Crissa wrote:You know, Maj, we already had one thread on this and danged if I can't find the one that went off the rails.
If that's new to you, I'm not sure where you've been.
-Crissa
Um... There's no mention of the Salem Hypothesis on that page. My browser's search function can't even find the words "salem" or "hypothesis" separately.
I couldn't find the term "Salem Hypothesis" using the board's Google search, but I did find it using the board's other search function. The only other iteration of that term is found here. Considering I didn't post in that thread from August to January, it shouldn't be a shock that I missed its mention the first time.
Last edited by Maj on Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:44 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Maj wrote:Um... There's no mention of the Salem Hypothesis on that page. My browser's search function can't even find the words "salem" or "hypothesis" separately.
Crissa wrote:I can't find the one that went off the rails.
As in, it seems to be missing, completely. That's the only fragment remaining of this thread. Maybe you didn't read it, but it seems a bit far-fetched you would find the concept new.
-Crissa
Last edited by Crissa on Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
A reference to engineering does not automatically result in the Salem Hypothesis. You can search as many remaining posts in that thread as you can here. Still no Salem Hypothesis.
And really, even if you're right and it is mentioned in some post somewhere that got deleted somehow, the fact that I've spent more than five minutes trying unsuccessfully to find any reference to it is a clear demonstration that the term is obscure enough that I could have missed it.
In a way, I hope that Salem Hypothesis can be found in one of those mysterious deleted posts because you certainly haven't been able to find it anywhere else on the boards - it's not where you claimed it was, and it was where you didn't look.
Stop shooting your credibility. It was dead a long time ago.
I don't know if you had to, but Breen was presumably responsible for helping the Combine totally turn Earth all Orwellian, so the Good Guys would presumably want him taken down and all.
Out beyond the hull, mucoid strings of non-baryonic matter streamed past like Christ's blood in the firmament.
PhoneLobster wrote:Big Man Japan. A movie not so much riotous comedy is was billed as and rather just mildly frustrating and depressing.
Yeah, my friend and I tried to watch that and just gave up like ten minutes in...
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.
Crissa wrote: But we'd taken over his tower, why did we care about him? The aliens totally didn't need him anymore.
-Crissa
It's the idea that he needs to atone for his past crimes. If Gordon and Alyx had just let Breen teleport away scot free, then it'd be sorta akin to a bunch of Soviets totally ripping apart Nazi Germany and then letting Hitler run off to his island resort for the rest of his life. (sorry for the Godwin).
Also, it's emotional payoff for the player. Breen's speeches are the first major bit of scene-setting dialogue for the player after the G-Man's introduction. By listening to his "Welcome...to City 17" spiel you get a real idea of how exactly the world has gone to shit since you killed that stupid baby at the end of the first game. And from him and the passengers, you identify him as the Bad Guy Who Needs to be Shot. It puts a face on the oppression you witness in the opening level. If he had just totally disappeared, it would have made the ending even less satisfying than it was already, which is honestly a hard goal.
Last edited by Blicero on Tue Jun 15, 2010 6:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
Out beyond the hull, mucoid strings of non-baryonic matter streamed past like Christ's blood in the firmament.
So, in your opinion when did the Naruto manga become irredeemably awful?
A lot of people will say Pain's BS resurrection--I just maintain that it was the worst moment--but the manga in my opinion hopelessly jumped the shark with the whole 'Itachi is good' revelation. At that point I knew that Kishimoto had more or less given up.
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.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, in your opinion when did the Naruto manga become irredeemably awful?
A lot of people will say Pain's BS resurrection--I just maintain that it was the worst moment--but the manga in my opinion hopelessly jumped the shark with the whole 'Itachi is good' revelation. At that point I knew that Kishimoto had more or less given up.
It became irredeemable when Sasuke revealed he was going Retarded Evil. I even continued reading it up until Madara/Tobi gave the "whole origin ninjas that are like naruto and sasuke" speech for no reason to the Kages. Then I stopped reading it.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:So, in your opinion when did the Naruto manga become irredeemably awful?
A lot of people will say Pain's BS resurrection--I just maintain that it was the worst moment--but the manga in my opinion hopelessly jumped the shark with the whole 'Itachi is good' revelation. At that point I knew that Kishimoto had more or less given up.
It became irredeemable when Sasuke revealed he was going Retarded Evil. I even continued reading it up until Madara/Tobi gave the "whole origin ninjas that are like naruto and sasuke" speech for no reason to the Kages. Then I stopped reading it.
It's been a little better lately. I'm sticking it out with much the same mentality I had for Harry Potter. "I've come this far, I'm seeing what happens, DAMMIT!"
But I wouldn't mind betting a dollar that Sasuke got mind-fucked into being so Retarded Evil (good word for it)
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!
I've never read Harry Potter past Book 5. I enjoyed it, though the climax of Order of the Phoenix seemed a little silly and forced.
I haven't read any books past that, though, because people have been bashing books 6 and 7 immensely. It's like, the fandom turned on the author and bared their fangs. Common complaints I hear are things like Harry turning into a selfish, spineless git and the school themes becoming increasingly awkward and small-minded as the characters grow older.
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.
Book six and seven were utter shit. I've seen fanfiction end a series better, repeatedly. Book seven felt like an utter waste of my time after having read it, and the deaths were such bullshit it wasn't even funny.
She had some good potential, but wasted it in those books.
People seem to really like books 6 and 7, or hate them.
Book 6 is a lot, in a word, skankier. There's stuff like Malfoy spending most of the train trip with his head in a girls lap. There's a brilliant parody making fun of this.
Book 7 tosses the whole Hogwarts structure out of the window and admits there's times when nothing's happening and Team Harry is going nuts because of it.
But if you've read up to book 5, you might as well finish it up.
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!
I like Book 6, but that's probably because it focuses a lot on Snape, and he was one of the few characters I actually liked. It also tries to make Voldemort an interesting villain, with varying results. There's also a lot of teenage wangst about gurlzz and such. It has less of a natural "the schoolyear advances as the book goes on" and is centered more around a series of more detailed moments, probably because a lot of people thought 5 was too long. The movie for the 6th book is perhaps the only one that I would also consider a semi-good film, if that matters.
Book 7 is...rough, to say the least. It abandons Hogwarts like Maxus said, and, seeing as Hogwarts was probably Rowling's best creation, this is perhaps not the best move (if still somewhat forgivable if Rowling wanted to shake up the formula a bit). It "feels" much more like a standard fantasy novel, with a central Quest and the heroes trying to fulfill said quest while the nefarious bad guys try to stop this. It has its moments, but it also has way too many "...lolwut?" moments that make you stop and wonder if Rowling honestly expected to get away with that. There's also a lot of character death, nearly all of which is handled very suddenly. Some people think that it enhances the feeling of "random deaths happen in War," but personally I feel it just makes Rowling look lazy. And the epilogue is truly horrific. Truly horrific.
But if you've taken the time to wade through 1-5, I'd probably recommend taking the final plunge and finishing the series.
Out beyond the hull, mucoid strings of non-baryonic matter streamed past like Christ's blood in the firmament.
I recommend abandoning HP with book 2, which is the last book Rowling had an editor on. Seriously, whatever your imagination comes up with will probably be better than what actually came next.
On the other hand, I do recommend A Very Potter Musical.
Books 5 and 6 suffer from a severe lack of the more likable and interesting secondary characters. Neville in particular barely shows up at all, despite being a big part of 5. Luna is around a little in 7, but is mostly missing too.
The worst part of book seven is NOTHING IS HAPPENING! And most of the deaths felt extremely contrived; yeah, randomness of war is one thing, but fuck that noise. Plus there was the godawful epilogue that reads like some half-assed fanfic.
I played some of Super Smash Bros.'s Brawl story mode again and I have to say that the second time through was not as entertaining as the first time.
This is mostly because of the fact that the game spends an excessive amount of time wanking to the Kirby characters, something that caused me to get bored by all of the 'cool' moments the second time through.
Trying to pump up your characters through this crossover, Sakurai? Shame on you.
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.
