Bay 12 Games Forum

The canon-logic behind Star Trek's alternate timeline is...

What this means for "a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away" is uncertain. There's no(t much?) frequently used time-travel trope, but there was the junking of the previously canon EU as various prequels sequels and tweenquels to the core movies ran roughshod over at least some of the spread of stories that had previously been treated as continuity or reporting past/future extensions to the story.


(I don't visit URLs with "media" in them whilst I'm travelling, so nothing much to say about that. Whatever it should be telling me. I can only guess, and I might be completely off the mark

but I'm pretty sure there's still black and white series being made out there, somewhere. They wouldn't use a blue filter by dint of not using blue at all :V

Well, they use red, green and blue filters, then..!;)

(Yeah, I know that's not true. Although, in fact using <hue>-filters in front of monochrome film-stock/recording equipment, or preprocessing prior to the zero-saturation conversion, can be a very useful way of highlighting/supressing key features that you can't do once you're in the luminosity-only model and which would make the non-greyscale version look positively weird. Or indeed do it with physical lighting/colouring that makes things look weird (red mascara and eyeliner to get the desired deepest-black on old film stock, seemingly moreso than the actual black).

But there's not exactly Welsh language street signs outside of Wales

I'd bet that a number of "Croeso y Cymru" (or "Croeso i Gymru") signs are. Just.

(Please concoct your own joke based on  one or more of "a Mickey Mouse organisation"/"Goofy"/"Donald Ducked"/etc, and perhaps a bait'n'switch if you don't fancy a bait'n'switch'n'switch instead...)

It all has shades of "Have you stopped beating your wife?", insofar as it being unwise to even start your answer with a Yes or No. It's not a provocative question by accident, of course. If the questioner is looking to impose their own agenda then they're likely prepared to shut down the answer as soon as they get the 'clear' yes or no and lock out the bit of the reply that disentangles the nuance necessary.

Something like the more proper response, from a properly prepared answerer, might be something like "I do not accept the premise of the question (...and this is why, if you'll let me continue...)", although that is perhaps soured by those smooth-talkers who do have something to hide and have such answers down pat to always slither out of proper laser-targetted questions. Being just too smooth in their houdini acts can be taken as a bad sign, whereas a genuinely railroaded interviewee is probably always going to be goaded and rushed into a stumble and the best they can do is try to recover from such a forced error and hope that they dodge the worst of the bad result (hope that enough people have enough sympathy with them to recognise the railroading tactics from the interrogator, rather than latch onto it).


Nothing like the above, but last weekend I was in a situation where my general ease of speaking one-to-one contrasted mightily with having to make points to a room-full of people. When raising my hand to suggest I'd like to make a point, etc, I definitely knew what I wanted to raise. Upon being given the floor, this disintigrates somewhat as I attempt to deal with (something like) 60 to 80 people now swivelled to face me, all my usual tricks for 'effortlessly' dealing with a face-to-face(-to-face-and-maybe-one-more) conversation[1] just don't work. How I'd be if sat as a witness (a televised witness, moreover) or similar, the world actually turning on my every word... No, I'd not like that.

Now, obviously you'd expect some who has risen to such a position of (localised) power to not be quite so unable to flash the smile and get 'the room' to go along with them (it's how they likely attained that level of competancy), but everyone has their limitations, especially when up against another "professional showboater" such as a nationally prominent politician must be (just to prevail against all the other aspiring professional showboaters they must have somehow elbowed their way past to reach such a zenith). Yeah-but-no-but... Not a desirable spot to be put in. Best you can hope for is to be so charismatic a showboater in your own right that you've still not reached your own apogee, and are just swinging past the (probably unchosen) obstacle of the interogation on the way to some higher thing. And there's not that much room in the upper point of a pyramid (with those who inhabit it rarely universally praised for it, certainly once they fall out of it again).


[1] There was one face-to-face where I did not know who I was talking to (didn't recognise them, but knew them by name and reputation) and I found myself in a conversation where heavy hints about a certain outcome were being said, without actually saying... But because the hints were on the down-low, I was replying on the down-low and (it turns out) was doing a 'nudge nudge, wink wink, raise eyebrow' at totally cross purposes. The other party may well have schmoozed their desired outcome, later on, but the manner of the "no names, no packdrill" conversation we had may well have added up to zero net difference in the internal politics (I dislike internal politics... as much as external politics... though of course it is a normal human condition - and I am of course a perfectly normal human) and just downgraded his reputation more, in my eyes... And maybe next time we'll meet I'll actually recognise him, and be on the right foot in the next conversation.

It's tricky to accomplish, but I believe you don't have to attack police in (at least) GTA 1 and 2. Maybe 3, but perhaps a mission requires it. Vice City I'm half remembering that you may have to actively annoy them to progress. San Andreas at the very least has a military-annoying mission where you'd attract too much attention to do a Terminator 2 and escape without killing. (Beyond that, I don't know how flexible they left it.)

It doesn't mean that police/military won't shoot at you, of course, but choosing your fights was always originally part of the risk/reward system (before the 'storyline' approach might have tied your hands). And there were joys to be had in evading the Harrier-like plane's missiles by flying the full-winged Dodo (with the advantage of being too slow to be intercepted, ironically, given that this is one of the real Harrier's tricks) until you can ditch from it and clean your record, after only provoking the forces of law an order by trespass to get the chase started. (Like forcing the train you hijack, and run backwards for a long run-up, 'through' the track-barrier that you're not yet supposed to pass, over into the other 'forbidden' territories, close enough to the military range that you can pinch the Harrier too, if you're quick enough. I think.)


But it's been a while. Thanks for the nostalgia, though.

(Posts occured since the point at which I was replying... Consider this point perhaps overtaken...)

I think I've already said, elsewhere, that I think Hamas's plan had gone "horribly right". A pyrrhic victory, of an operation, except that they might yet be utterly happy with the way the world is divided (tacit supoort for Israel is comparatively down, in the West, even if it's still there are various levels; everyone who was already pro-Palestine is likely even more anti-Israel, and... despite or even with the retaliatory losses, it justifies their cause at least as much as before, and far better than if their incursions had failed).

Much of the same may be true for Israel, albeit differently. Knowing/suspecting something was going to happen, those in charge may indeed have been willing to see the operation go ahead. Either to be smashed, or to justify (at least to those most in line with their thinking) the (counter-)incursion that was politically not quite in their grasp of possibilities beforehand. Yes, hostages were taken some (many?) were lost, as well as the other deaths... loss of some soldiers who were in the way of the steamroller that they might (or might not) have had an inkling of... but it adds to the message of "Palestinians can't be trusted!" and "There can be no peace with those people!". Pyrrhic defeat, as it were. (and then they go on the offensive and it gets messy).

But, to the true believer of either extremist end of the confrontational philosophy, "it's all good", You can't make an omlette (...etc), right?


It's everyone else that gets caught up in it. Or finds themselves at the other end of a complately different fuse that a spark from this conflagaration drifts off and lights the end of, seemingly unrelated. (The victims of the Parisian attack, we just had, although whether the same person would have popped up later or not (having history with the idea of doing something like this) at the next opportune time (if it had not been one just now) is a question that's hard to answer. Though we can be sure that the "Strong Pillar" training was going to lead to something, and may yet have those awaiting their turn to have their own go, in their own way.)