The Ben 10 Affleck-Out: I feel like fame is wasted on me.

[Drageuth]

Grabbed off of steam with a 50% sale. Was worth it. My 2 cents are in the recently beat games section. Didn't include spoilers.

[Sheras]

I was an "advanced reader" when I was younger and my teachers always struggled to find something to keep me occupied. Eventually one of my teachers loaned me a copy of The Crystal Shard when I was in 5th grade (I think) and I was hooked. Read the Icewind Dale Trilogy, Dark Elf Trilogy, then random other Forgotten Realms books, then discovered the Demon Wars Saga when that came out and was hooked on that. Eventually I moved on, but they still hold a special place in my heart. I just don't think I could go back to them and ruin them with an adult perspective.

Same here. I read way above my level. So I always borrowed my older brother's books and read those. This was back when I read a shit ton. Parents never allowed me to play video games during the school week, and my homework took me zero time at all, and with nothing on TV ever on AFN, I just read whatever I could get my hands on.

[Ikusagami]

I wouldn't say The Lord of the Rings books are linear.
You have to remember that Tolkien's stuff was written a while back, so it isn't really fair to compare it to any recent fantasy literature.
The movies aren't the same. Ok, most of the story is there but things are obviously missing and corners have been cut.
Plus the usual movie stuff to make them "cool".

Yeah, an ex told me Tolkien does most action offstage, in the classic style, while the movies are mostly. . .just that. But I also heard he waxes on superfluously for like six pages about minutia. Honestly, three different people have complained to me about the detail in how elven rope is tied.
Anyway, I have the books, and I do plan to read them. . .
. . .
. . .
someday.

I'm also wary, though, that some of the older style plot devices are commonly considered bad writing by modern standards. I love GRRM's comment on Gandalf:

Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.

I felt the same way about the New Testament. That ending was total Deus Ex Machina.

Same here. I read way above my level. So I always borrowed my older brother's books and read those. This was back when I read a shit ton. Parents never allowed me to play video games during the school week, and my homework took me zero time at all, and with nothing on TV ever on AFN, I just read whatever I could get my hands on.

*NERD HUG*
Teachers didn't like that I was reading Stephen King at 10, but nobody commented when I got hooked on fantasy a year later, because none of them ever heard of the authors. Hell, middle school teachers didn't even know the classics.
It's not much of a surprise my high school lit teachers were the only ones who liked me.

[Elin]

(´・ω・｀)

[Milady]

Tolkien may have his flaws but GRRM is far worse. I'm three books into GoT now and although I ate through the first one quickly, the others are slow going. At least JRRT used some interesting sentence structure from time to time whilst discussing elven rope, GRRM writes like he's still in high school, complete with silly sex fantasies and the dreadfully long process of getting to know the more uninteresting characters that are created to replace the ones he's killed.

When anything interesting happens it occurs in about two sentences, so that you almost have to reread it to make sure you've read it correctly.

And Elin, you don't count, you hate English~

[Milady]

And I'm going to start requiring people to define linear for me when they use it. How is a book NOT linear, unless it's a choose your own adventure thing?

[Milady]

In any case, I think I've just decided that fantasy genre books were cool and all when I was in high school, but I'll get back to my late 19th/early 20th century lit after I finally finish GoT. I got into them by accident when taking a break from Sherlock Holmes and H. G. Wells novels thinking a more modern style would be easier to read at work when I'm half asleep and stressed out, and I just wanted to buy some kind of physical book after having been using my tablet for all kinds of free domain stuff.

Yay, benefits of liking dead authors.

[Milady]

Also, I'm going to bed now, and I won't be backreading, so I don't know why I bothered.

[Ikusagami]

Tolkien may have his flaws but GRRM is far worse. I'm three books into GoT now and although I ate through the first one quickly, the others are slow going. At least JRRT used some interesting sentence structure from time to time whilst discussing elven rope, GRRM writes like he's still in high school, complete with silly sex fantasies and the dreadfully long process of getting to know the more uninteresting characters that are created to replace the ones he's killed.

When anything interesting happens it occurs in about two sentences, so that you almost have to reread it to make sure you've read it correctly.

And Elin, you don't count, you hate English~

GRRM does a lot of pandering for the audience. It's obvious he was a TV writer, but that is also his main selling point; he knows how to deftly manage twists and cliffhangers. I hated him at first, because the story is such an obvious soap opera; I wouldn't be surprised if he cut into the narrative with, "Jon Snow will now be played by. . ."
But he knows how to manage tension by lulling the reader into comfort with character building, then blindsiding them with unexpected plot development, and then drawing out climaxes where they're expected. In short, he knows how to manipulate an audience.

And I'm going to start requiring people to define linear for me when they use it. How is a book NOT linear, unless it's a choose your own adventure thing?

A dynamic plot is one with various plot points, as can be listed in a story synopsis, a linear plot is one with a tighter thread, so to speak. cf. Clerks 2 Star Wars/LotR comparison. The central arc of LotR could be cut down to CHARACTERS going to PLACE. The things that happen along the way could be cut out from a synopsis and still accurately portray the general plot. Cutting out plot points of Star Wars would leave a synopsis completely nonsensical.
That's not saying one is objectively better, but I personally prefer kinetic plotting. (game example: Xenogears=dynamic plot; Lunar=Linear))

[Ikusagami]

How can I get my uploads added to EP's servers? I don't really care about E-Penis points; I just want to make some rare Japanese games more accessible to those who might be interested (so others don't have to go to the trouble I did for some of them). I'd rather have them somewhere more reliable than a single mediafire account (which is already threatening to restrict my Tokugawa Corp. uploads if I don't upgrade).

I know this isn't the right place to ask this, but I don't feel like making a thread for a single silly question or spend hours digging for an answer. Sorry. Any help would be appreciated.

[Gare]

Probably that's why GoT was so easy to adapt to TV, he basically ends every chapter of the book with a cliffhanger.

[deadlegion]

And I'm going to start requiring people to define linear for me when they use it. How is a book NOT linear, unless it's a choose your own adventure thing?

Lord of the Rings isn't linear because the characters split off into different plot threads. So you spend a little time reading about something, then you switch over to what the other dudes were doing days ago or whatever.

But yeah, books are linear because they have consecutive page numbers (except for the game books example you mentioned...and maybe books with printing errors).

[Stark]

I actually had to stop it 5 minutes in to enter into a lengthy discussion on american imperialism and the macropolitics of the Iranian revolution as it pertained to the cold war.

Because the movie spent five minutes giving a cliff's notes version of the whole thing. Without loads of AMERICA FUCK YEAH overtones that you'd expect.

Which is simultaneously respectable and opened the gateway to lots of oil politics talk.

YAY!

And then it leads into a pretty interesting narrative that largely hits the key ideas of the hostage crisis while still taking massive liberties because it's a movie and movies do that. And it's pretty well played out. Even if some of the people involved in said crisis didn't exactly approve.

Which is disappointing, because I'm not sure their sentiment of "it's a bunch of pro-american garbage by a shallow hack" is really all that warranted.

But then again I didn't spend several months running from basement to basement under threat of death, so....

hmm, I think I'll have to definatly give it a watch (mostly due to the fact I'm unfamiliar with the real life event the film portrays)

[deadlegion]

How can I get my uploads added to EP's servers? I don't really care about E-Penis points; I just want to make some rare Japanese games more accessible to those who might be interested (so others don't have to go to the trouble I did for some of them). I'd rather have them somewhere more reliable than a single mediafire account (which is already threatening to restrict my Tokugawa Corp. uploads if I don't upgrade).

I know this isn't the right place to ask this, but I don't feel like making a thread for a single silly question or spend hours digging for an answer. Sorry. Any help would be appreciated.

You can't.
MasJ can add stuff to the main site. But please don't bombard him with 1000's of games you want added.
Try to be sensible and polite. He's the owner after all.

Edit: you could also try using some different hosts.
Eg: Filefactory (registered free account) will keep your uploads for like 3 months even without downloads iirc. And they don't remove stuff anywhere near as much as MF. They never block uploads afaik.
If you use JDownloader with FF links there isn't any captcha (maybe that's just for registered users though, not sure).

[Ikusagami]

You can't.
MasJ can add stuff to the main site. But please don't bombard him with 1000's of games you want added.
Try to be sensible and polite. He's the owner after all.

Somebody would have to pay me to make that many uploads. I just upped 9 that didn't come up in google searches.

Thanks.