Yeah, it’s really well done (some amusing stuff happens to the players who blew off developing certain aspects of their character histories), with a very YA-friendly metaphor of being uncertain how to act/exist in middle school, even if you are not a magical being.

To be fair to Falcone, who indeed sucks, he didn’t write or direct Happytime Murders. He has a producer credit, but that’s because it went through MCarthy’s production company. We can continue to blame him for Tammy, The Boss, Life of the Party and Superintelligence. And in the future, Thunder Force.

“Falcone” is one of those surnames where I’m like, “Damn, real people have that name?” because I typically see it used in entertainment media.

UGH. They need to stop working together. Nothing good has ever come of it.

I think you mean, the “best” Troma film

I liked Spy. There was supposed to be a “but” in there which I neglected to include. “but bad and dumb” as in the opposite. 

The lesson is she needs to team up with Paul Feig again ASAP

I thought it was a fantastic movie, only finding out right at the end that I was actually watching 2015's Spy the whole time! What a twist!

I know she’s capable of making really good movies - I loved Spy, and really liked The Heat, so it just makes these mediocre comedies that much more frustrating.  I guess it’s sweet that she supports her husband, but his work seems very least common denominator.  

who mostly communicates to her in the voice (and occasional image) of James Corden.

Nope. More likely, if legal action is taken, Microsoft will just quietly lock this down in a firmware update or something. Whether they could win if they fought doesn’t matter if the answer to ‘would they fight’ is ‘no’.

If his only options are to write what he knows or fail at writing slightly outside his experience, he deserves pointed criticism. The idea that he's immune to criticism because he lacks imagination is kind of a weird defense. 

I also find it very baffling how someone like Cline can spend years of his life, writing two novels, on 1980s culture, a subject which he presumably is very interested in, yet has nothing to say about the ways in which popular culture interacts, influences, and is influenced by politics, economics, and society. He…

There’s “write what you know” and there’s “write an entire fantasy world devoted exclusively to your personal tastes and interests and pretend that it represents the entirety of ‘geek culture.’”

An essential read for this vein of “virtual reality MMORPG” is Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash- definitely not YA, but a fantastic read. As for YA, I don’t know if it’s tangential enough to fit what you’re looking for, but Terry Pratchett’s Only You Can Save Mankind is a great read.

Untucked green shirt, bluejeans, brown shoes?

super funny to me that, while i know this is dreadfully nitpicky, there isn’t even a player two, and it’s just wade again.

it’s funny, but i do indeed expect someone to cosplay with jeans, green tshirt, watch, and giant cardboard cutout of a wall at the next convention

Darth Vader: “Jeans guy...is he alright.”

so you guys are gonna write about it but not post a single screen shot of it?