I think it's one of three things:

Okay, I actually got to a part in the game that revealed that one of the Casti castes is composed of people from the Shanje liro who got kicked out for marrying outside of the caste. That would seem to imply a dim view of inter-caste marriage, at least in Castithan orthodoxy. You are of course right about people…

…Wait, if you had a talking cat, you would neuter it without asking for its opinion on the matter?

Hey dogg, whatever floats your fanfic.

I grew mostly in Madison, erstwhile home of the Onion, so I was reading it at very young age, which may explain a few things, come to think of it. I don't remember when exactly they added the AV Club, but I do remember cutting class in high school every week to go to the corner store to pick it up and get my pop…

I too was puzzled by it, and figured it was some kind of literary reference (I mean, last week was "The Second Coming" via Joan Didion, after all). I wouldn't fault the reviewer - assuming he got the correct title in the first place, it's fairly easy to make these sorts of mondegreens in our head. And given the…

Didn't know that about Mia Kirshner. Although a brothel by any other name would smell as raunchy.

I would agree with this, both the thoughts on criticism and Pottinger (although I'll reserve final judgment on the latter until the denouement).

Don't forget the googles! She's wearing goggles on her top hat too!

You know, it's funny (and a good demonstration of the staying power of random one-hit singles): I was drawing a blank on both Des'ree and "You Gotta Be," then I looked it up, and of course I basically knew it by heart.

I've actually been lurking long enough to see the genesis of "where's Firefly?" and "cancerAIDS" (which should give you some idea of how reluctant I generally am to leave comments on the Internet - but so far, I'm sure glad I did!). Hell, I remember reading the AV Club in print on the school bus. OG, y'all.

In the second episode (I've been rewatching the first season now that I've played the game some and have a better understanding of all the throwaway world-building lines), when he's shame-racking that guy, Datak identifies himself as Datak Tarr of the Shanje liro, and the poor schlub on the rack as being of the Yuke…

I thought it was more likely that the truth was probably something like lironmiron conjectures, and Berlin, who as a film buff and propagandist probably knows who Leni Riefenstahl was, gussied it up to seem smart.

I think Datak loves her. He's certainly fighting to get her back (even if he keeps threatening to kill her), and making his servant call herself Stahma during sex while looking at a picture of Stahma the whole time. Sure, it's a weird way to show it, but Datak is kind of a weird dude. He also seemed to genuinely value…

@lironmiron:disqus According to the game, the Earth Republic was founded by the surviving remnants of the American government and the UN in New York. The actual global government, the Earth Military Coalition, fell apart at the end of the Pale Wars. The E-Rep only controls part of the Eastern Seaboard, although they…

Before switching to the Xbox version, where nobody uses the chat function, I played the game on the PC briefly. There I was, strolling along, and some guy got on the universal channel and started going on about how Defiance was "pretty decent sci-fi," except for "all the gay/bisexual/trans people it shoves down your…

Okay, I've actually thought about it for a minute, and while I could have definitely done without not one, but two versions of "What's Up?" in a single episode, I could definitely envision any number of one-hit wonders surviving a Defiance-style apocalypse.

Yeah, I've noticed the wankers, but what doesn't attract wankers on the Internet? Shit, I translate obscure poetry and even that attracts the odd wanker now and again. But hell, even the wankers on this site mostly know how to spell. (As a counterpoint involving people nominally in the same "fan community," I made the…

Fortunately, the show keeps putting her in those sorts of situations, since she's as bad at thinking two steps ahead as she is good at thinking one. It actually feels like an organic way to push her and Datak back into each other's orbit. Now that the initial flush of righteous (or "righteous," in Datak's case) anger…

Oh God, I had put that whole plot and its accompanying terrible cover out of mind. Thanks a lot.