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Yeah, the Deserve Victory joke is literally calling out that the protagonist tried to balance his murder by not eating meat. This could only make sense if he thought what he was doing was wrong, so therefore he didn't deserve victory. Once he embraced that he should kill people and eat meat he got all fixed up. Super A=A.
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Sep 22, 2020 06:35
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Groovelord Neato posted:Because I'd only seen that picture of him with the ponytail I figured he was in his 50s or something. I mean given thst picture is like from the late 90s or something, you're not far off
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Sep 22, 2020 07:23
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PJOmega posted:Yeah, the Deserve Victory joke is literally calling out that the protagonist tried to balance his murder by not eating meat. This could only make sense if he thought what he was doing was wrong, so therefore he didn't deserve victory. Once he embraced that he should kill people and eat meat he got all fixed up. Rather than "if you think what you are doing is morally wrong, maybe you should stop doing it." The Lone Badger has a new favorite as of 10:09 on Sep 22, 2020 |
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Sep 22, 2020 08:08
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The Lone Badger posted:Rather than "if you think what you are doing is morally wrong, maybe you should stop doing it. There's an unfortunately prolific fetish for Hard Men Making Hard Decisions that's kind of the reason the world is suck a gently caress
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Sep 22, 2020 09:30
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So, when he slaughters peace protesters, the description isn't that they are unarmed. Our hero wades into the crowd killing people "armed only with a hatred for moral clarity" which is somehow (sheer horror) a phrase that's stuck with me for years.
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Sep 22, 2020 13:46
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neongrey posted:I mean given thst picture is like from the late 90s or something, you're not far off I mean I thought he was in his 30s in the picture.
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Sep 22, 2020 15:35
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Cornwind Evil posted:To be fair, it wasn't like he (the hero) did that on a whim. If I remember correctly he not only didn't regret doing it, he felt sad that the girl was so awful that she gave him no choice but to do it.
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Sep 22, 2020 21:25
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there wolf posted:If I remember correctly he not only didn't regret doing it, he felt sad that the girl was so awful that she gave him no choice but to do it. Nobody *likes* salting the Snail, but she gives you no choice!
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Sep 22, 2020 21:34
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there wolf posted:If I remember correctly he not only didn't regret doing it, he felt sad that the girl was so awful that she gave him no choice but to do it. This logic only works if you bend over backwards and use the fact that 1) It's been established that whether by misuse of the Sword, in general, or both, Richard has a really bad temper and when he explodes in rage, he EXPLODES, and 2) The girl really went out of her way to provoke him. So she 'gave him no choice' by dancing on his buttons until his self-control, which wasn't that great to begin with, broke, while she was in range for a kick. And it was STILL something he should have regretted later if Goodkind hadn't gone the lazy, easy route of Dopamine By Any Means.
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Sep 24, 2020 03:23
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Is IDEOTV just done? They haven't put out an episode in a month. Chris posted a teaser in the Facebook group a week ago, but nothing has materialized.
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Oct 13, 2020 04:46
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grittyreboot posted:Is IDEOTV just done? They haven't put out an episode in a month. Chris posted a teaser in the Facebook group a week ago, but nothing has materialized. It feels like their hearts haven’t been in it for ages so if they are done it might be for the best.
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Oct 13, 2020 05:32
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grittyreboot posted:Is IDEOTV just done? They haven't put out an episode in a month. Chris posted a teaser in the Facebook group a week ago, but nothing has materialized. Their twitter says they're getting back into things as of yesterday, so I hope so.
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Oct 16, 2020 20:48
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Oh no, I finally caught up with the thread  Maybe it's time to crack open the Independence Day: Resurgence novelization and hope it departs from mediocrity one way or the other. Or have I read anything else terrible lately? I gave up on The Rift by Walter Jon Williams - giant earthquake strikes the SE US - but it wasn't entertainingly bad and I hated virtually all of the characters (who were all clearly good or evil). In particular you have an insane evangelist rapture preacher, a flashy stockbroker who does nothing important before the event and eventually goes mad and dies of thirst in his car (IIRC), and the secretly-KKK sheriff who was about to execute everyone in one half of his segregated refugee concentration camp when I tapped out. My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron was pretty disappointing. A mysterious satanic message comes from a tiny moon of Saturn in the 2030s, and a spaceship with small crew is sent to investigate. NASA tells the AI (who is secretly self-aware and somewhat evil) it might have to destroy the ship if there's a threat so it mutinies and kills the crew. Everyone keeps telling the main character how amazing she is, except she has amnesia from the AI's first attempt at assassination at the start of the book and has lost her experience and confidence so it's never demonstrated. The last chapter is admittedly decent as she's exploring the alien craft alone. Until, spoilers: why did a spacecraft orbiting Saturn broadcast "I want to live and die for you, Satan" amidst 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds of noise? It's a lifeboat, broadcasting one terrestrial day's worth of 1970s radio in reverse as a signal, and nobody on Earth ever figured it out. gently caress you. And no, the reversed lyrics aren't from a real song, I guess using the actual Stairway to Heaven phrase would have made it too obvious. At the end of the main story - there's an epilogue from the alien's perspective which introduces now-totally-irrelevant alien jargon and insight into their species - the aliens save the main character by digitizing her, which involves an unexpectedly graphic description of someone being unwillingly dissolved in acid and simultaneously brainwashed (the latter allows a fake twist of "it was all a dream" for a page or two in the process). Final twist: they've digitized the AI too! The Aftermath by Samuel Florman - I didn't get very far into this one, my notes to myself when I stopped: "The main character feels like the kind of person who would be intolerable to talk to because he would bore you to tears and never shut up. And the theme seems to be "what if a cruise ship full of engineers survived a comet impact, and were very efficient at getting things back on track because engineers are awesome and would you also like to hear about all the bureaucracy involved?" I often go in to books fairly blind, I add them to a list with minimal notes and usually forget details by the time I read them. Especially if they're ebooks where I never really see the cover or how yellow the pages are. Beyond the writing, this shocked me by being published in 2001 but somehow feeling incredibly dated; I'd assumed it was from the 80s. I think a few pages back there was a mention about authors writing long descriptions of characters who immediately get killed, and that certainly happens here too.
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Oct 18, 2020 01:57
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uvar posted:My Sweet Satan by Peter Cawdron was pretty disappointing. A mysterious satanic message comes from a tiny moon of Saturn in the 2030s, and a spaceship with small crew is sent to investigate. NASA tells the AI (who is secretly self-aware and somewhat evil) it might have to destroy the ship if there's a threat so it mutinies and kills the crew. Literally 2001
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Oct 18, 2020 04:29
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Byzantine posted:Literally 2001 It's not accidental or particularly subtle; the author describes it as "a nod to the late Arthur C. Clarke". I left it out because my description was already cluttered enough, but the AI is named Jason (JCN - two letters on from HAL, after IBM) and recites a nursery rhyme in its last conversation. Honestly, now I'm thinking about it again, it's basically a slasher-film version of 2001, complete with the girl-versus-killer faceoff at the climax (she's in her late 30s but thinks she's 19 due to the amnesia) and dumbass cliffhanger. Maybe I'm being too harsh just because it's not what I wanted it to be.
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Oct 18, 2020 07:35
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uvar posted:It's not accidental or particularly subtle; the author describes it as "a nod to the late Arthur C. Clarke". I left it out because my description was already cluttered enough, but the AI is named Jason (JCN - two letters on from HAL, after IBM) and recites a nursery rhyme in its last conversation. I don't think you are.
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Oct 18, 2020 07:40
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Yeah, that sounds like complete garbage. "Main character is a woman in her 30's who is repeatedly described as competent, accomplished, etc. but gets plot amnesia and spends the whole book as a terrified mental teenager using none of her skills" is pretty godawful even without the rest of that.
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Oct 18, 2020 08:05
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Antivehicular posted:Yeah, that sounds like complete garbage. "Main character is a woman in her 30's who is repeatedly described as competent, accomplished, etc. but gets plot amnesia and spends the whole book as a terrified mental teenager using none of her skills" is pretty godawful even without the rest of that. Never, ever, read the Demolished Man. It follows this trope to an embarassing T .
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Oct 18, 2020 09:44
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I used to pore over this as a kid - The Chronicle of Our Century; a history book that reads like a collection of news articles (so, everything is written in present tense), starting with 1900: It's based on a similar foreign book but it has plenty of articles about domestic matters, here's an English-language edition which may or may not be the first:  So what's the problem, what makes it terrible? It was published in 1986 
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Oct 21, 2020 05:37
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85% is better than what I got on my most recent exam, seems good enough.
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Oct 21, 2020 06:08
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Mamkute posted:85% is better than what I got on my most recent exam, seems good enough. But I don't want my books to be as ignorant as you
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Oct 21, 2020 06:17
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The Onion put out something like that pretending that it had existed since 1900. It was pretty fun.
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Oct 21, 2020 11:17
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muscles like this! posted:The Onion put out something like that pretending that it had existed since 1900. It was pretty fun. Our Dumb Century is a gem.
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Oct 21, 2020 15:58
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3D Megadoodoo posted:I used to pore over this as a kid - The Chronicle of Our Century; a history book that reads like a collection of news articles (so, everything is written in present tense), starting with 1900: My school had one with a different cover, in 1996 (I think). It was up to date. Didn't know it was a series. Wonder if it updated every year. There was also a Chronicle of the French Revolution, so maybe they branched out.
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Oct 21, 2020 21:25
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Ready Player Two is out and this guy is posting excerpts in a whole thread. Cline not only didn't take any criticism, he's doubling down. https://twitter.com/jacobmercy/status/1331102974240645120
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Nov 24, 2020 06:14
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chitoryu12 posted:Ready Player Two is out and this guy is posting excerpts in a whole thread. Cline not only didn't take any criticism, he's doubling down. That reads worse than The Legend of the Ten Elemental Masters (a book about the legend of ten elemental masters).
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Nov 24, 2020 06:29
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I particularly like how Wade is tolerant of all genders and sexualities because he's watched VR porn of them, which is basically just Lowtax's "how can I be transphobic when I watch all this porn?!" excuse
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Nov 24, 2020 06:35
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Antivehicular posted:I particularly like how Wade is tolerant of all genders and sexualities because he's watched VR porn of them, which is basically just Lowtax's "how can I be transphobic when I watch all this porn?!" excuse Which is itself just a repeat of the age-old "I get off to interracial porn so I'm not a racist".
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Nov 24, 2020 07:16
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Antivehicular posted:I particularly like how Wade is tolerant of all genders and sexualities because he's watched VR porn of them, which is basically just Lowtax's "how can I be transphobic when I watch all this porn?!" excuse Hey now, he's had VR sex in all kind of bodies (as long as the sex was with women) which has completely transcended the concept of gender to him, which is why he needs to tell us that the object of his stalking is a trans woman and explain how cool he is with that. Also I love that Cline bothered to add a Sailor Moon World just so he could call it useless other than introducing him to the one major male character in it. Way to push back against all those accusations of sexism.
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Nov 24, 2020 08:56
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On the subject of sexism, I suspect any plot involving Artemis is going to be a master class in how guys like this think of their exes, or any other woman who has moved out of the "potential sex partner" column. I expect, among other things, that we'll get a description of how her physical imperfections make her hideous, when like the one major plot point of the romance in RP1 was Wade accepting them.
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Nov 24, 2020 09:49
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https://twitter.com/jacobmercy/status/1331073896464859138 When I read the "armored coffin" line this is what I pictured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ8tuAoyT14
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Nov 24, 2020 11:31
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Antivehicular posted:I particularly like how Wade is tolerant of all genders and sexualities because he's watched VR porn of them, which is basically just Lowtax's "how can I be transphobic when I watch all this porn?!" excuse Oh, not watched. The plot is about Wade getting the plans to mass produce neural link headsets to let everyone fully experience VR as reality. And anyone can upload experience files for profit. Wade has achieved LGBT tolerance by jumping into bodies to gently caress. I have the book. It’s worse than these excerpts suggest.
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Nov 24, 2020 11:35
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SerialKilldeer posted:When I read the "armored coffin" line this is what I pictured: This is what *I* pictured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrIYwB4OAs
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Nov 24, 2020 11:45
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Is there a paragraph where Wade fawns over Elon Musk? Like, there has to be, right?
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Nov 24, 2020 12:28
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What is the plot of the book Is it another Easter egg hunt just to get to sleep with a girl
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Nov 24, 2020 12:37
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The Saddest Rhino posted:What is the plot of the book
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Nov 24, 2020 12:46
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I loathe the first book, but those excerpts are worse. That’s basically his nerd porn essay extrapolated into a novel
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Nov 24, 2020 12:55
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chitoryu12 posted:Oh, not watched. The plot is about Wade getting the plans to mass produce neural link headsets to let everyone fully experience VR as reality. And anyone can upload experience files for profit. Wade has achieved LGBT tolerance by jumping into bodies to gently caress. You're pretty good at threads that examine both the text and paratext of works that are good, bad, or written by William Control. Would it be worth your time examining this monolith of self-referential nerd-porn?
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Nov 24, 2020 13:18
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Everyone gets trapped in the matrix and there's an easter egg hunt to escape. Also there's some creepy stuff about the ex-girlfriend of one of the creators of the matrix. loving christ. to tie in with the upcoming matrix movie? Ambitious Spider posted:I loathe the first book, but those excerpts are worse. That’s basically his nerd porn essay extrapolated into a novel from what i've seen in that twitter thread the most charitable interpretation would be that he has listened to every single Joe Rogan podcast in existence since finishing Armada
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Nov 24, 2020 13:49
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Will always blow my mind Spielberg adapted the first.
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Nov 24, 2020 19:38
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