As A Child I Wanted To Be A Detective More Than ANYTHING, Out Of A Combined Love Of Solving Puzzles And

As a child I wanted to be a detective more than ANYTHING, out of a combined love of solving puzzles and a deep and burning passion for justice to be done to those who hurt others (and yet I still somehow wouldn't be diagnosed with autism until my 30s) and then I learned that in order to do that, you had to also be a cop, and my interest in being a detective died a quick death

fucking sucks ass that detective is a subtype of cop or always some type of law enforcement. a detective should be someone who is a master of disguise, a weirdo, socially maligned, and hated by the police. he should solve the cases using his ultra specific knowledge about geography, linguistics, human biology, and cigar ashes

One of my favourite lines in a book, ever, is from Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, a book about the history of the English language. He discusses how sometimes the difference in English and American slang can be stark, such as the word "fanny", which in America is "a harmless euphemism for the buttocks" and in Britain "the female pudenda".

He goes on to warn us to never, if you are an American at a dinner party in England, make an off-hand reference to the hostess's "fanny".

"You may hear the cold voice of experience in these words."

List of British words not widely used in the United States. Lists of words having different meanings in American and British English. List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom.

Brütal Legend: An uncomfortable revisit

I'm replaying Brütal Legend for the first time in years and it is a game that deserved to be much better than it ended up being. There's so much to praise about it: it's got that patented Double Fine look that makes characters feel unique and expressive, it occupies a world that's been given so much love and attention, it's genuinely hilarious (Jack Black must have been on a shortlist of one to play Eddie Riggs - I can't imagine anyone else doing it), and it's a deeply earnest and knowing love letter to heavy metal and all the things that make it ridiculous and brilliant. The problem is that the actual "game" part of it is not that great.

It tries to be two things at once - a hack & slash, and a real-time strategy - and it doesn't stick the landing on either of them. The controls are sluggish, combat feels janky and repetitive, and the RTS sections are slow, confusing, and unfulfilling, and represent an infuriating roadblock in your journey through the game on many occasions.

The strange fate of Brütal Legend is that it's a game ultimately hamstrung by the very insistence on thematic relevance that makes it so great in other aspects. Using guitar solos as attacks is a great concept and fits perfectly with the ethos, but in practice they're incredibly clunky and jarring, breaking what little flow to combat there is. Having to bust one out just to summon your car, additionally, at a time when even contemporary games had embraced single-button mapping for such things, is extremely tiresome.

But there's another aspect to the game that has disappointed me on this playthrough that I had never thought about before:

Where are the people of colour?

We meet a lot of characters in this game, all of them satires or parodies of differing rock and metal cliques; the headbangers, the emos, the glam rockers, the [checks notes] girls, and unless I'm very much mistaken every single one of them is white. It points to a very uncomfortable truth about the prevailing image of fans of alternative music in the minds of the devs.

I understand 2008 is far enough back in time in terms of video games and the culture around them as to practically be ancient history, but it makes me realise this is what the right-wing, "culture war" bores in gaming pine for: games where no-one, either behind the screen or in front of it, has to question their own biases even for a second.

This is a game best remembered fondly, seldom if ever revisited.

I WOULD assume she means "from the POV of Humbert Humbert", which it absolutely is and is why Nabokov is such an incredible writer by making this fantastic unreliable narrator protagonist, but she's repeatedly shown she has the literary comprehension of a child and is a snake in human form so I'm just gonna not do that

Are you fucking kidding me Joanne

"this must hit so hard if youre stupid" is such a simple yet incredible rinse i think it might change the hating game forever

I s2g Taylor Swift receives levels of adulation that were historically only reserved for the infant sons of emperors, and I could understand it were she actually the world-changing, era-defining genius they think she is instead of cottagecore Sheryl Crow

oh this is devastating. if i read this said about me with a hundred thousand likes in agreement the next high traffic road would be seeing me on foot in the middle of it arms stretched to hug a front of the truck death