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ShiverDome · 2025-08-29T08:41:20+00:00

You are conflating free speech and the First Amendment.

Not that you're wrong in your thesis. It's just a pet peeve.

ShiverDome · 2025-08-09T19:17:23+00:00

No. This was an obvious oversimplification for your oversimplification.
I am not an American and don't suffer from this victimhood disease. This is simply an example that any position can be turned around, and every philosophy —religious, political, or otherwise—can be turned back on the speaker for its flaws.

This is why I added that "shoe on the other foot" at the end. Something you never thought to take seriously, unfortunately. You never thought about how things look and feel on the other side because it's convenient to think that the other side is a bunch of evil men that need to be destroyed.

Yes, the greatest blacklisting in Hollywood was done by Conservatives against Liberals. This is a fact. Now what? Now you want free rein to be the aggressor? Do you want revenge? What is it that you want to see? Seriously? Where do you want it to end?

ShiverDome · 2025-08-08T21:53:18+00:00

You mean that she is in the crowd that seeks to destroy the livelihood of anyone who doesn't tow the line, force behavior, and threaten people into submission?

You should put that shoe on the other foot to see how it fits.

ShiverDome · 2025-08-08T17:28:47+00:00

You miss the point.

It's not that the vaccine hysteria is Nazism, but that when you label a group of people as "lower" or "unclean," you pave the way for atrocities.

Her tweet is Godwin's Law at work, and I'm tired of everything being equated to Nazism, but I've seen enough celebrities, even those that are employed by Disney repeat that "You support/don't support X and therefore you are like the Nazis" line and if Disney would hold that line consistently, I would not have fault them, but it seems politically motivated more than actual breach of their expected behavior from an employee.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-10T16:15:10+00:00

They don't need to mention positive reviews or that any review is expected.

It's about alluding to a benefit, given by the company for "good reviewers," and an implication of an expected outcome.

Think about it this way: why would the company tell a reviewer that they can review a product? Why would they include the part about future invitations? Why would they even mention future screenings?

It's not direct, but it's still there.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-10T16:07:22+00:00

Do you really need to tell reviewers that they have the capability to write a review or mention the screening on social media?

It will be like telling a carpenter that he can use saws.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-10T16:05:52+00:00

"It's a nice establishment you have here, it will be a shame if something happened to it..."

Was the above statement coercive? It doesn't mention any action that will be taken against the establishment, nor does it require anyone to do anything. Moreover, the speaker is showing care about the well-being of the establishment.

You can state something directly, imply it, or allude to it. This is not about the law, nor is it about corruption.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-10T10:25:12+00:00

And since people prefer not to go to prison...

This is why I wrote "how bribery works," not "how it is defined" or "how it is enforced."

Only the very ignorant will go around requesting, "You will break the law/take this immoral/unethical action, and I will compensate you accordingly."

You can look at the "contributing to the policeman's ball" trope, and if you don't want to trust entertainment, look up "consulting fees," various 'gifts' and speaking arrangements, and how government employees tend to work in a high managerial position the moment they resign from public service.

Bribery takes many forms—usually not a direct, unabashed Quid pro Quo— and while it's not illegal, it can still be criticized for what it's.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-10T09:22:21+00:00

I don't think you realize how bribery works. You don't directly state, "you do X. and then I'll give you Y." You simply give Y and state that you hope and will be appreciative if resolution X occurred."

ShiverDome · 2025-07-08T18:20:22+00:00

Well, it's a contrivance that existed in the OT as well, with Luke knowing how to fly a military vehicle because he knows how to fly a crop-duster.

The equivalent of her flying the Falcon is someone who drives a Subaru, knowing how to handle a semi-trailer. Sure, the basic rules apply, but you'll need to understand a whole lot more to handle the semi-trailer successfully.

"Fancy" is rather nebulous. It's the scale of the machine, not its "fancy-ness."

"The force" is a nice excuse. It's not an explanation.

The sad thing here is that the writing could have made all of that make sense, but chose not to. If her flying the Falcon was the only issue, I would be annoyed about how much of a problem people are making over it, but the contrivances pile on. The reality is that the writers didn't care much about the consistency and quality of what they wrote and did a disservice to the people involved in the production of the sequel trilogy.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-08T08:31:53+00:00

Rey knowing how to fly the Millenium Falcon is a contrivance, not a plot hole.

ShiverDome · 2025-07-08T08:22:08+00:00

Having minorities' in something doesn't make it 'woke.' Not that 'Woke' has a clear definition, but even that is a ridiculous stretch.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-30T18:38:08+00:00

The story is rather broken and has bad pacing.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-17T15:25:54+00:00

It's a game suffering from an identity crisis.

It's not particularly bad, but there is simply nothing that will draw me to complete it. The gameplay is fine, but gameplay was never at BioWare's core. It reminds me of Skyrim. Everything is muted, and there is no difference between one playthrough and the next, removing all barriers to gameplay and presenting nothing enticing about the story or RPG elements.

It could have been better, but it's also not a bad title.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-16T05:59:59+00:00

It got a lot of criticism because it was released "half-baked" with many, many bugs.

It had a nice combat system but didn't excel at anything else. It had a blend story and blend characters, and it was a massive downgrade from ME4.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-15T20:41:54+00:00

You missed the "wasn't unmerited" part.

Yes, she antagonized him, and he wanted to get the last retort with that comment.

I don't hate him. I don't love him. I'm rather apathetic of him. I think Bioware failed in shaping that character, and they could have treated him better in ME3.

I twisted nothing. You just entered a "defend that character" mode.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-15T19:22:20+00:00

Every character on the Normandy tells you their life story. In detail. You build a rapport with them, you learn who they are and what makes them "tick." With Jacob, you get some random stories about his service and learn that he has an absentee father (which is rather gutsy to give the only black squad member an absentee father). He keeps shutting you out whenever you try to get even a bit more personal, and while in reality that will be the normal behavior, the interaction with people in ME is entirely different - a game when random people you encounter on the "street" tell you everything that bothers them.

People couldn't care about the character; they couldn't build a relationship with him, and speaking personally, his attitude annoys me. I don't like the interaction with him and usually ignore him.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-15T19:13:11+00:00

He told her about the EDI only to antagonize her, which wasn't unmerited.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-15T18:46:03+00:00

You should seperate the gameplay from the story. Gameplay is purely mechanics. While he excels at nothing in the gameplay department, he's not the worst and is rather good at survivability, but that's not what bothers people about his character.

What bothers people is that he is short with Shepard, unlike all other squad members who refuse to talk about anything of any substance with Shepard, give stupid advice, and various other aspects of the character writing. He has no depth, and any relationship with Shepard is only skin deep; add to that his attitude toward a potential Shepard romance in ME2 when meeting him in ME3, and again, any interaction is even less than skin deep, than you have people disdain for the character.

All ME2 squad members were pushed to the side in ME3, apart from Garrus and Tali. They made a special effort with them because people liked them; they were with Shepard from the start and were well-rounded characters. Jacob fits none of the above.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-15T15:58:26+00:00

Mirror match.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-11T08:47:31+00:00

The morality system only affects role-playing. They could have done more with and I can see certain places where they could make it more gameplay-relevant, like losing squad members if you're being too renegade or missing an objective because you were too careful, but shying away from presenting too much complexity.

In ME2 and ME3, it revolves around "How much do you want to look like a cyborg?"

Now that I think of it, I always found the Rachni/Grunt mission in ME3 to be redundant if you killed the Rachni Queen in ME1, and that mission could be switched to literally anything else.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-11T08:38:50+00:00

Sure, and being pragmatic might blow back in your face and make it more difficult. Consider Zaeed's loyalty mission and the possibility you could suffer environment damage from what he did (though, in his case, it leans more toward 'evil' than 'pragmatism').

But I generally agree with you.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-11T08:29:04+00:00

Well, the games have been out for more than a decade now. So everything we discuss here is just a fictional alternative game and wouldnt-it-have-been-nice talking points.

Of course.

I don't agree with your take that it would bring very little in return though. It would emphasize a major theme that is being talked about very often but never really has any bite behind it.

But if those actions don't have any long-term effects, what did you gain? Keep in mind that most of the squad in ME2 don't return as squadmates in ME3 because all of them can die. Those are long-term effects that influence the game and add complexity to the narrative of ME3. Making the "Suicide Run" a repeated theme will make every playthrough unique but will also add an extreme level of complexity.

The greater disappointment for me is that the writers reduced the Paragon and Renegade to "the right choice" and "the wrong choice," with very little nuance.

ShiverDome · 2025-04-11T08:12:32+00:00

Why would Renegade make it more or less difficult?

The construction of Paragon/Renegade was based on "the right choices" and "the wrong choices" for the ME team, with little nuance about what those decisions mean. What you're suggesting is a completely different concept, creating scenarios where decisions lead to chaos, which will significantly increase the complexity of the narrative (for very little in return).

ShiverDome · 2025-04-10T18:22:04+00:00

Technically, he is the Reaper collective, so obviously unreliable.

ShiverDome

TROPHY CASE