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Despite a few outstanding performances I hate the Nolan Batman movies. I believe people have blinded themselves to how bad these scripts are. It will be sad when a real Batman movie comes along but no one will recognize it because they have convinced themselves that Bale's Batman is as good as it will get.
And I support Ben Affleck 100%. He's a cool guy and a major talent and will no doubt do a great job as Batman.
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I don't drink alcohol and have a low tolerance for those that do.I'm with you here, and were I hosting a live game I wouldn't allow it in my home nor partake if I was at someone else's (and probably would have a low tolerance for being around other people drinking - I loathe the smell of alcohol of any sort).
Hmm. Interesting.
Why do you have a low tolerance for me, my father, my sister, my mother, my fiance, most of my other relatives and most of my friends?
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I love Tolkien.
I love the narrative, the language. Fellowship is my favourite. I have a few chapters that I like to (re)read when I don't feel like picking up the whole book, and "Concerning Hobbits" is one of them (but The Council of Elrond is chief among them).
I delight in the "long" passages that, from what I can read on these boards, put everyone to sleep.
I know, shocking...
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For example: I don't like Battlestar Galactica. At all. Either version. I could never understand why it was so popular while it was on. Never liked Lost either.
The original BSG was cheesy fun (emphasis on the cheesy). The 'dark & gritty" sorta re-write was just... not fun.
I confess- I hate "dark & gritty"- it's soooo overdone and rarely done well.
Umm...another one for me, since you mentioned it: I actually enjoyed the Star Wars prequels. I thought they were very fun movies, good action, solid acting (in most places), and good effects.
Plot-wise it may have fell short, but I'm of the opinion that Star Wars wasn't exactly a high complexity/elevated/whatever you wanna call it plot either.
So I guess there ARE some things that liking it will get you shunned by some people (universally disliked things and things not "in your age bracket", for instance, if the Brony backlash is any indicator).
Yes, there were more annoying things, but still fun.
I don't get the whole "brony" thing.
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I love Tolkien.
I love the narrative, the language. Fellowship is my favourite. I have a few chapters that I like to (re)read when I don't feel like picking up the whole book, and "Concerning Hobbits" is one of them (but The Council of Elrond is chief among them).
I delight in the "long" passages that, from what I can read on these boards, put everyone to sleep.
I know, shocking...
We can be shunned together.
Whenever anyone complains about how long and boring Tolkien is because of his exhaustive descriptions of the setting or the history of an area, I always feel like asking what they think of Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, or John Steinbeck. Since I feel all of those writers had a very similar approach to the narrative pace and the value of a well-described setting, I am always curious if those same people are "put to sleep" by "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Huckleberry Finn."
I suspect the answer might be "yes"... and that's all I really have to say about that.
I've always felt Star Wars should be classified as Fantasy, not Sci-Fi.That isn't really a banning opinion.
Farmboy discovers that he is the son of the great hero, is given a magic sword by his wizard mentor, and then teams up with the clever hero and the mighty hero to rescue the princess from the dark fortress.
It's been openly admitted that Lucas used The Hero of a Thousand Faces as a template for Star Wars. It looking like mythology in space isn't an accident, but design.
The reason most "purists" (and I have leanings in this direction myself) classify "Star Wars" as fantasy instead of science fiction is because "the Force" is magic, not science. Jedis are mages, not warriors.
Of course that purist view is somewhat nullified when you point out that most sci-fi is full of things that we currently consider to be scientifically impossible, such as faster than light travel, teleportation and time travel.
But those are accepted by virtue of tradition and the need for narrative control in a universe that is too vast to deal with without at least FTL.
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Even though I am one in a sense, I dont like nerds. While I love my hobbies I really do dislike the fandom for the most part.
I find my fellow gamer/anime/comic book fan to be for the most part (with a few exceptions of course) to intellectually dishonest and narcissistic, with a propensity for killing fun rather than just enjoying what they enjoy. For the most part because they can't relate to certain experiences they find them inferior or not important. They lack the ability to balance common sense with their "vastly superior" intellects. Most times, especially on message boards where they cant be held accountable for what they say or do, they come across as functional sociopaths.
I love my hobbies. LOVE THEM. But sometimes I really, REALLY cant stand the fandom.
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I find my fellow gamer/anime/comic book fan to be for the most part (with a few exceptions of course) to intellectually dishonest and narcissistic, with a propensity for killing fun rather than just enjoying what they enjoy. For the most part because they can't relate to certain experiences they find them inferior or not important. They lack the ability to balance common sense with their "vastly superior" intellects. Most times, especially on message boards where they cant be held accountable for what they say or do, they come across as functional sociopaths.
Shin, I've been roaming the interwebz since they were created, and the newsgroups and bulletin board systems before that. My hobbies include hunting, shooting, photography, guitar, sculpting, drawing, riding, fishing....
Heck, let's just say that I have no lack for hobbies.
Your description above would be a fair criticism of pretty much every single group of people I've encountered in every hobby I've engaged in.
Which leads me to what I call the "Anthropogenic Principle" which can be stated as follows:
"No matter what group of people you're with, if you look around, you'll find that the people you see are pretty much the same as the people you see from any other group of people you could find."
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I think Kender are amusing and endearing.
Also, I didn't really enjoy Planescape: Torment
I loathe the terms "Pally" and "Sorc".
I like dark settings where all seems lost until the heroes show up.
I refuse to let players choose monsters as player races. The same with the anthropomorphic animal type races. In fact, I'mthisclose to banning all but Humans.
I like PALADINS.
I like Vancian spell casting.
I think AoO's are the devil's plaything and are mechanically full of crap.
I don't like discussing my hobbies with other gamers or other people I don't know, with the exception of doing so on the message boards. It's much ruder to neck punch someone who's annoying me in public than to just ignore them online.
Yes, there were more annoying things, but still fun.
I don't get the whole "brony" thing.
I ended up watching the majority of the first season for one reason or another (partly that friends watched it and I wanted to see what the craze was about).
While it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, I can see EXACTLY why people enjoy it.
It's a very...relaxing show. It's got that kid's show charm and innocence that's very soothing, but it has just enough substance that it's not vapid and boring.
It also helps that the characters are very likeable for the most part.
While I probably wouldn't sit down and watch the whole thing, if it were on at a friend's house or whatever I'd sit and be content with it just fine.
We can be shunned together.
Whenever anyone complains about how long and boring Tolkien is because of his exhaustive descriptions of the setting or the history of an area, I always feel like asking what they think of Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, or John Steinbeck. Since I feel all of those writers had a very similar approach to the narrative pace and the value of a well-described setting, I am always curious if those same people are "put to sleep" by "A Tale of Two Cities" or "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Huckleberry Finn."
I suspect the answer might be "yes"... and that's all I really have to say about that.
The problem is that there's a fine line between "well-described" and "over-saturated with description".
Dickens is a good example. He's written some great stuff. But we'll pick on Great Expectations here for a sec.
And my complaint with that book is very simple: It could have been told, with very little loss of substance, in about 20 pages.
It would have made a GREAT short story. As-is it's an okay book that drags in places, just meanders around with descriptions of X place with Y people and so on and it just continues to do so for many more pages than necessary. And then, after all that meandering, the climax comes up so abruptly you're likely to get whiplash just reading it.
I have a similar complaint with some of the middle books of the Wheel of Time as well, even though they're some of my favorite books, so don't think this complaint is contained to authors I don't like or who "aren't modern enough".
Rynjin, it is quite plausibly arguable that ANY story could be told in 20 pages or less.
The difference in great stories and bad stories isn't usually the plot, it's the style, the way the story is told.
There is a very good reason that "Lord of the Rings" regularly wins votes from both literary insiders and the general reading public as "the best novel ever." It's precisely because of the way the story is told.
Now, it is quite possible that weaving a multi-layered, semantically rich, linguistically lyrical story is something that is tied to a different era.
But I hope not. I'm working on the final edits of my own first novel, and I have done a lot of hard work to craft the story in such a way that the way it is told is as important as the story itself.
My problem with "Wheel of Time" is that regardless of how the story was written, it was never a story at all. It was an endless character study thrown into different settings with different antagonists, but with the same goal, which was to keep the reader buying books.
My problem with "Harry Potter" is that while the story was good, the text of pretty much every book after "Goblet of Fire" was bloated and boring because the author had so much clout that she simply wouldn't allow editors to do their job.
I don't think either of those are true of Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was using the main plot of the story as an allegory for a more important message, and his style of writing was to weave that deeper message into, around and through the "story" so that it became a more powerful and compelling narrative. For me anyway.
Which is true, but I again think that simply because it IS multi-layered, semantically rich, linguistically lyrical", doesn't mean it helps the story.
Like I said, there's a fine line between "well detailed" and "OVERLY detailed", and some stories are unfortunately harmed (in my opinion) by dipping into that second category.
If you become too bogged down in the detailing and sentence structure, your story becomes buried under it all. Conversely, if you use too little it comes out almost textbook-y and boring to read ("Chesspiece storytelling" I've heard it called. Character X goes to place Y and carries out Z action being the most description you get a lot of the time, with no character development or any of the juicy stuff in there).
And, I'll admit, I think a lot of authors "back in the day" tended to walk that line, sometimes staying on the "good" side of it, and sometimes straying onto the "bad" side of it.
Lord of the Rings does a good job walking that line, except around the middle of The Two Towers. That is probably the middle bookiest middle book that ever middle booked, to butcher a quote somebody said about the second Star Wars movie, and that's partly because it kinda gets locked down in itself, describing locations without really telling anything that HAPPENS.
Just to be clear, Jedi were not mages, they were Eldritch Knights.
I don't drink alcohol and have a low tolerance for those that do.I'm with you here, and were I hosting a live game I wouldn't allow it in my home nor partake if I was at someone else's (and probably would have a low tolerance for being around other people drinking - I loathe the smell of alcohol of any sort).Hmm. Interesting.
Why do you have a low tolerance for me, my father, my sister, my mother, my fiance, most of my other relatives and most of my friends?
If you're doing it in your own home, I don't. You're fine, do what you want. Just don't expect me to accept any invitations over.
If you're at my place, I'll politely ask you not to bring those things. If you do, I'll politely ask you to leave.
I think Kender are amusing and endearing.
Also, I didn't really enjoy Planescape: Torment
Ecch. Heck I think kender players should be banned. ;-)
Same here.
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I loathe the terms "Pally" and "Sorc".
I like PALADINS.
I like Vancian spell casting.
I think AoO's are the devil's plaything and are mechanically full of crap.
Ooops.
Me too.
Likewise.
I agree.
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I refuse to let players choose monsters as player races. The same with the anthropomorphic animal type races. In fact, I'm this close to banning all but Humans.
I refuse to limit the freedom of my players, though I do draw the line at obvious munchkins and min-maxing that goes out of control.
Also, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum as I usually feel like I should ban Core Races (especially Humans) and let people improvise.
I found the "Wheel of Time" series to be so boring I couldn't finish the first book after 4 tries.
Ever play the Wheel of Time d20 game? It's 10x worse. Instead of adventurers, players get to roll up cheerleaders who stand by and watch as NPC's from the novels swoop in during every important encounter and steal the show.
It's like a DMPC power-trip on steroids, except that it's written in the AP itself.
I think Kender are amusing and endearing.
Also, I didn't really enjoy Planescape: Torment
Shunning starting in 1... 2... 3!
Despite a few outstanding performances I hate the Nolan Batman movies. I believe people have blinded themselves to how bad these scripts are. It will be sad when a real Batman movie comes along but no one will recognize it because they have convinced themselves that Bale's Batman is as good as it will get.
And I support Ben Affleck 100%. He's a cool guy and a major talent and will no doubt do a great job as Batman.
I loved Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but I really thought the third Batman movie was rushed and weak. The plot was ridiculous and full of disappointing let downs(climax of Batman and Bane's battle, for example).
As for Affleck, I like the guy. But I've watched him in comedies just way, way too many times to take him seriously as Batman; Kevin Smith sort of ruined my taking him serious(although he was the bomb in "Phantoms"). I haven't seen Argo yet, but I really want to.
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I loathe the terms "Pally" and "Sorc".
I like PALADINS.
I like Vancian spell casting.
I think AoO's are the devil's plaything and are mechanically full of crap.
Ooops.
Me too.
Likewise.
I agree.
I love Paladins, too. But then I'm about the only person I know who prefers Superman to Batman, Captain America to Iron Man, and thinks Wolverine is the worst thing to happen to comic books since well . . . I take that back, Wolverine is actually the worst thing to happen to comic books character wise ever. He single-handedly ruined the 90's.
And Tinker Gnomes are WAAYYYY more annoying than Kender.
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I like the concept of Wolverine, but he's just had no development past "unkillable badass with blades in his arms." The extreme levels of plot armor he's had over the years is just ridiculous. I think I saw a comic where he was burned to bones, and the DNA in his marrow was enough to regenerate him back to full health. Making him invincible just ruins any attempt at development or risk.
I was actually cheering when Magneto turned him into a pretzel, or when the Hulk got fed up and just ripped him in half. Doesn't matter, he still survived.
Funny enough though, one of my favorite fantasy weapons is a bladed gauntlet, resembling Wolverine's claws, or what the Predator wears.
Spiderman is my fav.
Toby Maguire was a horrible Peter Parker. Don't know if that's his fault, or the writer's...
I did enjoy the spidey vs doc oc fight scenes in the 2nd movie, though.
Haven't seen the reboot yet.
Toby was a fine Spiderman. He nailed the nerdy self-conscious teenager better than any other so far.
...
Agree/Disagree.
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Less agreements, more shunning!!
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I don't like Star Wars.
I have been shunned at my table for that.
Less agreements, more shunning!!
Absolutely! The whole point of this thread is to shun the heck out of others! Shun me to the max Kryzbyn!
Oh, I am...
:)
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Wolverine is actually the worst thing to happen to comic books character wise ever. He single-handedly ruined the 90's.
I wonder what kind of XP you get for the 90s.
Wolverine is actually the worst thing to happen to comic books character wise ever. He single-handedly ruined the 90's.I wonder what kind of XP you get for the 90s.
enough to have lead roles in quite a few movies of the following decade...
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I like all the sequels/prequels that it's cool to hate: SW episodes 1-3, the Matrix 2-3, and the Hobbit come to mind. Not quite as much as the originals, mind you, but they're not bad films. They're just about different things.
I love Paladins, too. But then I'm about the only person I know who prefers Superman to Batman, Captain America to Iron Man
Hear, hear!
I think people whining about people dying in a Song of Ice and Fire exaggerate. Seriously. They raise their hackles about...
When I first picked up A Game of Thrones, and the thing happened to the kid, I was like "Whoa, this author doesn't mess around! How refreshing to know that any character can get killed/maimed at any time!" But all in all, it doesn't happen often to primary characters.
Which, if anything, is slightly disappointing to me.
I despise Firefly, and it has nothing to do with the show. I've got two friend who declared it was the best thing ever so many times I now hate it because of that fact. Probably not the best reason, but if you met these two you'd understand why.
I find that the more I hear about how awesome something is before I read or watch a thing, the more it falls flat as a result of the hype.
The new BSG was a pretty good show, but the only reason I finished watching the series was because of the board game, which I consider one of the best board games ever made.
I’m a huge New BSG fan, and an avid player of board games, but somehow I have yet to play the BSG board game. :(
I'm fine with those who drink a couple beers during a several hour session. It's generally not disruptive behavior. But I have at least one friend who will drink 6 beers in the first hour, and will have brought something harder for later. When things change from drinking while gaming to gaming while drinking, that's when I leave early.
Well said, sir. Everything in moderation.
I loathe the terms "Pally" and "Sorc".
I like PALADINS.
I like Vancian spell casting.
I think AoO's are the devil's plaything and are mechanically full of crap.
Ooops.
Me too.
Likewise.
I agree.
I love Paladins, too. But then I'm about the only person I know who prefers Superman to Batman, Captain America to Iron Man, and thinks Wolverine is the worst thing to happen to comic books since well . . . I take that back, Wolverine is actually the worst thing to happen to comic books character wise ever. He single-handedly ruined the 90's.
And Tinker Gnomes are WAAYYYY more annoying than Kender.
I agree with this. I prefer Captain America over anyone else that appeared in the Avengers movie. Except for maybe the Hulk. But I have a slight bias towards the big green rage monster, as his power is one I wish I had (I used to be a very angry person. I calmed since graduating school), just after Mystique's power.
Speaking of the wonderful blue-skinned redhead... I absolutely despise what they did to her for the X-Men movies (including the newer ones when they are younger).
I love Disney animated movies, and much prefer animated movies over live action. I also miss Dreamworks's non CGI animated movies. Yes, I even enjoyed their Sinbad movie. I just wish they would make them longer than 90-100 minutes. I also wish more movies were in the 3 hour mark. They need to redo the Dragonlance movie and get a studio that isn't made up of animation school dropouts.
I love paladins so much I house rule you could build your own code and pick your own god or ideal!
I've only read the first book so far, but I've been told (and spoilered) that a lot of characters die.
So either you're reading up on a different series, or then you're just being dishonest with us.
I have read the books three times...the number of POV characters that die, outside of the Epilogue/Prologues, are pretty minimal. Most of the "GRRM KILL EVERYONE" really is based off of two events in the series. A good chunk of minor characters die...but they are minor characters and often little more than scenery dressing.
The TV does make this much worse though, by killing off people who survive in the book and giving characters that die in the book far far more screen time than some of the main characters.
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I'm a Christian. Though I stay away from the loaded term "evangelical," since as a libertarian, I don't fall into that political camp. I do hold to much of the theology.