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Well of course everything is derivative. YOU are derivative. You have copied what your education system has foisted onto us all so you can graduate and become yet another derivative cog in the system.

If you were given a chance to see something truly original... you would go insane from trying to comprehend it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueArtIsIncomprehensible indeed.

Whatever you do, don't press the button!

I used to love shmups before Ikaruga...

Talk about Nintendo Hard

Because new == bad

We know.

No, seriously, at least give it a chance to be useful. Your prejudgment seems unwarranted, unfounded, and unnecessary. I know I'll at least try it out before either ignoring it or destroying it.

No, I'm sure it's great. I have a 100MHz system bus, however, so a page load from Google Maps do to a live preview of an incomplete address between each f'ing character I type is going to make Firefox unusable for me.

Most of the complaints about Firefox could be completely and totally eradicated if they would just make a fast, bare-bones browser and throw all these features that make it great into Add-Ons which are enabled by default. Don't want the Awesome Bar? Disable. Do you hate the Download Manager? Replace it. Want a screaming fast, bare-bones browser? Disable all the plug-ins.

Maybe in the process, they'll design a good way to allow themes to be universally applied across XUL windows in FF so that 3rd party plug-ins don't have to look ugly or use a custom style (or break under non-standard themes)

Because new == bad

Actually no, but those are the odds.

Old can also be bad, of course. As in, tired old straw man argument.

Because new == bad

We know.

No, seriously, at least give it a chance to be useful. Your prejudgment seems unwarranted, unfounded, and unnecessary. I know I'll at least try it out before either ignoring it or destroying it.

[...] As a rule of thumb, if Nazis would enjoy it, it's illegal, if they'd hate it, it's fine. [...]

oh shit, I hope nazis don't enjoy sugar >.>;;;

It was handled by one sentence: 'It's surprising there was no dissension' -- it sure is!

This is a technique called Lampshade Hanging. Here is a recent Dinosaur Comics about it.

I really wanted to like the finale, but this ruined it. I could no longer identify with the characters.

Abandon all technology? Frak. That. Felgercarb.

I think this should clear things up.

Gone from The Hitler Channel to The Armageddon Channel.

I mostly watch National Geographic HD these days. Or Netflix. Or even shows on Hulu.

The TV Tropes term is: Network Decay.

I thought that the idea of having 500 channels was that you could watch the kind of programming you liked. Instead what's happening is the cable networks are reforming into identical blobs.

Sounds like you were Dan Browned

TOS - canceled by NBC, revived by fan campaign, canceled again. Was intended to be "Episodic", such that Episode X being broadcast before Episode Y really didn't mean much. There was no "ongoing story" intended.

TNG - A tad of ongoing story but not really enough intended to matter. The "ending" I thought was a pretty damn well-done episode.

DS9 - one hell of an ending, especially after the "switch" from episodic (early seasons) to arc-driven (later seasons, cardassian/dominion war stuff).

Voyager - only existed because it was Berman & Braga's toy. Also, Seven of Boobs. "Ending" was a fanwank from Berman & Braga

Enterprise - could have gone on a lot longer, ESPECIALLY after Paramount execs finally got the message and kicked Berman & Braga off the franchise to get some real writing staff in. Sadly, they were too late and most viewers couldn't be won back.

If you'd like a series that REALLY never ends, try Doctor Who.

Now as for the rest of sci-fi and the rest of writing in general, you have a few different scenarios:

#1 - "Drag it on forever" - arguably you can put shows like Cheers, Frasier, Simpsons (which has jumped the shark so many times the damn thing is just getting bored) here. Also, Dragonball/Dragonball Z/Dragonball GT, or InuYasha/Bleach/Naruto.

#2 - "Oh crap the creator just left but it's still popular" - see West Wing (which got crappy within a season of Sorkin leaving but dragged on two more seasons), or Smallville.

#3 - "Why won't they let it die?" - Lost, Heroes, etc. Caused by desperate networks that know damn well they have nothing palatable to replace it with and we're bored out of our gourds with so-called "reality TV."

#4 - Last, but definitely not least, the rushed/tacked ending, personified by a number of tropes from anime such as the Gainax Ending, Mandatory Twist Ending, and similar. Basically where you have the writers "counting on" a 2-3 season arc, doing the 3-4 episode "premise and characters" intro, 16-18 episodes of happy silly fluffy slapstick, and then needing to "turn the show serious" at the end. Great examples: just about any anime out there, including (but not limited to) Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion (though that was also the result of Anno going off his meds)...

Now if you want to see a series that had multiple seasons all of which had a real ending, and which kicked the ass of all of these conventions, pick up Slayers sometime.

As for video games... it doesn't have to fail to get a real ending. Some games get an ending, some don't. The Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale games all had pretty encapsulated stories. Legacy of Kain has a definite cyclical storyline - sure there was "room" for a game centering on Kain afterwards, but they wrapped up Raziel in a nice neat package and there's no harm in leaving the "what happens now" question behind: the focus of contention ever since Soul Reaver (given that the original Blood Omen had a "definite ending" pair and the rest of the series is premised on assuming which ending the player chose and running with it) has been resolved. Hell, we even got to take care of the unfinished business and kill Turel.

TOS - canceled by NBC, revived by fan campaign, canceled again. Was intended to be "Episodic", such that Episode X being broadcast before Episode Y really didn't mean much. There was no "ongoing story" intended.

TNG - A tad of ongoing story but not really enough intended to matter. The "ending" I thought was a pretty damn well-done episode.

DS9 - one hell of an ending, especially after the "switch" from episodic (early seasons) to arc-driven (later seasons, cardassian/dominion war stuff).

Voyager - only existed because it was Berman & Braga's toy. Also, Seven of Boobs. "Ending" was a fanwank from Berman & Braga

Enterprise - could have gone on a lot longer, ESPECIALLY after Paramount execs finally got the message and kicked Berman & Braga off the franchise to get some real writing staff in. Sadly, they were too late and most viewers couldn't be won back.

If you'd like a series that REALLY never ends, try Doctor Who.

Now as for the rest of sci-fi and the rest of writing in general, you have a few different scenarios:

#1 - "Drag it on forever" - arguably you can put shows like Cheers, Frasier, Simpsons (which has jumped the shark so many times the damn thing is just getting bored) here. Also, Dragonball/Dragonball Z/Dragonball GT, or InuYasha/Bleach/Naruto.

#2 - "Oh crap the creator just left but it's still popular" - see West Wing (which got crappy within a season of Sorkin leaving but dragged on two more seasons), or Smallville.

#3 - "Why won't they let it die?" - Lost, Heroes, etc. Caused by desperate networks that know damn well they have nothing palatable to replace it with and we're bored out of our gourds with so-called "reality TV."

#4 - Last, but definitely not least, the rushed/tacked ending, personified by a number of tropes from anime such as the Gainax Ending, Mandatory Twist Ending, and similar. Basically where you have the writers "counting on" a 2-3 season arc, doing the 3-4 episode "premise and characters" intro, 16-18 episodes of happy silly fluffy slapstick, and then needing to "turn the show serious" at the end. Great examples: just about any anime out there, including (but not limited to) Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion (though that was also the result of Anno going off his meds)...

Now if you want to see a series that had multiple seasons all of which had a real ending, and which kicked the ass of all of these conventions, pick up Slayers sometime.

As for video games... it doesn't have to fail to get a real ending. Some games get an ending, some don't. The Baldur's Gate / Icewind Dale games all had pretty encapsulated stories. Legacy of Kain has a definite cyclical storyline - sure there was "room" for a game centering on Kain afterwards, but they wrapped up Raziel in a nice neat package and there's no harm in leaving the "what happens now" question behind: the focus of contention ever since Soul Reaver (given that the original Blood Omen had a "definite ending" pair and the rest of the series is premised on assuming which ending the player chose and running with it) has been resolved. Hell, we even got to take care of the unfinished business and kill Turel.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidAKoreanPersonDie

if you don't want to buy the games (for whatever your reasons may be) then don't play the games.

I want to buy the games, but Nintendo doesn't want to sell the games for any of several reasons. One is the No Export For You mentality even if there's a fully translated prototype (Earthbound for NES) or even if it's been released in another anglophone market (Kuru Kuru Kururin for GBA; Pinocchio for Wii). Another is that games from a smaller developer can't get published unless the developer has already released another commercial title on Windows, and some developers aren't fans of the genres that Windows gamers have historically preferred. What is the alternative to piracy in this case?

Don't you know? There's a One Steve Limit. Of course not everyone is named Steve!

This is often referred to as "Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy". To quote, "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge." Or also, "Cowboy Bebop at His Computer".

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidAKoreanPersonDie

At one place I worked, the firewall was a machine named Cerberus. Although, as someone else mentioned, machines have a tendency to get repurposed without ever having their names changed.

You mean how over time they start out shiny and amusing and eventually get plodding and depressing? Or have I got the names confused?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtlasShruggedMeanwhile, contrast the "reality" described in that book with the current news.

The Blair Witch Project has a lot to answer for.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RaimiVision?from=Main.ShakyCam

Raimi Vision is using the camera to represent the POV of some fast moving object or creature, usually Ultimate Evil. Also occasionally used to show the point of view of the arrow, bullet, or knife. It is usually shot in a Jitter Cam or handheld style, and with a fisheye lens or distortion effect.

Named for "Evil Dead" director Sam Raimi, who had almost no money at all for effects, and put a camera on a board strung on ropes between two people, running it through the forest, to represent the unspeakable horror terrorizing his cast. In Evil Dead 2, we finally get to see the monster, and it is appropriately horrific. Though the trope itself is played for laughs, as Ash runs away from the camera and we see scenes where the camera cuts to in front of him looking behind him, and it's just him running away from nothing.

Raimi's name for this contraption was Shaky Cam (after Steadi Cam).

Look at what the situation would have been had everyone survived and made it to graduation.

Your best pilots decided to perform an illegal maneuver ... in front of their COMMANDING OFFICERS ... and their families ... and whatever media is broadcasting the event ... and any undergraduates attending ... and so forth.

Yes, let us just flaunt our immunity to Star Fleet regulations.

Even the BEST scenario should have resulted in all of them facing disciplinary charges and then being kicked out.

And the "best" pilots didn't realize that? And the Wesley couldn't conceive of it with his massive brain?

The entire episode makes no sense. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAesop

Duty means disobeying legitimate rules about legitimate dangers and lying about it ... but it's okay because someone else will take the blame and you will be forgiven and all will be forgotten. Where's the honor or duty in that?

I think you might be describing Jagged Alliance. I didn't spend much time with the game, so I can't say much. However, I can give you a link.

When was Wake published? Because that's basically the plot of Serial Experiments Lain.

Meh, there's nothing new under the sun.

That doesn't stop some people!

Dude, she's like, in a coma!

- Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 - still have high hopes for this, even though I do think it's time the PS2 was allowed to die gracefully.

It's great. I watched my wife play some of Persona 3 and didn't care for it, but we're playing 4 together and it's really good so far (~70% of the way through now). It does suffer occasionally from Guide Dang It, but that's just something you've gotta put up with in most JRPGs. That's my only complaint, and it really could be much, much worse.

Convection schmonvection. I've finally found the perfect place to plot my evil deeds!

Let us not forget the most important ratio known to man: 4:1:2.5 +/-25%.

"If a piece of technology is used there is a neat description somewhere of how and why that particular piece of technology works and what are its underlying principles."

This is what I have a problem with.
99% of the time, the science/technology/explanations behind it is just complete bullshit, intentionally piled higher and deeper so people who call it out are labeled as "not getting it". I haven't read the manga of GitS, so I can't comment on that. But the general tendency for sci-fi anime (and sci-fi anything) is to over-explain to cover up flawed scientific reasoning.

I was referring to the manga. Read some of Shirow's GITS and Appleseed works.
If he says that a round from a GunTM goes through an ArmourTM it probably means that he did some extensive research about guns, calibers, materials and such before making that claim.
Manga in general is mostly not like Marvel with its "fill in the bubbles". One guy is responsible for drawing AND writing.
Yes, he may use helpers for manual labor, but in the end only one name is connected to the work.
So, when they work on something - they pay attention. Any mistake is their own, and any expression relayed through the story is their own. There is no wizard.

Also... dig up Mamoru Osii's Avalon and his Red Spectacles - Stray Dog: Kerberos Panzer Cops - Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade trilogy.
You should notice that in general - he makes more of an art/philosophical movie with SF taking the back seat or being just a setting.

Put a layer of that over Shirow's detailed work - and you get what you call "piled higher and deeper".

I don't know what you're referring to about the Wachowski dipshits and them ripping it off, but I believe it. They truly are hacks.

I was referring to the GITS opening credits (letters and kanji forming words) which were lifted to create the "pure unconverted Matrix" and probably also the "jacking in". Although that can be traced to various other SF work.

For the record, I think 99% of what's out there (hollywood or otherwise) as "sci-fi" is shit, and should not really be considered sci-fi.

Check you terminology. Sci-fi is often considered a pejorative term.
Then again, you ARE saying that 99% of X is not really X but Y.

Wouldn't then the logic dictate that it be called Y and not X?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarshmallowHell ?

You hit the real head of the nail right here:

does not dedicate all his time to sports and ever-going popularity contest

American juvenile subcultures are each built around something that the subculture considers Serious Business, and to be well-liked within the subculture one must excel at the chosen activity, requiring not merely ordinary talent or hobby-grade practice but full-on dedication. Nobody can work hard at academics, sports, and art because excelling in each of those activities requires becoming so involved that the activity dominates one's life. And nobody can have their life solely dominated by 3 things at once.

So the kids end up making trade-offs. They separate by whether they want to be good at academics, sports, or art; if they have talent they may have the ability to do well in two at once. But only the rare Kwisatz Haderach can do all three.

The Simpsons Did It. (They haven't yet.)

When I first found TV Tropes I felt like I was trapped in a time loop.

You are doing it wrong, think TV Tropes.

I don't know for sure if it is a Singleton, but I don't know that I have ever seen a site as humorous and time consuming as tvtropes. If nothing else it is a great way to lose a lot of time (assuming you watch television or play video games).

And a goatee.....don't forget the goatee.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilTwin

Layne

Ask them how the flood just happened to order all the fossil pollens in the right order, and didn't mix them all together.

A wizard did it. I mean, an almight god[dess] did it.

That was just an intuitive guess ... I didn't even know how stellar it is until I just googled it.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheElevatorFromIpanema

Eh, I was never a big fan of the series, but I would think that if the original game has something "special" to it, it will retain that quality no matter what happens in the future. If you don't like what gets released in the future, just excise them from your fanon- barring non-Novikov-compliant time travel, the original games can't be ruined.

The deletion policies have really saved wikipedia from becoming a horrible testament to nerd memorization skills and boredom.

The TV Tropes Wiki puts it the best way I have seen to date: As a consequence of Wikipedia's fame and scale, it's where people put knowledge when they don't know where it should go. This perception is actually at odds with the project's goals: to create a tertiary reference for information and viewpoints published elsewhere. Problem is, they've ended up with more information on Pokemon or Star Trek than, say, Civil Rights or the Second World War -- and that's not how they wanted it.

They're called 'koans'. That one is an ice-cream koan. :p

Behold Cowboy Bebop at his computer.

Form TFL (The f****** link):

Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy - Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for that rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, "Journalism is the first rough draft of history." Or possibly it was Thomas Edison who said that. I'm pretty sure somebody said it, because you often hear journalists quote it in an effort to explain how come they get everything wrong.

Posting anon to not undo moderation.

DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink. How hard is it, really?

True, I can find DVDFab HD Decrypter just fine, but the first several results on Google for dvd shrink say "we're not allowed to host this nor tell you where it is hosted; use Google". So it is hard. That said, I use VirtualDub-MPEG2 and AC-3 ACM to turn DVDs into AVIs so that I can play them in a DivX player or use Avisynth to make remixes.

Today's game producers tend to front load their game's content. I've never found a published statistic, but my estimation is that only about 40% of games purchased are ever fully completed by their purchasers. The player either tires of the game before the end, or gets another game to play before they finish.

There's finishing a game, and then there's really finishing it. By "finishing" a Pokemon, do you mean beating the Elite Four and getting the ending, or do you mean catching them all? Has anybody managed to "finish" Tetris? And how would one finish, say, Nintendo's Animal Crossing?

Are the bulk of McCain supporters intelligent and informed enough to make an actual contribution to a political discussion without help? Apparently, John McCain doesn't think so. This is tantamount to telling his supporters "You are too stupid to discuss my campaign without help."

I strongly agree. I decided to check a few of both major's video pages. Whereas the summaries of Obama's videos are largely demure "At $event_type in $place, Obama discusses $blah and proposes $widget" things, McCain's are mostly "Receive the latest official YouTube videos from the McCain campaign! Watch this video and click 'Subscribe' just above the box where this message is displayed on the video's page. John McCain for President: $url", with the occasional "and tell 10 of your friends to join you in subscribing!" thrown in.

I would understand if the McCain videos were from some zealous fan who was begging for subscriptions so he could show them to whoever was dumb enough to marvel at the large number on his profile at the local bar. Alas, it's just McCain's official YouTube account.

I might've just dismissed it as a case of Totally Radical*, but combined with massive flip-flops from his former, decent positions, it seems more like a big "fuck you" blended with a "you're an idiot" to any American who supports freedom. I don't like many of the things that all of the talked-about candidates have done, but (unless he's doing this to attract enough dumb Americans to pleasantly fucking shock us by ending the Iraq War, respecting the Constitution and reprocessing all of our nukes into sprinkled vanilla ice cream cones or whatever), there's no reason I could trust--much less vote for--John McCain.

*I'm not sure how I first found TV Tropes like a year ago; probably during my usual quest for Cutie Honey*ahem*information...but I wildly digress.

Ridiculous. That isn't ISO compliant!

Unfortunately, for most games and programming structures, the "fedex quest" mindset is a result of the structure of the programming.

Bethesda are great at trying to avoid this, and they spent a ton of time on it (compare the Morrowind to Oblivion engines, and see the designer commentary on all the work they had to do just to get the "watch a guy hide something" quest early in Morrowind to work right). But they still sometimes fall back on the trap.

The basic problem is, for a quest/story mechanic to work, you need triggers. Somewhere in the game, there's a bit or routine that checks for X, Y, Z completion requirements. "Is X in inventory and talking to Bob selecting Dialog Option 3" make for a really easy set of variables to code for, and then the game flips the bit so that X is removed from inventory. Even quests that are "Go talk to person X" are really fedex quests - you're "carrying" a bit that signifies that you're on the quest and person X is who you need to talk to, thus when you talk to them, the appropriate dialog box (which probably wasn't available before) is opened up... you've just handed in the "plot coupon" as it were.

The better a programmer hides the triggers - making you hide somewhere (in-game) and spy on someone, or specifically avoid encounters to get a really good item or piece of info - the better and more seamless the story will seem. The underlying programming still needs those triggers, though.

My suggestion? Stop buying crappy games like GTA, and go with games where the programmers put some thought into the storyline and making it fit better. The industry could survive just fine with a few less programmers making crappy movie-tie-in games (*coughIronmancough*) and a few more making really GOOD games like Thief or Oblivion.

As you say, there is the problem when a characters age does not match up with their apparent age.

So? Tropes Are Not Bad. Indeed, having more Genre Savvy readers can give a good writer more possibilities- if you know that the readers expect certain conventions, you can mess with them through inversions, subversions, deconstructions, etc.

And a completely original work would be incomprehensible- even if you allowed it to be written in an existing language, you couldn't use any of our physics, or even the concept of directed linear time.

So? Tropes Are Not Bad. Indeed, having more Genre Savvy readers can give a good writer more possibilities- if you know that the readers expect certain conventions, you can mess with them through inversions, subversions, deconstructions, etc.

And a completely original work would be incomprehensible- even if you allowed it to be written in an existing language, you couldn't use any of our physics, or even the concept of directed linear time.