Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 4:48 am

I've seen people actually refer, non-ironically, to Sonic the Hedgehog as Sonikku.

Yeah. I'm with you on this, 100%

Count Arioch the 28th · Wed Sep 03, 2014 7:53 am

I mostly don't approve of Japanese names because Japanese people tend to name their characters and fictitious places things that in English sound pretty stupid. I'm sure there's a cultural thing that makes perfect sense, but I just can't be arsed.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:01 am

name_here wrote:Specifically pissing me off is a new fan translation calling itself Haiyore! Nyaruko-san. The -ko is a feminine suffix, and the rest is supposed to be a shortened form of Nyarlathotep, which you may notice is not a name that contains a u.

I don't see anything wrong with the name, it's quite appropriate for the subject matter. The work itself is a franchise in which Nyarlathotep is a mangaesque moe Japanese girl. The japanization of the original name makes sense in-universe. It's not like a Japanese person wrote a scholarly article on Lovecraft which got translated into English with shitty romanization.

edit:
To put it this way, if, say, a Russian writes regular LotR fanfiction and you have to translate it to English for some reason, you just use the names in the original. But if a Russian wrote a tongue-in-cheek thing where the hobbits are Young Pioneers aiding the KGB and Frodo Baggins is renamed Fyodor Sumkin, and you have to translate that, you'd better reflect it somehow.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:02 am

Yeah, Nyaryko-chan is not a good example because the character is a parody mashup of Lovecraftian mythos and moe anime conventions. A better example is Alice/Arisu. "Arisu" is what happens when you transliterate the name "Alice" into Japanese characters. If the character is a blond haired westerner who is called "Arisu" in Japanese, you should translate it back to "Alice." On the other hand, if the character is Japanese and actually named Arisu, then you should leave it Arisu.

So the fact that Code Geass characters are named "Kallen" and "Nunally" in the subtitles drives me fucking nuts. The fact that the school friend in Serial Experiments Lain is named "Arisu" in the subtitles is perfectly correct.

-Username17

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 11:44 am

What's Nunnally even a weird back-and-forth romanization of?

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:09 pm

Nunnery? It might be one of those cases where Japan just picks a random english word and uses it without care for the meaning.

angelfromanotherpin · Wed Sep 03, 2014 12:36 pm

Presumably Nunnery. Although according to Google results, Nunnally does seem to be an actual English name as well, so the rage may be misplaced in that case.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:49 pm

Kallen:
http://babynames.merschat.com/index.cgi ... _key=43240

http://www.houseofnames.com/Kallen-history?A=54323-292

Nunnally:
http://surnames.meaning-of-names.com/nunnally/

http://www.houseofnames.com/nunnally-family-crest

http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=nunnally

http://www.boysnamefinder.com/name/4537/Nunnally

Kallen is an Irish Surname that can also be a boy's given name, which means mighty warrior.

Nunnally is a Saxon surname that means dweller at, or near, the nun's grove or meadow.

It can, apparently, also be a boy's given name.

And Nunnally Johnson wrote The Dirty Dozen.

This isn't incorrect romanization, this is the creators giving the characters random obscure European names.

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Sep 06, 2014 4:12 pm

Roman Reigns has about lost me. There is no universe where following up forearm smashes with a superman punch should count as variety. And confession time: I was never into the spear, either, not even when Goldberg or Edge were mid heyday8 and the superman punch is similarly boring. It'd be water under the bridge if he routinely dropped sweet promos or something but he doesn't. I mean, shit, Dean Ambrose has similar comically strong booking but I like cartoonish stuff as long as we get superplexes, fun promos and a liger bomb from Seth Rollins out of the deal.** It's to the point that I'm kinda bummed out that Reigns is getting matched up with Rollins while Dean is gone because Rollins does really cool stuff whenever he's allowed to wrestle people who aren't being portrayed as invincible.

*I accept that this fact combined with my dislike of the "What?" crowd chant probably makes me a bad person and killjoy.

**Seriously, just watch that shit. And Dean kicks out. That's loony tunes and I am OK with it. I'm alright with super hero booking as long as there's a payoff.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:37 pm

Is it just me or has Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal been taking on a distinctly misanthropic bent the last couple of months?

Not to say that the comic didn't have its share of 'humanity, fuck year'-deflating barbs even from its inception, but, there have been a lot of them lately and most of them aren't particularly clever. If I wanted to hear endless whining about the weaknesses and inferiorities of human beings, I'd just read Funky Winkerbean.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 2:59 pm

Ehhh. I don't trust myself to give a good accounting on a sample size that large. To be sure you should go through go through the past 3500 or so comics and tag them 'misanthropic' or 'not misanthropic'. Then we'd know. I have been enjoying SMBC less as of late, but it hasn't gotten to meh levels yet.

It is hard to bang out a novel comic daily though. I'd cut him some slack as compared to "Go Hel! Know? Thor won't."

That was so strained I actually groaned out loud.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:52 pm

erik wrote:Ehhh. I don't trust myself to give a good accounting on a sample size that large. To be sure you should go through go through the past 3500 or so comics and tag them 'misanthropic' or 'not misanthropic'. Then we'd know. I have been enjoying SMBC less as of late, but it hasn't gotten to meh levels yet.

It is hard to bang out a novel comic daily though. I'd cut him some slack as compared to "Go Hel! Know? Thor won't."

That was so strained I actually groaned out loud.

No comment on the SMBC trend, though perhaps having a new baby is skewing him in that direction; I know my wife and I held a dimmer view of, well, everything during those first three months. However, I will agree that the OotS comic was indeed painful.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 5:29 pm

Is it wrong to be surprised that the D&D brand has the money in it's marketing department to pay for favourable, hybperbolic reviews? Because that's the only way that this makes sense, but I would think they'd want to spend their money in other ways.

Count Arioch the 28th · Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:25 pm

They're releasing the extended edition of the Hobbit part 2 soon. Not that I'm surprised in any way, but that movie was too goddamn long already, I don't need to see an even longer version.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:35 pm

I'd watch it if it included all the levity that is missing from that movie. I'm all for filming the stuff that must have happened off camera during the time frame of The Hobbit to lead to the Lord of the Rings, but I resent the eponymous fun, fantasy adventure taking a distant second place to the "Lord of the Rings: Episode Zero" story.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:44 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:Is it wrong to be surprised that the D&D brand has the money in it's marketing department to pay for favourable, hybperbolic reviews? Because that's the only way that this makes sense, but I would think they'd want to spend their money in other ways.

I'm pretty sure Kotaku is just cheap.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Sep 22, 2014 6:57 pm

Oh, ok, that makes more sense. I figured something that well known would be more expensive.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:27 am

what the hell?
http://father.io/#BzJv1Q
yeah. no, i can't imagine this going wrong. ever.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 1:24 am

It can only go about as well as a six-year-old waving around a G1 Megatron toy in gun mode in front of a police officer.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 2:25 am

Prak_Anima wrote:Is it wrong to be surprised that the D&D brand has the money in it's marketing department to pay for favourable, hybperbolic reviews? Because that's the only way that this makes sense, but I would think they'd want to spend their money in other ways.

My favorite gem before I quit reading it:

Many agree that D&D lost its way ever since 3rd edition was released back in 2000, something I always tracked using the odd metric of how many wizard spells were for use outside of combat. By 4th edition, D&D had become quite a focused grid-based combat game, with Wizards of the Coast making up for ailing pen'n'paper RPG sales by flogging accessories and miniatures.

Does "lost their way" translate into record breaking sales and customers? Google's translator doesn't cover Stupidese to English.

Tho, Nice try at implying since 4e failed, therefore 3e must also have failed, because reasons.

And that is the most fucked and stupid metric I have ever hear of. The way to tell if it is true D&D is be the amount of utlity Wizard spells? And 3e and 4e are in the same league?! I don't. I. Jesus. What the fuck?

[edit: goddammit, I went back and kept reading. Unable to commit to slumber I erringly tried to rage myself to sleep. Fuck.

Think about everything incredible that happens between the fights in Lords of the Rings, or even Arnold Schwarzenegger's Conan. The speeches, the confrontations, the burglaries, the agonizing decisions, the romance, the personalities—everything that lets a game *transcend combat*—that's what keeps D&D relevant in a world where video games are getting better and better, and it's what's on offer again with D&D 5e.

Are there special rules for all of this? How much is simply lack of rules? And wait, I thought having too much stuff to do outside of combat was a downside for wizards, I guess that's my 3e bias, and he was instead suggesting that 4e and 3e are not having things you can do outside of combat. I imagine he's a blathering idiot who played a little 4e, and heard that some people played 3e too, somewhere, and now he has a word quota to meet to earn his $50 for this article. To find anything of substance about 5e you have to really dig deep in this morass of meaningless drivel.

"the combat's tense and tactical" + "my group emptied a goblin lair by working to scare the crap out of them, defeated a bandit boss by simply going in the back entrance". His praise can't even stay consistent. Fuuuuuck.

The character sheet picture is the only useful piece of information about 5e in the whole damn article.

He praises the gender section for being brief... it's 2 paragraphs. 3e gender section was a single sentence- that's fucking brief. Granted the 3e sentence ought have been expanded to a slightly longer sentence (I'd change "Your character can be either male or female" to "Your character can be any gender you want, typically female or male."), but fer-reals? I don't need to be told I can play as whatever I want. I fucking know that. I think more and more this douchenozzle never touched 3e.

And while a neat thing about pen and paper games is that players can run them however they want, the rules are always going to steer you. One of my favourite indie roleplaying games [monster hearts] gives players a secret power they can only use when having sex for that exact reason—to encourage romantic entanglements.
[...]
You should play the new edition of D&D because it's kind of like Dragon Age except this time you can have sex with everything.

That's his go-to example for steering play? I guess it makes sense when you get his capstone to the article- sex with everything. 5e must have rules that steer you to fuck everything up.

I'd say WotC should ask for their $50 back from this 5uck-up, but the article has 2000 likes (I wonder how much more they paid for that?). What a world. What a fucking world. If I were to sell a game I'd pay Quentin Smith not to play it, touch it, or talk about it.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:35 pm

erik wrote:Ehhh. I don't trust myself to give a good accounting on a sample size that large. To be sure you should go through go through the past 3500 or so comics and tag them 'misanthropic' or 'not misanthropic'. Then we'd know. I have been enjoying SMBC less as of late, but it hasn't gotten to meh levels yet.

It is hard to bang out a novel comic daily though. I'd cut him some slack as compared to "Go Hel! Know? Thor won't."

That was so strained I actually groaned out loud.

Things that are making me lose the love for OotT (former OotS):
- Tubes
- Going the Buffy route for explaining how vampires work
- Lackluster comedy
- Sluggish updates
- Passing way too many chances to make Dwarf Fortress references

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 2:19 am

Order of the Twits?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 2:34 am

TiaC wrote:Order of the Twits?

Order of the Tube.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 3:24 am

I don't get the Tube complaint. But yeah. I wouldn't mind it not trying to be funny any more so long as an entertaining story is being told, but that ain't happening either.

I think I'll take a several months off of OotS, maybe pick it up next year and hope that something entertaining happened. It picked up for a little bit, god, I think like almost 4 years ago, but it has been back to the doldrums for a long while now.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Oct 02, 2014 3:16 pm

erik wrote: I think I'll take a several months off of OotS, maybe pick it up next year and hope that something entertaining happened.

Me too.

I used to have it on my speed dial for my browser so I could check it regularly. I would check in somewhere between five and ten times between comic updates. He used to stick pretty thoroughly to a MWF schedule. I don't know if it's his mystery illness, complacency since he has such a strong following, or what, but he hasn't stuck to that schedule in probably over five years.

Some time earlier in the year, I pulled it off of my speed dial and forgot about it for a good month or two. It was fun to come back to numerous updates. I've gotten out of the habit of regularly checking and I still will check in to find no update.