BioGio

Love the kid looking on like, "That's the man I've heard the legends about. So he is real."

I MUST WATCH THIS IMMEDIATELY which of NBC's 100 channels is it on?

Happy birthday, Black Six! Thanks for all that you do to keep this site running smoothly!

Obviously Bambi can't yet quantify her enjoyment of the trip. She probably left behind the electrodes that were supposed to hook up to her brain.

I just received my two copies of Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges: one book in English, el otro en español. The book consists of seventeen of his best short stories, and I believe that I even managed to find a decent translation (read: not Hurley's). yay

I wrote up a line-by-line commentary/review--right here. (Please try to get through it within a few days, as I'll have to delete a bunch of documents from my Dropbox account soon.)General comments:One of the main themes of my comments is that some phrases and words don't quite make sense. As Mark Twain implored writers, "Use the right word, not its second cousin." You use a lot of second cousins: testy, gutsy, clatter, coiled, clacked, and femme fatale. Other than creating confusion ("What the heck is a testy swing?"), it comes across as pretentious. It feels like you're using words for their own sake, showing off your vocabulary.The other major issue was verbosity. There are times when you used six words to say "claw." That broke the flow of the narrative; moreover, it's really unnecessary. The word "claw" exists for the very reason of being used in these cases, so use it. Turning "claw" into "club-like Catcher Claw end of her weighted baton" generates confusion, a break in flow, and a sense of pretension.As for grammar, there was only one main, repeated error: You need to stop capitalizing common nouns after dialogue. Dialogue should be tagged in the following manners: "I concur," she said."I concur." She spoke fiercely and then ran away."I concur," she said, running away.Before running away, she said, "I concur."Before running away, she spoke a final time. "I concur."You alternate between "Hunter" and "Huntress" when referring to Lariska. Pick one.On the plus side, you did a very good job of not succumbing to "Green Matoran Syndrome" (the act of using nouns too often in place of of a name or pronoun). There was great potential to call Roodaka "the Vortixx" and Lariska "the Huntress," but you did not do it. Good job with that.The action was very readable and entertaining. The lack of excessive magic made the fight all the more enjoyable.Additionally, both characters were quite believable. They had clearly-defined motivations (beyond "winning") and everything! That this actually managed to fit smoothly within your narrative is impressive.In short, you need to work on style and grammar, but characters and action are already pretty good.~ BioGio

First, some of the things that I'd change:I wouldn't capitalize "Ghosts," just like one wouldn't capitalize "robot," "vampire," or "regional manager." This style of exposition is very vanilla--sterile, even. Each sentence (with the exception of "Like the Ghosts...") is a simple "Subject was/had X." As a result, I found this rather boring to read. It's tedious to read about people looking at people and the narrator describing what they saw from head to toe: Anybody can list off body parts and adjectives. When providing such basic descriptions, you should try to make it more interactive, in a way. Integrate a mention the color of their armor into a description of a Ghost putting on his uniform; refer to a Ghost's scraping his claws against the hilt of his sword; do something. This way, you'll end up with a lively, more personal style.Also, I object to your use of the phrase "as per their uniform." Its use gives the story a very strict, dry, fact-oriented tone, almost like a guide-book's.On a really nitpicky note, please remove either the word "brakas" or the word "monkey" from "brakas monkey-like tails." First of all, the second sentence doesn't follow directly from the first, unless you mean to say that raising his sword is a very weighty matter. Second, basically everyone has "more urgent issues to worry about than physical appearances," since basic physical appearances (especially of those you know well) tend to outrank even trivialities such as what to have for lunch. It doesn't really merit an explicit mention. Finally, if he isn't worried about appearances, then why did you bother to tell us about them? You call attention to an apparently unnecessary digression despite a third-person limited point of view. Just get rid of this sentence and be sure to integrate your exposition better (as I said above). There are much better places to put this: for instance, the first sentence ("looked down on his kneeling Ghosts"), the second paragraph ("They knelt around their king, holding their claws against the hard stone floor"). Here, it's just thrown in, and it disrupts the flow of "The Ghosts rose." Within two sentences, the word "Ghost(s)" is used (as both a noun and an adjective) a total of five times. What's more, you've begun sentences with subjects so often in this piece (13 out of 15 sentences begin this way) that it's starting to get grating. Also, does the Ghost King have power over sound? You need a comma between "Now" and "my" since "my Ghosts" is an address. This feels redundant. Wouldn't those rebellions be the attempts to dethrone him? I'm suddenly reminded of my ninth grade English teacher, who had a two-by-four with the word "FORESHADOWING" written on it. I think that she typically brought it out during Of Mice and Men and anything by Shakespeare, since these works really hit one over the head with foreshadowing. The moral of this story: You make it really obvious that the Ghost King is wrong here, and that this will be important. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, since foreshadowing is a strong tool, but you have to be careful not to overuse it. First, "a little bit afraid" isn't all that interesting or surprising. "A little bit" of fear is the sort of thing that one feels when one might flunk a quiz; it's not all that consequential. Second, you mean "they would never think of." Swap out "but" for "and," since the two facts--being taller and having longer claws--seem logically connected and not mutually contradictory. No one called King Louis XIV "His Frenchiness," and the English Queen Elizabeth is not "Her Anglitude," so the Ghost King should probably just be called "Your Highness." This comes across as: "He sat alone, also by the way there were some torches but he didn't need them but other people did." In other words, the description of the torches feels tacked-on here and would go best much earlier on where it would effectively set the scene. I get that the Ghosts have to be perfectly still to illustrate their discipline, but they also have to have emotions, as you clearly know. The issue here is that you're telling us all of their emotions. And you only take a few words to describe these feelings. And these few words are literally just the names of the emotions. At the very least, you could provide us with a Ghost's internal monologue. Currently, all the emotion is already digested for the reader, and I'd rather read these sorts of thoughts in an uninterpreted form.Finally, I can't help but question whether this is truly a tragedy. The Ghost King comes across as painfully unlikable, without any redeeming attributes. Oedipus Rex was a tragedy because Oedipus was a noble, just figure with some negative personality aspects. The Ghost King seems less like Oedipus and more like Stalin.Now for the good:Most of your dialogue is pretty much spot-on. It evokes a sense of powerful oratory exactly when it should, but never falls into excessive verbosity. (Now, if the king just had a teleprompter, you could change this balance... )You've definitely got me interested. The (obvious) foreshadowing makes it clear that this story will be more than a couple of assassins fighting, and that the scope will probably expand.Your choice to write a true tragedy is great. The downfall of a flawed character is highly cathartic. I cannot wait to see how you treat this and how everything plays out.Sorry for hitting style so hard in this review. It's kind of my forte, so I try to provide a lot of information on it.Oh, yeah--one last thing: He's definitely right. In "didn't bother [to] comfort him," you need to use an infinitive (or gerund, at the least), as one always does after another verb. Here, that verb is "bother." "Didn't" and "did" don't follow this pattern, though, since they only add the past tense, as auxiliary or "helping" verbs (and negative, in the case of "didn't").* "Bother" is never auxiliary (a huge difference grammatically), so it follows the rule of needing the infinitive. Here's some more information on the subject.For a better illustration of this point, replace "bother" with the slightly more common "try," (or even "want") as in "didn't try/want to comfort him." This is also the case in foreign languages such as: Spanish (e.g., "yo quiero leer"), French (e.g., "je veux lire"), and German (e.g., "ich will lesen")**.* English is actually rather interesting, as the past tense can be formed in two ways: tacking on the "-ed" or using a separate auxiliary "did." Thus, "I talked" and "I did talk" have the exact same meaning. The same is true for "I talked not" and "I did not talk," although the latter is obviously far more common. Thus, everyone should say "I didn't/did comfort him," but did is here working like "-ed," as an auxiliary verb.**All of these phrases scan to "I want to read"; the boldface affixes on the second verbs are what mark them as infinitives.~ BioGio

Silly memes? Well, "when in Rome..." >owns computer >claims not to own a single console I SHIGGY DIGGY

Perhaps you could use two of those "Hordika necks" connected at a 90-degree angle, perhaps joining them with this part. It would, of course, result in PermaCrouch, but that's somewhat desirable and fits with the arms' position. I don't know how that would really work, but it might be an interesting concept to pursue and could cut down on the excessive bley in the legs.

That's why an adaptation, well, adapts. It abridges, condenses, and changes the source for the new medium: a two-hour movie. Adding to the original certainly can be beneficial in some respects. But what's happening with The Hobbit (adding in subplots from the appendices of LOTR) detrimentally ignores the fact that Peter Jackson is making a movie, not an HBO TV series. It's running a huge risk of becoming greatly bloated with unrelated subplots. Jackson had his chance to tell these bits of backstory in LOTR (where they were relevant), but he didn't. Now, he's making up for this in the prequel. It's bad form, from where I stand.

Yeah, BZPower's generally pretty bad at reading OPs--even with relatively few pages of discussion. It's pretty clear that people often aren't taking the time in this thread to look through the disqualified list (which they should be doing every time they post a new candidate, but I digress). Perhaps we could supplement that with some sort of a regular (e.g., weekly) "conclusion digest" post that would allow for alerts to any new information and even restate the basic premises. That might be the only way to ensure that people pay enough attention.~ BioGio

That's not applicable in this case, though. We don't know any members of the Dark Hunters who aren't assassins or thieves (positions, by the way, that afford them quite a bit of influence in the world). The only exception might be Mimic. Furthermore, the DH aren't at all secretive about their goals (at least, not to their members), so it's clear that any member--yes, even the coffee maker--is aware that they are assisting a criminal organization. Whether they're fetching coffee to ensure that TSO is awake before fighting Toa, stealing Zamor launchers, or building an outpost in the north of Odina, they are contributing to the group's "evil" actions (even if they're just making it easier for other members). Their contribution may not be direct, but they're still counted as "evil."And the Dark Hunters (and other BIONICLE organizations) are nothing like banks. The best real-world equivalent would be to a gang. Perhaps not every member kills people; maybe one just counts the money others have obtained illegally. Either way, he's assisting a criminal organization and willingly associating with them. The money-counter gets just as arrested as the other members (but charged with a heck of a lot less, of course).As for the quote that started this whole thing ("defining himself that way" ), I suppose that we can get around this by assuming that the GB is a moral relativist and/or Uebermensch. Couldn't you or Erebus just edit the first post in this topic? Why not change this topic's title while we're at it? There's nothing to stop this one from becoming an official topic. It's already the only one dedicated to discussion of the identity of the GB. It's already got a partial list and the few main rules. We can just remind people to read the OP when they jump in.Either way, by the time that the other theoretical official topic gets to a few pages, people will make the same mistakes as they're making now: Not reading the OP, not looking through any previous rebuttals, and so on. The new topic won't remain particularly concise for all that long, and once it's long enough, it'll be just as useless as this one. Basically, a new topic isn't going to change anything, so just close this one (and perhaps any other topics on the topic, since we're never going to make any headway without Greg) or leave it alone.

You do, but not many of them compare to that name. *appreciates*

What exactly is the deal with this movie? Is it a reboot, or some sort of a weird semi-sequel? I still can't quite puzzle this one out.

GSR's an awesome dude. I that it first became most apparent approximately when he posted this. *appreciates*

This may interest you.

Nopenopenopenopenopenopenopenope Also, it would really be necessary to have a surge in old-style art (epics, MOCs, and art, in our case) beyond this "study" of the past. Unfortunately, our techniques haven't really changed beyond changes in parts available for MOCs.

It was pretty clear you were being sarcastic, but even a sarcastic final sentence would have made the whole thing come across as reacting a bit strongly (and with a bit too much of a practical tone) to a silly joke.Whatever.Here's something rather funny in a slightly dark way: During the 1980s, there was an appetite-suppressing candy whose sales dropped as much as 50% during just a few years--despite its very strong sales from the 1970s into the mid-80s. The reason for the sudden drop? It's name--Ayds.~ BioGio

A few language facts:"Flour" was spelled "flower" until about 1830.Verbs and most nouns in Semitic languages have "roots" that consist only of consonants (called "radicals"). Most of these roots consist of three consonants.Spanish has almost half the number of words as English. This is partially due to the amount of Latin-derived words in English. For instance, Spanish has only "tarde," while English has "late" (Germanic) and "tardy" (Latinate, obviously).There are languages that indicate the source of a speaker's knowledge on an event within the verb that describes the event; note that this differs from English "I know that" or "I heard that." This is called evidentiality and is as much a part of the verb as tense. You are aware that the "too low an estimate" thing was a joke, right? Because your sarcasm says that, but you last sentence doesn't. man774 just didn't sell it very well; he glossed over most of the buildup. (Either that or he thought it was true.)~ BioGio

So...How about that EOA6A3? Any theories about why ~ BioGio

Rank images are truly the best.

I had a feeling you meant that, but that sort of a goof-up can derail a thread quickly, so I tried to clarify a bit more.

I heard something about a 40-foot Voldemort, which seems amazing enough. (But the Chinese drummers in 2008 were basically impossible to top.)

@dotcom: Honestly, I've expected this for a long time, since it puts FiM at 65 episodes, perfect for syndication. Most shows go about getting to 65 through 5 13-episode seasons, but plenty chose to go FiM's route. It's too bad, but it makes sense. I, like everyone else in the comments here, wish we could get more high-quality FiM. (Besides, I wasn't posting to you either way; that was directed at the inaccurate "cartoons are getting shorter nowadays" comment. You even said that it was standard! )