Yeah, except it's kind of presented as a happy solution. Not to mention that I, and many fans, kind of expected Shepard to die at the end.

This is a shame. While BioWare's made some troubling decisions recently, including homosexuality in their games is not one of them. If anything, BioWare should be applauded for finally adding male homosexuality to Mass Effect after being formerly lesbian-only.

Funny. I have a friend actually who did some really awesome Dune concept art as well recently, for a school project. It took a different direction but it was still pretty sweet.

It's called suspension of disbelief. If the internal logic of a story is broken, then audiences have every right to be displeased and upset.

Nah, cause it didn't spawn an explosion of superhero movies; it just spawned one franchise, which did pretty well but not spectacularly well.

For some people it hasn't been a month.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the time the Doctor torpedoed Harriet Jones' premiership because she had the tenacity to blow up a group of aliens who'd invaded Earth. That's what I immediately thought of.

In fairness, it's a review of the second season, not the first. I generally consider spoilers for the previous season to be a freebie in reviews of a new one. Likewise for sequels.

"Outside of the die having 12-sides, I know precisely squat about D&D and even less desire to learn about it."

Well, to be fair, it turns off my suspension of disbelief only if it's just done because the author wants to have historical fantasy without any of the ugliness (though that's most of the time). I think it can be done well and it's merely a nitpick for me most of the time (I enjoy Dragon Age and the Forgotten Realms,…

Right, but the two sub-genres are mutually exclusive. Star Wars fits the definition of space fantasy, sure, but it fits the definition of space opera even better and is usually held up as the space opera all others are judged by.

"I'm not sure how this game went from space opera (star trek, battlestar galactica) to sifi fantasy (star wars)"

Clearly they meant this guy.

Yeah, it's weird. I don't always agree with what NYT's reviewers think of something, but I've never seen them miss the point so completely before. And it's not just one reviewer: this is a different critic than the one who reviewed last season!

Historical-esque fantasy that lacks these qualities, as horrible as they are, actually turns off my suspension of disbelief. It'd be one thing if these qualities were unique to Western European culture, but they're not. They're found worldwide in pre-modern cultures.

I don't see cliche portrayals of English or French people though. There are regional distinctions but none of them scream "French" to me.

But you didn't say "fantasy" you said "as long as your main characters and POV come from 'white European' culture/history." You basically said any story where the main characters are white, regardless of the setting, is racist.

Unfortunately, LeGuin just reversed the stereotypes rather than adequately exploring them. All the white are brutal savages (with the occasional exception) and all the brown-colored people are either protagonists or sympathetic antagonists.

That's just a silly attitude.

I think it's fair to say that, as much as we might not like to admit it, there are troublesome elements to The Lord of the Rings regarding race and ethnicity. I think it's also fair to say that Tolkien struggled with these elements himself, as later seen in his constant revisions regarding the origins of orcs and his…