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enderland

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Blog Comments posted by enderland

  1. The Zigur

    Posted

    Some excellent advice there. More periods, fewer commas. Avoid adjectives. I would add that a re-read should be done aloud. If it doesn't sound like the way someone speaks, or if it seems awkward, odds are good you're putting some of your readers to sleep. When teaching writing classes I insisted on this last one.

    Reading your writing outloud, or at the very least reading it while saying it in your head, is the best way to make writing better.

  4. Prodigal Moon

    Posted

    Most people could not articulate what makes their IC persona different than their OOC persona.

    Even fewer have decided what their IC persona actually should be and have thought about it and try to act in a way consistent with a RP'ed character.

    I do disagree with much of your post regarding moralism and DBDC, though I do not believe this detracts from your main point(s). Historically most people have not cared when a nation is an aggressor to neighbors so long as it doesn't affect them. We have only to look to WWII where it took Hitler declaring against a nation (Poland) where treaty obligations required much of the soon to be allies to declare war (not their annexing of Austria or Czechoslovokia which is very similar to DBDC attacking WTF). And even then it still took months and an invasion of France for there to be much actual, meaningful response from those at war with Germany.

    This is very consistent with how this game is played out. Alliances act nearly identical to how the allies did in WWII (or most conflicts throughout world history).

    The problem, here, at least is that while what you are saying is true and it's likely most people involved in CN would agree, CN is still a game at heart. Our primary purpose here is entertainment, enjoyment, and/or boredom. This will often directly conflict with RP purposes. The effect of this is people basically dismissing legitimate IC discussion such as in the ambition thread and then others not correcting them or bothering to even try to act IC.

  8. Captain Marin

    Posted

    The problem is, with Anakin, I have no reason to like him or care what happens to him because he is solely portrayed as an emo kid. The bad-dialogue fest with Padme only serves to emphasize this. Maybe if I was an emo kid who felt like no one in the world liked me I could identify with him? I don't see an inner struggle, I don't see him

    Nothing which he does is remotely surprising throughout the entire movie, with the exception of the first scene where he randomly cares about some clone pilot. He's reckless and acts irresponsibly and with disdain towards the Jedi Order the entire movie.

    Contrast your explanations of Luke and Anakin. You give about 3 times as much explanation as to the character of Luke as you did Anakin. This is my point. Anakin's character is shallow and Luke's character is dynamic and has more of a real feel to it (though I don't know how you can claim Luke is more whiney than Anakin).

    Regarding CGI, maybe it's because I grew up before every single action movie was completely CGI, but I do not find CGI and green screens the only way to show grandeur and intense battle scenes. Lots of CGI aliens fighting other CGI characters in the background is cool but ultimately might add nothing to the plot of the movie - as in the opening scene of EP III.

    CGI might be cool to some but the effect at the beginning of A New Hope with just two ships was significant. You see the clear contrast between the might of the Empire and Rebellion in about 5 seconds. You don't need to see 500 star destroyers fighting 10 rebel ships to accomplish this. The relative might of the Empire is clear, with just one ship.

    My guess is you are young enough to not remember the days when plot/character development was significantly more important to movies. It was harder to make a popular movie ignoring the fundamentals of theatrical writing. It was a lot harder to cover up complete lack of either with CGI or special effects. But in the past 10 years, a lot of movies have used these to compensate for terribly screen writing...

  9. Captain Marin

    Posted

    Well, first for a movie which was dedicated to the character development of Anakin (presumably? it's hard to really see a clear theme in the movie), this was all done incredibly poorly.

    The original trilogy was about the characters and their development. The audience feels connected to the characters and has a reason to care about them. The action supports this, it supports their development, and the reason I care about the movies is the story/characters.

    How many people have you heard say that any of the prequels are wonderful because of the character depth (lol) or story? Your entire support is about individual components which were in effect the only value of the movies. There was minimal (at best) character development, the dialogue/story was boring as hell, and the only reason the movies can be considered worth watching is the action scenes and/or CGI.

    You see a whiney kid go through... exactly the path you expect him to go, becoming evil. Go figure, this isn't suspenseful or dramatic at all. I don't care when Anakin becomes Vader because he is never shown to have redeeming qualities whatsoever. There's no internal battle, I'm never given a "why should I care" answer about Anakin.

    None of the characters in any of the prequel have any depth whatsoever, which makes sense because they were pawns in the "oooh CGI is cool, I'm gonna use as much of it as possible!" production style.

  25. Syzygy

    Posted

    Either way works -- adding very expensive improvements essentially would be the same thing, as almost any nation which would consider purchasing those would almost certainly have a lot of available improvement slots. Most of those could then be broken down into further improvements kind of like this -

    Instead of

    Reduces CM damage by 20%

    Have an improvement which does

    10,000,000

    Reduces CM damage by 4%, limit 5

    etc.

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