The Gaming Den

I just watched the 2nd episode of Man in the High Castle. I hated knowing what bad things were going to happen, and then that they happened exactly as I suspected.

I dunno if I wanna watch a show with too many bad feels, felt like what a snuff film must be like or something, and I didn't like.

Survivor Series was like a perfect storm of disappointment.

erik wrote:I just watched the 2nd episode of Man in the High Castle. I hated knowing what bad things were going to happen, and then that they happened exactly as I suspected.

I dunno if I wanna watch a show with too many bad feels, felt like what a snuff film must be like or something, and I didn't like.

This is pretty much why I give Game of Thrones a pass. If the big draw of the series is, by now, "Really Bad Things Happen to Characters Who Would Be Exempt, I'm so Edgy, DOH HO HO HO"

Whipstitch wrote:Survivor Series was like a perfect storm of disappointment.

Yeah, but my expectations of WWE programming have been very low for a long time.

I've discovered my limit for "non-superhero" action series (such as arrow, batman, etc.) is resurrection. Once the guy dies, he's dead. You are allowed to bring characters back if they disappeared, or no one saw the event, but that's it.
Heart stops beating, body turns cold, I'm out if the character becomes Jesus.

I don't now if this really counts as "lost me" but the most recent episode of Doctor Who had a glaring plot hole (assuming you can deal with the fact that it basically takes place over about 2 billion years, which, even for a Time Lord, is pushing things, I think)-

So, it's established that the rooms in the Confession Circle reset themselves, and not just when he tele-resurrects, because he notes it and is aware of it, while his fresh tele-resurrected selves remember nothing from his previous go through.

Even if we accept that a Time Lord, who is shown again and again to have remarkable survival ability, but little in the way of offensive capabilities beyond humans, such as strength, can punch through a wall "several hundred times harder than diamond" given enough time, there is still the fact that it should reset like everything else.

Maybe it's because the room with the diamond wall thing is the exit, so it's not affected? I dunno. Moffat has definitely gotten lazier since he first started as show runner. I mean, compare "Blink" and the library two-parter to his stuff now. Hell, compare his season 5 work to now.

On a related note, I wonder if the direction they're going with this whole hybrid thing is going to be a reference to the doctor supposedly being half-human (or so the 90's TV movie claimed, and something that seemed to have been ignored outside of that.)

Someone once mentioned something about how moffat doesn't write a lot of it because he is working on other projects, so... who knows.

Moffat certainly seems stronger when he's just a writer. Blink and Silence in the Library were great, and he gave us River Song.

Then he became showrunner and gave us Matt Smith (he's a great actor, but his Doctor was just... infantile) and the complete obviation of Capaldi's "No Papa-Nicole stuff" condition with the last couple seasons. Though I've recently been learning that the really weird/shitty episodes are usually written by RTD or Mark Gatniss, or other Who writers.

Heaven Sent was overall an interesting episode, but the above mentioned things are sticking points for me. Even leaving aside the room resetting.

I maintain that everything that Moffat is ever responsible for is basically a rehash of Press Gang. With the inexplicable exception of Coupling.

So, if his influence is slipping you can probably directly measure his contribution/influence over any given episode by determining how much the doctor is being a super competent sociopathic "Linda" and how much his side kick is trying to keep him grounded and human as a "Spike".

I would measure the last two episodes as ~70% and ~60% respectively on the "Spike and Linda Scale".

Watched episodes 1-4 of Alan Tudyk's Con Man. Really wanted to like it but not a single thing was funny and it just came off as a hate letter to his fans (or to himself, hard to say). Not sure if e5-13 picks up but don't think I'm going to tempt fate to find out.

PhoneLobster wrote:I maintain that everything that Moffat is ever responsible for is basically a rehash of Press Gang. With the inexplicable exception of Coupling.

So, if his influence is slipping you can probably directly measure his contribution/influence over any given episode by determining how much the doctor is being a super competent sociopathic "Linda" and how much his side kick is trying to keep him grounded and human as a "Spike".

I would measure the last two episodes as ~70% and ~60% respectively on the "Spike and Linda Scale".

How does your scale account for blink, which has a very limited role for the doctor and almost no companion at all?

Kaelik wrote:How does your scale account for blink, which has a very limited role for the doctor and almost no companion at all?

It would attempt to identify new Linda and Spike surrogates and if they cannot be found then, by the scale's reckoning at least, Moffat's influence must be minimal.

Though I would like to add... but why are they making a big thing in the next episode preview of the Doctor declaring that he is going to conquer Galafrey.

I knew he had been President of the place at least once, even half a quick check on the internet indicates he has been president probably at least twice, has turned the presidency down, avoided it or run away from it it at least several times, has effectively appointed at least one if not more other Presidents, and had at least one former side kick take the job.

By the old cannon the response of the Galafreyan's to the doctor declaring he wants to rule the place as far as I can tell is largely "About damn time, here are the keys, here is the robe, and will you at least stay long enough to attend the god damn presidential induction ceremony this time?"

But no, we just get the doctor all going... "It was ME who was prophesied to conquer this place... and not in the nice way where I was the ruler of it several times already... the prophecy means AGAIN and maybe in a sort of bad way or something and I dunno, the hybrid bit was a bunch of trash metaphor or something."

edit: And while I'm all for Timothy Dalton getting a doctor who role, the thing where he is somehow Rassillon in the context and time period he is supposed to be in seems like a pile of WTF for a variety of reasons.

Lessee if I can remember when the Doc became prez...

First time was in The Deadly Assassin, where the then current president was assassinated by the Master, and the 4th Doctor threw his hat into the race for a new Prez in order to flush out the Master. After all was said and done, the Time Lords wanted him to be pres. He didn't, so he left.

Second time was in The Arc of Infinity, where the time lords tried again to make him pres (after another pres was killed), but he turned it down again.

Third time was in The Five Doctors, where he finally DID accept... And promptly left.

Finally, in Trial of a Time Lord, he tried to use his presidential status to get out his trial, but the Time Lords said that since he basically ignored his duties, he got stripped of his title.

They've made it so that you can't view Facebook unless you have an account. I don't WANT a Facebook account, I just want to read Bloom County and Ask Vector Prime. But now when you go to those pages, a screen comes up forcing you to sign up or log in, with no way to close it and just read the [EDITED] page.

Fuck Mark Zuckerberg and fuck Facebook.

Make a fake account as Fuckface Fuckerberg or something similar.

Well, I tried something like that, but of course you can't have swears in the name. So I just stuck my two middle names together and sold my bitter soul and all I have to show for it is an account I'll never use except to look at shit on Facebook.

It'd be like if the Den required you to have an account just to visit the damn site.

Shrapnel wrote:They've made it so that you can't view Facebook unless you have an account. I don't WANT a Facebook account, I just want to read Bloom County and Ask Vector Prime. But now when you go to those pages, a screen comes up forcing you to sign up or log in, with no way to close it and just read the [EDITED] page.

Fuck Mark Zuckerberg and fuck Facebook.

You don't need FascistBook for Bloom County 2015, it's on Go Comics with like a week delay: http://www.gocomics.com/bloom-county/

Aye, that's true, but I still need to go to Fuckbook fer my AVP fix.

Shrapnel wrote:They've made it so that you can't view Facebook unless you have an account.

Is it region-dependent? Because I have no problem viewing facebooks at all, including Bloom County. The main page has a semi-transparent nag frame over the header image, and when I click on the comic, a "Timeline photos" page opens with a perfectly visible and readable comic.

Shrapnel wrote:So I just stuck my two middle names together and sold my bitter soul and all I have to show for it is an account I'll never use except to look at shit on Facebook.

Making a fake account that gives Facebook no real information about you is selling your soul?

Well, and you kind of link into the gigantic internet-wide Facebook tracking cookie thing if you aren't careful. But you don't need an account for that to happen.

Starmaker wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:They've made it so that you can't view Facebook unless you have an account.

Is it region-dependent? Because I have no problem viewing facebooks at all, including Bloom County. The main page has a semi-transparent nag frame over the header image, and when I click on the comic, a "Timeline photos" page opens with a perfectly visible and readable comic.

I have no idea. All I know is that this always pops up with no way to close it.

And it doesn't go away unless you sign in.

RobbyPants wrote:

Shrapnel wrote:So I just stuck my two middle names together and sold my bitter soul and all I have to show for it is an account I'll never use except to look at shit on Facebook.

Making a fake account that gives Facebook no real information about you is selling your soul?

It still makes me feel unclean.

Weird. I can't reproduce this at all. I disabled all the script blockers, used a US proxy (and got a captcha), even used IE.