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Probably so Isaac Send a noteboard - 14/03/2012 08:52:21 PM
Wiki does have a category for Belgian television but even had I thought of it first I didn't recognize any of the shows, even Tin Tin, which I was sure I'd know but only as it turns out because I kept putting 'Rin' in front of it. As for the search not being sensible, Nationality Recipe, Nationality History, Nationality News, and even Nationality *Films* work just fine. Nor is *sensible* necessarily applicable to me at all times, I did during my re-draft of this quiz today, when looking for other non-anime cartoons, use 'adult cartoons' as a search, which might be kinda dumb but it did actually give me two of my replacements when I rephrased it as 'cartoons for adults' after a quick head smack. It was never a criticism of anything, just an accident then produced a disturbing and vaguely humorous result.

Like I said, I never intended to be that guy who spoils everybody's fun by complaining about the questions on the quiz being unfair or unbalanced or whatnot - my post was merely intended as the good-humoured grumbling of those who have an abysmal score and aren't used to that. And then I observed, correctly I think, that comics and cartoons are a domain in which American influence abroad, in the present day, isn't nearly as extensive as it is in movies and (non-cartoon) TV shows (one of several reasons coming to mind is that having deeper pockets/a bigger home market doesn't make much of a difference for cartoons or comics while it absolutely does for movies and TV). By which I didn't mean to suggest that I expected you to make a more "balanced" quiz - just that you were likely to see a more pronounced difference between Americans and non-Americans on this one than on the previous quizzes.


I'd assumed the first post was meant in mild humor and my followups were initially meant in that spirit, then I suddenly thought I'd horribly misunderstood and you'd actually meant a mild reproach which I'd then have basically of spat on. At which point 'initiate crash backpedaling' kicks in.

As for the Belgian thing in general, and the 'everything well-known being American' comment, that's simply unfair. I read the comments on the quizzes and see what people did or didn't get so I can better future quizzes, it made perfect sense to follow the lead and to start with the first country that came to mind which was Belgium for obvious reasons. I hardly limit it to American material, Sunday's quiz referenced a British series, Canadian sci-fi shows have got named in prior ones, this one hand multiple Japanese ones. Nonetheless, I, the person who writes these, am most familair with English material and the board's one shared trait is everyone speaks English and so it will be, as I said, mostly unavoidable that most of it will be American because most English language TV, movies, books, etc come from English language nations and the US is the biggest one of those and does produce more proportionally where TV and movies are concerned. I've no idea what the value is but I'm pretty confident if we have a series name-off to see what the top twenty book/film/comic/TV are on the site in terms of familiarity at least half of them will be American and a large part of the remainder will be British and I would write quizzes on any of those that I knew well enough to make a question about over ones I didn't know or ones I loved but no one else knew. That is what was meant by 'unavoidable'

I think I covered the latter part of your paragraph above. I didn't really intend you to write such a serious reply as you did, but when you did, it did indeed irritate me. Belgium is a funny little country and there are few things about the country that Belgians are generally proud of, but as chance would have it, Belgium's world class comic book scene happens to be one of them (beer is another) - and when you live in a small country that doesn't have many claims to fame, you tend to guard the ones you do have jealously. Some part of that mentality is hard to suppress even when you're fully aware of its absurdity, as I am. We don't really expect Americans to know or care about Belgian comic books or indeed Belgian anything, as a rule, but when you actually bother to investigate, or to pretend to investigate, and then reach that conclusion, yes, well. For all that people here like to look down on nationalism or even patriotism, they still have certain reflexes.


The comic books I now know about since in my usual obsessive fashion I spent a hour or so looking up such things and reading up on Franco-Belgian comics. The beer I can attest to firsthand, and my neck of the woods has a parallel for wine that's perhaps less-deserved and doubly touchy,like I said I think that this one's my fault for initially reacting with humor then suddenly thinking I'd over-stepped a line. 'American insults foreigner' is also a pretty deeply ingrained reaction especially if you've spent a lot of time overseas mostly traveling in the company of 18-23 year old drunken soldiers, I probably reflexively jerk into damage control mode which often works out badly.

As for the "really not as unavoidable as you'd think", that didn't really mean anything other than to convey my displeasure at your reply in general, I guess. :P

All that said, I want to apologize for having hijacked your thread and brought controversy to what was supposed to be simple fun. I don't know that any of my posts really contained anything I need to apologize for as such, but I'm sorry about the result.


I think we both hijacked this one together in one of the moments of 'oops', fortunately the view count is low on these :P
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
- Albert Einstein

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Test Your Geekdom, Vol IV: Name That Toon - 13/03/2012 08:15:13 PM 1195 Views
Answers - 13/03/2012 08:18:27 PM 638 Views
I take issue with three of those. - 15/03/2012 04:29:39 PM 549 Views
Well the definitions aren't that ambigous - 15/03/2012 06:11:03 PM 622 Views
These seem to be getting increasingly obscure... I suppose that makes sense in a way. - 13/03/2012 08:49:04 PM 515 Views
Mostly a byproduct of why this quiz appears so soon after the last - 13/03/2012 08:58:43 PM 564 Views
On this one more than all the rest, nationality will tell, I guess. - 13/03/2012 09:03:12 PM 507 Views
That's probably a bit unavoidable - 13/03/2012 09:24:39 PM 574 Views
Really not as unavoidable as you'd think, I would be inclined to say after that reply. - 13/03/2012 10:26:42 PM 622 Views
Re: Really not as unavoidable as you'd think, I would be inclined to say after that reply. - 13/03/2012 10:40:01 PM 720 Views
Re: Really not as unavoidable as you'd think, I would be inclined to say after that reply. - 13/03/2012 11:02:18 PM 564 Views
I think you're being a trifle unfair - 14/03/2012 12:19:41 AM 493 Views
From where I'm standing, you're the one who started taking things too seriously. - 14/03/2012 07:26:53 PM 495 Views
Probably so - 14/03/2012 08:52:21 PM 630 Views
I totally remembered his name until you asked the question. - 13/03/2012 11:14:19 PM 679 Views
I only knew 1, 3, 5, and 10. - 13/03/2012 09:20:56 PM 571 Views
1, 3, 5, 7 for me - 13/03/2012 09:34:55 PM 676 Views
16; not bad for a non-comic geek, IMHO. - 13/03/2012 10:58:48 PM 741 Views
A lot are eponymous - 14/03/2012 12:31:17 AM 561 Views
Do be a Do-Bee (DO, DO, DO!) - 14/03/2012 01:08:49 AM 667 Views
Re: Do be a Do-Bee (DO, DO, DO!) - 14/03/2012 01:14:50 AM 575 Views
Nostalgic parody, perhaps? - 14/03/2012 10:51:14 AM 639 Views
That's probably as good as any other - 14/03/2012 12:32:16 PM 522 Views
12 - 13/03/2012 11:29:30 PM 1131 Views
I got three right off the top of my head. - 13/03/2012 11:36:48 PM 588 Views

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