chyron8472

But I am.

These pretzels are making me thirsty.

Possessed said:

I never liked the fact that Harry Potter dies and then comes back in the finale, and thanks to recent events on the forum I now understand that even though all official notation says it’s true I don’t have to accept it or interpret it that way. Thanks everybody!

You’re welcome. Nice to know your manhood is secure at least in your own mind.

You should. Witness David Bowie’s junk in gloriously tight spandex…?

But seriously, it’s a good flick.

TV’s Frink said:

^I don’t get it.

TV’s Frink said:

Don’t listen to me, I’m an idiot!

dahmage said:

that’s my line! (well, except for the idiot part)

Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Is Getting A Second Wind Thanks To Switch Update

doubleofive said:

And I imagine Wheaton was reading it in the sly voice he does that makes even the most innocent things insufferable.

Shut up, Wesley.

The story is supposed to be about a kid’s efforts to win the inheritance of a rich old man who left an easter egg in a video game. Whomever finds the easter egg wins; and the old man had a penchant for 80’s pop culture so delving into same would likely help you find the egg.

That’s it. That’s the plot, or what the plot is built up to be before this, as well as marketed. That’s why I was interested in the book, but when I got to this section I could no longer be bothered.

I say “technically” because of the manner of affiliation my church has with whatever organization/convention, and the fact that a large number of members of my church did not come from a Baptist background. There are certain baptist doctrines with which I agree, but I also recall my senior pastor going to a Southern Baptist Convention meeting at one point and when he came back he said he’d never make that mistake again.

Oh wait. I read that wrong then. It’s Darth_Ender who is Mormon. My bad.

It’s…not like the two of you are easy to confuse with each other. I guess I just read ender’s thread title and matched it to your signature for some reason.

Warbler is Mormon, not Catholic.

…also, for the record (not that anyone asked) but I’m technically Baptist. Since I’ve mentioned my faith in various threads lately.

moviefreakedmind said:

I’m curious what the context of that sentence is. There’s a tragic irony to being unable to believe in a philosophy that assigns meaning to life when you hate life.

Okay, here’s the whole thing.

[I]t didn’t take me long to discover that the OASIS was also the world’s biggest public library, where even a penniless kid like me had access to every book ever written, every song ever recorded, and every movie, television show, videogame, and piece of artwork ever created. The collected knowledge, art, and amusements of all human civilization were there, waiting for me. But gaining access to all of that information turned out to be something of a mixed blessing. Because that was when I found out the truth.

I don’t know, maybe your experience differed from mine. For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.

The worst thing about being a kid was that no one told me the truth about my situation. In fact, they did the exact opposite. And, of course, I believed them, because I was just a kid and I didn’t know any better. I mean, Christ, my brain hadn’t even grown to full size yet, so how could I be expected to know when the adults were bullshitting me?
So I swallowed all of the dark ages nonsense they fed me. Some time passed. I grew up a little, and I gradually began to figure out that pretty much everyone had been lying to me about pretty much everything since the moment I emerged from my mother’s womb.
This was an alarming revelation.
It gave me trust issues later in life.

I started to figure out the ugly truth as soon as I began to explore the free OASIS libraries. The facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren’t afraid to be honest. Artists and scientists and philosophers and poets, many of them long dead. As I read the words they’d left behind, I finally began to get a grip on the situation. My situation. Our situation. What most people referred to as “the human condition.”

It was not good news.

I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said:

“Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it later. But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

“Oh, and by the way … there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid. Deal with it.

“You’re probably wondering what happened before you got here. An awful lot of stuff, actually. Once we evolved into humans, things got pretty interesting. We figured out how to grow food and domesticate animals so we didn’t have to spend all of our time hunting. Our tribes got much bigger, and we spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus. Then, after fighting a bunch of wars with each other over land, resources, and our made-up gods, we eventually got all of our tribes organized into a ‘global civilization.’ But, honestly, it wasn’t all that organized, or civilized, and we continued to fight a lot of wars with each other. But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology. For a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things. Computers. Medicine. Lasers. Microwave ovens. Artificial hearts. Atomic bombs. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back. We also created a global communications network that lets us all talk to each other, all around the world, all the time. Pretty impressive, right?

“But that’s where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.

“Also, it turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left.

“Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. Things used to be awesome, but now they’re kinda terrifying. To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in ‘decline.’ Some people even say it’s ‘collapsing.’

“You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen to you. That’s easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You’re going to die. We all die. That’s just how it is.

“What happens when you die? Well, we’re not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You’re just dead, your brain stops working, and then you’re not around to ask annoying questions anymore. Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called ‘heaven’ where there is no more pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There’s no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you’re going to die someday and disappear forever.

“Sorry.”

OK, on second thought, maybe honesty isn’t the best policy after all. Maybe it isn’t a good idea to tell a newly arrived human being that he’s been born into a world of chaos, pain, and poverty just in time to watch everything fall to pieces. I discovered all of that gradually over several years, and it still made me feel like jumping off a bridge.

Luckily, I had access to the OASIS, which was like having an escape hatch into a better reality. The OASIS kept me sane. It was my playground and my preschool, a magical place where anything was possible.

So as you can see, it totally killed the mood. I wasn’t just reading this—I was listening to Wil Wheaton tell it to me, and from what I know of him it felt like he probably meant it himself.

And I can understand that, particularly in this current political climate. It is not my intent to preach, but only to convey my dissatisfaction with Ready Player One for killing my motivation to keep reading it.

But seriously. Speaking for myself as a Christian, and the fulfillment I personally get from my faith, it was extremely ironic to hear Wil Wheaton say “There is no God and I’m smart to realize it; I wish I could tell my younger self” followed immediately by “This is stupid; Life sucks and then you die.”

As I have said a number of times before, I mostly enjoy escapism and adventure in my fiction. It would be fun to have a nostalgic 80’s/90’s romp in fiction, but not when the main character craps all over the idea first. It really ruined the mood and I was no longer interested.

I posted that Riker-facepalm and it made me feel like watching “A Matter of Perspective”, the episode that it came from.

So I did.

doubleofive said:

Finished Ready Player One for the podcast “book club” 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back (from a couple of the RiffTrax guys). Holy shit, that book is the absolute worst. Badly written, poorly plotted, the main character has no redeeming qualities and spends 371 pages bragging about how much stuff he has memorized.

As a gamer, I was intrigued by this book so I bought the audiobook from Audible. I couldn’t even get past the first few chapters. Somewhere early on, the main character thinks about how smart he is for realizing there is no God, then almost immediately afterward he goes back to watching episodes of Family Ties and thinks about how pointless life is. And this is Wil Wheaton reading this. So it’s not just the character saying it, but I could feel as though Wil was speaking almost for himself.

As a person of faith myself, I couldn’t get past the irony of that, so I went online to read a review from a Christian perspective. The reviewer I read said the book is always sullen and never really gets better nor does the protagonist learn anything, so I returned the book for something else.

I don’t understand the point of a book that’s all nostalgia and pop culture references when the story itself acknowledges that such things are worthless and hollow.

moviefreakedmind said:

chyron8472 said:

I have been listening to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno. I’m on chapter 16 (of 30) at present, and thus far I’m…not really a fan. It has its references to forthcoming events in the prequels, but in general it’s slow and rather boring. And it mentions midichlorians more times than can be ignored.

Are you listening to an audiobook, or is someone reading it aloud to you in person?

https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/Star-Wars-Darth-Plagueis-Audiobook/B006PFYCW6

I have been listening to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno. I’m on chapter 16 (of 30) at present, and thus far I’m…not really a fan. It has its references to forthcoming events in the prequels, but in general it’s slow and rather boring. And it mentions midichlorians more times than can be ignored.

“Warb, don’t sigh.”
“Warb can sigh, just not as much.”
“No, Warb, just don’t sigh.”
"^+1!"
“I said ‘just not as much’.”
“No. Just No.”

Me: *sigh*

Warb:

Warbler said:

darth_ender said:

Warbler said:

Tobar said:

The established canon for the Kelvin “timeline” is that it is in fact actually an entirely different alternate reality:

That is not the way it appears in Star Trek 2009.

That is exactly how it appeared and was intended to appear.

That is not the meaning I got out of Star Trek 2009.

Just because you did not interpret the intended meaning, that doesn’t mean it only means what your interpretation was. You do not seem to leave any room for the possibility that your interpretation of canon may be wrong; and because canon is apparently so important to you, you argue why it must be what you say that it is.

Now, you can have a headcanon where, to you, Star Trek Prime does not exist. But what you are doing here now is arguing what the official is, in which case your interpretation doesn’t matter, but rather those of the creators of Star Trek. You have been given a boatload of evidence to support that the Prime Universe still exists despite the events of Star Trek '09.

What matters is whether the official canon matters to you (“you” meaning the individual viewer, not just you Warbler). If the official canon matters, then you must seek out the official intent of the canon. If it does not, then you can believe what you want. Regardless, your opinion regarding whether official canon must be observed does not impede me from having a different opinion. As it stands, my headcanon says Discovery is not part of the Trek Prime Universe; and Padme Amidala does not die during Revenge of the Sith.

Again, official canon regarding fiction is not Truth. It is not absolute. And besides that, my understanding of the Truth of my faith is that nitpicking the details in even that regard is missing the point (the point being fostering the relationship, not the adherence to rules.) So either way, your want to enforce your own interpretation on others is unfounded.

tl;dr: Stop arguing about why your interpretation of official canon is valid. If official canon matters, then correct interpretation is not up to you. If it doesn’t, then it is only up to you for your own sake and not for ours. You can’t say Prime doesn’t exist and both use official canon to argue your point, while using your point to argue official canon.

I recently watched DigMod’s Heir to the Force edit, and I liked the aspect of keeping Ren’s helmet on—and not outright saying who his father is—until the confrontation on the bridge. It made me somewhat wish there was a mashup between that edit and this one.

moviefreakedmind said:

I can’t comprehend why someone can’t just ignore the Kelvin timeline and Discovery if they don’t like it.

I do like the Kevin Timeline. I just wanted to like Discovery because it’s Star Trek and I’m generally a fan of the franchise.

I complain because I’m disappointed. I want to like it but I keep finding more and more reasons why I don’t.

If The Orville turned out to be awful right out of the gate, I would have given it up as a bad job right there and left it at that. I keep watching Discovery though because I’m always holding out a hope, but it seems to no avail. The writing is just awful.

Meanwhile, I’m continuing to be more and more fond of The Orville. The crew really need lessons in proper behavior while in undercover situations, but they are fortunate that their enemies are, for the most part, complete idiots.

DominicCobb said:

I’m not defending the f-bomb, seemed pretty random and unnecessary, but I just don’t see the big deal. Kids are going to hear those words one way or another, can’t escape it. Who gives a fuck, as long as you teach them right.

It’s not just for her. It’s for me. It annoyed me because it added nothing. There was no point to it at all other than for shock value. I hate it when streamed shows add “mature” content for the sake of being “edgy”. It’s actually immature. It’s like a child doing things deliberately because their parents won’t find out.

So I’m a prude. So what. I wouldn’t mind it if it had a point.

Besides that, it is possible to be classy and funny at the same time. For example, in Stargate SG-1, Vala Mal Doran was burned alive by the followers of the Ori. When Daniel asked her about why, she said “I explained politely who we were, and she said I was overcome, at which point I suggested that she should procreate…with herself.”

That is humorous and yet tasteful. There is no need to push one’s ability to be casually crass for its own sake. That’s not adult, it’s childish.

I know you said you’re not defending it. It just… irks me. This show irks me in a continually growing myriad of ways.

Because, at a certain age, watching a violent scene does not necessarily make a child have violent thoughts or violent tendencies. But kids will repeat things they hear people say. My sister had issues with my nephews doing that for a very long time indeed. She had to be very strict about it because they would laugh together and endlessly repeat it.

Similarly with sex… I watched the Tim Burton Batman film in the theatre when I was 11; but my parents would not let me watch Spaceballs. My mother said the reason why is because I was still developing my identity or my understanding of sexuality at the time, whereas she knew violence would not affect my developing mind the same way.