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pentyne posted:The problem isn't they needed a "good" reason for Pratt to wake up a women it's that it was presented as ultimately romantic. The explosive reveal that he stole her life is then completely derailed by the ship needing fixing which in the process of doing she decides she loves him and will give up her life to be with him. They could have kept the tension by having both woken up by accident, Pratt’s character figures out a way to put her back under but is torn about doing it and being alone so he doesn’t tell her. Still a betrayal, but a bit more understandable one since deliberately choosing solitary life is a harder sacrifice than “don’t be a creepy bastard and wake up somebody because you’re horny”. Hell, would work even without the romance that way, nobody wants solitary confinement.
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Sep 12, 2020 17:36
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Solice Kirsk posted:That first movie was so good. Didn't Stalone want the movie to end like the books where his character is killed, but the studio veto'd it so they could make more movies and then they got turned into action films? To be fair I heard it as more of a “telling a story where the only thing to be done for the PTSD vet is put him down like Old Yeller is kinda bad” which... seems reason enough not to do it. Can’t speak for the action film sequels of course, God knows that’s a major change in tone from the first film.
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Sep 24, 2020 20:31
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buddhist nudist posted:Ehhh. Both the film and the original story were about a man who gets pushed to that point specifically because of vagrancy laws and poor treatment of returning vets. The original story does frame killing him as the only resolution at that point, but there were a million ways "that point" could have been avoided. Yeah, but again, "sometimes the only way to deal with a vet who's been abused to breaking is a mercy kill" is a hosed UP moral of the story to preach, even indirectly, when you've got a bunch of real world vets with similar issues. I don't think putting the potential idea of "the only end to your suffering is death" out there for them is terribly responsible, and I gather there was a similar argument at the time. Not like the change really undercuts the point that Rambo shouldn't have been treated like that.
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Sep 25, 2020 01:24
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Perestroika posted:God, this discussion reminds me of when we were playing a PnP game called Degenesis. Basically it's set in post-apocalyptic Europe after a series of asteroids hit it and released a variety of fungal spores that lead to funky mutations all over. We mostly picked it up cause it had a neat and unique aesthetic and played a couple of self-made campaigns in that setting. Fun, been seeing reviews of that game in the Fatal & Friends thread in Traditional Games, does seem kind of batshit even at its best (though sadly that thread has revealed worse exists out there to boot).
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Nov 10, 2020 00:11
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hard counter posted:as a quick background, historically there's a difference between first wave confederates, the idiots who joined the sedition immediately because they agreed with its wretched, underlying principles, and second wave confederates, dudes who, for their part, just wanted to stay out of the war when it started but were dragged into it when it came to their doorstep when their communities were either getting shelled by direct union attacks or raided during foraging parties by regular forces, OR irregular forces that were vaguely pro-union (there were essentially bands of lawless roving 'bushwackers' on both sides who used civil war as an excuse to loot and/or kill their neighbours in horrible, horrible acts of irregular warfare, some acts were so vile it would led many historians to describe many of those guerrilla leaders as pure psychopaths...now, i'm summarizing heaps of history quick and dirty, but there was certainly some awful, historical internecine conflict that left lasting scars in the psyches of the involved) The writer of the book it was based on (Asa Earl Carter) was a member of the KKK, he was a segregationist speaker who among other things managed to rile up a mob of white men to go after blacks in Clinton once, and he helped write George Wallace's "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" slogan. I am... deeply dubious that kind of source was really revisionist, no matter how much Eastwood may have tried to tone it down (assuming the guy whose brain was so broken by Obama he lectured a chair about it tried to tone it down).
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May 12, 2021 21:01
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Sweevo posted:Data's time at Star Fleet Academy was spent switched off in a cupboard. Then on exam day someone popped in an SD card containing 'star_fleet_rules.txt'. I’m enough of a nerd to wonder if somebody has done Data taking the Kobayashi Mary test, though I suspect he’d either be a boring “can’t save them, staying outside the Neutral Zone” type or he’d do some sort of super fast calculating android thing that crashed the sim computers.
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Jul 14, 2021 15:44
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BioEnchanted posted:"This can be a little complicated" "Oh, like the time you accidentally fell in love with an idealised AI version of a scientist, only for things to get SUPER awkward when the real scientist went to the holodeck and found the program?" "Uhhh... ask Riker..." Hey, I gotta grant at least Geordi waving off trying to teach appropriate romantic/sexual behavior to someone as showing some self awareness. At least he had the courtesy not to mess the poor android up too.
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Jul 16, 2021 07:39
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bobjr posted:I was introduced to this movie because of the ending below, I just didn’t know how crazy the entire movie and production around it was LOL please tell me this didn't actually wind up on Hallmark, my mother watches those things relentlessly and my brain can't take the idea of her seeing that one. Though she's so familiar with the things she can recognize movies as Hallmark films that you wouldn't think were; we were watching Rise of Skywalker when she told me this was actually a Hallmark film. I said I thought those didn't involve a cackling madman throwing lightning around, but not five minutes later Rey and Ben Solo kissed and I had to admit she was right all along  .
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Aug 6, 2021 22:37
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hallo spacedog posted:Well, other than ISIS. So basically, the problem is phrasing? 
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Sep 9, 2021 18:40
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hallo spacedog posted:
"Mommy and Daddy are mad!"
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Nov 23, 2021 07:27
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christmas boots posted:TBH I thought it was kind of funny that asari didn't have the same chattel slavery experience under their system so they just write off humans being uncomfortable with slavery as some weird quirk we have. I did like that the whole "secret agent above the law" thing with Spectres seems to be just that kind of nonhuman value system at work once you get more background. They were formed back when the Asari and Salarians were the only ones running things, and a Spectre is almost literally a cross between an Asari justicar and a Salarian STG agent, so you can see why they'd come up with that sort of idea together. Most of the suspicion of Spectres we see is from Turians, who obviously wouldn't like anyone unaccountable working alone like Spectres tend to (don't recall any human statements on Spectres beyond "getting a human Spectre is a sign of human political power, we want it!", no real moral judgements I recall).
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Jan 13, 2022 03:18
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Alhazred posted:I also remember that people were willing to pay insane amount for so called "golden" telephone numbers (numbers that are easy to remember). Apparently some people have deliberately picked up the 867-5309 number (from the song) as a promotional gag judging by the Wikipedia entry.
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Feb 8, 2022 22:31
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The Moon Monster posted:I think the way to make an antiwar/cop film is to do it from the POV of the hapless victims, but that's a less compelling narrative than "good guys fight the bad guys and win!" Video game instead of movie, but This War of Mine was from that perspective, and it sure as hell didn’t glorify war at all.
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May 16, 2022 19:39
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Terrible Opinions posted:America starting a war over being allowed to sell guns to sell guns to France and otherwise ignore British imposed sanctions just doesn't play into the nationalist myths of either America or Canada to be taught in schools. In America if a reason is given at all it's the claim that Britain was press ganging American soldiers for no reason at all. Meh, when the Brits are basically holding an informal blockade around your country to intercept French-bound cargo (and grabbing something like 10,000 sailors in the process) it's kinda aggressive to put it mildly, and when you go so far as attacking US Navy vessels to impress people it is a bit too much for any sovereign nation to accept. Even the Brits recognized it and were going to cool things down (they did apologize for the attack on Chesapeake and they suspended the Orders in Council that sparked a lot of the conflict (right before the US declared war without having heard of that unfortunately)); real problem is a bunch of US warhawks decided on war and didn't care about any of the (successful!) diplomacy going on to prevent that. And surprise surprise picking a fight with a nation that had a veteran force from years of fighting Napoleon and was a superpower of the age with a brand new nation that was not universally enthused with the idea of war and had neglected forming much of a navy Did Not Go Well for the USA. The US managed to do enough damage to keep things to status quo ante bellum in the end, but it was an unbelievably stupid unnecessary war for both sides and had it gone to the bitter end I suspect the US would have been mauled, but Britain just did not need more fighting right after Napoleon. I do find it somewhat amusing/sad that right before then the US and France had the "Quasi War" from revolutionary France trying the same "you can't be neutral and trade with our enemies" ship seizing tactics; you'd think somebody would have learned something from that mess (hell, the British and Americans quietly worked together during that I understand, I would have thought Britain had a diplomatic opening there to get the US more strongly on their side and avert the latter 1812 conflict altogether).
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May 20, 2022 18:49
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Jedit posted:I find it very hard to take a claim that Lancelot was more noble than Arthur seriously when the girl he got was Arthur's wife. Unless whoever came up with him in the first place was the historical equivalent of all those people who talk about cucks and alphas and betas and whatnot. Or, to be fair, marrying somebody for politics at the demand of your family only to secretly sleep with someone you actually love/are attracted to was enough of a medieval thing I can see someone claiming an adulterer was noble with a straight face, it seems cheating was downright universally accepted among the powerful (powerful men, at least; women are just things to be seduced not seduce themselves). Though from what I've gathered from folks more familiar with Arthurian mythos, the whole thing seems to be fanfic the whole way down. Main thing sets up a great king with a court of the best knights in the world, come up with your own special knight and just stick him in the story having to go get his head cut off by a green man or whatever. Most Arthurian stuff even today does that exact same thing, Prince Valiant and the like are just following an ancient tradition. I suppose the Holy Grail quest stuff could have been people making the equivalent of an Avengers team up plot. Fanfic admittedly isn't quite a fair term though, there was no "canon" at the time these tales were conceived because you didn't generally have somebody writing it down; if it's just people telling stories, who would know when you make up your own and insert it into the framework? If people like the story, they start incorporating what you invented into their stories and so it gets spread. I expect there were several lame Knights of the Round Table who never made it into our knowledge because people thought they were boring/bad enough to never repeat the tales.
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Jun 12, 2022 18:32
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Vandar posted:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Round_Table#Partial_lists Apparently it's supposed to have room for three hundred people; plenty of room for your own insert knights I guess. If a 3' diameter table traditionally seats 10 you'd need a 90' table; guess only true heroes can manage to pass the salt successfully.
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Jun 13, 2022 19:29
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Byzantine posted:Even the omnipresent life energy of the cosmos doesn't care about Nazis getting killed. Hell, the omnipresent life energy of the cosmos helped Luke pull the trigger on those bastards; it expressly lusts for the death of fascist scum.
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May 11, 2023 04:35
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Mr Interweb posted:can't it just be more likely that people started noticing there's romantic subplots - in many cases, seemingly forced - in pretty much every piece of media that it gets tiring? i actually gave this a bit of thought in recent months and was actually kind of astonished just how ubiquitous romantic relationships are in tv./film/etc. no matter the genre, whether it's action/adventure/comedy/horror/etc., there is almost always at least one love interest involved. and it's almost always with lead characters. why does that need to be a thing? Honestly I swear this seems to be even more of an issue in a LOT of fanfic in my experience. Virtually every emotionally close relationship in the source media (whether it played that way originally or not) featured in the fic is inevitably spun as romantic. I'm not always against changing relationships that way (for one thing it's about the only way to consider any of the LGBTQ possibilities most original works refuse to look at), but it gets irritating when apparently it's impossible for people to care strongly for each other unless they're loving, found family and just strong friendships need not apply. Seen lots of stories where there's a great plot that doesn't rely on any sort of romantic elements that suddenly ends in "they fell in love" without doing any building or foreshadowing of such a relationship between the characters in question, just kind of has to be popped in as the "inevitable" result of people being at all together in the story even if it pretty much craps all over their original characterization to boot. When your romance suddenly kicks in last chapter without any build-up, consider whether it was needed at all. Not that professional stuff doesn't have similar issues but man it seems even more endemic in fan writing. Splicer posted:Our sources not only tell us Greg and Marcie were sitting in the tree, they were also k i s s i n g. You may know that next comes love and then comes marriage, but is that the end of the story? Find out after the break. This kind of reminds me of a related complaint I read in one book once about how all the stories cutting off at "they got married" are rather sinister. "Have you ever read a folktale where the princess's mother gets to do anything but die young? I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning or an instruction."
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Jul 6, 2023 06:01
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mllaneza posted:That's a great book in a great series, totally worth reading the whole thing. Amusingly, the first book in the series started out as a Star Trek fanfic. Now she's got more Hugos than Heinlein. Yeah, probably the funniest in the series, which is saying a lot. I don't generally enjoy comedy which depends on embarrassment but even I couldn't stop cackling at a certain dinner party chapter, particularly with lines like "the party is breaking up (And sinking. All souls feared lost)". Also like the fact the series manages the trick of a likable protagonist whose heart is in the right place but nevertheless is inarguably a real rear end in a top hat sometimes. That's a hard line to keep to.
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Jul 7, 2023 08:37
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ImpAtom posted:They don't, lorewise, actually reproduce via sex. They use their psychic powers to meld DNA or something and then create a new baby Asari using the combined DNA. Hey, if humans had 100% effective birth control since the dawn of our species (that psychic thing doesn't apparently result in kids unless they want to), and pretty much no STDs beyond a very rare genetic condition, how horny would we have evolved to be when there's not much downside? I mean, look at where we are now without those things *points at rest of Internet*. And judging by all the various species asari are willing to screw, they aren't even as picky as we are about appearance.
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Apr 20, 2024 03:06
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