Hitdice's page

Cordwainer Smith, as if that even was his real name! Have you read James Triptee Jr.?

(Okay, I'll cop to it: every single thread I post in turns into a book thread somehow. :P)

Hitdice wrote:

You've read Harlan Ellison, right?

No -- always thought of him as a screenwriter rather than an author.

P.S. To Comrade Anklebiter: I have, of course, read the other Ellison!

Take a look at Deathbird Stories and Strange Wine, those are both short story collections. (I'm not entirely sure that Harlan Ellison every wrote a novel length prose piece.)

Cordwainer Bird, though, there's an awesome author for you! :P

Hitdice wrote:

You might pick up some Dennis Lehane (Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone are his two most popular books, but only because they've been made into movies) just for blanks and giggles. Definitely worth reading, but not for the timid.

Mystic River was awesome, but Shutter Island kind of sucked donkey dick, so I stopped there. Kind of like how David Baldacci's Absolute Power was a tour-de-force, and everything he's written since has been like a 10-year-old wrote it.

Hitdice wrote:

Also: "Alexandre Dumas was black!"

Well, half, but, yeah. Read Gregoire and there's no doubt! Also, Django was awesome! I just wished they'd cast someone other than Sam Jackson in that role -- it was a bit too much for me.

Well, granted, in this day and age we would call him "mixed-race", but I sort of feel like that's a term that only gained traction in the U.S. since white people had to come to terms with voting for a black dude.

(Y'know what Freehold, you can just go ahead an post that PM for everyone to read, it looks like I derailed the thread anyhow. :P)

But about Lehane's stuff, I got Live by Night for Christmas, and really enjoyed it in a drippy-epic-romance sort of way.

You've read Harlan Ellison, right?

You might pick up some Dennis Lehane (Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone are his two most popular books, but only because they've been made into movies) just for blanks and giggles. Definitely worth reading, but not for the timid.

Also: "Alexandre Dumas was black!"; It's totally weird cause I just PM-ed Freehold about Django Unchained.

Spenser (yes, spelled like the poet) for hire now? Kirth, you read all the right authors. :)

ravenharm wrote:

No one under the age of 18 allowed at the gaming table. Ever.

Seriously i have sent players home who have brought their kids, or younger siblings.

Politically?
Think bioshock 1&2 with a dash of Game of thrones for heraldry.

Regarding sexual matters?
Sex, sexuality, and sexually driven story lines are common, about as common as combat.
Regarding irregular ideas (to other gaming tables) GLBT issues are handled with respect to the players and are used to improve the the game in a productive way to progress the story. They are treated as story points and are never thrown in there just to diversify or without purpose.

Grittiness/mortality?
Death is common. Of note: violence and sex have a strong dividing line down the middle that I as a DM will never cross. Sex will never steer into death. This isn't a slasher flick,and it will never be up to negotiation.

Any other aspects?
I didn't know I had this revulsion, but after an episode of game of thrones where joffery has one prostitute beat another with a heavy wooden thing, sex will never merge into violence in my games. Game of thrones had more violence against females then I could stomach, and i have since stopped watching the show.
I have also never been a fan of slasher films for a same reason, but it was while i watched the GoT that it came to light.

Yes, that scene was an absolute stomach churner. Joffery is the worst villain in the story, IMO. Can't stand him. The guy that plays him is a pretty good actor, to be able to play a slime like that so well.

Have you watched Call the Midwife lately? Holey Bejeezus, just don't buy a pickle fork for your wife the eighth time she's preggers!

Meat, I'm not saying you're wrong, but which side of the Don Imus firing do you fall on? It looked like a Justified Termination to me.

I'll back you up on your estimation of WoTC's whole approach. Never ever release any sort of playtest packet on April First, even a comedy one, it just looks bad.

Hitdice wrote:

Kryzbyn wrote:

Theon? You mean ** spoiler omitted **

What's funny is, I read the first four books between seasons one and two, and was rather aghast at what an a-hole Theon was. Then I saw season two and was confused by all the characterization they were wasting on him. Theon feels conflicted between loyalty to Robb and his father? Okay, but in the book he's just a treacherous douche-bag, characterization finished, and then he disappears from the story.

Then I finally get ahold of book five and I'm all, "Gee, maybe that characterization wasn't wasted after all . . ."

For those who have read the book five:

** spoiler omitted **

Read book 2 again. When I first read it I was feeling exactly what you described - I was so ANGRY at Theon for betraying Rob that I actualy missed the fact that even back then, he was a very complex character, and his betrayl, while certainly misguided and with horrible results, is really more the attempt of a lost child to define himself than just a bad guy. In my second read, I was actualy nearly in his favour, even while he was doing the terrible things he did back there.

Those books are *so* good.

It wasn't his betrayal of Robb, that comes later. I was saying that after dealing with Theon as a rather innocuous supporting character in the first book (and season), a page and half into his first POV section in the second, I said to myself "Wow, this guy's a f**king a**hole!"

I don't disagree with you about Theon's motives, but the TV series is front loading a bunch of stuff that makes him sympathetic, like the realization that he chose wrong and his real father died in King's Landing. You don't get that in the books until book five, after two volumes of off screen torture.

Robot mechanic, it's a growth industry!

Jiggy wrote:

I said "in my experience". And in my experience, yes, it IS far more often.

When you say "Often", do you mean "Often" as in a person who has lost their parents, or Often, frequently?

Frequently

Yes you repeated Often, frequently.

No, I only repeated it once.

Yes! You repeated Often, frequently, once!

Look, I'm from Rhode Island, and I make an effort to pronounce "Awfhen" without a T; just don't ask me about Waw-wick. :P

EDIT: Never mind thinking, why are you punishing me for my creative spellong and pronunciation?!

CapeCodRPGer wrote:

Glad to see he has such an open mind.

Does the calendar say 1982?

Ah, poor Pat, bless him!

I guess it depends on what you mean by "life".

On the one hand, I would say that the vast majority of the fantasy game players I've ever known are quite aware that goblins, orcs, spirits, ghosts, animated skeletons, fireballs, and Melf's Acid Arrows are products of the human imagination, with no more power over the real world than any other fiction, and that the vast majority of fantasy game players lead productive, healthy, constructive lives.

On the other, there's also that occasional guy we've all bumped into at one time or another, who talks about his character like it's real, and follows you around the game store telling you things about his exploits that you never wanted to hear...

...just like there's the occasional guy who follows you around with a Bible trying to tell you about how God makes him speak in tongues or the devil possessed his computer and made error messages appear, or there is the occasional guy who thinks that waving a dead chicken over his head is the supernatural equivalent of taking Viagra or antibiotics, or there is the occasional guy who lifts weights and takes steroids until he looks like a Klingon who will chase you around and tell you what you what not to eat or how much exercise to get, or there's the occasional guy who will follow you around and tell you that you need to sacrifice your favorite things to the Earth Goddess or she will burn you up with Global Warming for your pride and hubris.

For every interest out there, there's a certain number of people who get a little side-tracked and wander off the yellow-brick-road until they no longer quite see eye-to-eye with reality about what a "real life" is, and how to spend it.

We could all point to That One Guy anytime we want to dismiss a given group of people,...

I don't disagree, but Robertson isn't the occasional guy who follows you around with a Bible. He's a media figure with a TV show and an audience numbering in the high thousands, if not full-on millions. I'm not saying Robertson is a good example of Christian thought, but, as has been said before, I wish I saw more Christians having that Mr. Incredible vs. Incrediboy moment of "You are not affiliated with me!!"

I guess I'm saying that, whether or not anyone wants to dismiss Christians, Robertson deserves dissing and dismissing, frequently and in public, by "his own kind."

TriOmegaZero wrote:

They've already vilified smart phones, talking about how they make us stupider and turn us into zombies.

That second one looks pretty accurate to me. People like you and cyz who can actually put a text-y phone in their pocket and stop looking at it for a minute and a half? Those people are getting to be rather a minority.

See, Kirth, I know from the Horrible Milk Incident thread that you're the kind of fascist who demands that guests take off their shoes, so my point stands. :P

Well, I'm not saying you're wrong exactly, but religious nut-jobs (oversimplification, I know) have been burning books since before RPGs were around. I mean, say, Kurt Vonnegut books; stuff in recent history. I think Theeeshades is right on this one. Smart phones have assimilated into mainstream culture so thoroughly that at this point it'd be like calling out people who wear shoes.

In other I. Claudius news, I finally find a hawt chick sexy enough for Rome and she turns out to be a manipulative, psycho biznitch. Poor Clau-clau-claudius... :(

Wait, which one? Cause you just described every woman in the thing, aside from his mother. No, wait, she starves her daughter to death and then kills herself, that's as psycho as anyone else. Also, which of the hawt sexy chicks in Rome wasn't a manipulative, psycho biznitch?

Honestly, I thought I, Claudius had a hotter Livia Drusilla (Sian Phillips) than Rome (Alice Henley), but maybe that's just cause I love 'Sidi-ji so much. Old ladies with poison? That's sexy!

ANebulousMistress wrote:

James, when you set up IV coffee drips, do you add anything to your coffee? Cream? Sugar? Protein isolate in 80 ppm?

Before I went on the diet back in February, my coffee was a grande nonfat sugar-free vanilla latte. I'd have 1 or 2 of them a day.

Today, I've switched to black coffee with pretty much NOTHING else in it.

That's the only real kind of coffee,JJ; if you wanted coffee, why did you ask for a cup of cream and sugar? :P

I'd like to hear your thoughts on how we can improve the competition and the process for the next RPG Superstar competition. Ideas that are already floating about are:

* Shorten the voting period for R1. We went with the 3 weeks because we weren't sure how much voting input we were going to get and wanted to leave enough time to sort all the items, but clearly that wasn't a problem. Anywhere we can reduced the "lag time" in the competition is good (as it is, the competition is almost four months long, and it's easy for the public to lose interest over that timespan).

* Implement the R1 culling earlier to avoid so much exposure to the really poor items. And perhaps add a second culling.

* Add a way to flag R1 items that break the rules (word count, copyright violations, and so on) so you don't have to send a private message about it.

* Add a way for voters to add a short comment to an R1 item that remains hidden until the end of R1, at which time the author can see all the comments.

* Drop the playtest step from R4. (Adding a week to the process late in the competition contributes to people losing interest in/track of the competition, and we don't get many people who post their playtest experiences, so it's not a big benefit that offsets the loss-cost.)

No guarantees on any of the above, like I said, they're just ideas, and I'd like to hear about any other ways you think we can improve the competition.

This is the first time I've seen this thread, and I couldn't be bothered to read all the way through it. Sorry if I'm repeating something that others have posted before.

I think dropping the playtest step from R4 is the best option listed; you Paizo staffers know how to spot a functional scenario, and we uneducated fans know how to find the most awesome of the choices. Those are the two sides of the equation, and with such a tight schedule play testing becomes a bit redundant.

Outside of the choices offered, I think R1 is giving you guys the most trouble. It felt like a disaster this year, if only because I'm not willing to weed through anyone's slush pile unless they pay me for doing so. This probably isn't very helpful, but a special forum title isn't enough reason to sort through all of round one, forever and ever. If, on the other hand, you would offer a recast of the Varian Jegarre Reaper Mini (in resin or whatever) I would probably vote on 5 to 6,000 unique entries.

I hope that all made sense.

Aaron Bitman wrote:

Hitdice wrote:

She wrote the second book first, with no ideas beyond wanting to write a story with a huge snowstorm in it iirc, and ended up with a subtle high fantasy story that just happens to be about a ten year old. Then her publishers said "Looks like a kids series to us, make it so," so she went back and wrote OSUS stone as a kid's book.

Just for the record, Over Sea, Under Stone was first published in 1965.

The other four "Dark is Rising" books were published in 1973 through 1977.

Which sort of derails the argument about the publishers forcing it to be a kid's series. Which didn't really make much sense anyway, since the later books weren't as childish in tone as OSUS, though not always as much subtle high fantasy as The Dark is Rising

Perhaps she just became a better writer between the first two. Perhaps she intentionally shifted tone based on the viewpoint characters for the book (or scene?) in question.

What I'd mis-remembered is that OSUS was written as a one-off, and TDiR was the first one she wrote with plans for a series.

But Jeff, what argument? I said iirc, and Aaron corrected me, so I went and found an interview where she talked about how the books were written. If that's your idea of an argument, you must have a terrible time discussing anything. :P

Hitdice wrote:

Kirth Gersen wrote:

Hitdice wrote:

Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)

I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.

The introduction by Moorcock in the first White Wolf collection mentions that "Fritz could be sensitive" about the pronunciation, so I'm trying to re-train myself. Hell, I don't know, to honor the dead, I guess.

Sure, DA, Milne's cool, too. I was just thinking that Moorcock's right in the essay: as much as I love The Chronicles of Prydain (the dial goes to eleven) Alexander probably isn't as good a writer as Susan Cooper. The last time I read the Prydain books, I found some parts a bit formulaic. Of course, the first time i read them I was in fifth grade, so it was all new to me. Alexander was one of the people who taught me the formula.

Susan Cooper won my heart when I read her books in third grade for many reasons, but primarily for the lovely discussion Will and John Rowlands have in The Grey King about the nature of inhuman good. So much children's literature is very simple -- good is good, the end. I loved that in Cooper's books, she had the harsh, absolutist goodness of supernatural forces opposed by human compassion. I felt, as a little kid, like she wasn't trying to simplify things for me. Also there are some moments of ravishingly beautiful writing in her work.

I was twelve when I read those books. That was just old enough that, having read The Dark is Rising first, I found Over Sea, Under Stone too childish for my oh-so-developed taste. Remains unread to this day.

It's totally weird, though. She wrote the second book first, with no ideas beyond wanting to write a story with a huge snowstorm in it iirc, and ended up with a subtle high fantasy story that just happens to be about a ten year old. Then her publishers said "Looks like a kids series to us, make it so," so she went back and wrote OSUS stone as a kid's book. Or maybe it's not that weird, and I'm just rationalizing my own snootiness from 30 years ago.

But yeah, Jess, I know exactly what you mean. Reading The Greenwitch, you see Will through Jenny's eyes, and it's very educational seeing the character from the outside after The Dark is Rising. By the end of it I was pretty sure that Will's (and Jenny's for that matter) magic power was maturity, never mind all that stuff about the endless battle between Light and Dark.

Man, I loved those books, and then they made the worst movie of all time out of The Dark is Rising. Fricken Hollywood does it again.

Hitdice wrote:

Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded)

I was born in Germany; it never occurred to me that anyone might pronounce it differently than that.

The introduction by Moorcock in the first White Wolf collection mentions that "Fritz could be sensitive" about the pronunciation, so I'm trying to re-train myself. Hell, I don't know, to honor the dead, I guess.

Sure, DA, Milne's cool, too. I was just thinking that Moorcock's right in the essay: as much as I love The Chronicles of Prydain (the dial goes to eleven) Alexander probably isn't as good a writer as Susan Cooper. The last time I read the Prydain books, I found some parts a bit formulaic. Of course, the first time i read them I was in fifth grade, so it was all new to me. Alexander was one of the people who taught me the formula.

You could always Google it. The short of it: it's an essay by Michael Moorcock about why LotR sucks.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the goblin!

I hadn't seen the essay; thanks for the link.

It reminds me of my own feelings when Game of Thrones really hit it big and I heard a few comment about how GRRM had done something incredible by removing morality from the Fantasy genre. Sez I, "Gee, that sounds like something you'd say if you first saw the movies of LotR, then read the books, and assumed you thereby knew everything about the entire genre."

Personally, I think JRRT surpasses Lewis as a writer, but was glad to see Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Roger Zelazny and Fritz LYE-ber (the man may be dead, but that's the pronunciation he demanded) mentioned.

As for what I'm reading, after running off with my mother's copy of the latest atevi book (look, I returned it) it's back to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Theon? You mean ** spoiler omitted **

What's funny is, I read the first four books between seasons one and two, and was rather aghast at what an a-hole Theon was. Then I saw season two and was confused by all the characterization they were wasting on him. Theon feels conflicted between loyalty to Robb and his father? Okay, but in the book he's just a treacherous douche-bag, characterization finished, and then he disappears from the story.

Then I finally get ahold of book five and I'm all, "Gee, maybe that characterization wasn't wasted after all . . ."

For those who have read the book five:

The more I get sucked into this show, the more I grow to resent that long-ass introduction with the pop up towers and gearwork city models. It was amazingly cool the first few times, but now it just feels like precious minutes of airtime being spent on stuff that isn't the show! :)

Don't worry about it, Set. Last night I was thinking of book 3's mortality rate, and it occurred to me that the opening credits will only have to cover half the names next season. :P

Well, that answers that. I guess I can finally stop talking about Jaime getting spoilered and say it: they f**king cut his hand off, just like that.

Now I'm sad about Wilco Johnson all over again, though; I'm going to miss Ilyn Payne a lot.

You know, it's funny, because I remembered the scene from Living in Oblivion (link above) from when my old girlfriend showed it to me nigh on a millennium ago, but it wasn't 'til I tracked it down that I even realized it was also Peter Dinklage.

That actually is funny, cause I spent about ten years thinking of Dinklage as "that guy from Living in Oblivion" before I even remembered his name. After you linked it it I was all, "Of course it's on Youtube!"; some people call me Hitdice, but my secret elf-name is Dumbass!":P

See, I don't think he wasted his talents, I just wish more people would enjoy the movie. :P

I'm pretty sure he isn't a fantasy dwarf in Game of Thrones, but the good old normal type (his parents and siblings seem to be all "normal" sized folks).

Yeah, totally, you're absolutely right.

My point was that after Game of Thrones finishes up (if it even ever does) the dude will have enough royalty money rolling in to go back independent-ey movies, set in the real world, such as The Station Agent.

*shrug* One nice thing about Lost Girl is I don't recall anyone making an issue of Trick's height. (Well Kenszi might have, but that's Kenszi).

And he does carry the role well.

Dinklage had the same thing going on with an ABC series called Threshold. Only about 8 episodes were aired, but I'm pretty sure the role wasn't written for a little person. It worked because Dinklage can play a sonuvab~~&+ of any size at all.

I'm also not sure that Dinklage is complaining about his own lot in life, so much as all the body doubles out there. The actors who played the scale doubles for the hobbits got plenty of attention, but none of their faces were onscreen, right? I think that's what Dinklage is talking about. He's also a good enough actor that he doesn't have that problem.

Earlier on I mentioned Time Bandits. On the one hand, Time Bandits was a movie were you had real life dwarfs playing time-traveling magical dwarves, so that's type casting or something, right? On the other hand, it got Kenny baker out of the R2-D2 tin can suit, and face recognition is a net plus for any actor out there.

Disclaimer: if I was in Dinklage's place, I would probably make an effort not to play any more fantasy little people after Narnia and Game of Thrones.

Yeah, that's the original BBC format, though; they split the super long first episode into two for American broadcast.

Also, a lot of those early BBC dramas on PBS just showed everything the BBC had filmed; I can certainly remember seeing nipples (and sex scenes for that matter) during the original broadcast of Brideshead Revisited. I don't think the moral majority types really got up in arms about it till The Singing Detective aired, and that was mid to late 80s, iirc.

Yes, I watched PBS as a kid, and went to school and told the other kids all about the nudity; that's cultural enrichment, baby!

Caligula's in I,C! There are even orgies!

What's funny is, I, Claudius came back into my life when my local PBS station stated re-airing it a couple of months ago; I said what the hell and ordered the DVD.

Now, this is a BBC series from the 70s, so the some (very tastefully done) nudity. Early in the series, it's a small enough amount that you don't really notice the digitally fuzzed out bits. So I receive my DVD, watch the rest of the series, and, because it actually is very tastefully done, don't really think much of the nudity.

Until that is, I watched a later episode on broadcast television and it looked like someone's smeared butter across half my TV screen. Man, America's one uptight nation.

I asked if you'd ever watched I, Claudius on some thread or another because you're always yammering on about Rome and I,C has some characters in common. (Augustus and Livia Drusilla were the only ones I spotted, you may do better.) But c'mon, you get to see Capt. Picard and Gimli as murderous centurions, if that's not awesome I don't know what is!

The thing about I,C is, given the way things were filmed at the time, it's more like watching a play than a high budget TV series of today. Also, a roman empire period piece with BBC orchestra pit intro music is just weird.

Books? I, like Kirth, have been rereading Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser, after running across the entire White Wolf series (with Mignolia illustrations, double win!) in ye olde used bookstore. "Lean Times in Lankhmar" is a fricken hilarious story; whoever read it and decided that Issek of the Jug should be statted up for Dieties & Demigods sorta missed the point, IMO.

pres man wrote:

...around?

In the novels, Reacher's biceps are bigger around than Cruise's entire torso.

Of course, he never works out or anything; he's the strongest man in the world (and smartest, and best marksman) just by being naturally awesome. I figure if, as a fan, none of that bothers you, the stretch of casting a pixie-like Cruise shouldn't hurt your brain too much!

What about casting James Garner as Woodrow Call? That's like casting a Clydesdale to play a Shetland Pony!

I don't know what to say here. I really respect Dinklage as actor, but all this thread has given me reason to do is watch my Time Bandits DVD for the sixty-third time.

I hot glue my minis to soda bottle lids; hadn't thought about nails. It sounds useful for all the times you have have to turn a mini upside down and look at its crotch. (To paint it, you sickos!)

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a little bit about Stephen King, and the Wikipedia writeup on Rage is fascinating. It is not often that an author deliberately withdraws one of his novels from publication.

On a side note, while I can "take or leave" most of King's stuff, Misery happens to be one of my favorite novels. Does that saying anything unflattering about me?

He was actually going to publish Misery under Bachman's name, but got outed (or whatever) before he could.

Personally, I think King's a very interesting writer, but all the stuff that makes his writing so interesting makes it nigh-unfilmable. It's no coincidence that the two movies that approach the emotional impact of the books have a voice over. (I'm talking about Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption.)

Full disclosure, the only book I've read since finishing the dark tower series is Lisey's Story.

The Running Man is the one where some guy is hunted throughout the entire world, and it's a game show. Actually, considering books like The tenth Victim by Robert Sheckley, Hunt-each-other-down-and-kill-each-other-on-a-game-show maybe worthy of the term sub-genre at this point.

And speaking of Jennifer Lawrence, every tween-aged girl out there should see Winter's Bone; hell that one was even directed by a woman; definitely a chick flick. :P

I have a distinct memory of reading The Bachman Books in the sixth grade, but I don't really remember The Running Man. As a maladjusted teenager, I remember really liking Rage, though.

Also, in sixth grade, I remember that my teacher was married to a Czech defector, and she did this very interesting project to teach us about capitalism vs. communism. We were all assigned jobs and told to write a story about our lives. I worked in a shoe factory.

After we were done with all of that, we came in the next day, and she told us that there had been a communist revolution and all of the factory workers were now the government. I got to be the head of state and I was given three passes to have people I didn't like taken out into the hallway and shot by Jason Desrochers, who had been a worker in an electronic factory and was now the head of the secret police.

I used all three passes in about, oh, five minutes.

Vive le Galt!

EDIT: The only thing I remember about my essay on life as a shoe factory worker was that I got married and six months later, my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. We had to read our essays in front of the class and I remember Mrs. Reimann giving me a dirty look at that.

Even when barely pubescent, goblins do it in the streets!

So that's when it all started? Now we know who blame, Doodlebug. You named names!

Nothing against The Hunger Games, but have any of youse twos dudes read The Running Man? It's worth reading, but don't bother with the movie.

You've hit the nail on the head, Healer. PIE isn't, and wasn't ever a language. It's just common roots of various indo-european languages, which is different than, say, Latin, which has contributed to all the romance languages, and is an actual language which you can learn to speak (or at least translate).

Sad news.

Really Doodlebug? Even:

"Styled on my John Thomas, more like."

"Netley! How perceptive! The obelisk is phallic, for the sun's a symbol of the Male principle; of man's ascendancy."

I tell you, an architecture lecture, a history lecture, a mythology lecture, and a dick joke, all in one comic; I guess I'd give Alan Moore about a B. :P

Indeed, Orthos. The story described the honey as "unsellable," but I'd buy at least one jar of each color. Hell, given the conversation value it wouldn't necessarily have to be edible. :)

(Given my own dietary habits, I really hope M&M production doesn't produce toxic waste.)

Whenever someone posts that "[X] is the only word in the English langauge that [Y]," we need an unconscious caveat: "...that my lame inernet source was able to quickly name of off the top of his head, and without bothering to look around or think about it any more."

They didn't even specify that it was alphabetical order; this thread has gone to the dogs in your absence, Kirth. :P

Hitdice wrote:

Discussing MMOS in another thread, I pointed out that the word rape has become synonymous with "beat decisively."

For the rest of the world that remembers a word can have more than one meaning, they'd know that this is also (fairly close to) the correct definition, and indeed ORIGIN OF the word. The sexual aspect came in much later.

It's a word of French origin 14th Century - "seize prey; abduct, take by force,"

So the MMO players are correct.

If you want to then say there is 'Rape Culture', well yes there is, but it wouldn't mean what you think it means.

Shifty, are you really explaining etymological drift, and telling me that the 700 year old foreign language origin (it has much earlier roots, in Latin) of a word should supersede the modern english usage, in the same post? :P

Discussing MMOS in another thread, I pointed out that the word rape has become synonymous with "beat decisively." The response to my post was that 1) that's something you hear throughout society, not just in MMOs, and 2) It doesn't happen all that often, and isn't worth getting upset over. These statements were made in the same post.

There's no rape culture checklist out there, but that strikes me as the whole thing in a nutshell.

Doodlebug, if people won't discuss the differences between your points of view and Citizen's R.'s it might because the differences are so obvious that they don't bear discussing in the first place.

Of like, language, dude; what were you talking about? :P

Well, that's where you get into some weird territory; you may disagree, but I don't think the extended ESRB rating summery on the website is fair warning to the consumer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely sure the consumer deserves fair warning of the content if they went ahead and bought the game without doing their due diligence.

Actually...I think your example is an example of what I was saying.

Theory had a non-scientific meaning for a long while before it took on a precise scientific definition. People are simply confusing the two definitions, which I agree leads to a lot of bad output.

I'm not denying what you are saying happens, but the difference is that in those cases the scientific community happily carries on using its rarified definition. A vernacular use that differs from the precise scientific usage doesn't affect the precise scientific usage. I'd argue that the reverse is not true. In other words, in western society the scientific usage of a term bears more weight because of the weight we put in science in general.

I'm only speaking anecdotally, but the vernacular usage far surpasses the scientific, day to day. You disagree?

Meat, have you heard about the use of video games/3D environments/virtual reality as therapy tools? Long story short, it doesn't surprise me at all that video game would get that kind of reaction, no insult to the art form.

I guess my question is, does the ESRB rating warn about everything in the article? From what I read, there was no warning that said, "This video game contains choking; if you've been choked, you could have a flashback." Don't get me wrong, I think choking falls within the greater classification of violence.

I think the customer should be educated as to what they're buying, but that shouldn't undermine the artist's vision, or whatever you want to call it.

So, it's hard to decide which hat to go for on this one:

From a book I read a long time ago about Methodist missionaries in Uganda:

** spoiler omitted **...

I can't believe you'd say that about missionaries; it's just unflattering!

This article was shared on my Facebook feed by Zombie Orpheus Entertainment. Take a moment and read it, I'll wait.

It's certainly interesting.

First off I'd like to say that I'm extremely happy to live in an age where, both through technological advances and sophisticated narrative, videogames are capable of eliciting such a visceral response, however negative.

Then I'd like to open this up to discussion. I'll post some questions and I won't attempt to answer them, in the interest of having an open discussion.

Have you ever been 'triggered' by a game?
How about a film or television show?
Given that a videogame elicited such an emotional response, and that art is meant to provoke such a response, can we call this game a work of art?
Are games art?

Is someone justified in feeling angry at/violated by a game or its developer due to a PTSD triggered reaction?
Is it okay for a game to intentionally provoke such a response if the aim of the narrative is to provide catharsis?
What if it doesn't?
Is evoking helplessness a valid goal of a work of art?
Why/why not?

Is there anything the industry can do to prevent such a response?
Should they?
Does warning players that a game may provoke an intense emotional response due to specific stimuli 'spoil' portions of the game?

I haven't been traumatized in my life enough to be triggered by anything I guess. Works of art effect me emotionally, but I've never had that moment where I relived an experience from myown life and walked around shell-shocked all day afterwards.

As re: are video games art, I just don't know what to tell you. I think it's much more useful to define the differences between good art and bad art than quibble about what is or isn't art. The people who produce video games are obviously creative types, going through the creative process as they create something out of nothing (if I use the word create a few more times, that sentence will have meaning :P), but I have yet to see a video game that should be alongside the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, y'know?

If seeing someone gets choked in a video game gives you flashbacks, I think you should be angry at the [redacted] who actually choked you, rather than the designers of said video game. I also think that any video game where the main character gets chocked to death right in front of you should have violence warnings all over it.