Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 6:43 pm

Ted the Flayer wrote:Hellboy: Blood and Iron lost me at that end.

It suffers from condensation; a lot of specific scenes are taken from the comics, but without the same context. In this case, the Abe Sapien-changed-to-a-wall-and-tortured-by-a-monkey bit came from Box Full of Evil - the moneky got the drop on Abe with a gun, which is how he ended up chained to the wall, ut the chain was old and loose, so it took him some time (and adrenalin) to break free.

Re: Erfworld
Yeah, the glacial pace on Book 2 is dire.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 7:09 pm

Starmaker wrote:
angelfromanotherpin wrote:The ending of Bioshock: Infinite made me so very, very angry.
Share the details. I don't have it so I only have a quite inoffensive synopsis at my disposal. NEED MOAR RAGE.

I'll PM you.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 8:19 pm

Erfworld lost me when it started going into prequel mode. I knew then it was never ever going to go anywhere. I don't give a fuck about the necromancer chick's backstory, and once it started going that way I just stopped reading altogether.

-Username17

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 8:36 pm

I don't read the pre-quel novel crap.
But, I do check once a week or so to see if there is a new comic. I'm certainly not going to the forum, or clicking on any ad links.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 9:30 pm

The prequel stuff is Rob's response to the art delays; faced with having to update nothing for weeks at a time or cobble together something that didn't require art, he opted for the second option. And he didn't want to write 50 more Paron's Klogs (probably from some combination of not wanting too, thinking it would bore people, or that that much detail up front about the game "world" would paint him into a corner), so he went with the all-text prequel story about Wanda and Jillian.

Regardless of whether you like it or dislike it, hopefully the prequel stuff will take a distant back seat to Parson's story once Rob has an artist who can produce art reliably and frequently.

virgil · Post by **virgil** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 9:38 pm

Yeah, painting himself into a corner with the rules of the world is already happening. There isn't even an excuse as to why the red dwagons didn't attack that bear spending time bashing down a wall right next to them.

I wonder if the prequel is an excuse, personally. He's apparently taken the decision that it MUST alternate between art pages, and only writes fast enough to keep up with that update schedule. The prior artist was professional enough to show what the update schedule would actually look like if it were 'only' limited by Rob; which everyone complained about back then.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:36 pm

It's true the with the previous artist that it seemed like Rob was the bottleneck, but that was also back when he had another job as well as was doing his comedy music thing as well. I think all that's fallen by the wayside since then and if he really has put all his eggs in the Erfworld basket, then maybe the delays of old won't be applicable any more. Or maybe they will be and it'll suck no matter what; I'm hoping Book 3 vindicates my battered optimism.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Sat Apr 06, 2013 1:05 am

Checking the site, it's got a text update now that's been there for a full week (since the 29th). And I'd be quite surprised if he gets a comic page up over the weekend--you have to have a buffer to do weekend updates. "Immediately" before that was a comic update on the 20th. Going back further we have a text update on the 11th and a comic on the 4th.

So at this point he's running more than a week between updates of any kind , and more than two weeks between each individual comic update.

I'm shocked that he still has an audience at all.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:47 pm

The latest SMBC's first two panels had me going "Uhhhh." Even generously assuming that the second has an unspoken "...behind their back", holy crap.

Guyr Adamantine · Post by **Guyr Adamantine** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:47 pm

John Magnum wrote:The latest SMBC's first two panels had me going "Uhhhh." Even generously assuming that the second has an unspoken "...behind their back", holy crap.

Considering it's about other people...

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 6:59 pm

SMBC contrives strawman dystopias or Kafkaesque societies for humor.

I've pretty much made my peace with it as long as the comic doesn't try to make a real world implication/criticism off of it. Of course, it's hard to tell whether the writer is deliberately being cheeky and railroading the plot for a joke (like South Park) or is trying to slip in sincere deconstructionist satire (like Family Guy). Based on this highly subjective and self-butthurt criteria, I found the Superman-tied-to-an-electric-generator comic funny but I found the Utilitarian-paradise-maximizing-one-guy's-happiness comic a dumb strawman.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 9:10 pm

It's from an unattributed quote/proverb:
"Intelligent people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people."

And it means gossip, ie, talking about specific people. Technically, talking about people in general is talking about ideas.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Fri Apr 19, 2013 9:54 pm

I like my own version better, it is more truthful at least.

"Intelligent people talk about things I like. Average people talk about things I don't care about. Stupid people talk about things I dislike."

Do note, that ideas and people are actually included in things.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:19 pm

So I was trying to find more of Macklemore after Thrift Shop and listened to a few of his songs, enjoying them a lot- some good choices in samples, interesting and complex lyrics about important topics, some really good sounds and a variety of styles. For example I really thought I was listening to Electric Six for one of them.

But then I listened to one song called "Castle". It starts off slightly out there, talking about fantastical things like
"Unicorns and wizard sleeves
Hammer pants and make believe
Pirate ships sailing off to sea
Well you can party with me in my
Castle, in my castle, in my castle, in my castle"

Okay, interesting start although it has a lot of autotune, lets see where this goes. It's a party song so I can ignore the fact that he goes on to say
"Like Dennis Rodman, I got a rod man (awww yeah!)
Long wong-dong in a soft hand
And a ping-pong pink schlong, let's all dance!"

His lyrical choices are starting to get a bit weird, but fine. It's no worse than a lot of rap. About the same level as "Til' the sweat drips off my balls" and that song is unironically great. But I'm still fine because I can forgive a lot for the lines
"Your thighs are the closet to Narnia
Is it cool if I go and get lost in that?"

Except I'm starting to get really confused by his next choice of lyrics where over the rest of the verse he spends a while talking about how cold Eskimo toes are, and then even longer on female ass, including the lines
"Make it wobble, wobbly-wobble 'till my third leg has to hobble"

Except then he completely loses me with the following lines. He actually sings these on a song he wrote, produced and released worldwide. With no excuses based on record executives since he's independant.
"Have you ever killed a coyote in the middle of a party
In the night, in the middle of a party
Have you ever killed a coyote in the middle of the night
In the middle of a party
Brought it home and threw it on the carpet
Sit and kill a coyote, I'm starving
Who wants to eat a coyote?
Who wants to eat a coyote?
Who wants to eat a coyote?"

What. The. Fuck. Where the hell did coyotes come from? What? Theres not even a lot of drums or instruments so the words are even more obvious and in-your-face. What the hell Macklemore? I thought you were cool.

Unless it was a competition where he auctioned off topics for one of his songs to go to charity and he had to add all these different topics, theres no excuse for this shit.

[EDIT] Added a link to the song, and realised it sounds like I'm saying that Macklemore is terrible- its more that he has multiple personas including a very over-the-top party one. Other songs like 'Otherside' & 'Starting Over', 'Same Love', or 'A Wake' are much more serious while being really good, and some of his party songs like 'And We Danced' or 'Can't Hold Us' I really like, it's just that the lyrics to this one lost me.

Count Arioch the 28th · Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:21 pm

Wizard sleeve is slang for a loose, over-used vagina.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 4:39 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:Wizard sleeve is slang for a loose, over-used vagina.

Really? There goes the last of my youthful innocence. Damn you internets.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 6:31 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:Erfworld lost me when it started going into prequel mode. I knew then it was never ever going to go anywhere. I don't give a fuck about the necromancer chick's backstory, and once it started going that way I just stopped reading altogether.

It lost me when I ceased to be able to navigate the my unread backlog without skipping over the prequel. Alternating between the two plots is more attention than I'm willing to put into a webcomic

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 7:42 pm

My wife and I were unable to get through The Perks of Being a Wallflower. We just turned it off about half way through. Nothing was going anywhere and I didn't fucking care about any of it. I was a highschool student in the nineties too, so I guess this was supposed to appeal to my sense of nostalgia or something. But really it just reminded me of how bullshit and pointless highschool was and how not particularly insightful self absorbed highschool students are into the matter.

I mean, it was mostly realistic in its depiction of narcissistic highschool students in the early nineties who think they are way cooler than they actually are and take small amounts of drugs and fumble around with sexual feelings, but it didn't fucking go anywhere. I guess it's an achievement to achieve cinematic realism to the point that you actually notice that people doing costume changes at a showing of Rocky Horror is bullshit. But if you're showing more than one event of self absorbed highschool students doing Rocky Horror, your movie is bullshit.

-Username17

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:17 pm

A Song of Ice and Fire offically lost me when I put down A Dance With Dragons. Someone needs to slap Martin then tell him that gritty and realistic is not enough to make a readable series.

First things there is a point at which the number of POVs needs to stop growing and ASoIaF has clearly passed it. Also as super "gimdof" "ralistic" as it is to have as much as half of the narrators flailing about unable to accomplish personal goals it's boring as fuck.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 5:03 am

Lord Mistborn wrote:A Song of Ice and Fire offically lost me when I put down A Dance With Dragons. Someone needs to slap Martin then tell him that gritty and realistic is not enough to make a readable series.

First things there is a point at which the number of POVs needs to stop growing and ASoIaF has clearly passed it. Also as super "gimdof" "ralistic" as it is to have as much as half of the narrators flailing about unable to accomplish personal goals it's boring as fuck.

I punched out in A Feast For Crows. Didn't even finish the book. And I realized that is came down to this:

George R. R. Martin wrote:Myself, I think the writers who allow fan fiction are making a mistake. I am not saying here that the people who write fan fiction are evil or immoral or untrustworthy. The vast majority of them are honest and sincere and passionate about whatever work they chose to base their fictions on, and have only the best of intentions for the original author. But (1) there are always a few, in any group, who are perhaps less wonderful, and (2) this door, once opened, can be very difficult to close again.

Most of us laboring in the genres of science fiction and fantasy (but perhaps not Diana Gabaldon, who comes from outside SF and thus may not be familiar with the case I am about to cite) had a lesson in the dangers of permitting fan fiction a couple of decades back, courtesy of Marion Zimmer Bradley. MZB had been an author who not only allowed fan fiction based on her Darkover series, but actively encouraged it... even read and critiqued the stories of her fans. All was happiness and joy, until one day she encountered in one such fan story an idea similar to one she was using in her current Darkover novel-in-progress. MZB wrote to the fan, explained the situation, even offered a token payment and an acknowledgement in the book. The fan replied that she wanted full co-authorship of said book, and half the money, or she would sue. MZB scrapped the novel instead, rather than risk a lawsuit. She also stopped encouraging and reading fan fiction, and wrote an account of this incident for the SFWA FORUM to warn other writers of the potential pitfalls of same.

Got that? George R. R. Martin thinks that his books have to be completely different in plot from all fan fucking fiction or he risks legal liability. This is first of all: completely untrue. But more importantly, it means that once the books got popular enough that a lot of fanfiction started happening, George Martin felt that for legal reasons he was constrained to take the plot in directions that no fanfiction author could possibly guess. Meaning that events started becoming unforeshadowed and narratively unsatisfying. Because anything that could possibly make any sense with respect to the events that happened earlier in the series would pretty much by definition be something that might show up in someone's fanfiction and therefore George Martin writes to avoid that.

Or to boil it down further: George Martin is making shitty lolrandom plot choices in order to troll people. Seriously. Also: he thinks that doing this actually protects him legally from litigious fanfiction authors, which he believes are an actual thing.

And when I realized that George Martin was actively avoiding writing a conclusion to any character's story that was even a tenth as coherent or satisfying as anything I could write myself, I just stopped reading altogether. It's never going to get any better or more coherent, because he is deliberately making it shitty and incoherent to protect himself from the magic internet idea thieves that he believes the internet is populated by.

-Username17

Whipstitch · Post by **Whipstitch** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 5:41 am

I also quit during Crows. The last PoV character Martin "added" that I actually gave any shits about was the Kingslayer given that, you know, he had been there the whole fucking time and was involved in lots of important shit with many important characters.

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 12:08 pm

I didn't quit so much as just did not proceed forward after A Feast for Crows. The whole thing is just so long and dry that once I forced my way through, I just didn't feel ready for the next book.

Besides, I've probably got a couple of decades before the story is finished anyways.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:05 pm

Film Crit Hulk had some words for the last couple of Ice and Fire books that I found worthwhile.

Why 'A Feast For Crows' is a terrible waste of 1,000 pages.
Why 'A Dance With Dragons' is both a vast improvement and yet utter proof the books will never be good again.

Warning: Hulk-sized spoilers.

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:16 pm

Fan fiction is an unauthorized derivative work. The fan authors have no rights. Zero, zip, nada. If it was authorized, and they had a contract, they'd have the right to whatever they added (but still no rights to the underlying characters). But it's not authorized, so the law specifically excludes them from having any copyright protection at all.

GRRM could take someone's Daenerys fan fiction straight from a website, slap his name on it, and publish it for the lulz, and almost certainly win in court (this happens in Hollywood approximately "all the time").

Now, certain fan fiction groups are working to fight this and get some rights as transformative works, so going to court means you might suddenly be their test case and have to face down a few dozen attorneys who are really passionate about reading and writing unauthorized fanfiction sex scenes. That's a deterrent for any author, so I can understand the impulse to avoid reading/taking from fan fiction. But not letting people "guess" your plot is super dumb.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 3:59 pm

I haven't been able to get more than a couple chapters into A Clash of Kings, because every character other than Tyrion is unbelievably stupid and tedious if not outright offensive and even in A Game of Thrones the plot was already excruciatingly drawn-out and stuffed with pointless leaden descriptors. I kind of want to keep reading so I can see the mad reign of King Jauffre and the agonizing death of Catelyn Stark, but oh my god.