Upthorn

So, any chance of getting an OCR group hotel room together so a cheapass like me can go?

This brings up a good question, though Do you have some kind of supervan or stretch limo to get everybody from your place to magfest every day?

Confirming that I'll be hitting the magfest this year. Mad thanks to brushfire for hosting cheapasses like myself.

Oh wow, I didn't think this was happening until, like, the first week of August. Congrats, you two.

can the birthdays djp? Oh. Happy daveday, djp.

I am quite interested in going if I can acquire some cheap lodgings for the duration.

What's Houlihan's? I've been passing by Tir Na Nog for years and keep meaning to try it out. Sounds like a plan to me.

Looking at the convention schedule, Saturday looks like a gigantic wasteland up until the OC Remix panel, so I think we should all meet somewhere for lunch and kill time together until the panel. Any opposed?

Heresy. They should clearly move their wedding date so as not to interfere. Or even better, get married at the con! Edit: o btw I'll b there agn this year, fwiw

Err, no that's a totally different thing. A crime of passion tends to be what happens when a guy walks in on his wife with another man (or a girl on her husband), and has easy access to a loaded gun. People who are griefstricken tend to behave very differently than people who are in the throes of intense jealousy and betrayal. Actually, it wasn't within his rights to maroon Kirk, as Kirk notes in his log about the precise regulation it is in violation of. Brig, yes. Maroon, no. It wasn't a fist fight, it was spock grabbing Kirk's throat and squeezing it with all his strength. That is very much attempted murder. It's not premeditated, but he was definitely trying to kill Kirk. Oh, please. His bringing up Spock's mother doesn't even flow from what he was saying 5 seconds before. It's just like "hey man, your planet was destroyed, people would understand if you need a break." "no thanks" "well I guess you never loved your mother then" *STRANGLE* There is literally no leadup to Kirk doing that, no reason that he should jump to that without trying other things first. The way it plays out is as though Kirk had been watching the scene of Spock's childhood along with the audience.

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure people don't usually go around randomly attempting to choke other people to death, even in their most intense grief. And how much sense does it make that he marooned and then literally attempted to murder a cadet, and nobody even gives him shit about it. I'd really think that attempted murder of a trainee would be a court-martial offense, even given the circumstances. Shock I have no problem with. Vulcan external calm while a roiling storm of grief tears him up internally is A-Ok. Making illogical command decisions because he's emotionally compromised, good in my book. Attempting to murder a cadet with bare hands, in front of the entire command staff of the ship... that's not just a breach of character, that's blatantly unrealistic, even if it weren't Spock. And let's not forget that there was really no reason for Kirk to even think of Spock's mother as far as his line of attack for getting Spock to show that he's emotionally compromised. And hey, while we're at it, why is it that Chekov could get a transporter lock onto a falling Kirk and Sulu, but couldn't for Spock's mom? I mean seriously, that she even died is inconsistent with a scene from just 5 minutes earlier.

I'm not talking about "showing emotion". I'm talking about psychotic rage.

I realize this, but Spock's personality was well established by the original series, the movies, and some eps of TNG. And none of the time line alterning stuff should have had any effect on Spock's development until after he'd joined starfleet academy. Spock flying into a violent rage whenever his mother is mentioned is just inexcusable. I mean, it would be incredibly lazy writing even if it weren't completely breaking a well-established character. I mean, since it was so incredibly clear that the only reason they put it in at all is because they'd written themselves into a corner regarding how they were going to get Kirk into command of the Enterprise.

Right, so I saw the movie on Sunday, the 10th, but I've just gotten around to checking this thread. Here's my take: The good George Kirk James Kirk Pike Bones Uhura Sulu Chekov Sulu's sword. Old Spock Scotty Racist vulcans some of the action sequences. Beastie Boys - sabotage. The updated viewscreens. The bad The "shields at 30%" cliche being invoked when the shields clearly don't exist at all, as evidenced by the massive explosions and hull damage whenever any weapon hits at all. Romulans all being bald and tattooed. That one Romulan using a collapsible battle axe instead of his gun The new design aesthetic visible inside federation ships. (all exposed pipework and steamworks and 20th-century submarine-esque) Vulcan gradeschool bullies. The incredibly generic villain. The dystopian future traffic cop, and actually the entire scene with Kirk joyriding -- Except for Sabotage. product placement. The utterly horrible New Spock's entire personality (blame lies firmly with the writers/directors on this one, not the actor). Sci-fi monster chase sequence on ice planet (Notably the portion which outright recycles the cloverfield monster model with a new head) Scotty's wacky!!! alien assistant the waterworks sequence. Completely unnecessary and unrealistic filler, outright shattered my willing suspension of disbelief. the scene where Kirk emotionally compromises Spock. (Aside from being blatantly telegraphed, there was literally no reason that Kirk should have thought to say the things he said.) Red matter The supernova in the original future which threatens the entire galaxy. Seriously, that is just disgustingly ignorant on the part of the writers. Now, the "shields" thing, the dystopian cop, and new Spock's personality being completely incorrect wouldn't be negatives if it weren't calling itself a Star Trek movie. So, if I were to grade it without taking the branding into account, it'd get a 6 out of 10 -- mildly entertaining, if mediocre and unfocused. With the Star Trek branding, that drops to a 4 or 5, primarily because of the complete mischaracterization of one of the most important personalities in the entire franchise.

Incidentally, a minor correction regarding what I told you guys the character on the back of Gouken's shirt means. The one on the bottom is what is on the shirt. Yeah, I didn't look closely enough before speaking.

I saw the movie tonight, and my overall feeling is that it pretty well did the graphic novel justice. Yes, some parts which would have helped to bring the story into a fuller light were cut. However, strictly speaking, they weren't necessary to follow the story. In fact, when I read the graphic novel, I skipped over "Under the Hood" and "Tales of the Black Freighter" segments when I got to them, and then went back and read them after I finished the storyline proper. Perhaps, though, it would have worked better as two 2.5 hour movies instead of one 3 hour film.

I would only ascribe Batmanism to Rorschach and Nite Owl. Comedian I see as more like The Joker than like any hero, and The character of Ozymandias resonated more with Richard Reeds for me. But then, I'm totally unfamiliar with Charlton Comics characters.

No. It's not "peni" because the -us -> -i pluralization rule is used for words that end in "us", which penis is not. Also, the proper plural is "penes", but nobody would actually understand you if you used it, so "penises" is probably the better choice. I haven't seen the movie, but when I read the graphic novel a few years back, I got the distinct impression that Rorschach was supposed to be based on Batman. 1940's Batman, who solved crimes via detective work, had no compunction with busting a few heads if that's what was necessary to get the rats to talk, and had serious psychological issues from being an eye-witness to the murder of his parents. (And Night Owl was clearly 1960's Batman, who solved crimes via impossibly contrived gadgets.) Though it would not have been unreasonable just to read Dick Tracy into Rorschach, instead...

Oh yeah, I should probably post that I'm totally down for this as long as scytheful is still willing to pick me up from Davis on his way down.

Sometimes I like to pretend that is Hitler, for humor value. This is one of those times.

Uh, in Sonic Adventure all the cutscenes were rendered in-engine, so the whole game did have those kind of graphics....

Different people's ears are differently sensitive to quality loss, so there are probably a fair number of people who can tell the difference between lossless and 256kbps mp3. But even if you can't (and I can't), the mp3 release isn't going to be in 256kbps, it looks like it's going to be in 192. And I can tell the difference between 192 and 256. AND you can create an MP3 of any desired quality from a FLAC. Or you can go the extra mile and make OGGs instead, which give better quality at lower filesizes than MP3, but wouldn't be provided by OCR because it's a less supported format. Well, if you make the FLAC version torrent only, then the site only has to provide the hosting space and bandwidth for a single like 30 kilobyte file... You'd be surprised how many audiophiles there are out there who really care about the quality of their audio. Chances are the FLACs wouldn't even be for burning to CD, but as their permanent listening copy. Isn't one of the site's goals to educate people about the quality of video game music as a form of fine art? Like, y'know, classical symphonies? The attitude you're expressing here is very much not in alignment with that goal... If you do the torrent FLAC idea, it's not very much extra effort on your guys' part, and it satisfies everyone's needs. Stop pretending like anything you're not interested in is a waste of time.

Not sure the song's exact title, but it came from either Outrun or Outrun 2

Woah, crap. You're right. I just checked ticketmaster again and it looks like purchasing tickets at this point will require physically venturing out to the box office