Loki

Cracking album though. This one always amuses me when I pull it out of the rack - The epitome of 70s soul covers.

@The Gaffer Yeah - I just mean a backlash against the generally socially progressive trend of the last few decades. And you're absolutely right about parents/relatives - even my folks, as liberal as they come, have weird red lines that seem to anger them. Gay marriage was a big one - despite having had gay friends all their lives, the access to the institution of marriage was the point at which they balked. I think a lot of that is natural inertia as you approach old age, where you become more and more disconnected from the bleeding edge of social discourse and more and more set in your ways. In that respect the older generation not understanding the younger generation is a constant throughout history, but we're definitely seeing a worldwide rise in backlash against the prevailing direction of travel. We should probably just delete the internet, it's not been a force for good.

I do wonder where this backlash against modernity will end. As easy as it is to laugh at the weirdos online, or have a chuckle at anti-vax literature, a lot of this stuff has gone from fringe conspiracy groups to mainstream political parties in probably less than a decade. And as you can see in the US it doesn't take that long to infect mainstream politics - the GOP has become the party of QAnon and anti-science, anti-woke in really only two election cycles. With the rise of far-right politics in the US and across Europe, it will surely arrive here soon in terms of mainstream political discourse - I don't mean the Lee Andersons of the world but probably the opposition Conservative party/leader post the next election. And it will bring with it other elements like anti-abortion etc. I think the next election after this will be fought on the stuff in this thread.

She's a terrible author, I think that's where a lot of this comes from. She's lazy, she steals without realising it, and in the latter stages of her career didn't have a decent editor so her books becoming rambling messes. She pretty much lifted the whole idea of Harry Potter from A Wizard of Earthsea (and then claimed she didn't, which is bollocks). And it annoys me that Potter became so much more ubiquitous than Earthsea because Le Guin is one of the greatest authors of her generation and her books are fantastically complex and deal with topics like race and sexuality in a properly mature fashion. I had to read the last two Potter novels when I was working on the games, and it was awful. They're just bad books.

It's not got that much better in the intervening years, I can tell you. Even in the last few years I have had heated conversations with co-workers about the implicit sexism of people's work, and had to advocate for a more inclusive approach. A lot of games companies are 70-90% male staffed, and so a lot of the time it's just a blindness to inbuilt biases. Like for example making the "default" skin of a female character a tiny bikini where the male default is t-shirt and shorts. Or having no female enemies to fight in a game. Or making a bunch of haunted weapons, and they're all haunted by male ghosts. That sort of thing. It's never malicious and deliberate, it's just a lack of wider thought. When you're the only woman in a meeting of 15 artists, you have to be very, very self-confident to speak out about this, so often it just passes unremarked. And the number of women in senior development positions is still far too low, so senior management meetings are often all male. It's hard to redress the balance, especially in larger companies. I've quietly managed to hire more female juniors into my departments over the years but some companies don't like the idea of positive discrimination so you can't do it overtly. Also there are so few women candidates. So I've worked with a university to set up bursaries for female students to encourage more girls to do videogame degrees, but obviously that's only going to produce a few more candidates a year. You do what you can. On the flip side, I've heard from more than one female game developer that Lara Croft inspired them to get into games. Yes, she was 50% polygon norks, but she did represent a genuine female voice and protagonist which was unusual at the time (Janus in Metroid is silent and in a power suit). Having playable, voiced female characters is fairly well established now across game franchises, and that in the long term will encourage more girls to play games, and then consider it as a career. TL:DR games dev is still a sausage fest. Still, at least people don't download hardcore porn onto their work computers any more, that was a thing when I joined the business.

It seems a bit nitpicking to critique Ripley's reign when having the belt for a year AND being part of a major faction has made Rhea Ripley into the biggest female wrestling star in the world. It's worked brilliantly, and if the sacrifice was a few extra matches with Liv or whoever it's definitely been worth it. It's a pity she's had to vacate but they had no way of predicting that. In retrospect they should have had her lose at WM but that's hindsight. This has been bugging me for a year now, but it's obviously deliberate as they've had many opportunities to rebrand it. I think it's a WWE bubble thing, those inside the company just don't see the issue.

It was a nice try but people didn't even read your initial post before kicking off. I think you can make an individual case for most people on the AEW roster. It's just the sheer quantity that is the issue. Sure, Moxley has value, but if you cut the roster by 30% then Khan would be forced to use the remaining wrestlers better. You start to understand why WWE traditionally cuts a bunch of wrestlers after Wrestlemania - you need some turnover or you'll never admit defeat, people will never get pushed out of their comfort zone and new stars won't emerge. There's whole swathes of the roster that haven't achieved much in 5 years. Private Party - couldn't tell you who is who in that team and they've been on tv since 2019. Those two brothers who both look like Action Andretti, and seem to be tagging with Action Andretti. So much dead wood that's on telly all the time. As well as thinning the roster, I'd hugely thin the belts out. Samoa Joe spent the first 12 months in AEW poncing around on ROH TV with a meaningless belt. Get rid of all the ROH belts but the World Championship (which will only appear on ROH tv), get rid of the trios title, get rid of one of the midcard belts (International, Continental, whatever they are called). I actually liked the Power Rankings and all that from earlier in AEW (/January this year), and the idea that people were moving up and moving down. You can see the attraction of the old territory system can't you. Imagine if AEW, WWE, TNA all had a core roster of 30 guys, and everyone else rotated around the majors and the indies as genuine free agents.

Am I right in thinking that no AEW belts were defended at AEW Battle of the Belts?

Difficult to quantify, it’s mainly a gut feeling. There’s lot of showmanship in their acts, a lot of appealing to the back row that would translate well into big arenas and glossy WWE entrances. They’re both very attractive as well and have matinee looks if you know what I mean. They’ll get a lot of likes, reposts, sell a lot of merch. None of this precludes them from being a success in AEW but there are just certain wrestlers that look like WWE could make a lot of money with/for. I’d love to know how AEW merch cheques compare with WWE ones. I imagine some wrestlers could double their income. You have to think it’s one of the reasons Jade went there.

Congratulations everyone for taking a potentially fun little topic and dragging it down into a WWE v AEW debate again and arguing over the rules. @RedRooster I think your list isn't a bad shout although I think Dannhausen belongs on the indies, or preferably not at all as he's awful. Moxley I've said many times is wasted in AEW. He's being allowed to do exactly what he wants, which is random bloody matches across the Indies and Japan with an occasional bloody match on AEW tv when he has the time. I'm sure he's loving it but his star has very much faded, and he would slot straight into some of the biggest main event stories in years in WWE, so it's a no-brainer. I can't see a place for Eddie Kingston in WWE. For me, he's quickly become the heart and soul of AEW - if it's not a place for wrestlers like him, what IS it for? Unlike so many of the ex-WWE guys who came over for a "proper push" and discovered they were the issue, Eddie finally got his shot and has made himself beloved, the crazy out of shape lunatic. Unless the WWE were prepared to make him their modern Mick Foley, I just think he wouldn't work in the Fed. Ricky Starks and Britt Baker both feel like more natural WWE stars anyway. To that list I'd add Jamie Hayter when she's healthy, she pisses charisma. Although AEW can't really afford to lose her to be fair. Penta was the first name I thought of when I read the topic. He always strikes me as a genuine main eventer, such a talent and such a look, but he's always just... knocking around, taking losses and tagging randomly with people depending on his brother's health. Put a bit of WWE spit and polish on the gimmick, some decent lighting in his entrance and he'd be selling merchandise all round the block. WWE have wanted a Mysterio replacement for years, and seem to have settled on replacing Mysterio with himself but a lot older. So Penta could be the masked star they've been searching for.

This was almost inevitable after Israel crossed the line with their attack on a consulate in Syria. There aren't that many rules in international politics, but the sanctity of embassies is one of them; otherwise diplomacy is impossible. Best case is that Israels formidable anti-missile and anti-aircraft systems intercept the drones and missiles; they might then limit their response. Worst case, Bibi has nukes although he can't launch them on his own (unlike POTUS). Most likely Israel will strike some military targets in Iran, which they do relatively often anyway.

This is an excellent idea. If Khan has the self-awareness that he needs to delegate some booking, D’Amore is probably the best person out there right now, with great reputation amongst the indy wrestlers Khan seems so keen to hire.

It's not, and it led to some execrable tv from WWE over the years. However, Vince grew up in the wrestling industry and worked in it for years before getting the book. And over the years his booking decisions led to the industry booming to extraordinary heights. So he has that in his favour.

I nominate Chris Jericho.

The only roles that really get descriptions are the ones which are not-white, so Othello or Shylock where their appearance deviates from the norm and in some way reflects their nature (or not depending on how you read the subtext). This makes sense when you think that until probably the 1960s you'd just get a white actor to paint some dark slap on their face to play Othello. Otherwise every character is assumed to be white, as indeed the vast majority of people in England in Elizabethan England would have been white. It's in our lifetimes that having people who LOOK like the characters so be routinely cast as those characters. Ben Kingsley being cast as Gandhi is the example that always amazes me. Shows how far we've come already. It's an interesting debate that's happening in the US over casting generally. Having got to the point of having trans actors cast in trans roles is a huge step forward for the acting profession. But then you have Hunter Schafer saying, quite understandably, that she doesn't WANT to play trans roles as it's pigeonholing. She just wants to be cast for her acting talent. The answer really is for writers to write characters that aren't simply defined by their visual appearance / sexuality / gender - that way casting can be completely open and free. But that's obviously incredibly hard, not many writers can do that. Famously the characters in Alien weren't gender specific and Sigourney Weaver ended up getting the lead role. Shonda Rimes I think writes like this, which is perhaps why Bridgerton ended up with such a fantastically diverse cast.