On that subject, I've taken a look through my younger sister's reading list and got some strong flashbacks to high school and my wrangles with teachers over me reading in class (some were okay with it, drove some of them nuts. Particularly the English classes.)
Here's my most-hated list of things were covered in high school, in no particular order.
-A Separate Peace (I called Phineas' death within a few page of his introduction and I'd never heard of the book before this class. If a sixteen year old can figure it out from knowing that Literature Is Depressing and being cool in a piece of Literature is a god-damned death sentence...it doesn't need to have a Spoiler tag.)
-Brave New World
-Animal Farm (As near as I can tell, this is covered extensively in class because twenty years isn't long enough for the educational system to realize the Cold War is over. Yes, it's a very complex allegory and totally called a bunch of stuff. But it's not a good read.)
-Of Mice and Men
-Romeo and Juliet (if this is the greatest romantic tragedy evar, the others must be a torment to the brain. Also, two dumb teenagers hyped up on hormones isn't romance. It's a start, but it's not there yet.)
And here's the stuff that was actually allright:
-Macbeth
-Beowulf
-The Odyssey
-Dracula
-Looking through my textbook, I found the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Which was fun to read for some reason, but makes me wonder why the hell it's regarded at all if the author admitted that having the moral be 'treat animals with love' is both a weaksauce moral, and stupid that there's a moral to that weirdass story at all.
-Julius Caesar was allright. What I remember of it.
Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.
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Last edited by Maxus on Fri Jul 31, 2009 5:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Lago PARANOIA
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Animal Farm was written before the Cold War started. George Orwell was communist who fought in the Spanish civil war and his book and future writings was colored by that experience; the underlying message of that book (how a revolution could be betrayed) would've found its way into a book even if Lenin had ghetto-stabbed Stalin in the face while on his deathbed.
So that said, I'm baffled how anyone could say that it's not a relevant book. It's a timeless tale of how people can give up their freedom through a spiral of lies and fears and is packaged in a way that a small child can understand. The fact that it viciously skewers the Lenin/Stalin era of the Soviet Union is just a bonus on top of that. It'd be an awesome (through probably not classic) book even without the satire.
So that said, I'm baffled how anyone could say that it's not a relevant book. It's a timeless tale of how people can give up their freedom through a spiral of lies and fears and is packaged in a way that a small child can understand. The fact that it viciously skewers the Lenin/Stalin era of the Soviet Union is just a bonus on top of that. It'd be an awesome (through probably not classic) book even without the satire.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
I gladly acknowledge its literary importance and the moral lesson.
It just happened to turn most of my peers off reading. Well, it and the rest of the required reading list. The Powers That Be complain about how young people don't read these days...then make the stuff the young people are exposed to some really depressing shit. If you want to get them on the joy of the written word, find something that's not so dry or anything.
I was dumbstruck to find that the local schools now have Good Omens as an option for summer reading--pretty much the year after I graduated high school.
It's pretty bad when the happiest thing you read for the summer in four years of high school was Dracula.
It just happened to turn most of my peers off reading. Well, it and the rest of the required reading list. The Powers That Be complain about how young people don't read these days...then make the stuff the young people are exposed to some really depressing shit. If you want to get them on the joy of the written word, find something that's not so dry or anything.
I was dumbstruck to find that the local schools now have Good Omens as an option for summer reading--pretty much the year after I graduated high school.
It's pretty bad when the happiest thing you read for the summer in four years of high school was Dracula.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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PhoneLobster
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Lago PARANOIA
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If they can't get through Animal Farm then I don't know what to say. It's short, requires no outside research to get, and is written at a fourth-grade reading level. It's not even a particularly angsty book; I thought Charlotte's Web was more angsty and everyone loves that damn book.It just happened to turn most of my peers off reading. Well, it and the rest of the required reading list. The Powers That Be complain about how young people don't read these days...then make the stuff the young people are exposed to some really depressing shit. If you want to get them on the joy of the written word, find something that's not so dry or anything.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Oh, they got through it. Since it was done in class.
It just reinforced their notion that Reading is Not Fun.
Generally, every year, the majority of the class would select their summer reading by page count. So, freshman year, I read Count of Monte Cristo. Most of the rest of the class read Fareinheit 451.
It just reinforced their notion that Reading is Not Fun.
Generally, every year, the majority of the class would select their summer reading by page count. So, freshman year, I read Count of Monte Cristo. Most of the rest of the class read Fareinheit 451.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
technically this is off topic, but technically it fits...
What's lost me, recently, isn't a piece of entertainment, but rather the general opinion of a couple.
Aliens Vrs. Predator (let's just talk the first one, can't remember the second well enough)
The Punisher (again, let's talk the first one, I haven't seen the second)
So, I've heard that, in general, people hate these movies....
why? what makes them so "bad"?
What's lost me, recently, isn't a piece of entertainment, but rather the general opinion of a couple.
Aliens Vrs. Predator (let's just talk the first one, can't remember the second well enough)
The Punisher (again, let's talk the first one, I haven't seen the second)
So, I've heard that, in general, people hate these movies....
why? what makes them so "bad"?
Aliens Vs Predator is so full of hoop-jumping to explain why both species end up on Earth, just so the humans can be there to die horrifically.
Seriously, we have an ancient pyramid thing in Antarctica with an Alien queen chained up to provide spawn for Predator warriors to fight their rite of passage in a gladatorial deathtrap. And the human expedition just happens to uncover it around the time the Predators return to have said rite of passage.
Would have been better if they had just had massive intergalactic warfare between the two. But of course we need human exposition bots.
It really was just a gorefest you should turn your brain off for. Which for me, means I won't enjoy it near as much as other movies, like 1408.
As for the Punisher, not sure. (You mean the Tom Jane one, right?)
Seriously, we have an ancient pyramid thing in Antarctica with an Alien queen chained up to provide spawn for Predator warriors to fight their rite of passage in a gladatorial deathtrap. And the human expedition just happens to uncover it around the time the Predators return to have said rite of passage.
Would have been better if they had just had massive intergalactic warfare between the two. But of course we need human exposition bots.
It really was just a gorefest you should turn your brain off for. Which for me, means I won't enjoy it near as much as other movies, like 1408.
As for the Punisher, not sure. (You mean the Tom Jane one, right?)
I saw a clip of the earlier one and laughed. Never watched it ever.
As for the Tom Jane Punisher, I enjoyed it myself, so I can't answer your question. There were many elements from the comics (the popsicle scene lol) kept in it, and just as many that weren't (the Russian). Yeah, they traded Ma Gnucci for Travolta's character, but even that was enjoyable. So I don't know why people say it sucks. Anyone else got anything?
God I can't believe I actually typed lol. I must be regressing to my childhood. XP
Edit: punctuation
As for the Tom Jane Punisher, I enjoyed it myself, so I can't answer your question. There were many elements from the comics (the popsicle scene lol) kept in it, and just as many that weren't (the Russian). Yeah, they traded Ma Gnucci for Travolta's character, but even that was enjoyable. So I don't know why people say it sucks. Anyone else got anything?
God I can't believe I actually typed lol. I must be regressing to my childhood. XP
Edit: punctuation
Last edited by TOZ on Mon Aug 03, 2009 2:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
That sounds really awesome. Follow a band of predators around, maybe 3 of em, as they go around doing their thing killing stuff. They could use human-comprehensible hand gestures to communicate silently (and more understandably, since translated subtitles would be a shitty decision).TOZ wrote: Would have been better if they had just had massive intergalactic warfare between the two. But of course we need human exposition bots.
If they must then they could have the honorary human predator chick (from a comic aliens vs predator story arc) there for exposition and crap, but without any humans to talk to it would mostly be her doing a voice-over monologue/diary. I could imagine such a thing being done well enough to be entertaining.
I prefer to think of AVP as "Aliens versus Girl Scout with Predator providing assistance at ringside."
It's a more accurate title. A better movie would have been an hour of recording people play the AVP game (PC, came out years before the movie) in deathmatch mode.
With or without microphones activated for "Camper whore!" and "suck my dick!" being shouted repeatedly.
It's a more accurate title. A better movie would have been an hour of recording people play the AVP game (PC, came out years before the movie) in deathmatch mode.
With or without microphones activated for "Camper whore!" and "suck my dick!" being shouted repeatedly.
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
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Draco_Argentum
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Bleach.
Eesh, Bleach.
It's still showing flashes of coolness, but now people win fights by pulling superpowers out of their ass. Which I'm fine with as long as they're set up in advance and all. But when someone wins a fight by holding his sword in both hands this time? Eesh.
And while I admire the aesthetics of the Espada and all that, it does lend itself to some jokes...
Eesh, Bleach.
It's still showing flashes of coolness, but now people win fights by pulling superpowers out of their ass. Which I'm fine with as long as they're set up in advance and all. But when someone wins a fight by holding his sword in both hands this time? Eesh.
And while I admire the aesthetics of the Espada and all that, it does lend itself to some jokes...
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Lago PARANOIA
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You're only up to the Kenpachi part?
I'd give up on the series now while you still can. It only gets more ridiculous as time goes on, especially the 'Superpowers from nowhere angle'. I mean, kenpo? Things get way, way worse, trust me.
I'd give up on the series now while you still can. It only gets more ridiculous as time goes on, especially the 'Superpowers from nowhere angle'. I mean, kenpo? Things get way, way worse, trust me.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Oh, no, I'm more or less up to date. But, yeah. It's lost my liking for the series (I cheered and did a backflip when Ichigo delivered the smackdown to that serial killer Hollow. The Soul Society arc had a lot of cool stuff happening. But now? It's more or less DBZ, except the really powerful people are the ones with the really unfair powers. "I aged you to death!" and stuff like that.)
But, yeah. It's a shame, really. I really enjoyed it early on. Even had my jaw drop when the 1st captain broke out his powers. But this latest arc just isn't the same.
But, yeah. It's a shame, really. I really enjoyed it early on. Even had my jaw drop when the 1st captain broke out his powers. But this latest arc just isn't the same.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Lago PARANOIA
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The Harry Stamper shooting AJ scene in Armageddon.
Seriously... what the hell?
Seriously... what the hell?
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:32 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Lago PARANOIA
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I guess I should clarify.
I really hate the storytelling character of 'Overprotective father who threatens young men who have an interest in their daughter'. Or rather, I don't, but I hate that this archetype is viewed as funny (in a non-sick way) or even worse, sympathetic.
Being so obsessed with your daughter's genitals that you're willing to threaten/assault/kill teenagers to protect what's 'yours' is creepy and Freudian as hell.
How I would love to see a show where the suitor's response to this weird behavior is to break the dad's nose and just either continue acting normally or walk away from the relationship.
But no, every time this asshole comes swinging his shrivelled penises around the suitor automatically turns into some kind of simpering bunnypants who acts like he should actually fear and respect this moron on a level beyond 'crazy sexist with a gun'.
I really hate the storytelling character of 'Overprotective father who threatens young men who have an interest in their daughter'. Or rather, I don't, but I hate that this archetype is viewed as funny (in a non-sick way) or even worse, sympathetic.
Being so obsessed with your daughter's genitals that you're willing to threaten/assault/kill teenagers to protect what's 'yours' is creepy and Freudian as hell.
How I would love to see a show where the suitor's response to this weird behavior is to break the dad's nose and just either continue acting normally or walk away from the relationship.
But no, every time this asshole comes swinging his shrivelled penises around the suitor automatically turns into some kind of simpering bunnypants who acts like he should actually fear and respect this moron on a level beyond 'crazy sexist with a gun'.
I've seen it done funny once: in "A Bit of Fry & Laurie", the first sketch ever for that matter. The father shows the suitor a long series of photographs from his holiday, causing the suitor to eventually break down in tears.
"Right. Touch my daughter again and it'll be a slide-show, you understand?"
"Right. Touch my daughter again and it'll be a slide-show, you understand?"
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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I gotta admit, this shows an amount of insight that I wouldn't have expected you to have.Crissa wrote:Generally, suitors are not in a position of power,
Being a suitor (at least as a male in a hetero pairing, will refrain from commenting on other types due to me never having any) basically makes you a bitch. You caper and cavort long enough and hope the female is impressed long enough to allow you to get to know her.
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
...I don't think that's what Crissa is saying.
And I'm not exactly sure what you want, if you dislike a system where X has to impress Y so that Y will consent to sex with X. Would you prefer X to declare "I think I will have sex with you" and Y has to shut up and take it?
And I'm not exactly sure what you want, if you dislike a system where X has to impress Y so that Y will consent to sex with X. Would you prefer X to declare "I think I will have sex with you" and Y has to shut up and take it?
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.
The old "father needs to approve of the suitor" thing still clings on. I've found the best way for me to deal with it is to assess whether I respect the father as a person.
So far it's been no on both accounts, and hence, I didn't give a shit about his approval.
So far it's been no on both accounts, and hence, I didn't give a shit about his approval.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.