Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[Username17]

I just think Girl Toothless kind of looks boring. I couldn't tell you why this is because I only know this from that chick that sleeps in my bed and lets me slap her anytime I feel like it but a lot of albino reptiles do have interesting color combinations from what I've seen. (doesn't make sense to me but I don't know reptiles like I do tarantulas).

It's not really enough for me to be upset about though.

Reptile albinism is interesting because reptiles have multiple different kinds of pigment sacks, and those can be genetically disabled separately. So a reptile can be "albino" in the sense of having it's melanophores disabled - at which point all the black turns to white - but still have its xanthophores and erythrophores that produce Yellow and Red respectively.

But obviously in the case of a Night Fury, if you turned off all its Melanophores it wouldn't be left with an awesome red and yellow patern, it would just be all white.

-Username17

[Maj]

This thread. Right now.

[Josh_Kablack]

Wait.....new girl dragon is a special color, is still stealthy despite not being camouflaged and shows up and does things that were previously established as things that only the protagonist dragon could do. That checks a lot of the Mary Sue boxes if you ask me.

[maglag]

Where did this even come from to begin with?
In nature, the female is often the bigger, hardier etc. of the species.

Although technically true if you count all animals, in mammals and birds (read: the other animals that humies most interact with) the males are often the bigger, hardier, etc of the species.

[DSMatticus]

Let me put it this way. No one cares whether you like their use of the word Mary Sue so why don't you suck a snorble? Yea you get people who staunchly refuse to engage in what actual people arguing mean when they say Mary Sue instead of the definition you want them to use as it was crafted for fanfic but no one in the conversation cares and people like you get stuck in a dumb semantic debate instead of playing ball and actually getting into the real meat which is actually the cultural debate over Rey and what she represents.

Beyond that your reframing the argument, comparing Rey to other common boring protagonists? That's not what Star Wars fans are on about. Hell there was a ton of dislike for fucking Star Killer but he was just some no note in a Star Wars game. I personally don't care that Rey is a shitty female protagonist no matter what dumb word you want to make up to describe her as but you can't get to the real meat of the conversation as long as you want to argue about semantics or whataboutisms about other franchises that have other rules and set ups. You compare Rey a Star Wars protagonist to other Star Wars protagonists because that's what fucking Star Wars fans are interested in. There's clearly an argument you WANT to have here about how she fits in with other protagonists but that is simply not the conversation anyone is having. Trying to use that as evidence of anything and basing your argument off of some assumption is just you justifying arguing in bad faith (again).

I am endlessly amazed at how stupid you don't realize you are.

HARRY POTTER FLY GOOD. NO REASON GIVE. NARRATIVE NO EXPLAIN. JUST FLY GOOD BECAUSE. YOUNGEST SEEKER EVER. GOOD OTHER THINGS. NOT ALL THINGS. PRETTY GOOD THOUGH. COMPETENCE IMPLAUSIBLE, YES? NO ONE CARE. HARRY POTTER CRITICAL ACCLAIM. NO MOB CHANT MARY SUE. MAYBE IS? NO CARE. FUN THINK ABOUT MAYBE. NOT SEEM IMPORTANT.

REY ALSO FLY GOOD. NO REASON GIVE. NARRATIVE NO EXPLAIN. JUST GOOD BECAUSE. COMPETENCE IMPLAUSIBLE, YES? EVERYONE CARE. ANGRY INTERNET MEN CHANT MARY SUE. MARY SUE, MARY SUE. MAYBE IS? HARD SAY. WORD SMALL BUT DIFFICULT. NO CARE. ANGRY INTERNET MEN CHANT MARY SUE ANYWAY.

NOT WHATABOUTISM. DEMONSTRATE INCONSISTENCY. ONE THING ONE WAY. OTHER THING OTHER WAY. BUT THING VERY SAME. WHY OTHER WAY? DIFFERENT AUDIENCE? BUT WHY MATTER? STAR WARS NO TEACH WHAT MARY SUE MEAN. HARRY POTTER NO TEACH WHAT MARY SUE MEAN. PEOPLE LEARN MARY SUE FROM FUNNYTALKS ON INTERNET. EVERYONE FUNNYTALKS ON INTERNET. HYPOTHESIS THAT DIFFERENT FANBASES DEFINE MARY SUE DIFFERENTLY STUPID. STUPIDER THAN ALL CAPS CAVEMAN RANT. BETTER HYPOTHESIS THAT PEOPLE BIAS, NO THINK GOOD. INCONSISTENT. LIKE ONE THING, HATE OTHER THING. NO SAY BAD THING ABOUT THING LIKE. SAY BAD THING ABOUT THING HATE. THING HATE MARY SUE. THING LIKE WHO CARE MAYBE IS? NOT IMPORTANT. IMPORTANT SAY MEAN THING THING HATE, THOUGH. VERY IMPORTANT.

CROSS-FRANCHISE ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TROPES NOT WHATABOUTISM. CROSS-FRANCHISE ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TROPES LITERALLY HOW TROPES DEFINED. IF EVERY FRANCHISE ISLAND, NO TROPE. TROPE IMPOSSIBLE. TROPE IS PATTERN. ONE NOT MAKE PATTERN. MANY IS MAKE PATTERN. NEED MANY DEFINE TROPE. NO CROSS-FRANCHISE ANALYSIS OF LITERARY TROPES, NO MARY SUE. MARY SUE TROPE. MARY SUE PATTERN. ONE FRANCHISE, NO PATTERN. REY NO MARY SUE. MARY SUE CHARACTER FROM PARODY STAR TREK FANFICTION. REY REY, MARY SUE MARY SUE. MARY SUE DEFINED OUTSIDE OF STAR WARS. IF STAR WARS ISLAND, NO STAR WARS MARY SUE. NOT POSSIBLE. NEED USE MANY DEFINE PATTERN. STAR WARS NO DEFINE PATTERN ALONE. NOT MAKE SENSE. VERY SILLY. COMPARISON INTRINSIC TO CRITICISM OF THE MEDIUM. NO DISCUSSION WITHOUT.

ME THINK DONE NOW. YOU FUNNY, BUT UNPLEASANT. NOT GOOD LAUGH. ANGRY LAUGH. WHY HE SAY THIS THING? HE NOT REALIZE? HOW NOT? VERY OBVIOUS. NO FUN EXPLAIN. TRY MAKE FUN EXPLAIN TALK STUPID. LITTLE FUN. NOT ENOUGH FUN. PLUS PEOPLE HATE. JOKE OLD FIRST PARAGRAPH, BUT KEEP GOING. NOT LIKE BE MORE FUN IF STOP. COMMITMENT IMPORTANT, EVEN WHEN BIT BAD. GALLAGHER RIGHT, COMEDY LIKE SLEDGHAMMER. HM. MAYBE THAT NOT METAPHOR. MAYBE JUST FUNNY MAN SMASH THING.

[nockermensch]

[Josh_Kablack]

Ready Player One's direct author insert character is not the dumb kid, it's the implausible zillionaire. Dude explicitly shares a birthdate and hometown with the author.

[DSMatticus]

The zillionaire wins at everything off camera before the events of the story. The dumb kid wins at everything on camera during the events of the story, and inherits the zillionaire's legacy. Until he writes a prequel, it's a win for Wade by default.

[Whipstitch]

I find the idea that boys don't get called bossy weird as hell. I'm sure girls get it worse on that end--the "ball busting bitch" stereotype is alive and well--but I've never considered bossy or "too big for your britches" to be particularly gendered. I've been told both, a lot, because as a kid I was kind of a dick and a sore loser.

[Stahlseele]

Shrill is what happens when you raise a higher voice.
That it's mostly women who have the higher voice is just coincidence, but i have told several male colleagues at work to tone it down because their shrill voice was grating on my nerves as well.

[erik]

I think Frank nailed something that has bugged me about TFA. I want Finn to be a better fighter and my disappointments with TFA line up pretty well with when he under performs in a fight. Missed opportunities where he could have proven himself competent but appalled at the violence especially in having to fight people he may have served with.

[Chamomile]

25 ABY also has the advantage of being 20 years (ish) after Jedi, which is at least in the neighborhood of correct, although it would've been just as well to set things in 35 ABY and just retcon the Yuuzhan Vong out of existence.

A major problem with the new trilogy is that we haven't been telling Star Wars stories for any of the thirty intervening years, and the movies want those years to not matter. They want Star Wars (movie) fans to be all caught up on the situation and ready for a nostalgia trip, but one thing Star Wars always did was drop you into a strange world that the characters were nevertheless completely familiar with and assume you'll figure things out as you go. Not doing that and instead sticking to established conflicts like glue makes things less Star Wars, not more.

[deaddmwalking]

but one thing Star Wars always did was drop you into a strange world that the characters were nevertheless completely familiar with and assume you'll figure things out as you go. Not doing that and instead sticking to established conflicts like glue makes things less Star Wars, not more.

I agree with this. It's true in other 'good' stories, too. When you watch Lord of the Rings, the monuments to a Gondor that no longer exists indicate that there is a rich history but it doesn't rub it in your face. We don't need to know about the lives of the people who built the giant statues to understand the type of sophisticated and civilized world they represent. So, yes, having 35 years of stories and only referring to them in passing makes the world 'feel fuller'. They completely missed out by not doing that...

I did realize there is a character I do hate. It's Snoke. I hate him for how he is portrayed, I hate him for what he implies, I hate him for his worthless motivations, and I hate him for the way he was removed without providing any kind of payoff (not that he should have been there in the first place). Palpatine makes sense - he's trying to have power over the entire galaxy.

If I were going to make the sequel trilogy, and I really wanted to use old Luke and Han, I'd start with Kylo Ren's story. Trained by Luke, haunted by visions of Darth Vader and he doesn't understand why... Learning that Luke killed his own father. He runs from Luke and ends up using his force powers to gather and build the Imperial forces. Luke's destiny was to 'bring balance to the force', so having his nephew replace Palpatine makes an interesting story. Luke is conflicted - if balance must be preserved, does he destroy the Jedi order (himself included)? The whole time, the question of whether Kylo Ren can be saved sets up the story. Han can still die trying to persuade Kylo Ren to abandon this course. Rey could still be there as the protoge - the one that thinks that the Force shouldn't be destroyed or abandoned. Perhaps she represents another way of 'bringing balance' to the Force.

But whatever, they missed the boat.

I just wish I could get the Theatrical Release of the original trilogy on Blu-Ray. The extra 92 seconds of scene transitions absolutely KILLS the pacing of the movie.

[Omegonthesane]

Snoke having no payoff is a symptom of their refusal to actually adequately advance the setting or try to justify retreading the same beats of the original trilogy with a bunch of terrorists replacing the established tyrannical order. He might be the biggest single issue but he's not the underlying problem.

That being said.

The Emperor in Return of the Jedi had no more characterisation or explanation as a person than Snoke did, but his role as Emperor of the Galactic Empire established as the successor state to the Galactic Republic and his set up as Vader's teacher in Empire Strikes Back made it make sense for someone to be in that role. Making the Supreme Leader be a very old evil sorcerer when the rest of the First Order are deliberately too young to remember the Empire they're cosplaying as undermines a seemingly intentional visual point that the people wanting to bring back the Empire don't know what the Empire was actually like.

Although technically there is still room for a reveal that Snoke = Plagueis in episode IX, I don't think Disney has shown the writing chops to even think of attempting that, much less to pull it off competently.

[Surgo]

I thought that Snoke = Palpatine actually, after watching TLJ, but I suppose Snoke = Plageus could be a viable path as well.

[Stahlseele]

Err . . Plapatine was the Emperor . . And the Emperor got dropped into the reactor shaft of Plant 2 . .
How should that work out? O.o
Also, Palpatine was a smallish, frail looking human to begin with, even before withering into his Emperor form.
Snoke is . . a fuck off huge grey like green alien or something? Or was that another sith too?

[Omegonthesane]

Snoke wasn't that huge in person, and Palpatine wasn't that small or that withered.

Before Disney purged the EU, expanded canon was that Palpatine had a cloning program going on where he used the Dark Side to hotswitch into backup bodies, and was already not in his original body during the events of Return of the Jedi. But that's not canon anymore.

As you say, Snoke was an alien. Even if Palpatine had learned Plagueis' powers and expanded them to the point of self-resurrection, why self-resurrect as an alien?

[Surgo]

Snoke was scarred and fucked up as shit. He didn't have to be an alien, that literally could have just been scarring. What struck me was he had the same trappings of power, same sort of explicitly supernatural planning abilities, and ultimately the same fatal flaw.

[deaddmwalking]

Snoke was scarred and fucked up as shit. He didn't have to be an alien, that literally could have just been scarring. What struck me was he had the same trappings of power, same sort of explicitly supernatural planning abilities, and ultimately the same fatal flaw.

But I just chalk that up to they wanted the Emperor, but he was killed at the end of RotJ, so they just created a new one that was ALMOST just like the original, so they could do everything they already did again in a slightly different way with slightly different people.

[Kaelik]

Snope was fine, because his purpose was to serve as the big bad evil dude that puppets Kylo in Awakens, which he did just fine, and then to follow that up, his purpose was to die to Kylo so that Kylo could take over as the true enemy.

He doesn't need to have a payoff from his backstory, hell, Palpatine didn't, and that was fine. If you were thinking that Snope was the really important person who if you just killed him everything would be fine, then that's what the movie wanted you to think, but if you still think that now, then you missed the point of the rest of the movie after his death.

Also, while the whole "First Order" thing is garbage in many many many ways "Hey it would have been better if the Empire has never even lost is" 1) probably false, and 2) kind of the point? Like hot take: our understanding of fascism is a little different in 2017 than it was in the 70s. In particular, if the movie is telling you that the New Republic was basically post WW II liberal democracy, and that it inevitably sowed the seeds of it's own destruction then... good? Because that happened.

I mean, it's still a badly told story in many respects, but the concept of a new fascist outgrowth from from the New Republic makes sense, and even fits with the chronological (in real world) order of the movies.

1) The story about how plucky heroes overthrow fascism to bring back glorious liberal democracy.
2) The story about how oh shit liberal democracy falls apart and raises up fascists.
3) Hey, we need to find a new way of taking down fascists that doesn't just end up repeating this cycle.

Now obviously, they couldn't make "The Prequels, but this time with Leia playing Amadal and Luke playing Obi Wan" because we already had the prequels, and people would (probably) hate it even if it was good. (And let's be honest, JJ Abrams isn't good.) So skipping ahead to "fuck it the fascists are back like they always are" is a defensible story decision. Obviously, the past should be told better than it was, as evidenced by literally no one agreeing about what even happened in the past, but you know whatever.

[virgil]

We've been told how that world works and that's not it.

As evidenced by the Holdo Maneuver, the are not in fact consistent rules in the setting any longer.

[MGuy]

We've been told how that world works and that's not it.

As evidenced by the Holdo Maneuver, the are not in fact consistent rules in the setting any longer.

Which is one of the things really upsetting people about these movies. I liked the Luke is not the Hero he used to be reveal but that really fucked with a lot of people's expectations and is routinely what older friends of mine argue is the worst part of TLJ.

[Dean]

We've been told how that world works and that's not it.

As evidenced by the Holdo Maneuver, the are not in fact consistent rules in the setting any longer.

3 Pages ago this thread was all about how the Holdo Maneuver is terrible for exactly these reasons so...yes that's terrible and it will be a consistent thing that ignoring your setting's established canon will not be a thing people like.

[OgreBattle]

I find the idea that boys don't get called bossy weird as hell.

Whiny or entitled is the usual derogatory association with a male character like that. Or just vile if they are a character who abuses their position of power.

On Jar Jar Binks, as insulting as his accent was his actions had him....

- Timely rescue of the Jedi and directing them to safety got the plot rolling
- Instrumental in diplomacy to save his people and his planet
- Danced through battlefields unscathed
- Was an outcast but became a celebrated hero of his people for his valor
- His war time heroics saw him become a general, then official representatitive of his people in the galactice senate
-... may or may not have been a pawn (master?) of the Sith...

JarJar's arguably accomplished more than every single non-White human character rolled together, and has suffered none of their humiliation like...

Lando Calrissian- Presented as a greasy scumbag, Leia recoils upon meeting him, Han snickers and talks down to Lando the whole way.


Lando's redemption arc is risking everything he's worked for to escape a life of poverty to save the drug dealer that regularly stole from him, then the Black business owner/community leader has to beg on his knees for Leia's forgiveness.


So in that sense Fin's characterization as misguided until he becomes a White lady's servant is sticking with Star Wars tradition

[erik]

I find the idea that boys don't get called bossy weird as hell.

Whiny or entitled is the usual derogatory association with a male character like that. Or just vile if they are a character who abuses their position of power.

When my 7 year old boy starts telling grown-ups or other kids what to do I typically tell him not to be bossy. I didn't realize its gender association, so I don't think I was unconsciously doing a gender-based insult.

Boys and men can be called bossy and indeed are. It's just that women are unfairly called bossy for behavior that is approved of in males.