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Welcome to the Internet Critic Discussion Thread 3.0! Thread Rules:
Goon favorites Chez Apocalypse (sitewide Patreon) -- one of the networks with a lot of the talent you'll see discussed here. Among them include: Lindsay Ellis (Loose Cannon-specific Patreon): Formerly the Nostalgia Chick, now working on a show called Loose Cannon and a bunch of miscellaneous stuff with Chez Apocalypse. Kyle Kallgren (Oancitizen) (Patreon)-- Does in-depth reviews of what are generally called "arthouse films" (though he hates the term). He made me legitimately appreciate a movie that was a guy talking over a blue screen. Todd in the Shadows (Patreon) -- Pop song reviews and retrospectives on one hit wonders. Also a _____ Phelous.com hosts the reviews of... uh... Phelous (Patreon), Obscurus Lupa (Patreon), Andrew Dickman, and Team Panshy. Allison Pregler (Obscurus Lupa) -- Now does the show movie nights which is a semi-scripted review show about mostly schlocky movies. Also covering every god forsaken episode of Baywatch (presumably due to insanity). ____ Misc (in no particular order). Brad Jones (The Cinema Snob) (Patreon) -- Attacks more... questionable films with snark and dry wit. Linkara (Linkara) (Patreon) -- Reviews (mostly superhero) comic books. He also has incredibly silly ongoing plots that he's making into a movie because of his Patreon. Cinemassacre -- Home of Board James, James & Mike Play, and the Angry Video Game Nerd. (Note that we do have a AVGN/Cinemassacre thread in the Games forum, but you're welcome to discuss it here too) The Rap Critic -- Reviews rap songs in a very in-depth manner, usually including significant cultural and political critique of the songs. Feminist Frequency -- Literally tries to enslave and brainwash men by making harmless and thoughtful feminist critiques of various media (mostly TV, Movies, and Video Games). Matthewmatosis -- Breaks down and reviews video games. He's not huge on the cultural commentary, but he's absolutely stellar at analyzing games on a more mechanical level. SF Debris (Patreon) -- Reviews (mostly) Sci-Fi television episode by episode. Has a pretty good middle-ground between plot summary and plot analysis. Red Letter Media (Patreon)-- Review movies. These guys seem mostly insulated from the "internet critic community" so they go at a bit of a different angle, especially with their knowledge of cinematography. Ross Scott -- He mostly does Machinima (notably Freeman's Mind), but also has a stellar show called Ross' Game Dungeon which is strikingly unlike most other game review shows. He picks more obscure games and just kind of... chills and talks about them for 30 minutes. Despite the way that sounds, they're well-edited, structured, and paced to boot! Former Video Anime Reviewer Jesu Otaku is now writing text articles at Anime News Network under his real name (Jacob Chapman). Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Feb 1, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2015 05:45
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Reserved in case we need it. (Doubt it)
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Jan 14, 2015 05:46
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Rebochan posted:Lindsey Ellis isn't in the OP even though we have her site right at the top? Seems kinda weird. Her outputs pretty slow these days, but I thought we liked her. Honestly, since she's not the Nostalgia Chick anymore I wasn't sure what to put for her blurb until she started her new show. She ain't a persona non grata or anything, I'm just not that familiar with her. I don't have a blurb directly for Phelous for similar reasons, I only watch Lupa. poparena posted:-GoingRampant An up-and-comer I think, she reviews media from a feminist perspective with a fine amount of detail. Basically, if you still feel FeministFrequency is too broad in her approach, I'd check GoingRampant out. Whelp, I just watched her Buffy S1E7 review and she has a new fan. Exactly what I wanted out of feminist critique videos, thanks. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 06:50
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I might have to organize the Misc part into sections focusing on various genres, it's going to be a bit discordant otherwise.Puppy Time posted:Would it be good to identify critics who are goons in the OP? I know it took me a little bit to realize that one of the thread posters was actually Lupa, f'rex. I considered it, but while their identity isn't exactly a secret, I don't want to go screaming "Hey guys this person is a Goon go stalk their post history!" either. I mean, if Lupa, JO, or Kyle really want people to know they post here and under what names I can put it in there. But barring an explicit request from them I'll just leave it as is and let people discover it themselves. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Jan 14, 2015 |
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Jan 14, 2015 07:30
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At this point, I'm calling a moratorium on new critics to add to the OP, at least until I add all this and see just how massive it becomes.
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Jan 14, 2015 21:18
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The comic industry is pretty bad, yeah. I had the same realization at the first and only comic convention I went to. (I was nearby and decided to see a couple panels for TV or Youtube people, wasn't really worth it) There are certainly good comics, but they're hard to find and few and far between if you're not into the superhero stuff. I liked the Nodwick books once upon a time, and I've heard good things about Locke and Key (though I don't think that's kid friendly). I think webcomics are starting to be more of the scene. A lot of them are still in the "newspaper funnies" format, but there are a lot of plot-based higher quality ones. Though I can't think of any that are super kid friendly off the top of my head. I guess Dresden Codak isn't too objectionable, but it has some pretty dense philosophical references. I don't know much about Girl Genius, but apparently it's fairly popular among geeky tweens-teens, so maybe in a few years?  (E: Though of course, there should be stuff for girls in the superhero genre too.) Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jan 15, 2015 |
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Jan 15, 2015 05:41
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Eh, I mostly wanted to keep CA drama off the first page or so. Talking about CA stuff should be okay now that we're settled in, as long as we only talk about people who volunteer info like you and don't do creepy internet detective work. E: Lupa, the midroll discussion had me wondering. Is it hard to know exactly where Blip will insert midrolls? I remember that, at least on some of your videos, the ads had a weird habit of interrupting you mid-sentence sometimes. That was really the only complaint I had about your midrolls (though I didn't email Channel Awesome about it or anything dumb like that). Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 03:19 on Jan 17, 2015 |
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Jan 17, 2015 03:02
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I remember playing one of the games on the Gamecube. It certainly wasn't the worst licensed game I've played by any stretch, but it was kind of  .
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Jan 21, 2015 01:04
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I know that's a relatively popular theory. Or at least it has been since Animatrix became a thing.
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Jan 21, 2015 01:17
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I didn't really have a problem with Hyper Fan Girl until that awkward part in the Princess Diaries where it turned out she was just pretending to like "boy stuff".
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Jan 21, 2015 01:24
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Inception is definitely better overall than the Matrix, but I feel like the Matrix had more narrative and tonal consistency. Inception didn't seem like it could really decide whether it wanted to be some weighty philosophical piece revolving around knowing what's real, or an awesome heist movie. I'm not saying these two thing can't go together, I'm saying I don't feel like they executed it properly, and I felt like I was watching two different movies. Both were fairly good movies, mind you, but the whole thing felt inconsistent. Perhaps that's part of the dream metaphor, and you could defend it as such, but even if that's true it still feels flawed to me. The Matrix, on the other hand, meshes its philosophy and its story fairly well. It's heavy-handed in places, to be sure, and it's not really "deep", but it blended all of its components fairly seamlessly.
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Jan 21, 2015 04:19
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Mraagvpeine posted:Wasn't there a fan theory that the "real world" was part of a Matrix? That there were different levels of the Matrix and humans were given the illusion of freedom. I'm going to go out on a limb and boldly declare a law of fiction and fandoms: If there is a story that involves multiple realities, there will exist a prominent fan theory that the reality presented to us as the "real" or top level one is, in fact, also fake. The existence and/or widespread acceptance of this theory will be independent of the evidence for it in the work itself.
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Jan 21, 2015 05:08
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I never said such a theory existing was a bad thing, just that one of that sort will always exist. 
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Jan 21, 2015 05:28
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Vicas posted:The best thing about The Second Renaissance was that Kids Next Door shot for shot remake of it This is the 100% unvarnished truth. I support the release of the Animatrix for that alone.
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Jan 21, 2015 05:52
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If wishes were horses...
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Jan 29, 2015 04:33
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Idran posted:No, it sounds like she meant the opposite of bias towards Doug that they ended up screwing up. They tried to rig it so Doug would lose, but they mixed something up and Doug got the easy stuff by mistake. It could have been funny if they'd rolled with it and had Doug intentionally throw the easy questions.
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Jan 29, 2015 09:22
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I'm sure there are some anti-gamergaters who are something stupid like TERFs or have done terrible things like doxxing or whatever. I'm not aware of anything anti-GGers have done explicitly related to Gamergate that's as bad as Gamergaters, though. And even if someone has, the sheer difference in volume and widespread acceptance of this poo poo condemns the GG side. Yes, anti-GGers can get pretty unduly assholish on microblogging sites (and I don't just mean in condemning the doxxing and swatting bullshit, where the vitriol is justified), and it's not cool even when the people I agree with are doing it, but the difference in overall degree of awfulness is so great it's really, really offensive to equate the two sides. E: Ross Scott has a channel update now that Freeman's Mind is over. Cyron posted:i am done with this thread for a bit, i am going to a place where people are nicer to you for not agreeing with them like North Koria where i am sure the only thing close to gamergate is making a gate into a sport. No... please... don't go or whatever. 
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Jan 31, 2015 03:54
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Mutation posted:Did you know that Boyhood took twelve years to make? No, I didn't. Have you seen the trailer to the movie Ishtar?
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Jan 31, 2015 04:05
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Cyron posted:Funny part is, i don't hate you, i respect you far more then half of the people on TGWTG history. so sorry for being a complete dick and ruining this thread. Yeah. No. Don't apologize. You keep apologizing every time you shitpost and everyone piles on you, but then (and here's the key) you keep doing it. Half the time about the same three topics! Don't apologize if you're not gonna learn anything. At the very least, I think you would have learned by now that 90% of the visitors of this thread vehemently disagree with you and you're just gonna get a pile-on again. Basic pattern recognition or something. In an attempt to segue away from derailgate... Spoony posted a video on Lawful Good. I just don't like the Lawful/Chaos system. Oddly, I find it works better on the evil spectrum, because at least Devils being bound by their word to uphold contracts is interesting. The issue I have with Lawful Good characters is that they're bound to uphold a bad regime as long as the power was attained legitimately. They will take action to change it, but it will be purely internal action, which doesn't work well when your entire regime is corrupt. To me, the clearest example of Lawful/Chaotic Good is Yuri and Flynn from Tales of Vesperia. Flynn just doesn't get anything done until Yuri helps by basically being a murderer. I strongly prefer neutral good for heroes. I usually play neutral-leaning-on-lawful, but full-on lawful (or full-on chaos where you just assume every regime is suspect) sucks. I think Lawful/Chaotic good alignments are a product of their settings more than an inherent trait. Robin Hood works as chaotic good because the Prince/Sheriff is a dick that rules with an iron fist. King Arthur or Sir Gawain work as Lawful Good because their regime is just. It's a matter of context in most adventures, and I doubt a real lawful good character could in good conscience continue being lawful just because a corrupt regime attained power legitimately. I'm sure a very heavy RP-focused adventure could make changing a system from the inside engaging, but it would be difficult. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 31, 2015 04:22
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Cyron posted:2. i always see Chaotic Good as the "true hero" since sometimes to save the world you have to break some laws of man. Chaotic good postulates that evil inherently stems from order and laws. It's a very anarchist/libertarian point of view. Like I said, sometimes it works from the perspective of working from within a regime that's corrupt. However, sometimes, especially in a fantasy world, he king really is goodly and the nobles really are kind. A chaotic character wouldn't be able to accept this, it wouldn't fit with their worldview. Lawful characters get the opposite problem. They're wary of disorder and think that toppling a government will only lead to suffering. They'd prefer to try to lawfully change the leader, or remove inequity. In some ways, most people are inherently lawful. This doesn't necessarily mean they'll gleefully be an executioner just because the law says so, but it does mean that their first idea to reform the lovely military is probably going to be "put in a lot of years of effort to become a general and enact the reform from within." This is why I like neutral good. In fantasy, it's often much better (and much more suited to the game mechanics TBH) to topple corrupt regimes than change them, but a lot of the time just being law-abiding will open so many doors. Especially if the DM is trying to force-feed you NPC aid from the king. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jan 31, 2015 |
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Jan 31, 2015 04:35
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e X posted:I agree. The problem is that the first thing that comes to mind with "law" is the laws we deal with in everyday life, so you kind of default to law abiding citizen as archetype, hence the boring, goody two shoes stereotype. But like you said, that is not really what it is about, it simply refers to some kind of strict moral or procedural code that the characters follows. Which, when it comes to, let's say a paladin, would be the law of his order or his god, not whatever city state he is currently in. At least according the the D&D 5th ed rules, that's closer to Lawful Neutral. Lawful Good posted:Lawful good (LG) creatures can be counted on to do Lawful Neutral posted:Lawful neutral (LN) individuals act in accordance The descriptions of races aligned towards lawful also mention an importance on a "well-ordered society" quote:Alignment. Most dwarves are lawful, believing firmly Though I will be fair and say that Halfling slightly contradicts my description since they have "no tolerance for oppression": quote:Alignment. Most halflings are lawful good. As a rule, I still think it's just better to ignore alignment rules.
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Jan 31, 2015 09:36
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Wait, Penny Arcade are on the GG side? I know they've done some dumb poo poo (dickwolves; transphobic comments), but I really didn't expect that of all things. Especially given how obsessively anti-bullying Mike Krahulik is.
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Jan 31, 2015 10:09
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Benny the Snake posted:Alignment ought to be taken into consideration when creating your character. Back when I still had a Pathfinder group, I created and played a cleric who was an acolyte to the goddess of piracy. My DM suggested I go the escaped slave route, so my cleric's backstory was that he was a slave who made an appeal to the gods in desperation and made a pact with his goddess in exchange for the strength and power to lead a successful revolt. He was then taken in on a pirate ship and became their doctor. Chaotic Good was the obvious way to go and I made sure to adhere to it. In that module, there was a brothel and a madam who we needed to question. In character, I said straight out that everybody else should do the talking, lest I get into the madam's face about exploiting her girls since exploitation was a trigger for me to turn beligerent. We never made it to the next session which was a pity since I was planning in-game to lead the girls into a revolt. Some alignments work better than others for rp'ing, obviously. My personal take on Lawful Good is that if the two identities come into conflict for a character, the good should win. I think my issue with Lawful stems from when I played Neverwinter Nights. Bioware scarred me for life. I got enough alignment points away from Lawful to go straight to Neutral by doing something stupid like "disagreeing with a corrupt lord's authority to banish someone for trying to save the town" or something. It just made me hate the whole system. It really isn't a blanket condemnation of the idea, but it's usually implemented poorly.
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Jan 31, 2015 21:05
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I hated Kesha for a while. Or rather, I refused to like her. Then one day I just decided I was being a stupid hipster, said "gently caress it", and decided I unironically like Kesha. I don't listen to much pop music, but I will absolutely defend her. She's put out some of my favorite pop songs. They're fun, and I agree with JO that the overprocessed, autotuned sound is a stylistic choice and one that works. She's also a huge songwriter in the industry, instead of just a performer. She's incredibly talented. She may not be the best at any specific thing, but she's good enough at so many small things, and really knows how to bring it all together and make it just mesh. Die Young is fantastic and I don't care who knows I listen to it. I've never even been to a party or club and it's fantastic. I think if Taylor Swift is the Queen of Pop right now, Kesha can at least be a kickass duchess.
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Feb 2, 2015 11:13
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Arcsquad12 posted:I'm iffy on Takahata's filmography as well, though that includes Grave of the Fireflies. I'm kinda with Sage on this one, I don't really like seeing a man's apology letter to his dead sister being turned into a "shut the gently caress up and obey your parents" message. Really pretty to look at, but not without problems. I think Grave of the Fireflies is one of the greatest arguments for death of the author. "Yeah, I know what the author thinks the message is but gently caress that guy"
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Feb 2, 2015 22:45
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Feb 3, 2015 02:32
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I like one of the repliesquote:@femfreq @HarvardHumanist well i'm not a feminist i'm a huma- oh crap wait
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Feb 11, 2015 02:24
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Well, there's Shamus Young. I don't read Experienced Points or whatever much, but his blogs about his game programming projects and some of the long-form analyses are cool, so I assume his Escapist stuff is decent too. (Unless they dropped him?)
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Feb 14, 2015 00:18
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Tracula posted:With Patreon being such a big thing I'm astonished Yahtzee hasn't gone independent like Jim Sterling did. I'm sure he'd do pretty drat good for himself. Doesn't Yahtzee own a bar? I think at this point his web stuff, while likely being a significant source of side-income, is something he's not interested enough in or reliant enough on, to maintain on his own. I think he's perfectly happy having a publisher do all the marketing and webpage updating for him.
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Feb 14, 2015 02:15
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Tarquinn posted:Wait, what about the two amateur actors that appear in Doug's videos? Don't tell me they are doing that for free... Malcolm and Tamara are on payroll, yes. None of the producers are, though.
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Feb 15, 2015 09:00
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The only problem I really have with Hbomberguy is that his analyses are almost always explaining why some work you think is sexist or racist is really a clever satire or criticism of racism or sexism. I suppose I should admire the optimism to some degree. However, (and while I hate these terms for being overly confrontational, I can't think of any better ones here) it can feel like what people mean when they say "mansplaining" or "whitesplaining" etc. "No, let me explain to you why this work you find problems with is really okay. Nothing is wrong. Ignore the beheadings and keep your eyes forward." I don't think he's a bad person, but the apologetics can get questionable at times. E: I mean, there's not anything too wrong with that specific reading, I agree about the "mirror" filming, but it's part of a pattern. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Feb 17, 2015 |
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Feb 17, 2015 18:20
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Mraagvpeine posted:Thankfully she ended up better off than Lindsay Lohan. Now there's a tragic story. At least we still have Mean Girls.
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Feb 19, 2015 01:49
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Genetic Toaster posted:Well, The Escapist was always inflammatory trash masquerading as "schtick" (with the exception of latter-day MovieBob and the LRR guys, plus Extra Credits for the five minutes they were on Escapist) so this new guy looks like he'll fit in just fine! And Shamus, who I've never seen do anything wrong.
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Feb 22, 2015 01:33
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E: Nevermind, misinterpreted.
Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Feb 22, 2015 |
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Feb 22, 2015 02:30
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As I recall, in Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1 there were a couple of characters where it was strongly hinted that they were raped, but it was never focused on, just a backstory element*. It worked pretty well there. * Specifically, 1. The somewhat unhinged lady in the second episode who was stalking Clementine. It was implied that after the world went to poo poo her child was killed and she was raped several times which is what caused her to attach to Clem the way she did. 2. Molly slept with the Doctor in Crawford in exchange for medical supplies for her sister, but in Crawford being ill was sort of "illegal" because the entire town was sort of a subtly "take that" to the sociopathic way a lot of people claim they would act to survive a Zombie apocalypse. But the Doctor reneged on the deal immediately after one of the sexual encounters, essentially having sex with Molly under false pretenses, which lead to Molly's sister's death. I guess it's not quite strictly rape, but in the "sexual abuse" continuum. That's literally the only instance of it I can think of in a game that sort of worked, and it was deliberately downplayed and ancillary so it's not even that great of an example.
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Feb 22, 2015 07:27
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IronicDongz posted:At the end, he literally sacrifices his own life via taking a thrown spear to save the person it was aimed at. Which anyone reading would assume is all a final act to redeem him, but no! None of the characters think so, including the person he just gave his life to save, who seriously says[paraphrasing] "he may have done this one good thing, but all in all he was rotten. some creatures are just bad." Not having read the book in question (I've only read one Redwall book and it was back in middle school so I barely remember it), are you sure this wasn't meant to be a bit of irony? Like, this guy was really good but these mice can't see it? Obviously they're still the heroes but they can be flawed. Of course, I'm not optimistic that this is the case given that this is a book for children, and you probably would have mentioned if it was obviously true.
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Feb 22, 2015 22:03
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I just finished the video. Yeah, I don't think he was critiquing the society as racist in the later book...  You mentioned Tolkein when you talked about races being inherently evil. I'm not an expert on Tolkein (I can't stand the guy's prose enough to dedicate myself to that, for one), but as I understand it -- it's not that they're evil because they're orcs, it's that they're orcs because they're evil. In that an orc that became good would spontaneously become an elf. You can still do some nasty racist poo poo with that sort of idea, but I think it's a lot cooler and has a lot more potential for not being terrible than "these guys are evil because they are".
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Feb 22, 2015 22:15
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Jack Gladney posted:Does this mean that Jehovah exists in Lord of the Rings World? That seems even worse, theologically speaking, than just making it a heathen Viking world. Middle Earth has a bizarrely complicated monotheistic cosmic order to go along with its understandably complicated anthropology and linguistics. It closely mirrors Christianity with a few curveballs. His religion had a pretty big effect on his work, as was such with his BFF C.S. Lewis. CGP Grey explains Tolkien's mythology better than I could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxgsxaFWWHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKU0qDpu3AM
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Feb 23, 2015 00:06
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:I think there was actually some intent in Zelda 2 to make it into an epic duel but by the time most people got to the guy their health/lives/magic were so low I wouldn't be surprised if someone just instinctively ran to a corner, squatted and mashed the B button. Looks like it is. It's kind of boring and time consuming, though.
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Feb 23, 2015 00:35
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Spiritus Nox posted:It's worth noting that, as I understand it, Tolkien himself never came up with what he considered to be a satisfactory answer for the question of "the gently caress is with the Orcs." Between the Silmarillion and the LOTR books (and I'm pretty sure even within the works of the Silmarillion itself), there are multiple contradictory accounts or implications of what constitutes an Orc - one can only assume Tolkien meant to make things consistent once he found a good answer. Alas, it never happened. On the other hand, we could consider ourselves fortunate it never happened. It makes the world more interesting and ambiguous. I don't think Tolkien would have totally mucked it up, but it adds something that nobody really knows. Not even Tolkien. It's a legitimately hard question, much like real world theological ones like the problem of pain. Having no easy answers makes sense.
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Feb 23, 2015 01:18
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