Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[maglag]

So just to recap how bad RP1 is:

In the intro where the video will sets up the treasure hunt the there are two errors that I spotted. First the wrong year is listed in the visual identifying the song used. Second the tech billionaire misidentifies the first video game to feature an Easter egg. But what truly damns the book is that none of the detail-obsessed characters who have dedicated their lives to solving the puzzle ever notice either of those errors.

Clearly that's why they took so long to even start solving said puzzle.

The clues were wrong to start with since they were based in mistakes, the private work of a demented man at the verge of death, and the only way to win was to make the exact same mistakes!

[erik]

So just to recap how bad RP1 is:

In the intro where the video will sets up the treasure hunt the there are two errors that I spotted. First the wrong year is listed in the visual identifying the song used. Second the tech billionaire misidentifies the first video game to feature an Easter egg. But what truly damns the book is that none of the detail-obsessed characters who have dedicated their lives to solving the puzzle ever notice either of those errors.

See, that shit isn’t even an unforgivable sin. For all I care the facts and factoids are true in their universe. Other inconsistencies irritate me much more.

When the setting explains that people live their life in VR and some people get married without ever meeting IRL, and the main characters are total VR junkies, it pisses me off when they constantly whinge about having to meet IRL as necessary to know someone.

And acting like a couple hundred billion dollars is a magical amount of moolah 50 years from now, made the author sound like temporally displaced Dr Evil.

The trailer stacks sounded completely stupid and implausible. Like everything else in the setting.

[hyzmarca]

The trailer stacks sounded completely stupid and implausible. Like everything else in the setting.

It's hilariously unsafe, and I can't see the set up not killing large numbers of people, but it's not implausible with compared to other high-density slums in impoverished countries with poor or non-existant health and safety standards. If we assume that they're not intentional constructs, but rather things Macgyvered as needed by desperate poor people and slum lords who didn't give a shit.

[erik]

The trailer stacks sounded completely stupid and implausible. Like everything else in the setting.

It's hilariously unsafe, and I can't see the set up not killing large numbers of people, but it's not implausible with compared to other high-density slums in impoverished countries with poor or non-existant health and safety standards. If we assume that they're not intentional constructs, but rather things Macgyvered as needed by desperate poor people and slum lords who didn't give a shit.

Word. It's fractally stupid. If I understood the authorial intent, it was that stack cities happened out of convenience of creation. But they're the furthest thing from it! You don't just stack trailers dozens high. They aren't designed for that shit. And for giggles it's in Oklahoma, where storms wreck "single-stack" trailer parks. How're they pumping water to the top? Where does the waste go? How about explaining why the first grease fire doesn't consume an entire stack city? There's not the population density pressure calling for it either. Again, they're in fucking Oklahoma with some of the lowest population density on the planet, and everyone telecommutes anyway as a cherry on top.

Cline's world-building chops are shit. RP1 makes the juvenile setting of Hunger Games seem nuanced.

Gas cars are still a thing. Drivers are still a thing. AI is wildly inconsistent in capability, being laughably underutilized/stupid to borderline sentient. How a Watson AI from 50 years in the future couldn't solve all of the challenges is baffling. The corporate overlords already had hacked rigs, it should've been trivial.

[Whipstitch]

Plus, even the sillier dystopian elements of the Hunger Games have a fairly clear purpose. All that horrible stuff is to raise moral questions about how much shit people can be expected to eat before it becomes acceptable to burn everything down and start over. Whereas RP1 just kinda comes across as an author fucking around. You don't really need the weak sauce world building that's being done just to sell people on escapism.

[Prak]

I was going to post in Rocked, but then I realized that, beyond a generic "it was good" I was mostly complaining.

So. I saw Infinity Wars. It was good, enjoyable. Though the thing I expected to be a problem was- I fucking hate the Guardians. Specifically Drax, and to a slightly lesser extent, Mantis.

They fucking drag the guardians down in maturity. Quill and Gamora have actual mature conversations when Drax isn't there. Rocket is hilarious.. well, pretty much always, but more so when Drax isn't there. Groot is... well Teen!Groot was more bearable than Baby!Groot. But Drax is basically a fucking walking autism joke, and an incredibly lazy one at that, and Mantis just extends that joke.

So. The complaints that involve spoilers. You've been warned.

At the end of the movie, Thanos wins. Duh. We know there's going to be a second part, so honestly this isn't a surprise. It results in half the universe's population being erased.

All fine, not really surprising. Very well executed, and it's very emotional.

But as the erasure went on, I was taken out of the moment as EVERY FUCKING NON-WHITE MAJOR CHARACTER GOT FUCKING ERASED.
T'Challa- Erased.
Sam- Erased.
Rhodey- Erased.
NICK FUCKING FURY, WHO GOT NO GODDAMNED SCREEN TIME BEFORE THE POST-CREDITS SCENE, FUCKING ERASED.

Wanda and Hill were erased, Carter was nowhere to be seen (though I'm glad for that, because CapXSharon is skeezy as fuck).

Shuri and Okoye live, but if Marvel actually puts even one, let alone both, of them forward as a full major character, I'll be fucking floored.

So Avengers 4 is basically "FIVE MIDDLE AGED WHITE MEN, A CGI RACOON AND A COUPLE TOKEN WHITE WOMEN SAVE THE DAY WHILE ORDERING A COUPLE BLACK WOMEN AROUND."

Like I said, it was a good movie. And I'm being offended over stupid shit here, but it pissed me off.

[Blicero]

At the end of the movie, Thanos wins. Duh. We know there's going to be a second part, so honestly this isn't a surprise. It results in half the universe's population being erased.

All fine, not really surprising. Very well executed, and it's very emotional.

But as the erasure went on, I was taken out of the moment as EVERY FUCKING NON-WHITE MAJOR CHARACTER GOT FUCKING ERASED.
T'Challa- Erased.
Sam- Erased.
Rhodey- Erased.
NICK FUCKING FURY, WHO GOT NO GODDAMNED SCREEN TIME BEFORE THE POST-CREDITS SCENE, FUCKING ERASED.

Wanda and Hill were erased, Carter was nowhere to be seen (though I'm glad for that, because CapXSharon is skeezy as fuck).

Shuri and Okoye live, but if Marvel actually puts even one, let alone both, of them forward as a full major character, I'll be fucking floored.

So Avengers 4 is basically "FIVE MIDDLE AGED WHITE MEN, A CGI RACOON AND A COUPLE TOKEN WHITE WOMEN SAVE THE DAY WHILE ORDERING A COUPLE BLACK WOMEN AROUND."

This article claims that Rhodes doesn't get ashed.
http://time.com/5252990/avengers-infinity-war-deaths/

The plot of the next movie is probably going to revolve around time travel, so it's not like the the survivors of this movie are necessarily the most central ones for part two. But it makes sense to start with the original Avengers cast plus a few randos.

Vox claims that filming for Infinity War started just as filming for Black Panther finished. So most of IW's scenes were probably shot before Black Panther was released and became a sensation. So it's not the most surprising that the Black Panther character didn't do much in this film and wasn't one of the surviving randos.

[virgil]

Response to Prak's statements on Thanos.

As Blicero comments, Rhodes doesn't get ashed. It's very unlikely that he'll play a major role in the next film though, since Stark's still alive.

You claim Sam, Rhodey, & Fury are major characters and simultaneously claim that Wong, Shuri, & Okoye aren't? If it helps? They also smacked away Parker, Strange, & Quill - so it's not like white skin is an apotrope from Thanos.

Honestly, the issue is that the primary characters of each sub-franchise are all white dudes except T'challa. Regardless of who they ashed, unless they go really out of their way, they will dominate the demographics of the plot.

Frankly, I doubt Gamorra is going to be ordered around, and she's certain to play a role in the next movie.

[Prak]

Yeah, I forgot Rhodey survived.

But, like, yeah, a lot of white characters got ashed, too. But (virtually) all of the black characters who carry plots got ashed. Like, sure, Okoye and Shuri are still there, but...

I would love to see Shuri and Okoye get to carry more plot. But they're basically backup characters, at least in Infinity War. Shuri is the lab tech who exists to explain how Vision can be fixed when Tony and Bruce couldn't just make him better in the first place. Okoye is another body for battle, but one who doesn't get narrative importance in IW, where Rhodey or Bucky do get narrative importance beyond being extra bodies on the field.

What I'm saying is that the remaining characters of color are characters who exist to be given side jobs. Like, in D&D terms, Shuri is the Sage NPC who the party asks to look something up or make a potion, and Okoye is the caravan guard NPC who is like 5th level, and can hold her own, but it's not like they play a big part in the adventure.

Rhodey... I don't really know what Rhodey is narratively at this point.

Also I forgot about Wong. Hopefully he gets more too do, and probably will, given that Strange got ashed.

And yeah, this is really more of a symptom of the actual problem, which is that the MCU is primarily a bunch of middle-aged white guys, and really needs some damned diversity in the figureheads.

[Mask_De_H]

Yeah, I forgot Rhodey survived.

But, like, yeah, a lot of white characters got ashed, too. But (virtually) all of the black characters who carry plots got ashed. Like, sure, Okoye and Shuri are still there, but...

I would love to see Shuri and Okoye get to carry more plot. But they're basically backup characters, at least in Infinity War. Shuri is the lab tech who exists to explain how Vision can be fixed when Tony and Bruce couldn't just make him better in the first place. Okoye is another body for battle, but one who doesn't get narrative importance in IW, where Rhodey or Bucky do get narrative importance beyond being extra bodies on the field.

What I'm saying is that the remaining characters of color are characters who exist to be given side jobs. Like, in D&D terms, Shuri is the Sage NPC who the party asks to look something up or make a potion, and Okoye is the caravan guard NPC who is like 5th level, and can hold her own, but it's not like they play a big part in the adventure.

Rhodey... I don't really know what Rhodey is narratively at this point.

Also I forgot about Wong. Hopefully he gets more too do, and probably will, given that Strange got ashed.

And yeah, this is really more of a symptom of the actual problem, which is that the MCU is primarily a bunch of middle-aged white guys, and really needs some damned diversity in the figureheads.

The MCU is primarily a bunch of middle-aged white guys because middle-aged white guys are the main actors (in both comic and meat spaces), sell to the rest of the world, and middle-aged white guys make decisions. White folks still hold a damn plurality in America.

It's honestly kind of annoying as a PoC to hear white people who will become middle aged at some point probably complain about a lack of diversity for us. It's tokenism++, because it shouldn't goddamned matter what skin color or gender the character is, only that they can be a role model, or at least entertaining. It's reinforcing the otherness of people for brownie points.

I don't fucking need you to tell me there need to be more PoC in film; we have our own films. With blackjack. And crossdressing. The Rock is black enough for WWE and he's one of the biggest box office stars in the world.

[OgreBattle]

Black Panther and Pacific Rim Uprising did great in Asia, Black lead and made more money than most Marvel/Disney/DC movies like Justice League, Thor, Star Wars, etc.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/intl/china ... 018&p=.htm

Indian movie Dangal made $190mil in mainland China too, which is as much as the highest grossing Bayformers films. The top Hollywood films in China are still Fast & Furious, which prominently stars mixed race n' non White actors.

The western market is particularly hard for non-western films to crack though. As the US becomes a less important market you see more diversity in Hollywood global grossing films.

[Leress]

The MCU is primarily a bunch of middle-aged white guys because middle-aged white guys are the main actors (in both comic and meat spaces), sell to the rest of the world, and middle-aged white guys make decisions. White folks still hold a damn plurality in America.

It's honestly kind of annoying as a PoC to hear white people who will become middle aged at some point probably complain about a lack of diversity for us. It's tokenism++, because it shouldn't goddamned matter what skin color or gender the character is, only that they can be a role model, or at least entertaining. It's reinforcing the otherness of people for brownie points.

I don't fucking need you to tell me there need to be more PoC in film; we have our own films. With blackjack. And crossdressing. The Rock is black enough for WWE and he's one of the biggest box office stars in the world.

Another PoC here, I'm going to have to +1 your statement Mask. I was going to write a long statement about my problem with your statement, Prak, but I'm very tired and I don't want to make the equivalent of a drunken post.

[Prak]

Ok, that's fair. I see representation as an unqualified, unquestionable good, and I want to see more of it, because there are aspects of myself that certainly aren't represented, but if this is a case where I'm being too concerned about it, that's fair. I'll take this into my consideration.

[Kaelik]

I want Miles Morales as spiderman just because I hate everything about the Peter Parker origin story and have seen it 50 times, and I know nothing about Morales, but it would be nice to see something new.

That said, representation is good because it has benefits, saying "we have our own films" sort of belies the point, because that's also representation.

[Maj]

This has been an interesting conversation for me to watch because I'm white, and I find myself gravitating toward diversity because it's more comfortable. The basic culture presented isn't the WASP one that makes my skin crawl. And as a parent, I think it's better for my kid to grow up in a world where he sees all groups represented in strong roles and that's a perfectly normal thing to happen. I mean, I can talk to him about race/gender/sexuality all day, but it's nice to have the world back you up.

[Chamomile]

The favor done by representation isn't really to PoCs directly, but to people who are trying to defend PoCs politically. Which shouldn't be surprising. The only thing PoCs have in common to begin with is that the Ku Klux Klan hates them. Other than that, they are a wide variety of different cultures, skin colors, etc. etc. most of whom are as dissimilar from one another as they are from white people. It is politically useful to be able to have a shorthand reference for heroes and villains that can be communicated quickly, before an audience's attention span expires.

Being able to refer to some effort, usually by high schools or sometimes universities, to implement extreme policies allegedly meant to curb some societal ill as - well, back up and notice how even a cursory description of the problem was kind of labyrinthine back there. There were plenty of opportunities for someone, especially someone below this forum's intelligence waterline, to get confused by what I was referring to, get frustrated, and wander off. I'm not even talking about people so stupid they're unable to grasp the problem even with serious thought. I'm talking about people who aren't smart enough to instantly understand a nuanced and somewhat tangled problem and would rather go back to checking Twitter than exert the effort to understand what I'm talking about when as far as they know I might just be trying to sell them on some crazy conspiracy theory. People selling crazy conspiracy theories are way more common than people trying to explain real problems, especially these days.

You can cut through all of that if you can append "so they're pretty much literally YA dystopia villains" at the end. People already know how they feel about YA dystopia villains - they are so committed to some weird ideal that they have become crazy extremists, so crazy and extreme that they seem (and in some cases actually are) implausible. Books and movies have already done the legwork of holding people's attention while getting that point across by delivering them alongside a story. All you have to do is draw reasonable-sounding connections between YA villains and dumb high school policy and you will 1) have a much easier time convincing people you're right and 2) figure out why teenagers find these villains so much more plausible than adults.

So it's straightforwardly advantageous to have a reservoir of heroes and villains who occupy roles that are easy to plug into your own narratives and hard for a political opponent to turn around on you. Having Black Panther means that we can make jokes about Black Panther fighting the Republican League of Evil and those jokes will be more persuasive than they have any right to be if and only if people know who Black Panther is and have positive associations with him.

[Pariah Dog]

I want Miles Morales as spiderman just because I hate everything about the Peter Parker origin story and have seen it 50 times, and I know nothing about Morales, but it would be nice to see something new.

That said, representation is good because it has benefits, saying "we have our own films" sort of belies the point, because that's also representation.

You'll be getting your wish there is some MM spiderman in the works. Animated though not live action. Into the Spider-verse I think its called.

Just saw IW today and I enjoyed it personally though I did have a couple of gripes

I guess Hugo Weaving didn't want to reprise his role as Red Skull.
Also unless its the 1 in 14 million version of the future he saw why the fuck did Strange just roll over and give Thanos the time stone?

[Kaelik]

Have watched Infinity War, so spoiler:

Wow, Thanos sure is fucking dumb. Like it's almost amazing that anyone that dumb could do literally anything. Where his entire race super hulk powered pacifists and that's the only reason he's ever accomplished anything?

Because he was too stupid to be a pacifist?

I say this, because Thanos believes that he must kill half of everyone to solve the problem of starving people, but in literally every single society that he must kill half the people, there are literal rich and poor people. There are abundant resources in every society and it's just a matter of redistribution.

I mean obviously if you have the magic power of all the stones, you can just create infinite food for everyone even if they don't have it, but like..... Hey fucking dummy, they had enough fucking resources, they just had rich people hogging them.... you fucking idiot.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, Infinity War's Thanos is what happens when you have a Totally Deep Idea, except you're an idiot and it isn't.

"I'm evil lol" would have been a better motivation.

The comic book's "I want to fuck Death" would have been a better motivation.

Anything would have been a better motivation than "I'm going to become omnipotent so I can solve scarcity everywhere forever...." "Neat." "... with genocide!" "I'm sorry, run that by me again?"

The movie's ability to not buckle under the size of its own cast is impressive. It is sufficiently engaging scene-to-scene to keep asses in chairs and popcorn in mouths. And the plot is the stupidest fucking thing. Sometimes it is better to not try at all than it is to try and fail - just make him a dick and give him an evil laugh, call it a day.

[maglag]

Have watched Infinity War, so spoiler:

Wow, Thanos sure is fucking dumb. Like it's almost amazing that anyone that dumb could do literally anything. Where his entire race super hulk powered pacifists and that's the only reason he's ever accomplished anything?

Because he was too stupid to be a pacifist?

I say this, because Thanos believes that he must kill half of everyone to solve the problem of starving people, but in literally every single society that he must kill half the people, there are literal rich and poor people. There are abundant resources in every society and it's just a matter of redistribution.

I mean obviously if you have the magic power of all the stones, you can just create infinite food for everyone even if they don't have it, but like..... Hey fucking dummy, they had enough fucking resources, they just had rich people hogging them.... you fucking idiot.

Some Thanos comic background.

Thanos indeed comes from a whole planet of pacifists, although he was the only hulk-powered purple one, everybody else looked like normal humies, so he's a mutant.

Thanos later goes on a killing spree there for the evulz, and his father gets desperate enough to actually build the only gun in the planet, but can't pull the trigger. Then Thanos actually pulls the weapon out of dad's hands and shoots himself in the head, gets just a bit scorched and tells father he should've built a better gun.

Also in the original Infinity Gauntlet story Thanos kills half the universe's population just to try to please lady Death. Because Thanos is madly in love with lady Death. And this lady Death may or may not be the actual embodiment of Death or just an hallucination, since he started seeing her when he was young and thought she was just a normal person at first. And most of the time Lady Death doesn't even speak, Thanos just stares at her then goes "What's that, want me to kill half the universe? Anything for you sweetie."

Just saying, Thanos supposed to be a fucking idiot clinically insane.

[Kaelik]

Yes, I am familiar with the comic version, at least the lady death part, not the origin. I even led with in discord: "infinity war spoilerish: thanoses motivation is even stupider than in the comics"

I'm not saying "he was crazy, that's bad" I'm saying "He was so tremendously stupid that I have difficulty believing he could ever even accidentally stumble onto a workable plan in any way ever in anything."

Literally every step of his plan makes less sense than just wanting to bone a specific supernatural lady. It's just really bad.

The movie is mostly okay, but like...... It was a really dumb plan.

[Longes]

MCU Thanos is basically Anti-Spiral.

[Starmaker]

I say this, because Thanos believes that he must kill half of everyone to solve the problem of starving people, but in literally every single society that he must kill half the people, there are literal rich and poor people. There are abundant resources in every society and it's just a matter of redistribution.

I suspect this is what Hollywood screenwriters actually believe. It's either the status quo or Thanos's plan, anything else is UNPOSSIBLE!!!11

[Omegonthesane]

I say this, because Thanos believes that he must kill half of everyone to solve the problem of starving people, but in literally every single society that he must kill half the people, there are literal rich and poor people. There are abundant resources in every society and it's just a matter of redistribution.

I suspect this is what Hollywood screenwriters actually believe. It's either the status quo or Thanos's plan, anything else is UNPOSSIBLE!!!11

Or at least, it's what they want viewers to believe.

[Prak]

Yeah, I was struck by that literally the second Thanos unveiled his we'll-charitably-call-it-a-plan.

It's kind of frustrating because if you basically gloss over how absolutely stupid the actual specific plan is, MCU Thanos serves as a great example of a type of villain we don't often get to see. A villain who doesn't want to subjugate the world out of some megalomania, and doesn't even have a specific desire to kill (more or less), just a desire to solve a very real problem in a way that happens to be horrific and villainous. With Mark Rosewater talking about it on his tumblr blog, it kind of makes me hope that maybe we'll see a set with a real white aligned villain in a Magic set five years from now.

Actually, rereading over what I wrote, it makes me wonder- does such a villain, one who wants to accomplish something technically good, just with an evil plan, basically require the villain to be dumber than a sack of rocks?