Blarghagh

Jerry Cantrell - Keep The Light On It's basically Alice In Chains, I guess... but it's not the same without Layne. I know his songwriting input wasn't big, but his vocals was definately the part that caught your attention.

I don't know that band, but those lyrics! Listening to: Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is out to get us!

I haven't, and I was the first to complain about the ending here.

See, that's exactly what I mean. They seemed to be setting up some kind of plot that at least some of the zombies were smarter than they appeared (I hear the book has a similar plot), but then the other survivors turned up, and they completely abandoned it in favour of Hollywood safety.

The thing isn't that I wanted it to be a bad ending, the thing is the ending did not fit the start of the film.

"The more sin, the heavier something is" is one of my favourites. Lead must be really sinful then!

Being a christian does not immediately make someone irrational. In fact, he injects it with a level of modern logic that I did not know was possible.

I Am Legend I am hard pressed to give this movie a grade. That's because while watching it, I thought it was the best movie I had seen in years. Then, when the other survivors turned up, I thought it was the worst movie I had seen in years. It felt like a completely different movie. It was quite obvious that it had gone through many rewrites to make it a Hollywood ending. So, I guess... pre-Survivors part: 9/10, and post-Survivors part: 3/10 Still, that doesn't take away the strength of some of the scenes. Especially the death of the dog. Caused quite a lump in my throat.

I am willing to bet that these people have never had a rational conversation with an atheist in their lives. I say this because I was like this towards christianity until I got a friend who is christian and had rational conversations with him.

Geeze, love thy neighbour much? For claiming to love and follow Jesus, these people are pretty busy ignoring everything he supposedly said. I especially like how you can't read four quotes on that page without atheists being accused of wanting to commit genocide against christians, yet you also can't read four quotes on that page without reading about a christian's wishes to murder all atheists.

Doesn't bear repeated viewing? I saw that movie loads of times and I still love every second of it. Anyway, I just saw Control, about the late Ian Curtis, singer of Joy Division. Honestly, I wanted to see more of anyone else in the movie. I can see it's a good movie, but as a person Ian Curtis does not appeal to me at all. He was kind of a bastard.

Lord of the Rings was cult?

...Pulp Fiction?

Half the things based on a true story are fiction. That's why it's "based on" a true story, not "is a true story". Hell, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs are both based upon the same true story.

You are right with the second part (and that is as a whole referred to as "speculative fiction"), but not the first. Magic is not the determinant of fantasy. Hypothetically, if I were to draw a Steampunk comic in a psuedo-victorian setting about orcs attacking cities with war machines made for them by enslaved gnomes, and then some technologically gifted youngster who comes along and stops them, then it would definately be fantasy. Yet it has no magic. I find it interesting that some of the most popular fantasy series do not fit into Kaftan's 3 criteria that apparently all fantasy stories should have. His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, The Dark Tower, Star Wars. Eh, whatever. This has gone on far longer than it merits.

H.P. Lovecraft - At The Mountains of Madness Decided to read it again after I read somewhere that Guillermo del Toro was going to make a movie of it. How the heck do you make a movie of this, though?

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah My favourite version of this song (although it would be tied with Leonard Cohen's original if he didn't sound like a warthog with a bad case of constipation).

The people in this thread have seemingly already come to the conclusion that the guys who work there are not stupid by definition. Eating there however is quite possibly stupid or insane. I have yet to figure out which. ^__^

This isn't really true, because obviously fantasy doesn't have to adhere to patterns at all. The problem is that most fantasy writers do. When they write a fantasy story, they want to make it grand and epic. Yet, we've seen that so many times in fantasy stories that it ceases to interest us. We need them to find different ways to make it interesting. The punk and fantasy comparison is interesting; because both of them are filled with people who play by established rules in a genre that was basically meant to allow them to go outside the rules. This is not the genre's fault. This is the fault what perception they have of the genre (a perception which you evidently share). But honestly, I am confused by the claim that sci-fi is different. Because you can do exactly the same things with fantasy as you can do with sci-fi. After all, what is magic? To a tribe that has never seen a gun, won't that seem like magic? What about force-fields? Doesn't that come down to magic shields? As for your "classic example" of raise dead ruining a whodunnit, that's a problem particular to that universe. That universe does not encompass fantasy as a whole. Not even close (I'm not really that fond of D&D at all myself). It's you.

Isn't this discussion useless? Half of modern Sci-Fi is inherently just masked fantasy anyway, and there are thousands of fantasy stories masquarading as sci-fi (Star Wars, Dune, Stargate, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, Steampunk or anything "-punk" for that matter, even Star Trek, and almost all supposed sci-fi video games such as StarCraft, Mass Effect, Doom, etc.). Fantasy isn't inherently restrictive. It's just that most fantasy writers are idiots. They have this disturbing notion that all fantasy should be medieval, or "high" fantasy, and it's this odd need to seperate Sci-Fi and Fantasy that you people are now displaying that caused that particular rift to begin with (which means by even having this conversation, we are basically making this problem worse). In the end, they're both just speculative fiction, and there is nothing to gain but a lot to lose by seperating the two. You may prefer the letter A over the letter B, but they're still in the same alphabet, and often used in the same words.

Yeah, they totally removed the "pointing" portion. That's not really what I meant. I just don't like the "pick attack" "issue attack" system. I prefer "twitch" combat because I don't have to sit still waiting for my character to finish hitting the opponent.

I wouldn't mind another romp through that universe. I hope they keep the combat system. I found it much more fun than the pointing and clicking of most of their games.

The thing is, society has a very dim view of us gamers in the first place. So his game hating probably somehow translates into being sensible by the d00fus masses. Or something. What about incessent badgering, threatening and intimidation, sueing people for making donations to charities, and accusations of conspiracy against him? This may be related to the game controversies, but not directly. For his none-gaming crimes, how about filing police reports accusing people of battery for touching him? Attacking music artist's first amendment rights? Claiming to be the real world's equivelant to BATMAN? Promoting anti-Muslim propaganda? Trying to declare the Florida Bar Association unconstitutional the moment they decide to look into his matters? Verbally assaulting other attorneys as well as judges, claiming such wonderful things as "they distribute porn to kids"? Sueing SOUTH PARK, convincing some poor kid's parents that he accidentally killed himself because he tried to act like Kenny? This guy is the slime of the earth for more than just gamers, you know.

I haven't played Mass Effect so I don't know about the first 3, but HELL YES for number 4.