Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Guyr Adamantine · Post by **Guyr Adamantine** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 5:17 pm

And that's true for both examples.

Juton · Post by **Juton** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 7:25 pm

angelfromanotherpin wrote:
Juton wrote:With regards to Turtles Forever, it's kind of like having a Batman movie with Adam West, TAS Batman and Christian Bale's Batman all on screen at once. In comparison Adam West is going to come off as silly and Bale is going to come across as too serious, so you get a situation where the one in the middle best comes off looking the best.

That works too.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 9:52 pm

In those sorts of situations it's better to just have the TAS Batman or 2003 Turtles play the Straight Man rather than the Mary Sue.

More generally if you can't do a crossover without making the others look bad, then seriously don't do it.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 3:32 am

Why do people find Jade Empire's Black Whirlwind funny or interesting or badass?

He's not. He's not a rogue, not lovable, and not cool. He's a one-dimensional entitled douchebag thug that was forced on your party. Which wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that you're not allowed to kick his ass or call him out on his shit. I fucking hate it when games force annoying characters on you, but I especially hate it when they force an evil character on you and you're not allowed to do anything but grin and bear it.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Oct 09, 2011 4:23 am

DID anyone like him? I sure didn't.

Cynic · Post by **Cynic** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 11:38 am

I've been reading Harry Potter and the methods methods of rationality.

While this isn't an indictment of the fanfic, it's more one of the original books.

Is there no Wizarding world equivalent of college?

7th form is obviously the end of an associates degree. So what do you do if you want to go for college.

It looks like most of the education past this is on-the-job training. I suppose this could also be attributed to the middle-age-fappery that the HP universe has built into it. By that I mean that rather than college, they might go with some sort of apprenticeship. So, Harry would be an apprentice to one of the Aurors before becoming one himself?

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:11 pm

Yeah, all post Boarding School education in the wizarding world is apprenticeship type things. I think the aurors probably have a training academy, but I don't think there's anything more school like than that in the WW

Darth Rabbitt · Post by **Darth Rabbitt** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 3:21 am

In Prequel, when Dimitri was introduced, stayed around just long enough to become an interesting character, and then was killed off a few moments later.

Also, the part of Mortal Kombat 9 where Sindel gets up that plot device power up and kills off 90% of the heroes (at that point I was convinced that the rest of the story mode was going to be Chrono Cross + Mortal Kombat Annihilation).

The game itself was quite fun, and the arcade mode was cool, but the story mode was one of the worst pieces of trash I've ever seen.

Finally comes the entirety of Pokemon Black/White's story, which came off as the Pokemon version of the Sword of Truth with its rambling philosophical monologues and Team Plasma's coming off as mustache-twirlingly evil strawmen regarding complaints to the morality of the series.

It didn't help that for every time we were assured that Pokemon are better off with Trainers (a perfectly fine assumption, just say that they like training and fighting, similar to Goku, and leave it at that), the game undermines it by having things like "I heard their cries from up here," said by the player's mom after you fight your really fucking annoying rivals; the Professor's insistence that "People should be able to do WHATEVER THEY WANT with their Pokemon (emphasis mine);" and some random trainer saying that Pokemon can't speak, and therefore we don't know what they're saying.

And the fact that the attempt to mix 3D and sprites looks really cheesy, the annoying gimmicky gyms (which has gotten worse with each generation), and most of the new Pokemon designs themselves are incredibly stupid, made it hard to just ignore that and continue playing.

The game itself did suck in this case, although the postgame is actually OK, mostly due to the lack of almost all of the bad elements above.

EDIT: Although the latter two cases are about games, they're mostly story complaints, so I think it's still on topic.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Oct 30, 2011 8:05 pm

Darth Rabbitt wrote:In Prequel, when Dimitri was introduced, stayed around just long enough to become an interesting character, and then was killed off a few moments later.

What I found even more irritating was when the author revealed that he/she had determined in advance to kill off Dimitri regardless of what was actually suggested. But the recent Flash update was entertaining enough that I wouldn't say Prequel has lost me just yet.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:02 pm

Warning: Frank, please just ignore this post...

So... der's a thing... Image just put out a comic called "Our Love is Real." (safe, Wired) It's a short one shot set in a future civilization where people fuck... well everything, apparently. The main protagonist is a zoophile cop who enjoys beating up on rioting vegisexuals (that is, people who have sex with genetically modified plants), and meets a mineralsexual after one such riot, is harangued by his fellow officers who also seem to be zoophiles, uses false claims of police business to gain entry to the mineralsexual's home, kisses her, and finds out that "she" is really "he." And of course immediately starts wondering if it makes him gay.

I'm sure there's supposed to be a message, but Image needs to employ someone who'll point out when a message is clouded by spectacle or over literalness, or something. I mean, this is more fail than that time I was in middle school doing one of those activity lessons for the civil war, and suggested our (Northern state) group's flag should depict a "boot crushing a cage full of blacks." Fortunately there was a black guy in the group who pointed out that the spectacle destroyed the message.

This comic is like saying "Eh, fuck whatever you want if you love it. But don't fuck plants, because that's just nasty and you can't love a vegetable."

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 10:25 pm

And of course immediately starts wondering if it makes him gay.

I'm sure there's supposed to be a message,

Without really wanting to reference the source material, the summary in you post seems to indicate that the message is that the difference between gay and straight is at least as meaningful as the differences between animal, vegetable and mineral. I sure hope that's wrong, because that's a reprehensible message, even within the context of a shock-porn comic.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 10:49 pm

Oh, it wasn't even pornographic. It was something that could sit on a shelf in a shop, and only be considered offensive because it basically seems to be saying that you should be able to fuck whatever you want as some kind of weird support of gay marriage or something, I assume.

Seriously, the most sensational thing in it, graphically, is the violence. And even that's cartoonish with a cop beating rioters in comically disfiguring ways. There's a single panel that shows the cop's lover standing over/on him, and it's drawn from about his chest up, so there's not even anything wrong with it if you don't know what's going on.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 10:53 pm

I read it.

<speechless>

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 11:34 pm

Hey, I'm only talking about it because it's in "If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college" territory and I don't want my head to explode before I go out to the movies with a cute girl tomorrow.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:06 am

Ok, this is just bizarre. Nosferatu in VtM have the power to mask their appearance, but the power doesn't actually change the fact that they are ugly as sin. So, the Nos uses Mask of a Thousand Faces to look like Brad Pitt, but he still has 0 dots of appearance. What the hell?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 1:18 am

Oh, by the way fellow TGDs, just in case you forgot:

SPIDER-MAN MADE A DEAL.

WITH THE DEVIL

TO ABORT HIS BABY OH MY FUCKING KORESH NOOOOO WHHHHYYYYRRRGGH!

... I really need to get over this.

Neeeek · Post by **Neeeek** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:53 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Oh, by the way fellow TGDs, just in case you forgot:

SPIDER-MAN MADE A DEAL.

WITH THE DEVIL

TO ABORT HIS BABY OH MY FUCKING KORESH NOOOOO WHHHHYYYYRRRGGH!

... I really need to get over this.

No, no. He made a deal with a devil who, based on everything he's ever done in the MU, doesn't remotely have the power to do what is being requested in order to remove from existence his child that is already born. Then it got retconned to being MJ's fault.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:48 am

The ending to Perdido Street Station was so incredibly fucking terrible and depressing, I basically avoid China Meville's work whenever possible now.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 3:24 am

So I heard some good things about Garth Ennis due to his work on the Punisher, a renowned Spider-Man villain. I heard that he was working on a superhero comic called "The Boys." I decided to check it out at the local comic shop.

Flipped through an issue. Zombie villain dude comes back from the dead to stuff a gerbil up his ass. Fellow supervillain chews him out and restrains him; zombie pisses on him.

Put it back, looked at another issue. Meteor headed for Earth. Superhero astronaut heads into space, lands on meteor, starts screwing a vagina-shaped crater. Meteor explodes in a shower of white fluid.

I put the book back on the shelf and never looked back.

K · Post by K » Sun Jan 01, 2012 5:03 am

Ancient History wrote:The ending to Perdido Street Station was so incredibly fucking terrible and depressing, I basically avoid China Meville's work whenever possible now.

I don't think he knows how to write "stories" with "conclusions" or "character development."

Mostly it's just setting material. Some of that setting material is incredibly well done, but his novels' lack of storytelling makes him a very hard writer to enjoy.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 12:36 pm

Watched Midnight in Paris last night. Had major problems with WSoD - the time-tripping angle was more plausible than the self-absorbed characters - but there was a jarring anachronism when Zelda Fitzgerald used the word "lobotomized" in a rhyme. The procedure didn't exist until 1935, and the Fitzgeralds left Paris in 1930.

Libertad · Post by **Libertad** » Sun Jan 01, 2012 10:14 pm

[quote=Lago]Oh, by the way fellow TGDs, just in case you forgot:

[b][color=red]SPIDER-MAN MADE A DEAL.

[SIZE=150]WITH THE DEVIL[/size]

[SIZE=200]TO ABORT HIS BABY[/size][/b][/color] OH MY FUCKING KORESH NOOOOO WHHHHYYYYRRRGGH!

... I really need to get over this.[/quote]

Lago, did you ever check out this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgQj1WpFnuw

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:16 am

I really fucking hate the fact that everyone always blames One More Day on Joe Quesada. J Michael Straczynski was the actual writer. Yes, Quesada wanted Spiderman rebooted, but JMS could have written that competently if he wasn't such a fucking hack who bases all his stories on deals with the devil and time loops.

Recall, JMS also wrote Grounded, where Superman walks around like Jesus and expounds about the dangers of illegal immigration. And Sins of the Past, where Gwen Stacy gets raped by Green Goblin (the elder) and then decides to keep the baby, who grows up super fast to be a hermaphoriditic Grey Goblin. And All-New Wonder Woman, where Wonder Woman is lost in a time rift and all the Amazons are dead and she has to wear 90s outfits while wandering through JMS psycho-babble before the time rift closes.

Yes, Joe Quesada did some horrible things during his tenure at Marvel, but you notice how all of JMS' offerings are shit whether they are at Marvel or DC?

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 9:40 am

Quite frankly the issue isn't so much that Spider-Man made a deal with the devil so much that Joe Quesada decided to undo decades of continuity out of whiny grognard fanboyism. The deal with the devil part definitely is stupid, but it's only the sprinkles on the cake of stupid. Terry Prachett could've written the entire comic but if the impetus behind it was to make comics more like some shadow editor's childhood the underlying premise would have still been deeply insulting.

I say 'deal with the devil' because it makes a much better sound-bite than 'Spider-Man undid years of continuity in some Oepidal Complexed manchild fucktard's scheme to make the series feel more like Peanuts or Garfield or the newspaper version'.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jan 02, 2012 1:25 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Quite frankly the issue isn't so much that Spider-Man made a deal with the devil so much that Joe Quesada decided to undo decades of continuity out of whiny grognard fanboyism. The deal with the devil part definitely is stupid, but it's only the sprinkles on the cake of stupid. Terry Prachett could've written the entire comic but if the impetus behind it was to make comics more like some shadow editor's childhood the underlying premise would have still been deeply insulting.

I say 'deal with the devil' because it makes a much better sound-bite than 'Spider-Man undid years of continuity in some Oepidal Complexed manchild fucktard's scheme to make the series feel more like Peanuts or Garfield or the newspaper version'.

Meh. They just rebooted Aquaman, Green Lantern, Superman, Cyborg, and Wonder Woman and it's fine. Of the whole Justice League, only Batman is keep his continuity from even five years ago, and it's still actually OK. Continuity from twenty or thirty years ago is always iffy, because most of your readership hasn't read it. Sooner or later you want to tell the story of when Robin Hood meets Little John Spiderman meets Dr. Octopus again because Comic Book heroes are folk legends and that is how it works.

The problem isn't the reset. Resets happen. Resets and retellings and remakes happen all the time. It's part of how the storytelling medium works.

What's not OK is doing your reset in a really stupid and offensive way. Let's be honest here: if One More Day had been written by Geoff Johns, there would be some grumbling, but it wouldn't be on anyone's top five worst comics list. Hell, it wouldn't have been anyone's choice for worst comic of the year. Hell, Flashpoint happened last year and peoples' choices for worst DC comics of the year include Grounded and Deathstroke's Titans.

-Username17