Dorek

Stories aren't made to be internally consistent microrealities - they're meant to say something.

I, personally, like internally consistent micro-realities. If you're building some kind of tale that's worth reading, it pays to be consistent (or consistently inconsistent, if you're going for absurdism or parody). This is why I genuinely subscribe to the idea of "canon", even if people can take it to horrible extremes. The idea that you want everything to make sense in a story (especially one geared at younger readers!) is a remarkably easy one to empathize with.

If you're muddling your mechanics just to promote "themes" (whatever the heck those are) you're very clearly doing it wrong. If you're undermining themes for the sake of minutae, you've gone too far the other way. It's rare to find a story that is able to achieve both with 100% (you're delving into weird, dense, nigh-unreadable Tolkein levels at that point), but by the same token it's not something that needs to be a 50/50 split.

BIONICLE was a huge massive world with a lot of cooks in the kitchen; that it came together as well as it did is as surprising as it is enjoyable. I'm not going to write off my feelings of it as nostalgia, nor am I going to pretend that it's perfection incarnate. Take from it what you want from it, also known as enjoying a story.

Considering how many times you bolded it...

"Suggest Me Names"

I like to think I looked at things in the same way as I do now, but feel less inspired overall to act on them. I'll often formulate posts (tall, short, whatever) and then just abandon them because I think "what's the point?".

If I have something to contribute, I'll definitely do it, but I'm a lot less off-the-cuff than I used to be. If I have a long post, it's because I really want to say what's in it, and if it's a quick post, then I'm just capitalizing on a quick burst of energy (basically right now =P).

Honestly, I think it's just a little bit of everything; there's so much more to do in life (good and bad) as you get older; makes sense that your whole waking existence isn't about posting.

Iron Man 3 wasn't even really that dark, though... I mean, every time it seemed like it would hit the tonality of the first two, there was some moment to lighten things up. If any movie was really dark, it was Captain America 2, and that's easily the best MCU movie of the lot.

I personally think Ultron won't be as edgy as people think, but honestly, the best part of the MCU is the fact that it can do so many different genres and movie types and they can all be awesome.

(also, as always, I will reiterate my crusade to eliminate the term "grimdark" from the vernacular because it's soooooooo stupid)

So science can afford fancy machines to measure brainwaves AND give controlled non-lethal electric shocks AND hand out money to randos?

This is why we're in debt, sheeple! The real enemy is science! DOWN WITH SCIENCE

1. Staple. Giant weapons are awesome. The only time there's a problem is when they become overly specialized e.g. Strakk's axe, which is probably about as bad as it gets.

2. Eh, I've never particularly minded one way or the other. As long as they can stand up.

3. Neither. It is both amazing and in need of innovation; LEGO always is, and always does.

4. Red, probably. It's never so overt, but I always try and pick red things when I can.

5. Apology refused. Fight me.

In KHII, again, Sora's main goal at this point is Find Riku, and Kairi's kidnapping isn't until later on, and the game continues on after she gets kidnapped.  Still, she's less able to evade her captors/mess up their plans this time, and what she does manage to do is with help from others.

And then there's the whole "this time, I'll save you line" which, while cheesy, is also fairly telling of her overall personality; KH as a series likes narrative parallels, and while her screentime was short, her journey in KH2 mirrors what Sora is going through (only his is for Riku). I actually like the irony of Sora assuming Kairi's safe and squared away on the island and therefore not worrying about her when she actually has all sorts of adventures.

Ah, but then you have the reverse scenario of the Toa Inika's faces glowing in the story but the sets not actually being able to do this.

Wait, unless we can canonize things in real life? Somebody get on that.

Now I'm thinking that episode of Futurama where they blasted the Earth slightly further away from the sun to solve global warming.

LET'S DO IT

The location of the bodies.

State it.

And also seriously maj being down is a pain because of how many people had stuff on it. ugh. i migrated to imgur after the first week of it being down this year.

oooooh they're still in the trunk of my car. Uh. Brb.

(I've been using flickr again, but it's getting to be pretty ridiculous)

I am demanding the location of a 2x2 LEGO brick that goes by the name Samantha.

Dorek, why do you not want to be asked anything?

I wonder sometimes why you won't answer questions.

You got me to answer a question by making it not a question. I'm on to you.

"What did the triangle say to the circle?"

"You're so pointless."

My UPS driver told me that one. Cracked me up.

I think killer phones would be a lot more interesting back when phones had substance. I find it hard to be threatened by something that fits in the palm of my hand.

Then again, they are making phones larger these days...

oh god it's happening

1. I like action oriented games. inFamous, Kingdom Hearts, etc. Also RPGs, obviously, so Pokemon, Persona, etc.

2. Probably Kingdom Hearts. I've given my reasons here before, it just has that little bit of everything amazing.

3. I tend not to buy outside of sequels or series because ain't nobody got time for that. I just finished Transistor, though, and LOVED it. Way better than Bastion.

4. I do interchange this with DLC, but in terms of standalone, inFamous First Light is actually really good. Strong female protagonist, fun gameplay, lots of replay value.

5. For stuff that's tied to the original game, BioShock Infinite's "Burial At Sea". The perfect end to the series. inFamous: Second Son actually had this neat DLC/Augmented Reality game that required a lot of puzzle solving in addition to the normal chasing and fighting. It was fun.

6. I'll probably get flack for this, but Pokemon: Black and White Versions are some of the most unpleasant games I have ever played. Completely personal; the Pokemon mechanics were sound, obviously, but the terrible and unnecessarily morose plot, the muddled themes, uninteresting sound design and the art direction were so very very disappointing. It was the first Pokemon game I had gotten at launch since Emerald, so it was a poor experience.

7. Gravity Rush 2, Persona 5. Hopefully at least one of them will be on the Vita...

8. Action platformer. It will have awesome environments and characters, decent enough puzzles, and terrible combat.

9. The World Ends With You or Persona 4. I wasn't really a fan of j-pop/j-rock, but these games opened my ears, so to speak.

10. How dare you speak about trombones that way

To me it seemed people were saying "I would prefer something that supports an imaginative conclusion rather than a shoehorned one".

And don't get me wrong, I loved 2010's end (even if 2009 was a necessarily overlong detour). But if given the binary choice of a completely open world with no clear plot in hand - which is more or less what we ended up with - versus a definitive cliffhanger, I can see why people would go with the latter. Ending on a "high" note, as it were, instead of languishing.

Or maybe people use it as shorthand for the giant robot twist and not the Makuta takeover twist, although that would have been an incredibly lame ending, not giving the villain any sort of due other than to be a massive nuisance.