@FillionSmythe: I would add to what Placentasaurus said (oh internet! the phrases you put in our mouths!) that if the rape is part of the plot of the film or the book, well, fine. Hasn't our culture said it's fine? It's all over. But the film or the book rarely uses the rape as the "point" of anything. …

@Rebochan: And...beaten to the point. Well, thank you. This must have gone in as I was still typing my reply, or I wouldn't have set myself up to be redundant. >.< Apologies!

@Nick Hagman: That seems something of a stretch. Not enough people play these games for them to affect a national average. And I'll leave it to the people with the numbers, who piled in on former posts about this game, to remind you of the gross misrepresentation of rape as a cultural malaise "we somehow managed to…

@HeadspaceCools: As a foreign female in Japan I'm just about the last person you'd turn to for a spirited defense of anything Japanese. (Anyone have a plane? I could really use a plane. Or a boat. Or a combination of the two.) But in the interests of not being crass...I don't know that a statement like "living a…

@Limeade: While I don't think marketers will ever be chased away from putting people in boxes so as to fine-tune their companies to make bigger bucks...it _is_ refreshing to hear a more inclusive, less Cut Their Nuts Off voice, here, regarding the lesser-publicized people who bulk up the numbers of that survey. So,…

@Razorwire_Troop: Seems as legit a guess as anything. I didn't notice those first time; thanks for drawing my attention to them. I was busy shuddering at that Goofy. Yack.

@WildKB: Ditto here with the awwww!

@Deaf Mute: If his parents were so quick to jump at shadows that the mere explanation of non-heteronormative people was beyond their middling parenting abilities, then he was bound to be "disturbed" by any number of things during his childhood.

Mm hmm, because trannies are just hell on children's psyches, just right up there next to waking up next to an animal. Charming, ESRB. Is it beyond you to simply deal out a verdict—the usefulness of which is doubtful anyway, except as legal ass-covering, because as we've seen in the last week we don't exactly live…

@Komrade Kayce - Hero of Soviet Kotaku: Aw. That is really sweet. I'll never have the love for the community that you do, but it's touching that you've materialized it thusly.

@Witzbold: There is too much personal response all the way around. He too is angry at his lack of a star and is reacting to it, I would say personally, over on the Week in Comments section. You don't seem to be immune to the same complaint yourself. I'm no more a shining paragon of commenting responsibility than…

@wild homes loves you but chooses darkness!: Hear hear wild! This whole cult of the stars thing that seems to have evolved boggles me. Are we in third grade again? I'll lick mine and stick it on the forehead of the last kid in line, if it'll stop the bellyaching.

@bakagaijin: I believe a need to relax was mentioned?

@bakagaijin: One might point out with a tact I lack that the duty you're griping at us for not performing plonked itself on our shoulders without so much as a by-your-leave. If I were an ed I'd be sick to death of all the bitching heaped at my feet by my kinda-sorta-constituents, but you might consider waiting a…

@KamuZ: Ha, wrong person, it's his band not mine. But I agree, I'd pay money to watch someone mess with the obnoxious street obstacles. Just tell us where it's at. It beats making faces at my thesis which has thus far obstinately refused to write itself.

@tim rogers: I'm hoping you meant the Saturday that isn't the 11th? It being that Saturday now...

@amadeus3000: That _is_ useful. I had no idea there were schools of thought involved here. Which isn't to say I don't think games journalism is worthy of factionalized schools of thought; I just didn't know those involved would look kindly upon them. I'd never heard of NGJ but just your description (and this…

Honestly what pulled me along, long since overdosed as I am on that damn ad of the kid and and his family getting fished out of the ocean with DQIX as the bait, was a burning curiosity to follow the pert comments like a treasure trail and see if they led to Japan-blinders or gritty embitterment. It's always a…

@svetlana: *but often as not the flame wars around AREN'T about

Maybe using the term "community" is a mistake. I use it because—they didn't use these words, but this is basically what they tell you—it's a way you can make crass generalizations about large bodies of people while still doing a token nod toward political correctness.