Gormongous

Khan's plan makes no sense, though. He attacks Starfleet headquarters and then flees into enemy territory under the assumption that a ship, captained by someone he's never met, will load itself with the long-range torpedoes that contain his people and then choose to violate orders in order to travel to the enemy planet itself so he can allow himself to be captured, gain control of his people, and then take over Admiral Robocop's ship? It is a very bad thing for the script if I as the audience never fully know, let alone understand, all of the villain's plan at any point in the movie. Really, this is the problem with all of Lindelof's scripts, they churn out this enigmatic fog that allows everything to happen exactly how it has to happen for the movie to go from awesome setpiece to awesome setpiece with as little audience backfill as possible. I think Chris Pine gets too much flak, because his Kirk is quite competent, but it's laughable how much gravitas the penultimate scene with Kirk in the reactor asks us to credit it, because the callbacks to The Wrath of Khan are totally unearned. We've spent the entire movie watching characters, even Spock, make sudden, uninformed decisions that don't coalesce into any sort of distinctive character for anyone. Kirk is brash and impulsive, Spock is cold and impulsive, Scotty is goofy and impulsive, Bones is grumpy and impulsive, Uhura is clever and impulsive. Without cowboys charging around doing dumb shit, Lindelof's script doesn't hold together, so since this is nominally an ensemble piece, everyone has to be a cowboy charging around doing dumb shit. I found the entire movie almost unwatchable, up to the point that Spock won by punching the bad guy (how is this a satisfying conclusion to his character arc) and then saving Kirk with the superblood (but not anyone else, of course). Anyway, we have a Movies/TV thread for this conversation.

Yeah, the title is bad, especially seeing the URL abridges it to "rape thrones", but I think it's a fine piece, maybe one of the best to send to a friend making fun of you for complaining about "insignificant" changes between the books and the show. It's very weird to watch Game of Thrones and see many events rewritten to give more to their characters, but the sex/rape scenes often stripped down at the same time to be more brutal and traumatizing.

I'm playing an all-strength build for the first Dark Souls, but I don't think I will for Dark Souls 2, which I'm debating buying right now for the preorder weapons, which I don't even intend on using. It feels like dexterity is so much more versatile than strength in almost all situations...

I don't know if I can respond to all of your post, Miffy, much of which I agree, but I don't know if a robust suspicion of popular things is quite the social nihilism you make it out to be. I'm hardly contrarian about what I like, but I certainly stop using memes when they become popular enough to appear on Family Guy or network TV. There's just something unquantifiably less fun about knowing and liking something that everyone and their dog knows and likes.

Isn't that Havel's weapon from the previous game? Goddamn.

I honestly think they could get away with just having some diplomacy and quest texts refer to i) the three most powerful nations on Old Earth, ii) the dominant religion, and iii) the type of victory won by the player. I think the ability to import a save from a previous game and have it acknowledged in any way is more important to nine out of ten players than the way it's acknowledged. I mean, frankly, every Crusader Kings II save I've imported into Europa Universalis IV has not been remotely as interesting as the default scenario, usually because I'm "winning" the former game by a ludicrous margin, but it's the pleasure of seeing that empire rendered with a different engine and systems that actually matters to me.

Eh, kinda? That guide is a bit of a joke. I wouldn't worry about rules. Be enthusiastic, be kind, and be willing to have a good conversation, that's all I think is necessary here.

An excellent (though somewhat spoilery) analysis of one of Game of Thrones' latest twists was just put up on the AV Club: http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499

Both those are marvelously frustrating to read, the latter especially. "I strain us of searching things, disappointment." "Frustrare petunt," please. I'm begging you.

I feel you. The best advice I got from a prof on my board, the advice that I give to every incoming cohort, is to study nothing the evening before. Have a fantastic meal, do something you love, and come into the writtens and orals as free of stress as possible. If your department's anything like mine, having an easy and lucid way about you is more important than having memorized all the sieges of Constantinople until its fall in 1453. Good luck!

I say, focus on unlocking the first few carnivores and herbivores. The starting animals are weak, obtuse, and hard to play without someone else doing co-op, which is strongly recommended anyway. I got really far as a pair of Shika deer with my friend's niece, so it might even be a good cross-generational game, so long as you don't mind the animal sex.

Meat chauvinism just like that is a major theme of Iain M. Banks' first sci-fi novel, Consider Phlebas.

Nah, it's not grad school making you think that, although I am in grad school and I think that. It first occurred to me the year I lived in Greece. We went to Epidauros and saw the famous round Tholos temple there, partly rebuilt with new marble. My professor told me that it was currently a political battleground between three different advocacy groups: one that wanted not to interfere with the temple's decay at all, one that wanted to preserve it in its current state, and one that wanted to finish rebuilding it with new marble. All three claimed, quite rightly, that they were preserving the "authenticity" of the temple. I saw then very clearly that "authentic" is the intellectual version of the word "nice". It's an empty word used to decorate positions that appeal to a given party.

My main complaint is really just overall design. It's dark and difficult to find your way around. The terrain penalizes exploration even more than Dark Souls is otherwise wont, because you can aggro enemies you can't even see two levels above you and you can't use the camera for situational awareness in the same way to which you've become accustomed. Not yet in this game had I looked at a corpse with an item on it and thought to myself, "I have no idea how I'm supposed to get there," and then just had to wander around killing zombies until I found the magic combination of ladders and ledges. I got used to it by the end and actually like some things in hindsight, especially the fallen pylon and the toxic basin, but I felt the whole time like the level was designed to get me lost and then kill me. I didn't really feel like taking it in stride as much as I have been Dark Souls' other little "fuck you" moments, I don't really know why.

I don't feel great about this post. Did you just dismiss all counterculture as a slippery slope? Also, the reason you gave is not the only reason people give hipsters shit, even in this thread. Honestly, I think I'm learning more about what kind of people resent hipsters than about hipsters themselves.

This is maybe the dorkiest thing I've posted on these forums, but one of my favorite jazz bands is just this Swedish one that covers anime theme songs in a variety of jazz stylings. I have CDs of Chet Baker, Oscar Peterson, and all that, but I generally find it difficult to find a point of entry into the genre otherwise, and maybe I have no taste but most of Platina Jazz's covers are legitimately good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFlQIG0p_rs

I honestly had a really unrestful sleep because all I want to do is play the game, but I find it so incredibly stressful. I'm taking a break of a day, at least, because I made it through Blighttown all of yesterday and basically spent the entire time incredibly, uncomfortably angry. Mostly with myself, but mostly with the level. I swept it pretty clean, but I never want to have to come back except on my way to somewhere else, so I pulled up a map and grabbed the couple of chests that I'd missed. Quelaag is waiting for me!

If there's any cultural force of which I'm actually a part anymore, it's probably being a hipster. I self-apply it on occasion, usually with a wry twist of the mouth, the same way someone might self-apply "yuppie" or "hippie" or any other subcultural identity that's been poisoned in the public eye for being too exclusive or too rigorous. Honestly, I like the first half of Reyturner's definition: "someone who fetishizes authenticity". Authenticity is an elusive, probably imaginary thing, so it makes sense for the public at large to have disdain for those who chase it. I don't know why the "without being authentic themselves" part is needed, though. Do we have a different word for someone who fetishizes authenticity and is authentic? I know a few, I call them hipsters, too. How am I not myself, anyway?

I'm rewatching Farscape right now and actually getting pretty nostalgic for that odd period in the nineties when computer effects were still seen as hokey and expensive practical-effect TV was a viable way to grab audiences.

I agree that it is usually dumb because most conversations about hipsters happen between two groups that could easily self-identify as hipsters: people who don't want to admit they like an obscure thing more than is socially acceptable and people who want to make sure all words are used as correctly as possible in casual conversation. The former group probably just needs to get over themselves, but the latter group is the one I really can't stand. I actually look forward to the grim future of language/games that they're always prophesying, where all words mean nothing anymore, because at least then I won't be able to understand their pedantic screeds.

Looking at the etymology, "hippie" first came into use as a diminutive form of "hipster". The jazz-era hipsters of the 1940s labelled the rock-era hippies of the 1960s as inferior versions of themselves, but look who won that culture war. The wheel keeps turning, right? I'm sure it'll keep turning with "hipsters" today.

I'm kind of part of the hipster backlash backlash. For me, it used to refer to part of the cultural vanguard, then to a special breed of hypocritical elitism, and now back around to someone who's in a bit deeper than might be understandable in an obscure topic.

The two hours were spent on a couple of things, really. I briefly tried to farm large titanite shards to get my Claymore up to +10. I also get lost really easily in the sewers. In the end, I'm pretty sure I killed the Thorn dude, because someone spawned in front of me with the animation that NPC summons get, the message "YOU HAVE BEEN INVADED" popped up, and he got a Claymore through his chest. Fun stuff. What "purpose" does he have, anyway? I'm sure it's not a spoiler.

It's odd, because when I try to prepare for the invasion and use the environment against them, I always die, but every time I've charged them and just gone crazy, I kill them. This might be an example of correlation not being causation.