified as white…

There's also a lot of stuff to do, but there isn't much meat to the quests besides the main quest. I was stoked to find all of the Dragon Priest masks with my mage, but it just ends with a special item. The dwarven puzzle box quest is a little more satisfying because it started a definite facto through line about my…

In a word, nothing. But I ordered a new graphics card today that should arrive when I get back from vacation next week, and then I'll have (hopefully) another week to move into our new house/be the stay at home dad by day and play video games in the evening before I start my new job. I picked up Sunless Sea at a Steam…

Last time I tried to play Quake the control scheme killed me, but I do remember it being much more intuitive than N64 back in the 90s.

Last time I played Skyrim I ran into a feeling of sameness - even with different character classes and mods, I felt like every play has been a pale rerun of my original Nord badass/family woman. That said, it's been a few years now, so maybe the old magic will be back - specifically for my redguard mage.

It's on HBO. I think you can get a free trial through Amazon.

Pit Fighter was made by the same studio, Midway Games, a few years before Mortal Kombat as a proof-of-concept that they could make a fighting game with digital-video characters. It really isn't fun to play. Between MK and MK2 they made Primal Rage, which did the same thing with stop-motion dinosaur and gorilla…