Yeah, I’m not happy about the Switch 2, but the amount of cope is unbelievable. I’ve seen multiple people claiming, “the Wii U sold out a launch too,” even though the Wii U sold worse than the Wii on opening weekend. The sales might still fall off a cliff in a month, but breaking the PS4’s record for launch sales is not a great sign.

These days he looks more like this:

Uh, you OK? That was a borderline SI statement.

Yeah, I do remember that the series ended with him being given the opportunity to become God (AKA the narrator of the show), and him turning it down, creating a universe without God, which appeared to make everything the same but without narration. I assume that was related to the cosmic energy? Fun idea, but, to bring it back to Theseus, his continued consciousness despite his physical transformation into energy implies the existence of an intangible part of his being (AKA a soul) that continues beyond his human brain. If we ever prove that transporters are teleporting our souls, I’ll happily use one. Otherwise, they are 100% suicide booths.

I don’t know, but I know destroying every cell in your body at once is called suicide.

I did, and I remember enjoying it, but that was 10 years ago and I don’t remember it that well. Did they have a teleporter?

Yeah, but you didn’t shed them all at once. If the ship of Theseus exploded, and then they built a new one, the question wouldn’t be, “Which is the true ship of Theseus?” it would be, “Hey, did you guys see Theseus’ new ship?”

Yeah, Eric Adam’s did this to send a message, but I don’t think he realized what the message was or how it would be received.

Not sure, though, how this ploy would work out for our fine fellows in South America and Canada, the ones currently belabored with being the closest neighbours…

Fuck Mexico, I guess.

There’s gotta be a name for quadrupling down on a bad take. I think it’s called Reddit brain.

Morons: “I think using AI for this is lazy, and the result is ugly.”

You (a genius): “This is exactly like fascism.”

Hey, “um, actually,” is half my comments, so I can’t talk. Also, thanks for the info. It was a conspiracy theory that I heard a couple of times but never bothered to look up.

Calling it now, this is the Coke/New Coke/Coke Classic strategy. Coke was good, New Coke sucked, and when they went back to Coke Classic, people were so happy they didn’t even notice that they swapped out the sugar for corn syrup. They were HBO Max, then they became Max, added in a bunch of reality TV slop, and dropped a bunch of their other content. I bet they’ll announce they’re bringing back half of the library they dropped for the 30 House Hunters spin-offs they added and hope people will count it as a win.

Yeah, I’m definitely not trying to diminish her as a character. Her sexuality is never explicitly stated, and the film doesn’t seem particularly interested in addressing it, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions. The fact that she’s a Marine at all is notable, since women weren’t allowed to hold combat roles when the film was made, and it’s awesome that Vasquez breaks gender norms without being demonized or treated like a punchline. All in all, she was an especially progressive character for 1986.

But there is definitely a theme of the film that masculinity (or what we would now call toxic masculinity) is inferior to femininity, specifically maternal femininity. All of these brash, hotshot marines spend the first act of the film belittling Ripley, despite her first hand knowledge of the threat. Ripley is also the only one to take the time to develop a relationship with Newt, despite the fact that she’s the only colonist to survive the Aliens, while the Marines see her as unimportant. They are then immediately massacred in their first encounter with aliens and crumble (especially Hudson) when their big guns and big talk are ineffective.

Besides Ripley and Newt, the only survivors are Bishop and Hicks. Bishop is a male presenting android, but he’s not like the Marines, being much more quiet, thoughtful, and diplomatic, stereotypically feminine attributes. Hicks is a much more traditionally masculine character, but despite becoming the ranking officer during the mission, he’s willing to be deferential to Ripley and allow her to lead.

The film is about Ripley, a grieving mother, finding a surrogate daughter and protecting her, and it is the characteristics of her role as a mother that allow her to overcome the threat of the Aliens. Meanwhile, the tough, masculine characters she’s paired with proved to be no match for that same threat, which in the third act is revealed to be another mother in the form of the Xenomorph Queen. It’s awesome that Vasquez represents a non-gender confirming character, especially one made 40 years ago, but that fact that she’s a masculine-coded character means she’s part of the gender spectrum being critiqued in the film.

Ripley and Vasquez are antithetical. Vasquez’s strength comes from enbracing masculinity. She’s in a traditionally male profession, she’s stereotypically, “butch,” (short hair, muscular, etc.), she’s aggressive, and she belittles Ripley with her male peers. The film even calls attention to this early on (“Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?”…“No. Have you?”). Meanwhile, Ripley is similarly a strong woman, but she doesn’t need to reject femininity to show strength. She weeps when she learns that her daughter died and later develops a maternal connection with Newt, but she’s more than capable of picking up a gun and giving orders when needed. She’s also in a traditionally male profession (which she demonstrates when she uses the power loader), but she doesn’t let that define her. She never seeks the approval of the male characters or behaves like them to achieve her goals.

I’ve heard it argued that Vasquez is a sort of queer coded sheild for Ripley, allowing audiences to enjoy Ripley as a strong female character without worrying about her sexuality (“No, Ripley’s not a lesbian; that’s a lesbian.”), but I don’t think that’s fair to either character. Vasquez is a heroic character in her own right, not wanting abandon teammates and ultimately sacrificing herself so that others can escape. But the film is about motherhood, and Vasquez, just like all the other marines, isn’t capable of maternal behavior. I think in the end, Vasquez’s character is meant to demonstrate that Ripley is a bad-ass because of her femininity, not in spite of it.

Relatable.

There’s a Lovecraft story about this exact thing. It doesn’t end well.

Same.

True, but to be fair, if I’d been watching Mr. Rogers as a kid and Big Bird showed up, ripped his own head off, and revealed a middle-aged man hiding inside, I probably would have been traumatized.

Mr. Rogers really wanted to encourage children’s imaginations, but he didn’t want them to confuse fantasy and reality. That’s why there’s such a strong delineation between his house and the Neighborhood of Make Believe. He also did more than one, “behind the scenes,” episode to show the neighborhood wasn’t real, and even mentioned on occasion that his, “house,” was just his, “television house,” where he would visit with the viewer, not his real house where he lived (which explains why he leaves at the end of every episode). When Big Bird was set to do a crossover episode, Rogers initially wanted the puppeteer to remove the costume and show children how it worked. The puppeteer didn’t want to destroy Big Bird for children, so they compromised by only having Big Bird visit the Neighborhood of Make Believe. However, there are two regular characters (Handyman Negri and Mr. McFeely) who appear in both the Neighborhood of Make Believe and the Mr Rogers house, which potentially blurs the line between real and make believe.