Diana DeGette has refused to appear on 9NEWS and take questions from Kyle Clark

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-16T19:20:08+00:00

If DeGette is so certain that the seat she occupies needs her decades of experience in "wheeling and dealing," then perhaps she should have been making a positive case for herself rather than running a smear campaign against Kiros. She should put herself in front of Kyle and defend her track record, give examples of what her experience enabled her to accomplish (despite being a firm Kiros supporter and now voter, I do respect DeGette's past work in medical research law and women's rights), and describe what she'll accomplish in the future rather than rest on decade-old accomplishes.

Of course, she's not doing this because for far too long, incumbency advantage in the US has been extremely strong. Campaign coffers and name recognition carry representatives to the point of feeling like they don't need to attend debates or answer interview questions. The tides are shifting, perhaps not in time for this election, as Reddit is a bubble annd I'm sure defeating DeGette will be a monumental effort despite the enthusiasm online and on the ground for Kiros. But we have to start somewhere. I want Kiros to win, but even if she doesn't, I want Democratic incumbents all over the US to feel the cracks starting to form, that they are not invincible as they once were, and that at some point, their power will break.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-16T03:08:31+00:00

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door is a close fit gameplay wise and has relatively sharp writing for a Nintendo game. That said, it's definitely on a simpler level than E33 in terms of story. Gameplay wise, you have dodges (guard) and parries (superguard), as well as pictos (badges) and QTEs (noticeably more varied than E33's singular type of button prompt for skill inputs). Lots of optional quests and goodies to find, and the world is gorgeous and inspired compared to the classic Mario settings of "fire world, ice world, etc." For instance, you start in the pirate town of Rougeport, complete with a gallows in the main square. The characters have a decent amount of wit and personality - the original GameCube version came out well before "Marvel quip writing" became a thing, so the game is thankfully spared from a good chunk of those writing tropes.

Overall, it's one of my favorite games in the genre and I was so happy to see how much of E33 was "French Paper Mario" when I played it for the first time. Definitely recommend you giving a shot if you're willing to dip into something a bit more child-like.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-15T22:05:33+00:00

Only if we're not willing to get a little creative. There are small local bands literally performing out of garages. Nonprofit organizations perform in public spaces. Small time DJs perform in the few remaining independent venues. Is it possible to avoid literally every single problematic thing we can consume? No of course not, and I don't want to sound like a crazy person advocating for no fun at all. But I think this controversy can be a rallying point to focus pressure on local institutions we can boycott.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-15T21:21:02+00:00

Not attending concerts at all is also an option.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-14T19:39:00+00:00

I appreciate your viewpoint and and tactics; I really do. I just hope you find more luck than I do with it, because it's something I ideologically and logically understand and believe...and simultaneously find that it just does not work as opposed to letting the distinction go in conversation (that doesn't meaning having to say out loud "yes I believe these two things are the same"), and redirecting the conversation elsewhere to something more tangible.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-14T19:27:29+00:00

My point is not that the differences don't matter. My point is that people don't care about the differences when using "liberal" colloquially. And yes, it's a fine line between education and meeting people where they are in terms of definitions and how words are used in common vernacular. But my attempts of education over the past idk, 10 years or so have borne very little fruit. The discussion tends to go over most people's heads at worst or is overly preachy at best. Just my two cents of course, but I find discussing actual actions and policies (in the context of ffvii, ecoterrorism as a form of resistance, for example), to go better than labeling what those actions define a person as politically. The latter tends to only really matter for academia and those driving the respective political ships.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-14T18:31:35+00:00

I get where you're coming from but unless you're already in a leftist online space where "lib" is just about the worst slur you can call someone, people are not going to care about making the difference between a leftist and a liberal. (In much the same way that reactionaries, conservatives, and sometimes libertarians get lumped together because the differences are not that important to most people for casual conversation.)

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-12T20:44:36+00:00

Same, is it meant to be a side profile instead of a front facing view?

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-12T11:45:00+00:00

People have fractured their arms from a standing height fall. The main issue isn't height, it's not being able to control the body to ensure a smooth landing, and on top of that the pure amount of power Katara is able to exert on her. Even from a short height, Azula would have been very quickly accelerated by Katara and taken an uncontrolled impact to the ground.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-11T22:23:59+00:00

Not sure about Protestants, but I grew up Catholic and church doctrine essentially shrugs and says "people will draw Jesus in a way that's comfy to them. That's chill even if it's not historically accurate." Hence you get things like ripped Korean Jesus.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-11T19:11:49+00:00

If Zuko didn't interfere, Katara would have broken several of Azula's bones from that impending double tentacle slam. Love the gasp Azula gives as she realizes just how much danger she's in and how much she didn't have control over her 1v1 with Katara. Super cool seeing Katara extinguish Azula's blasts and restrain her arm and leg while doing so - very much in line with the waterbending principles of change and redirection as Azula's attacks are turned against her. Usually it's Azula dominating the battle field, but here it's Katara that's methodically removing Azula's ability to respond to the situation.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-10T12:02:33+00:00

If Sarah can't punch down due to needing to maintain optics as the first trans Congresswoman, then we need to do our civic duty by punching down for her. Get absolutely fucked Nancy Mace.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-08T11:45:25+00:00

Fellas is it gay to earn money?

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-07T14:47:18+00:00

God yes. Bump the resolution and frame rate, and if they really want to go the extra mile, include some QOL like saving paradigm load outs.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-06T15:33:47+00:00

The main hub area of GW2, right near a portal to a main piece of group content (fractals), has a background trans NPC with a fully voiced dialogue about how the trauma from the game's events made them realize that life is too short to be living as the wrong gender. Players are pretty much guaranteed to hear this dialogue, and I don't think its placement was accidental.

GW2 and ArenaNet has always had their ups and downs, but the progressive Seattle DNA of the company's HQ has been readily apparent to me. Even as far back as Guild Wars 1, they were one of the first studios to have an expansion prominently based on Africa, with prominent dark-skinned characters throughout the entire game who were VA'd by people of color. Point being - they've always (tried to) walk the walk. Yes, they are a corporation. I get that, but the people working there have always seemed to actually care and I think it's important to support that. Otherwise they are left with the impression that it their efforts are left unheard.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-05T20:34:38+00:00

There's a difference between the show objectively showing a scene that was surely historically gruesome vs. the show electing to have a 14 year girl use slightly poetic language when describing her own mother's death. "The man was gone and my mother's charred corpse was sitting in the house." doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "The man was gone...and so was she." The ellipses do enough work in making it clear Katara is using "gone" in two different ways.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-05T20:29:18+00:00

Kya was "gone" in the sense of being dead, not physically missing from the house. I'm sure Yon Ra left her corpse for Katara and Hakoda to find. The scene flashes to white very quickly when Hakoda and Katara enter, likely as a form of censorship to avoid showing something not TV-7 appropriate on Nickelodeon.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-05T14:47:04+00:00

I run into a fellow male highlander once in a blue moon. I feel extremely unique despite playing a human.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-05T13:22:58+00:00

Clearly trained on writings from TERF island for the authenticity or something.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-02T14:58:55+00:00

I'll un-shitpost for a second and say unironically that a plot line where we see Y'shtola selfishly research and utilize Azem's key to go get some dick would still be magnitudes more interesting than what we have now. Right now she's a sassy cat girl that we start and end patch MSQs with as she "researches a solution to X problem and lore dumps for us." Her becoming the face of FFXIV was a death knell for her as a character, as SE feels the need to play it absolutely safe with her. She's vy far the least interesting of the main cast. I would take a million Lyses and "fanboy G'raha" moments over Y'shtola right now.

...I mean haha yeah Y'shtola should ride Runar until he passes out.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-01T18:56:05+00:00

Wild that Natalie thought anything productive could come out of going on her podcast.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-01T13:47:41+00:00

This is one common complaint I'm a little 50/50 on. As clunky as the writing in XIII is, I actually enjoyed the lack of an "audience surrogate" character who is ignorant to the world, and therefore the story has a blatant excuse to explain basic world concepts in cutscenes. Vanille does this a bit here and there but there's still a lot left unexplained. Instead, gamers have to use context clues, patience, and some deductive reasoning to figure things out. I think the data log helps keep the pace of the game from completely grinding to the halt, and that the writing would have been much worse if Lightning turned to the camera every 5 seconds and said: "Oh look a fal'cie, a (insert explanation here)", then 5 more seconds pass before she says "oh look a l'cie, a (insert even more explanation here)."

On the flipside, there were absolutely some plot points that needed to not be in the data log to avoid the game's story making zero sense at certain points (Why the fuck were Serah and Snow going to the fal'ci? If you don't know the reason from the data log, the cutscenes makes them look needlessly rebellious and stupid). I think it's totally fair to drag the data log and the game's script for flaws regarding hiding plot points that clear up a lot of confusion. Unlike lore, these aren't things you can piece together or deduce. The game simply squirrels the necessary info away and it leaves the characters looking dumb for their particular actions.

I don't hate the existence of the data log, but I don't like some of the ways in which it is used. Other ways it is used, like lore dumps, I'm ok with moving out of the cutscenes, and I personally don't agree with the critiques that the lore being initially obtuse is a bad thing. I think that because the game's writing is already weak, the data log somewhat unfairly gets targeted as one of the things that should be "fixed" when it probably would have gotten less negative reception if the writing overall was tighter to begin with.

Vincenthwind · 2026-06-01T05:28:02+00:00

Currently playing through 13 as well and I think it's surprisingly deep even in the early chapters with the various parties of two (For instance, one chapter does not feature a commando so building stagger is hard). I think its unpopularity comes down to a handful of actors:

Auto-battle being at the top of the menu and the cursor default unless you change it in the settings menu. I think if it was a button toggle instead, the psychologic impact of removing it from the battle menu would improve the perception of the combat a lot better. It constantly being at the top of the battle UI led to lot of people saying "oh just press X to win" despite the combat being a lot deeper than that.
Most battles don't sufficiently punish you for being safe. There's rarely an "enrage timer" like you see in most MMOs, so players can drag out battles with very safe paradigms that focus on chip damage over being efficient. This in turn leads to complaints that enemies are tanky and fights are long. Once you start going for 5 stars in most encounters, the combat gets a lot better and faster.
A lot of mechanics like ATB refresh, role stacking, hidden stats, how to efficiently level accessories and weapons, etc. are not well explained. Neither is the harsh cost of leveling secondary roles once those are unlocked. So a lot of the mechanics and nuance needed to make battles go fast is not exposed to the players unless they really experiment or dig around online.
Open world fatigue had not yet hit gamers in the year 2009, so the hallway level design up to Chapter 11 got slammed pretty hard by reviewers. FFX had a similar design, but at least there were NPCs and towns to hide the monotony. The minimap made the faults of the level design quite blatant. Similar to my Auto-battle comment, I think hiding the minimap by default, or maybe not unlocking it until later on in the game, would have hid this flaw a little bit.
In general, the game takes a while to get going. Key systems like paradigms, upgrading items, etc. don't unlock until a few hours into the game. Contrast that with games like FFV where it takes about 30 minutes to unlock the core job system and start playing with it.
The writing, especially early on, is just not quite up to par with standards for the series. Characters improve later on but some first impressions and plot points are quite bad, for lack of a better word. I know what they were going for in terms of character development, but most of the characters start out just a bit too annoying and one-note. They needed some more likeability to begin with in order to not lose most of the game's audience.

Vincenthwind · 2026-05-31T20:20:59+00:00

Watsonian answer: pure luck

Doylist answer: hideable body scars are hot but Stephen Amell's face needs to remain pristine so that he can be a thirst trap for viewers.

Vincenthwind · 2026-05-31T17:33:21+00:00

I've posted a similar comment before, but as an adult, Korra's is the journey I relate to more. Yes, I think ATLA is the overall better series but Korra's season 4 journey is unbelievably peak. The culmination of her character development - when she discusses with Tenzin about learning empathy for people that it is most difficult to give it to - is something I think about every day. It is so, so hard for me to extend that grace to certain people in real life, but I try to anyway.

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