Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Reudh on December 26, 2011, 08:59:20 pm

I like believable fanfic that can be easily accommodated by the existing mythos.

Isn't that the whole point of decent fanfic?

Not always! Sometimes it's about seeing how the existing mythos breaks.

Then there's crackfics. Even the ones that don't really fit the mythos can be* pretty decent. By which I mean hilarious, of course.

Then there's the stuff that's only borrowing the name and possibly the appearance/general character of some of the characters. You wonder why they didn't just shift a few names around with those, but they can be* pretty good, if you ignore the connection to canon.

*Triple-underlined, italicized, bolded. Can be =/= is often.

I've never heard of Louis Armstrong, but I have heard "kung fu fighting".

Ol' Louie was basically one of the best blues/jazz musician/singers American ever bloody had. That roughly translates into: He was one of the best freaking musicians the USA has ever had, period. There's a lot of good ones, and more than one that matches Louie, but he's basically one of the defining voices of that musical style. Really, really, damn, good.

Have a wiki.

Frankly, I've heard of him, but never knew that he was the one doing that song. Welp. But then again cultural imbecile here.

Oh, no. Louie had nothing to do with Kung-fu Fighting. Just saying that not having heard the one is culturally equivalent to not knowing who the other is. People not knowing who Louie is makes me want to strangle people S'roughly equivalent to not knowing Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Beethoven, etc, to me. Protip: That's... it's not good. People that don't know those names and that music are honestly deprived of some of the greatest productions of our species.

... would it count as progressive irritation that it bugs the hell out of me some people my own bloody age (to say nothing of the younger generations, now) actually have never heard Kung-fu Fighting? Or just more generic rage?

It's like folks, especially Americans, not knowing immediately who Louie is. Louie Freaking Armstrong! How the hell does one reach puberty without knowing who Louie is, especially in a country where he's one of the best singers/musicians of one of the only original musical styles our culture has? We don't have much culture you can't scrape up with a fingernail (read: Shallow as fook), how the blazes do we get away with ignoring what little we do have? Darn idjit kids, grumblemutter.

That armor mastery one. Which I see you mentioned, now that I look at what it's called. Definitely that one.

Here's an article that seems to lay out their point of view pretty well.

That's not the 30% Will was talking about. That's the other ones.

Honestly, I've only personally met two christians, both ordained priests (though of different denominations) that were, I guess you could say, 'chill' about the homosexuality thing. One was that WWII vet I mentioned a few pages back; he was a massively radical Christian who denies the literal truth of biblical text -- for him, the scripture is a combination of existential truths and moral parables (to greatly simplify things, of course), which is littered with things that are obviously contradictory to the teachings of Jesus (Those parts, are to be ignored or outright vilified). His response to Christian persecution of homosexuality was pretty simple: "That's not Christian." Full stop, he saw it as against the teachings of Jesus*, regardless as to what the bible said.

The other was a co-worker with my parent, teaching adult education (Drop-outs, helping with adult illiteracy, GED prep, etc.). Is a full time nurse practitioner now, iirc. Less radical, but it'd be roughly the same message. Jesus' message is a message of love, not hate, not persecution. If you're exercising the latter two, you are sinning. There's no biblical text you can hide behind strong enough to protect you from that. If there is going to be judgment, then God will judge**, but until then that man or woman is your brother or sister and as much a child of God as you are. You cannot, in good faith, act toward them differently than you act toward anyone else.

There was some passing interaction with Christians that wanted the legal equality thing to go down, as well. Being fair to all things (Some days, anyway), I'm in a really shit-poor area for finding the good ones.

*S'one of those things that a lot of Christians seem to fail to realize, that the teachings of Jesus, who they claim to want to emulate, is not a 1:1 match to biblical text. Also, divine inspiration of text is irrelevant when it's written/translated/copied by fallible human hands, read with fallible human eyes (or hands, for the blind), listened to and orally transmitted by fallible human ears and mouths, and interpreted by fallible human hands.

** Protip: An omnibenevolent god, unless you're using the strongly supported (in a number-of-people doing it sense) medieval conception of benevolence (It has absolutely jack and shit to do with morality, especially human morality, and everything to do with omnipresence. By the old scholastic conception of benevolence, a good sized boulder has as much goodness of god in them as a man), cannot punish for acts that do no harm. Homosexual relationships do no (more) harm (than heterosexual ons)? Check. Omnibenevolent god cannot punish that. Full stop. Logic says.

Gay couples could live together without getting married and live the rest of their lives in peace with the community, but they choose to force upon the community their view of that symbol.

Point of order, most homosexuals I've heard of mostly don't care (E: At least in a 'we need to go activist on people' sense.) whether religion allows them to marry or not -- that's a point of theology and nothing the secular government has any business messing with so long as it's not harmful, and thus isn't a point of major social issue.

What they want is equal legal standing re: partnership. Most homosexuals I've heard speak rationally on the topic (and some even speaking without quite so measured a response) would be perfectly bloody fine with domestic partnership if it gave the same legal rights as a given a 'married' heterosexual couple. In most of the US, and indeed, most of the world in general, that right is denied. Domestic partnerships rarely entail the same breadth and depth of legal rights as what's legally called marriage.

So yes, they could, in a sense, 'live the rest of their lives in peace with the community'... as a second class citizen, whose rights are being curtailed for no sensible reason. The community is forcing their (misguided, usually due to the religiously laden term 'marriage'*) view of a symbol on a minority, and doing so in a harmful way. So the picture being painted in the quote is quite inaccurate.

As the general aside, 90% of peoples excuse (religion) to be fucktards stubborn about homosexual marriage could be solved by completely g'damn decoupling marriage from law. Let marriage be religious and completely irrelevant in any fiscal/legal sense and have domestic partnerships be the only legally recognized entity. Would solve so many problems or at the very least strip one more shield from the g'damn bigot's arsenal.

Well, it's late, and I'm rambling a bit and I think forgetting a point/poorly organizing everything, but whatever. I think the point gets across, mostly.

*Usually due to a literal interpretation of... whatever that line is. The funny one, where if you're being ass enough to interpret literally, you can only decry male homosexual couples, not female. Yes, the man lying with man one. Bible's too bloody chauvinistic to be meaning man as general human, there. Protip: That is blatant hypocrisy.

Only the graphics and voices are new.

Well damn, there went the entirety of my interest in it. If I wanted to play DotA, I'd play DotA in the WC3 I already have

Not in beta, so I can't see anything with my own eyes, but... that's pretty damn disappointing, that.

Hey, you're central standard, too. Timezone buddy!

Or not, or so, or whatever. Happy solstice, folks. Hopefully tomorrow it'll actually be cold