Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

[shinimasu]

Can I add 're-read' to this because the Eragon and Twilight books stole weeks of my life in high school that I'll probably never get back.

They both did it in the same way too. Book one was solidly mediocre, but the kind of mediocre that makes you think "well maybe now that the author has a solid grasp on the world and the characters book two might be halfway decent. Maybe even good!"

And then Book two takes such a sharp nose-dive that you finish it feeling kind of cheated.

Actually that was book three in Twilight's case, it took myers a little longer to become immune to her editors. Book two was the same kind of mediocre nothing that book one was but this time with werewolves. This should have been a red flag but I was also 17 and I cut myself a break.

[saithorthepyro]

Can I add 're-read' to this because the Eragon and Twilight books stole weeks of my life in high school that I'll probably never get back.

They both did it in the same way too. Book one was solidly mediocre, but the kind of mediocre that makes you think "well maybe now that the author has a solid grasp on the world and the characters book two might be halfway decent. Maybe even good!"

And then Book two takes such a sharp nose-dive that you finish it feeling kind of cheated.

Actually that was book three in Twilight's case, it took myers a little longer to become immune to her editors. Book two was the same kind of mediocre nothing that book one was but this time with werewolves. This should have been a red flag but I was also 17 and I cut myself a break.

I'd argue that book 1 of Twilight was when it went to the dumpster fire, but that might be the inner horror fan being really pissed off about their treatment of vampire's. I tried reading it, and around halfway through couldn't take any of the character's anymore. The movies are better because they are not such a slog and because of unintentional hilarity, but still are terrible.

Eragon is mostly like you said mediocre all the way through. It's really just a collection of fantasy tropes thrown together, and reads like someone's early writing, probably because it was since the author was a teenager when he started it. The worse part is the prose, which makes me want to burn the author's thesaurus, but that's around it. It doesn't claim most bad fantasy series that is popular award, that goes to Sword of Objectivism/Truth, which I spent several hours reading that I am never going to get back, curse my fourteen year-old self.

[erik]

Word. I was at least a couple balls deep into sword of truth series before I realized it was a basketful of STDs. That was a terrible waste of my time and metaphorical cock.

Eragon just got the tip before I knew better.


*balls deep being a literary gauge of comparing the height of the stacked books

[saithorthepyro]

Word. I was at least a couple balls deep into sword of truth series before I realized it was a basketful of STDs. That was a terrible waste of my time and metaphorical cock.

Eragon just got the tip before I knew better.


*balls deep being a literary gauge of comparing the height of the stacked books

Yeah, I got into around book nine before I left. My only excuse was being young, stupid, and having only those books left to read at the time due to picking them up cheap at a library sell. Eargon isn't as bad because it doesn't blatantly try to throw ideology in my face and also doesn't have so much of the protagonist acting liking an asshole.

[shinimasu]

I'd argue that book 1 of Twilight was when it went to the dumpster fire, but that might be the inner horror fan being really pissed off about their treatment of vampire's. I tried reading it, and around halfway through couldn't take any of the character's anymore. The movies are better because they are not such a slog and because of unintentional hilarity, but still are terrible.

Eragon is mostly like you said mediocre all the way through. It's really just a collection of fantasy tropes thrown together, and reads like someone's early writing, probably because it was since the author was a teenager when he started it. The worse part is the prose, which makes me want to burn the author's thesaurus, but that's around it. It doesn't claim most bad fantasy series that is popular award, that goes to Sword of Objectivism/Truth, which I spent several hours reading that I am never going to get back, curse my fourteen year-old self.

I knew going in twilight was going to be cheesy romance and not a proper vampire story (I got it at a library after the second book had already been published so I'd picked up on a little of what its deal was already via cultural osmosis). So book one seemed like fairly bland YA romance but not egregiously offensive YA romance. The sparkling was dumb but tbh not actually mentioned all that much outside of the infamous scene it's brought up in.

Book one felt like a lot of setup, here are the vampires, here's how they work, here's the two leads being conflicted about their feelings. So I figured book two would dive into the meat of the relationship and/or do more with the whole vampires premise. Nope instead Edward fucks off in the first couple chapters and the rest of the book is dedicated to setting up werewolves.

So I figured, OK book three has to be the payoff to all this setup right? Nope, book three is where they introduced soulbonding and the werewolf that soulbonds with a literal toddler with the implication that he's going to attempt to hit that basically the moment she comes of age, and that the toddler basically has no say in the matter. That's when I noped out of the series hard.

For Eragon the nope moment was during the second book where he's wrestling with the scar he received at the end of the first one. It's a legit crippling injury and I was like "oh man I'm super curious about how he's going to overcome this." Then he gets magically healed at a party, turned into a super amazing super hot half elf, and is suddenly perfect at everything. It comes right the fuck out of nowhere too, he's just at this party and suddenly there's this dragon spirit that comes out of a tree and says "Ok you're part elf now."

[saithorthepyro]

I'd argue that book 1 of Twilight was when it went to the dumpster fire, but that might be the inner horror fan being really pissed off about their treatment of vampire's. I tried reading it, and around halfway through couldn't take any of the character's anymore. The movies are better because they are not such a slog and because of unintentional hilarity, but still are terrible.

Eragon is mostly like you said mediocre all the way through. It's really just a collection of fantasy tropes thrown together, and reads like someone's early writing, probably because it was since the author was a teenager when he started it. The worse part is the prose, which makes me want to burn the author's thesaurus, but that's around it. It doesn't claim most bad fantasy series that is popular award, that goes to Sword of Objectivism/Truth, which I spent several hours reading that I am never going to get back, curse my fourteen year-old self.

I knew going in twilight was going to be cheesy romance and not a proper vampire story (I got it at a library after the second book had already been published so I'd picked up on a little of what its deal was already via cultural osmosis). So book one seemed like fairly bland YA romance but not egregiously offensive YA romance. The sparkling was dumb but tbh not actually mentioned all that much outside of the infamous scene it's brought up in.

Book one felt like a lot of setup, here are the vampires, here's how they work, here's the two leads being conflicted about their feelings. So I figured book two would dive into the meat of the relationship and/or do more with the whole vampires premise. Nope instead Edward fucks off in the first couple chapters and the rest of the book is dedicated to setting up werewolves.

So I figured, OK book three has to be the payoff to all this setup right? Nope, book three is where they introduced soulbonding and the werewolf that soulbonds with a literal toddler with the implication that he's going to attempt to hit that basically the moment she comes of age, and that the toddler basically has no say in the matter. That's when I noped out of the series hard.

For Eragon the nope moment was during the second book where he's wrestling with the scar he received at the end of the first one. It's a legit crippling injury and I was like "oh man I'm super curious about how he's going to overcome this." Then he gets magically healed at a party, turned into a super amazing super hot half elf, and is suddenly perfect at everything. It comes right the fuck out of nowhere too, he's just at this party and suddenly there's this dragon spirit that comes out of a tree and says "Ok you're part elf now."

Believe it or not, the movie adaption was originally planned to be much different, with more action, less stupidity, and less moping and mary sueing involved. Then the author got involved, and we ended up with we got. One of the few times were I wish the movie had been less faithful to the books.

On Eragon, yeah, healing the back was the most stupid thing in that book. There wasn't even a build-up to it, just completely out of nowhere. Him having that injury throughout the series could have been interesting. Although I think Brom turning out to be his father in the fourth book is much more stupid and mary sue-ish, especially after they already played the "Your dad's a villain card" in book 2.

[Maj]

Twilight was the first book I ever actually threw in contempt. I probably would have thrown the Sword of Truth books, too, but I read them before I read Twilight and thus didn't yet believe throwing books was an acceptable way of showing disapproval.

[Josh_Kablack]

Watched the movie Game Night yesterday, which did a lot of things right. But it was painful how bad the choices of games to feature were. This stood in extra stark contrast to how relevant the film references in the movie were.

[Prak]

I saw The Incredibles 2 the other night.

It's entertaining, sure, but the overall story is basically the same as the first. And I could swear that the Parrs learned about Jack-Jack's powers at the climax of the first movie, so not knowing about them in the sequel is a glaring plot hole.

Worse, though, is that it just raises a slight variation of the first movie's political question, but worse. Partly, that's because the characters argue over one another about it, but also because... we've gone from whether Supers should be allowed to Super, to should Supers disobey what's already been established to be a bad law.

[Pariah Dog]

Haven't seen it yet (not quite willing to throw down theater price to see it, so I'll catch it on DVD later) but I think they learned Jack-Jack had powers, just not the extent of them.

[Leress]

It's entertaining, sure, but the overall story is basically the same as the first. And I could swear that the Parrs learned about Jack-Jack's powers at the climax of the first movie, so not knowing about them in the sequel is a glaring plot hole.

It's not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbIUxyn9cWE

[angelfromanotherpin]

Incredibles 2 has serious pacing issues and also lacks focus. Individual scenes are good – often great – but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Yeah, I got into around book nine before I left. My only excuse was being young, stupid, and having only those books left to read at the time due to picking them up cheap at a library sell. Eargon isn't as bad because it doesn't blatantly try to throw ideology in my face and also doesn't have so much of the protagonist acting liking an asshole.

I noped at after the part where the protagonist's brother was running for office on a political platform of scapegoating fire.

[Hiram McDaniels]

Most people have already mentioned my rewatchables, but I’d like to add The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Dark City, and The Third Man to that list.

Favorite movie of all time is Strange Days. I watch it at least once a year. I don't know how well it stands up to critical analysis, but I still love it.

[Prak]

It's entertaining, sure, but the overall story is basically the same as the first. And I could swear that the Parrs learned about Jack-Jack's powers at the climax of the first movie, so not knowing about them in the sequel is a glaring plot hole.

It's not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbIUxyn9cWE

Ok, I misremembered particulars. And Kari's interview with Dickerson is part of a separate piece that was retconned out, I guess, but... there's still the plothole of a bunch of voicemails on Helen's phone from Kari saying weird stuff is happening, that, bare minimum, should have involved one of them asking her about it. And within the framework of the movie's reality, that would lead to Dickerson interviewing her, and mindwiping her, and the Parr's learning Jack Jack has powers.

So, I guess it's slightly less of a glaring plot hole given that they did not directly witness Jack Jack's powers in the first movie, but there's still the plot hole that verisimilitude is broken.

Incredibles 2 has serious pacing issues and also lacks focus. Individual scenes are good – often great – but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

p.much.

[Josh_Kablack]

I noped at after the part where the protagonist's brother was running for office on a political platform of scapegoating fire.

I handled that as obviously dude was an unwitting tool of the dark forces of thems-what-is-vulnerable to fire, but I ragequit at the explanation of confessor powers.

You can't sell me that Always On and Recharge Time on the same power (which also explicitly worked on animals and the state of recharge was obvious to the power wielder) led to not just a cursed life, but a whole guild of wimmens with cursed lives. Also, that guild is all wimmens because sexism. Men would have the power better if the fictional world let them live, so the fictional world goes to infanticide, which is just accepted and somehow none of the wimmens with cursed-by-awesome mind control powers ever got out of killing their infant sons? So on top of the other issues, apparently Goodkind had never heard of Moses.

[shinimasu]

Oh actually can we talk about gotham? Like all of it?

I think the moment it "lost" me was the point where it apparently decided it needed all of batmans future rogues gallery to appear no matter how little sense it makes. The aging up of Ivy through magical mutant powers is especially egregious.

Then all the weird love triangles. Especially among the villains. Barbara Gordon turns evil because a serial killer makers her murder her parents.

I feel like Gotham is kind of emblematic of trashy CW writing, it's like a microcosm of every poor story decision ever made in any of their programming. It started out as a kind of down to earth crime drama. There's two mafia guys, they don't like each other, them not liking each other means there's a lot of murder happening which gives Gordon a lot of cases to solve and then there's also this conspiracy about the wayne murder.

There was a solid foundation they clearly weren't actually interested in using.

[Username17]

I feel like Gotham is kind of emblematic of trashy CW writing, it's like a microcosm of every poor story decision ever made in any of their programming. It started out as a kind of down to earth crime drama.

But... Gotham isn't a CW show. It airs on a "major" network. That's why they are able to film in a city that isn't Vancouver. Gotham was supposed to be the adults in the room. But they ended up being much more ham than the Arrowverse material.

-Username17

[shinimasu]

I feel like Gotham is kind of emblematic of trashy CW writing, it's like a microcosm of every poor story decision ever made in any of their programming. It started out as a kind of down to earth crime drama.

But... Gotham isn't a CW show. It airs on a "major" network. That's why they are able to film in a city that isn't Vancouver. Gotham was supposed to be the adults in the room. But they ended up being much more ham than the Arrowverse material.

-Username17

You're absolutely right, they're introducing batwoman/gotham into the arrowverse and that tripped me up.

I'm not sure if it being on fox makes this more or less disappointing as a series though.

[Pariah Dog]

Oh actually can we talk about gotham? Like all of it?

I think the moment it "lost" me was the point where it apparently decided it needed all of batmans future rogues gallery to appear no matter how little sense it makes. The aging up of Ivy through magical mutant powers is especially egregious.

Then all the weird love triangles. Especially among the villains. Barbara Gordon turns evil because a serial killer makers her murder her parents.

I feel like Gotham is kind of emblematic of trashy CW writing, it's like a microcosm of every poor story decision ever made in any of their programming. It started out as a kind of down to earth crime drama. There's two mafia guys, they don't like each other, them not liking each other means there's a lot of murder happening which gives Gordon a lot of cases to solve and then there's also this conspiracy about the wayne murder.

There was a solid foundation they clearly weren't actually interested in using.

Nitpick. Its Barbara Keene (Keane?), not Gordon. Barbara Gordon is Jim's daughter. Also as Frank said its not a CW show, they have shared a few villains, Solomon Grundy, Tigress and Ra's al Ghul

[Prak]

Gotham is probably best viewed with the MST3K mantra in mind and the understanding that it's basically AU fic.

[Hiram McDaniels]

I feel like Gotham is kind of emblematic of trashy CW writing, it's like a microcosm of every poor story decision ever made in any of their programming. It started out as a kind of down to earth crime drama.

But... Gotham isn't a CW show. It airs on a "major" network. That's why they are able to film in a city that isn't Vancouver. Gotham was supposed to be the adults in the room. But they ended up being much more ham than the Arrowverse material.

-Username17

Do you remember an episode during the first season of Arrow where the DA needs evidence against some mob guy, because of due process of law, so of course they turn to the mysterious, hooded vigilante? Because of course that's what they do.

So Ollie sneaks onto mob guy's property, straight up MURDERS like a dozen of his guards and then plants the bug. Because of due process. Side note: if you have the money and inclination, you can hire armed security guards and as long as they're licensed to do so, it's perfectly legal. So for all GA knew, these guys could have been a bunch of Securitas employees and he killed the shit out of them.

The whole first season was like that: GA breaks into secret hideout, remorselessly slaughters the workaday mooks who are only there because of poor life choices, only to give their robber baron boss a stern warning. Bt then they introduce the black archer who they establish is evil, because he hunts down and kills the rich guys who Ollie had previously let go. I like to think that a detail police kept from the press is that each of GA's arrows had a page from Atlas Shrugged wrapped arond the shaft.

[Hiram McDaniels]

I noped at after the part where the protagonist's brother was running for office on a political platform of scapegoating fire.

I handled that as obviously dude was an unwitting tool of the dark forces of thems-what-is-vulnerable to fire, but I ragequit at the explanation of confessor powers.

You can't sell me that Always On and Recharge Time on the same power (which also explicitly worked on animals and the state of recharge was obvious to the power wielder) led to not just a cursed life, but a whole guild of wimmens with cursed lives. Also, that guild is all wimmens because sexism. Men would have the power better if the fictional world let them live, so the fictional world goes to infanticide, which is just accepted and somehow none of the wimmens with cursed-by-awesome mind control powers ever got out of killing their infant sons? So on top of the other issues, apparently Goodkind had never heard of Moses.

Wasn't that pretty much the same trope as the Aes Sedai in Jordan's books? Men can't handle this power, so we have to murder them in the crib. I think that's a permutation of the "white savior" genre. This is a story about a club that men can't into, until one does and then he rules them all with his big, huge dick fuck yeah fighter jets!

I seem to remember reading a synopsis of a latter Sword of Truth book that was pretty much the Fountainhead but with wizards.

[Kaelik]

In the Wheel of Time, there use to be male and female Aes Sedai, and they were both cool, and the best things could only be accomplished with both, but then specifically there was a backlash against the power used to seal the Dark One and the result was that his influenced caused men to go insane.

Pretty much the story revolves around how the way men who can channel were treated by the Aes Sedai was completely bullshit, and how the institutionalized oppression of men who can channel created a system that grew worse over time.

Then the taint was cleansed and men where fine.

[Thaluikhain]

So Ollie sneaks onto mob guy's property, straight up MURDERS like a dozen of his guards and then plants the bug. Because of due process. Side note: if you have the money and inclination, you can hire armed security guards and as long as they're licensed to do so, it's perfectly legal. So for all GA knew, these guys could have been a bunch of Securitas employees and he killed the shit out of them.

Ah, but in GA, all weapons seem to be fully automatic. You aren't likely going to get random security types with legally owned fully automatic weapons.

In GA and half of every other show, yeah, but that really annoys me for some reason.