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Death of the author becomes most obvious in bad works, where a coherent message can emerge that has no bearing on the author's intent (my favourite example is the incredibly racist anti-racist YA novel Revealing Eden). Generally, a good work is more likely to say what the author wants it to say, though the culture of the time and place will pretty much inevitably tend to imbue meanings outside the author's conscious intent as well.
Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 22:07
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Death of the Author is what makes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory extremely racist. (They take aboriginals and force them to literally work for beans, and this is a good thing because they were unsafe where they were living.)
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Jul 17, 2014 22:23
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Turtlicious posted:Death of the Author is what makes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory extremely racist. The Wonk Man's Burden
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Jul 17, 2014 22:25
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Regalingualius posted:I'm vaguely remembering him saying something about how it was aimed at what he felt was a rather delinquent youth in Japan at the time it was made. Basically "stop bitching, you've no idea how good you've got it", though I could be misremembering. This alone wouldn't be so bad if the director hadn't co-opted someone's semi autobiography for the story. The dude who wrote the book meant it as an apology to his dead sister, whom he failed to save during World War 2. Taking one man's personal tragedy and using it as a tool to smack arrogant kids around feels rather cruel, especially if it involves changing parts for the adaptation to make Seita less sympathetic.
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Jul 17, 2014 22:28
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Turtlicious posted:Death of the Author is what makes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory extremely racist. Now read my 100k-word fanfic trope aversion where Charlie is addicted to crack chocolate and used as a figurehead by Oompa-Loompas in an EVIL PLOT and also there is lots of RAPE.
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Jul 17, 2014 23:26
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sweeperbravo posted:The Wonk Man's Burden Could have gone with The Candy Man's Burden but you dropped the ball.
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Jul 17, 2014 23:38
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kazil posted:Could have gone with The Candy Man's Burden but you dropped the Dahl. Redeemed?
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Jul 17, 2014 23:50
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Turtlicious posted:Death of the Author is what makes Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory extremely racist. Roald Dahl posted:"There’s a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity … I mean there is always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere; even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason." You're right, Death of the Author is what makes this guy's work racist.
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Jul 18, 2014 00:02
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Runcible Cat posted:
"The chocolate... The chocolate..."
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Jul 18, 2014 00:02
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FrozenVent posted:Basically, for the purpose of criticism, the author died the moment he finished his work. That's a pretty good explanation, I still think that it's a stupid name for it.
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Jul 18, 2014 00:26
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I'm basically under the belief that Death of the Author is bullshit cus you can project drat near any interpretation onto any piece of art/media. Wonka is actually about drug abuse and addiction. I mean think about it: Wonka is a drug dealer, and the kids represent addicts. You see them (sometimes literally) get swallowed by their addiction, and you not only see the horrible effects on the children but also on their parents. After the group samples almost any of the 'candy' there is a horrible or mind-bending scene of its after-effects. The oompa-loompas obviously represent the foreign drug workers. Furthermore, Charlie starts off as a poor kid whose family is desperate to even survive - he eventually works his way up (through stealing and smooth talking) to take over wonka's drug empire, leading him and his family to implied riches.
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Jul 18, 2014 04:10
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Death of the Author is useful for when it seems apparent that the subtext of a work is in conflict with its stated intent. "I wrote this book as a statement against racism," no matter how much the author says it, doesn't mean that the book itself isn't racist as hell (that Save the Pearls book is a good example*). Authors aren't always aware of how their books actually read, nor do authors always tell the truth in public statements. So it's a useful corrective for situations where writers are either lying or don't know how they've come off. *In a different vein, gay and lesbian writers' publishers sometimes used to insist that their books had unhappy endings, or that the writers put in an author's preface saying Gay Stuff Is Bad. Or in the Soviet Union, authors were made to issue statements saying their books weren't critiquing the government, even when they were. In its useful form, Death of the Author says you can ignore that stuff. It also came about as a reaction to the unbearable schools of biographical criticism, and its subsets of Freudian and Marxist criticism. Again, sometimes this stuff is useful ("David Copperfield's grueling factory job was inspired by Charles Dickens's own experience as a child laborer") and sometimes it's just stupid as hell ("Murdstone's name came from a local firm of coal dealers three streets down from the house where Dickens was born"). AlbieQuirky fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 04:27
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AlbieQuirky posted:*In a different vein, gay and lesbian writers' publishers sometimes used to insist that their books had unhappy endings, or that the writers put in an author's preface saying Gay Stuff Is Bad. Or in the Soviet Union, authors were made to issue statements saying their books weren't critiquing the government, even when they were. In its useful form, Death of the Author says you can ignore that stuff. Oh, I get it. Death of the author is basically just this. 
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Jul 18, 2014 04:37
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cptn_dr posted:"The chocolate... The chocolate..." http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/CSIDeathByChocolate quote:Fanfic: CSI Death By Chocolate Head-Tiltingly Kinky: Greg Sanders meets Violet Beauregard, now a contortionist with Cirque du Soleil. She is combing her hair. With her feet. From behind. In the nude. Spit Take: Catherine tells Gil about the Chocolate Room. Gil is eating tomato soup at the time. Squee: Greg Sanders' reaction to finally meeting Willy Wonka is to run around the lab screaming "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!" Stuff Blowing Up: The Las Vegas Wonka Emporium is firebombed two thirds of the way through. Tear Jerker: Wonka's reaction to learning that his apprentice is dead. About what I expected
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Jul 18, 2014 05:52
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cptn_dr posted:"The chocolate... The chocolate..."
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Jul 18, 2014 09:03
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Runcible Cat posted:"Mistah Wonka - he dead." "Exterminate all the Gloops!" TVTropes complete butchering of the ideas of literary criticism (Death of the Author, the intentional and affective fallacy, deconstruction, etc.) and their applications has led to me viewing the site as cargo-cult literary analysis. They've seen these techniques and ideas being used, but they have no understanding of how or why they actually work (or don't work in the case of some of the more outdated approaches to analysis they use), so they just end up with a mess of stuff that almost looks like proper analysis at first glance (if we're being really loving generous) but has no actual useful function. For example, take CodfishCartographer's idea from earlier: quote:Wonka is actually about drug abuse and addiction. I mean think about it: Wonka is a drug dealer, and the kids represent addicts. You see them (sometimes literally) get swallowed by their addiction, and you not only see the horrible effects on the children but also on their parents. After the group samples almost any of the 'candy' there is a horrible or mind-bending scene of its after-effects. The oompa-loompas obviously represent the foreign drug workers. Furthermore, Charlie starts off as a poor kid whose family is desperate to even survive - he eventually works his way up (through stealing and smooth talking) to take over wonka's drug empire, leading him and his family to implied riches. This is basically interpretation on the level that TVTropes works at. It's more interested in finding "hidden meanings" of the work that amount to projection of an idea onto a work, followed by working backwards until everything fits. The goal is to generate the type of thing you see on Cracked or Buzzfeed, i.e. "The Shocking Hidden Meaning Behind 8 Classic Kids Stories (That Are Totally hosed Up)". The sad part is that if you stop there, not only have you not done anything useful, but you've left out the best part. So, you have a good introduction to an idea about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being about drug abuse or addiction. Cool. Death of the Author is pretty useful in displacing the author-figure as the authority of the text so we can have this discussion without getting bogged down with ideas of authorial intention. The next step is, where does the book fit in with the tradition of past works on addiction? There was plenty of written in England about their relation with foreign countries in regard to the opium trade you would want to take a look at and it would be fun to dig into if Dahl was using any of those ideas to inform his work. Not to mention some of the more contemporary stuff coming out about drugs during the early '60's. I mean, you have lines like: "Chapter 27", pg. 107 posted:"It rots the senses in the head! // It kills imagination dead!" And while this sort of rhetoric is pretty common in the context it's being used (anti-television), the anti-television movement has always borrowed heavily from anti-drug literature and addiction narratives. Really work on all of this? You could have an interest take on how our ideas about addiction and drug culture have developed and informed other works. That's a useful idea. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure TVTropes is fundamentally opposed to being useful.
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Jul 18, 2014 11:33
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GangstaRap
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Jul 18, 2014 15:07
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quote:Ah, Gangsta Rap: probably one of the most controversial genres of music to ever hit the mainstream.
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Jul 18, 2014 15:37
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Type 1-4 gangsta rap. Really? Could that description get any more clinical? It's like tropers are wearing scrubs staring at slides through a microscope. If they can make up poo poo like Leather Pants Draco Malfoy they should at least come up with names for different types of rap.
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Jul 18, 2014 15:38
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Trap music (also known as Neo-crunk) is a rather polarizing style of hip-hop and electronic music that has gained large popularity over 2012 and 2013. Trap music is a started as an emergent style in southern rap that is characterized by spare beats, sharp snare hits, deep bass notes and simple rhymes about gangster cliches (this isn't a diss at the genres expense mind you, the lyrical aspects are not of much importance to the genre since the main appeal is the beat and vibe the song generates, so lyrics are often simple as a result). All of this creates a dark, slightly abrasive, and hedonistic vibe. While the Ur Examples are from different parts of the southern United States, the major players of trap music such as Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, T.I. And Young Jeezy are all from Atlanta, and many newcomers to the genre are also from Atlanta. Many Hip-hopheads were against the genre, claiming it's simple lyrics are boneheaded and just dumb club music, while defenders state that the simplicity is the reason why it is such dumb fun. However the genre did catch on with many, namely EDM Musicians who have created a much more dancier instrumental songs. Another group that caught on were the up-and-coming rappers from Chicago, who created drill music, a style that emphasizes the violence on the streets of Chiraq and put a face to the issues that previous conscious Chicago rappers talked about.
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Jul 18, 2014 15:47
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:Trap music (also known as Neo-crunk) is a rather polarizing style of hip-hop and electronic music that has gained large popularity over 2012 and 2013. Trap music is a started as an emergent style in southern rap that is characterized by spare beats, sharp snare hits, deep bass notes and simple rhymes about gangster cliches (this isn't a diss at the genres expense mind you, the lyrical aspects are not of much importance to the genre since the main appeal is the beat and vibe the song generates, so lyrics are often simple as a result). All of this creates a dark, slightly abrasive, and hedonistic vibe. While the Ur Examples are from different parts of the southern United States, the major players of trap music such as Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, T.I. And Young Jeezy are all from Atlanta, and many newcomers to the genre are also from Atlanta. Many Hip-hopheads were against the genre, claiming it's simple lyrics are boneheaded and just dumb club music, while defenders state that the simplicity is the reason why it is such dumb fun. However the genre did catch on with many, namely EDM Musicians who have created a much more dancier instrumental songs. Another group that caught on were the up-and-coming rappers from Chicago, who created drill music, a style that emphasizes the violence on the streets of Chiraq and put a face to the issues that previous conscious Chicago rappers talked about. Wikipedia would like their passage back.
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Jul 18, 2014 15:59
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CodfishCartographer posted:I'm basically under the belief that Death of the Author is bullshit cus you can project drat near any interpretation onto any piece of art/media. DOTA is about operating off the text rather than the author's opinions on the text. You're not just working ex nihilo and making poo poo up, you're determining which themes and messages are supported by what is on the page. So, for instance, you'll have a much tougher time successfully arguing that His Dark Materials is about how Christianity is awesome than arguing that it's about how organised religion is bad, because hello, evil church ruled by senile, malevolent god slicing off children's souls. You don't need Pullman's long speeches about the evils of Christianity outside the work to get that message.
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Jul 18, 2014 16:06
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^^^ Fair enough. I suppose I'm just used to really lovely analyses like mine being thrown around in complete sincerity that it's sorta worn on me. MGTen posted:Really work on all of this? You could have an interest take on how our ideas about addiction and drug culture have developed and informed other works. That's a useful idea. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure TVTropes is fundamentally opposed to being useful. 
CodfishCartographer fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jul 18, 2014 |
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Jul 18, 2014 16:46
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MGTen posted:Really work on all of this? You could have an interest take on how our ideas about addiction and drug culture have developed and informed other works. That's a useful idea. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure TVTropes is fundamentally opposed to being useful. I am glad you said this, because I find Death of the Author to be useful and interesting when you are trying to make a point using a work, but it's worthless if you just use it to make something 'edgier' like tropers do by interpretating sexual poo poo into everything. Like with the Wonka drug interpretation. If you just leave it as that without expanding on the ideas like you mentioned in the part I quoted, then what's the message of the story, what's the point of Charlie's journey? That drugs are great and the poor should sign up to become dealers since they will have the moral fortitude to resist the temptations? A person is free to make that point, but the whole of the interpretation becomes a lot harder to make fit on those grounds once you follow through on it. What it boils down to is really the same it always is with Tvtropes; their writing had no meaning. To them, all writing and narratives are just stuff happening, there's no flow or purpose beyond a simple chain of events. Which is fine for stuff like Role-playing, but not something that works for an actual, satisfying story.
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Jul 18, 2014 17:37
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ANIME MONSTROSITY posted:Trap music (also known as Neo-crunk) is a rather polarizing style of hip-hop and electronic music that has gained large popularity over 2012 and 2013. Trap music is a started as an emergent style in southern rap that is characterized by spare beats, sharp snare hits, deep bass notes and simple rhymes about gangster cliches (this isn't a diss at the genres expense mind you, the lyrical aspects are not of much importance to the genre since the main appeal is the beat and vibe the song generates, so lyrics are often simple as a result). All of this creates a dark, slightly abrasive, and hedonistic vibe. While the Ur Examples are from different parts of the southern United States, the major players of trap music such as Gucci Mane, Waka Flocka Flame, T.I. And Young Jeezy are all from Atlanta, and many newcomers to the genre are also from Atlanta. Many Hip-hopheads were against the genre, claiming it's simple lyrics are boneheaded and just dumb club music, while defenders state that the simplicity is the reason why it is such dumb fun. However the genre did catch on with many, namely EDM Musicians who have created a much more dancier instrumental songs. Another group that caught on were the up-and-coming rappers from Chicago, who created drill music, a style that emphasizes the violence on the streets of Chiraq and put a face to the issues that previous conscious Chicago rappers talked about. drat son, where'd you find this?
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Jul 20, 2014 10:57
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Tunicate posted:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/CSIDeathByChocolate It's worth having a look at this fic. It's really something. quote:The young man lay sprawled in the desert brush like an impromptu reproduction of DaVinci's "Vitruvian Man", though in the dim after-dusk light it was hard to make out without a flashlight, and since he was dead the effect was little appreciated by those who currently had them. I hate this sentence. It's self-consciously quirky and trying to ape Pratchett/Douglas Adams, but it's so overwrought. Da Vinci is two words. The Vitruvian man is not sprawled, he's very precisely positioned (and has four arms and legs). quote:He was dressed in a suit and tie though the suit was - had once been - brilliant royal blue, not a color one ordinarily found in a menswear catalog. Now it was badly stained with something thick and brown that smelled vaguely rancid. His dead eyes stared blindly towards the sky, and were it not for the flies blithely exploring the brown stuff rimming his eyes and caked in his nose and mouth he might have looked merely strung out. It's a murder story! Talk about the body! I don't give a poo poo about fashion trends. Your characters don't care about the Vitruvian man, I don't care about suits, why are you telling me this. Also the story is called Death by Choclate. It's advertised as a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fic. It's clearly loving Chocolate. But the author keeps calling it "brown stuff" multiple times a paragraph for the entire first chapter, in a pointless attempt to squeeze some mystery out of things. Later on, at the opening of a new Willy Wonka store: quote:There was already a small village of sorts forming in the parking lot of what was destined to become a candy story. Sport utility vehicles, one- and two-man tents, and even people with just sleeping bags dotted the asphalt immediately surrounding the building (not including a few sleeping bags on the sidewalk), portending a lot of very disappointed people once they all found out that the store would not open on time. Congrats, you have a thesaurus and looked up "portending". quote:"Jesus Christ," Nick breathed, "This looks like the opening of a Star Wars movie."  There's also a youtube read through. Not and Eye of Argon piss-take, but a serious one from an out of breath guy who fumbles his lines and can't say "chided" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKMKDYcaM4o&t=46s
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Jul 20, 2014 13:40
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quote:One aspect of Bishoujo Series, and the cause of many tropes such as The Unwanted Harem and Improbably Female Cast, is that you really shouldn't have too many important male characters. But, y'know, girls like girly things. Girls who like video games and anime that aren't crossdressers? Holy moly! Give them a trope page!
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Jul 22, 2014 02:00
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Suspicious Dish posted:Girls who like video games and anime that aren't crossdressers? Holy moly! Give them a trope page! To be fair, everything has a trope page.
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Jul 22, 2014 03:59
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Suspicious Dish posted:Girls who like video games and anime that aren't crossdressers? Holy moly! Give them a trope page! They already have a trope page. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GamerChick?from=Main.GamerGirl posted:
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Jul 22, 2014 04:25
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Is that an actual quote from Morgan Webb? That really sounds fake.
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Jul 22, 2014 04:32
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:Is that an actual quote from Morgan Webb? That really sounds fake. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably something written for her to say on X-play.
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Jul 22, 2014 04:35
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HOOLY BOOLY posted:Is that an actual quote from Morgan Webb? That really sounds fake. Sounds like something she said on X-Play, which is scripted.
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Jul 22, 2014 04:35
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Strom Cuzewon posted:It's worth having a look at this fic. It's really something. That is the voice of someone who does not talk to people very often
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Jul 22, 2014 04:35
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I'm watching Fringe right now and it's a lot of fun, so I looked up the Tropes page to see how badly tropers have mangled the series. Surprisingly, the tropes page is pretty good, but there are still a few gems:quote:Shipper on Deck: Walter, for Peter & Olivia: "Do you two want to use the room?" Lately he's wondered aloud if his son and Olivia got married she would call him "Dad". Is it really shipping if the two characters are actually romantically involved with each other? It's classic troper beep boop what is a relationship beep boop quote:Break the Cutie: The entirety of the series seems to be devoted to breaking Olivia Dunham. She gets through a godawful childhood (involving illegal drug trials, a monstrous stepfather, and what sounds like a Promotion to Parent). She manages to find a job that she enjoys and falls in love with her partner. Partner is injured. She goes to incredible lengths to save said partner. She finds out that he's a traitor and he dies in her arms. In the first episode. Turns out that John Scott isn't a traitor but death is awfully permanent these days so no happy ending. She falls in love with Peter. He leaves. She goes to another universe to save him. She gets left behind. After enduring torture, Mind Rape and the prospect of a gruesome death, she barely manages to get back home. She spends the beginning of "Marionette" with the most adorable smile on her face. When she sees Peter, she does the whole shy teenager glance thing and just seems so happy to back. And then she finds about Peter and Fauxlivia. The smile is gone. She's been Strapped to an Operating Table how many times? Plus she went through a car windshield and was temporarily declared brain-dead. And then there are the seizures she's had while in the lab. Oh... and her friend ended up being killed and replaced by a shape shifter who eventually tried to kill her. It's like watching someone dangle a bone in front of a puppy and then kick it for good measure. How do you write this many words about the main freaking character and still manage to completely miss the point. Apparently, because she is attractive she is an innocent, helpless little girl, when in reality she is the polar opposite of this. Also, casual  Jesus Christ gently caress these guys.
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Jul 22, 2014 20:24
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Earlier Babylon shown the thread how tropers can gently caress up XCOM. Since they can't even understand simple videogame plots, I got to looking on their Nightmare Fuel page.quote:Remember those Mutons and how they're supposed to be the front line troops for the invaders? They can take some serious punishment, soaking bullets to the face, to say nothing of their elite counterparts. Now, let's go to South America's continent bonus, "We Have Ways", which allows all interrogations and autopsies to be completed immediately. Just what are they doing to the Mutons to make them talk so fast? quote:The Terror missions. You hear screams and panicking in the background while you're attempting to rescue an isolated group of civilians, who are being picked off one by one by aliens. They're also probably going to be the first time you'll meet the Chryssalids. Huh? They killed a civilian, you say? What!? THE CIVILIAN IT KILLED CAME BACK TO LIFE!? quote:The Sectopods have a long range, and it's possible that it can hit you without you being aware of its existence, because its attack range is greater than its sight range. Your first encounter with a Sectopod would most likely involve a giant loving laser coming out of nowhere. quote:The tutorial, if you played the first game when you see the soldier in the warehouse, you just know he is gonna frag you, and there is nothing you can do to keep yourself from dying. quote:Ethereals. Sectoids and Sectoid Commanders can pull off some pretty nasty psionic moves. With Ethereals, this is all they do. One Ethereal, and your squad goes from a highly disciplined team armed with high-tech weaponry to a terrified group, cowering from psionic attacks and the weapons of their own comrades suffering from the effects of Mind Rape. quote:The News Ticker in the Situation room will paint a very grim and bleak picture if you're doing poorly against the aliens. quote:One of the Vendor Trash that you can collect after capturing the alien base is the "Alien Food", a nutritious slurry eaten by the aliens. The description reveals that the soup contains unmistakable traces of human DNA. With that in mind, just think about what happens to all the civilians that gets abducted, or the unpleasant implications on what will happen to the body of your fallen soldiers if you are unable to retrieve them due to the mission being aborted. quote:Site Recon. It's a Council Mission in Enemy Within where the team is dispatched to investigate a distress signal from a Canadian fishing village. The regular military rescuers have gone silent. You land at the village and start to progress through it. Then, zombies start popping up. This looks bad, because where there's zombies, there's Chryssalids. You push through the village, to find a wrecked whaling ship, where the sharks and a captured whale are being used to incubate an army of Chryssalids. And more and more are getting birthed every round. Central makes it clear that you've only got one option: fight through the horde of Chryssalids to activate the boat's transponder so XCOM can direct an airstrike to wipe out the entire village. Then, once you've managed to pull that off, Chryssalids start pouring out of the whale-hive, and you've got to make a mad dash back to the landing site before either the airstrike wipes you out, or the Chryssalids catch up.... And the one they find most terrifying, otherworldly horrors, callousness of combat troops? Nope it's making your guys into goddamn Space Marines. quote:While the surgery isn't shown, MEC Troopers giving up their arms and legs, along what appear to other parts of their body, is horrifying to picture even if it is voluntary. quote:The worst thing about the MEC Troopers is that, unlike Space Marine Dreadnoughts or Protoss Dragoons/Immortals, it's not just critically wounded soldiers getting put into mechanical suits so that they can keep on serving. Instead, MEC Troopers are men and women that voluntarily amputate their own perfectly fine limbs and replace their organs with machines, just so they can have better combat effectiveness. It is both heroic and scary at the same time. quote:Also, their voices. MEC Troopers speak in a borderline Creepy Monotone with a filter effect that makes their voices sound computer synthesized. Makes you wonder how much of their humanity they traded for an arm-mounted flamethrower. quote:
quote:It's worth mentioning that, most likely to audio clip limitations, Zhang maintains his regular voice even after being turned into a MEC trooper. If viewed from the right angle, this can come off as a Crowning Moment Of Awesome and Heroic Willpower quote:While the description is probably meant to be hopeful, the fact that the base augments (the skeletal limbs that the MEC Trooper wears while not in an MEC) are intended to "hopefully" allow the soldier to return to a normal life if XCOM wins the war, is kind of frightening. It's a case of technology and necessity outpacing long-term considerations: MEC Troopers will never be human again, and it shows. quote:MEC Troopers are unable to be deployed onto the battlefield without their actual MECs, even though they always have a set of arms and legs available. The given reason for this is that the cybernetic arms and legs made for off-duty hours aren't agile enough to be used. Think about that for a moment. Normal humans can certainly go off into battle, but MEC soldiers without their suits can't. As powerful as the suit may be, a MEC Trooper is even less capable than a normal human without it. quote:Though do bear in mind that the Base Augments are made using regular steel, circuitry and batteries. Considering what the Alien Alloys and Elerium do for all your other tech, it's not hard to imagine biologically-par augments being made. Hell, by the time you're done with levelling and Foundry projects, the actual giant hulking robot suits have roughly the same dexterity, speed and combat options as your flesh-and-blood soldiers. quote:Let's think about this from the alien mooks' perspective, shall we? So your leaders tell you to forcibly uplift a primitive race known as humans. Pah, easy you say. These primitive apes are still using ballistics weaponry and they haven't even figured out practical spaceflight yet. So you send out the Sectoids to start abducting. And then, out of nowhere, a squad of four of these humans shows up and slaughters your advance guard (assuming you didn't play the tutorial). Okay, you think. We'll send in the Thin Men, Floaters, Mutons, and Chryssalids. They get slaughtered. Then, your spacecraft start getting shot down by this same mysterious group of humans. Now, the rumors have started among the rank and file of a horrific creature known only as "Doctor Vahlen," who will capture you, place you in a glass pod, and stick probes into your brain to gain information on you! And THEN, this same group of humans, having turned your own weapons against you, breaches your base and utterly slaughters everyone inside. They never leave any survivors, and they always take the corpses to their horrific underground base to be dissected and used as weapons. So you start bringing out the bigger guns: Sectoid Commanders, Muton Berserkers, Muton Elites, Sectopods, Cyberdisks, more powerful spacecraft, the works. They're all slaughtered, even when you attack their base. And those psionics that gave you a massive edge early in the invasion? The humans have them too, and they'll use them, chortling horrifically while they do it. You think you have it bad? Try being a platoon of Thin Men or Sectoids on a Council mission going up against a squad of Colonels and Majors. The end of the game tells you that.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:42
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I'm kind of surprised that tropers are freaked out by the idea of MECs. Becoming a giant badass robodude seems like something they'd like.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:20
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Moatman posted:I'm kind of surprised that tropers are freaked out by the idea of MECs. Becoming a giant badass robodude seems like something they'd like. The creation of MECs doesn't involve raping an underage girl.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:19
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You know who has an amazing sense of humor? The Amazing Atheist.quote:TJ's total breakdown in this video about a really crazy Straw Feminist who seems to literally think that every form of sexual activity performed by a man means that he supports rape. Especially when poor TJ screams with outrage at the list maker and later starts laughing hysterically.
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Jul 23, 2014 19:51
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The Vosgian Beast posted:You know who has an amazing sense of humor? The Amazing Atheist. loving feminist got owned. 
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Jul 23, 2014 19:53
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Isn't he on TGWTG now? I have to wonder: was Doug Walker desperate, does he have really low standards, or is he just such a lovely human being that he doesn't find TAA's views on women objectionable?
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Jul 24, 2014 04:04
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