nikki.

Aww, I really thought outside the box for #9 and it's funny that you didn't even acknowledge my answer (even to say it was wrong!). Whilst the category was 'World Leader', the clarification didn't say that it needed to be a Head of State, or the leader of some big organisation, just that these 'should be fine'. I mean, I didn't expect a point, but still! (For the curious, my second answer was: "Tom Sietas (who is currently the world's leading underwater swimmer, managing to swim 200m with just one breath)"

Well, A'tuin is better than B'tuin, because, well, A is before B in the alphabet. A-list celebrities, for example, are considered better than B-list celebrities, and so B'tuin would be a less good A;tuin. Alorael's joke was a pun; very simply, he was saying that 'Fluffy' and 'Tank' are not names you want to be choosing between - and that the right choice, B'tuin, sounds like 'between'. And now I hate myself for having to explain that.

Of course, these days mobile 'phones have spirit levels installed on them (the iPhone's is found by swiping to the right whilst in the compass app), so you no longer have to carry a hefty bit of metal (or *i's red monstrosity) unless you're looking to cause a bit of aggro. (of course, you DO look a bit ridiculous using the phone in that way)

Ah, yes, welcome to the boards! Glad we've been able to help you with your gaming.

it has been suggested that my use of the word "cool" above is slightly stupid. blackfish is a really moving and engaging documentary. and worth your time, but it is not "cool".

Wow. Yeah, just to be clear, don't mess with the talkobj.txt script, since this will affect every piece of terrain which has this script attached to it (so probably lots of other books, and signs, and stuff that throw dialog boxes up at the player). I mean. doing what Ishad says won't break anything, but it's like fixing a squeaky hinge by removing the entire door. Slarty is right. Annoyingly, though, I can't seem to find any mention of the book in the "t3Brigand Fort" scripts.

okay, so this year I saw lots of films, but lots of them were kind of underwhelming: - the hobbit 2: disappointing, and ugh. i liked sherlock, but why is Benedict Cummerbund in everything these days? definitely suffered from being a middle film, though nothing was as cringe-worthy as the goblin king scene in the first one. - now you see me: meh. this was one of several films i was dragged to. honestly didn't care for anything in it. - man of steel: entirely missable, literally, at times, since the last half of the film is basically two super-speedy guys fighting REAAAALLY fast. luckily a lot of the set pieces are repeated over and over, so you'll get an idea of what's happening. - the world's end: easily the weakest of the cornetto trilogy. watch Hot Fuzz instead - iron man 3: they really should have stopped at iron man. this one was even worse than the second, despite the cool sequence with all the suits. - star trek into darkness: seriously, this film really needed a colon in the title. SERIOUSLY. also, hey, cummerbund and lens flares. probably one of the better offerings this year though, even if Mickey Smith tried to mess it up. - the great gatsby: either it completely missed the point of the book, or it did it SO WELL, i completely missed it getting the point. need to rewatch. - alpha papa: average. probably better to watch the tv show instead. - thor 2: least favourite avenger, and less loki-time. - blackfish: this was a pretty cool documentary about killer whales and seaworld. i'd recommend a watch. - from up on poppy hill: one of my favourite ghibli films, and the first one i got to see at the cinema. probably biased, but it was great. - filth: stupidly, i did not know this was irvine welsh until i got in there. it was great, and McAvoy, who I am usually lukewarm too, was really very excellent. - rush: hey! that's the guy i was named after! - the pervert's guide to ideology: hmm. i love zizek, but i felt this wasn't nearly as engaging as the pervert's guide to cinema. wasn't as witty, the examples weren't as good, and the theory seemed stretched over too long a time. better editing would've made this infinitely better. never mind. so yeah. a mixed bag. probably From Up On Poppy Hill, Filth, and... I'm struggling to name a third film, so just those two were my favourites.

Well, but the OP clearly states that this particular book was readable once, and is now unreadable, rather than it never being readable at all (this book IS readable, and gives a third level mage spell, if I recall correctly). Anyway, as Randomizer said, try clicking on the book, or pressing 'u', and then whichever letter appears above the book you're trying to read.

Hey now, there's no need to take anybody's head off. That lightsaber would be put to much better use by carving some delicious turkey. Or toasting bread as you slice it.

Ha! You've only been here for five minutes, Edgwyn, but you seem to have sussed us all out pretty well.

So... is an android? My biggest problem with autocorrect on my iDevices is that since I type so badly and so frequently, words now get "corrected" into complete garbage.

Okay, actually... Nethergate and N:R use the same engine, I believe. Nethergate was the first game to use it, whilst N:R was the last, after Avernum 1-3 and BoA. Of course, there were many improvements to said engine along the way, which is why the game feels and looks different. Also, I'm pretty sure that outdoor dialogue is possible in BoA - I never tried it myself, but I'm sure somebody (TM?) did.

Oh right, duh. Yes. You can listen by visiting http://radio.calref.net/ and clicking the big play button. It was pretty impromptu, but if I ever do it again I'll give more notice.

So right now I am shamelessly avoiding university/life/commitment and playing some songs and talking and stuff, so if whiny english kids listening to whiny english/american kids is your thing, go ahead and listen!

Once you play the game from the other side, you'll see why the wands are smashed. Re: Pearlblossom. Part of me is sad that she wasn't given a quest in the remake (and, in fact, I even wrote a quest for her, without ever publishing it), but I think a bigger part of me is alright with it. Not everything can be fixed, or set right, even in a kingdom of fairies and magic. Just as the ending is bittersweet, some of the interactions you have with people must be too.

I await further Nalyd posts. Really interested in what's going on here.

you were there, and I was there, and... now everything's monochromatic. that's gotta be the biggest let down. going from full colour to simple black and white.

The last book of my undergrad course (*cry cry*) is Alasdair Gray's Lanark. It's probably the most fun I've had reading a text for a long while - in a module of excellent books (which have each been "the best book I've read in a long while") - Lanark really stands apart from two reasons: 1) The prose is just absolutely right for the plot. Pretty, simple, slightly menacing. Beautiful. Other books have been amazing to read (and one was Naked Lunch!) but Lanark is one of those rare books that I couldn't imagine reading in any other way. 2) It's fun. The constant jumps in time. Lanark's inability to be anybody but Lanark. The whole way in which the Institute seems to work. I'm only part way through the second book (Book One), but I also only started reading it a few hours ago, and I haven't put it down since. So yeah. Don't be put off by it's size. It's very easily conquerable.

Er, what? What does it matter who the author is, as long as the text is "good"? You seem to be implying that "good" authors have an easier time of getting published, whilst simultaneously ignoring what it is that makes them "good" or "bad". An author is only as good as the stuff they they write/the one-liners they spout on Question Time. (I mean, I agree that it's not whether fanfiction is "good" or "bad", as you say, that matters, but the rest of your post is a little puzzling.)

(disclaimer: this is probably all rubbish, but it did at least get me out of writing something i ought to really have been writing! yay!) Well, I got to the party even later than Riibu (hi!)... First of all, Goldenking and Lilith have pretty much summed up everything I want to say, and far better than I'd be able to do it.1 The metaphor of the Mona Lisa is exactly how I like to think of fanfiction (bearing in mind that I am not a writer, nor reader, of the genre); I'm much more interested in individual responses to art than I am the culturally agreed "meaning" of a particular piece, and it seems to me that this is what fanfic encourages. Characters, settings, plots - none of these are the sole property of one author, but are cultural artefacts that shape the world upon publication. If I want to create an "original" story (an impossible task!) and include a character that is self-involved, slouchy, grumpy, but ultimately a good guy, why can't I just use Han Solo? If I do that, why can't I write a story about Han Solo working in a bar, or the Queen of England getting a nose-job?2 Fiction bleeds into reality constantly, so why is it so bad that I take this stuff and stick it back into a fiction of my own choosing? Rather than repeat what Riibu said about fanfic being fun, or what Lilith said about it being a way in which people can find solace or comfort, I'll address something that I can't recall being approached anywhere else here. Going through the thread, I found a couple of things that made me think that SoT just sees fiction differently to the way in which fanfiction-writers (and myself, and mot other people in this thread) do. That's not to say SoT is wrong or right, but it might help highlight where I think he's coming from. Of everything, these are the three things I have the biggest problem coming to terms with: First of all, it's not fair to simply say "most of fanfiction is bad" (i.e. unpublishable). I think the simple truth is that "most fiction is bad" (but then I'm cultivating for myself a reputation of being elitist towards literature, so feel free to ignore me). I happen to dislike Middlemarch and its ilk. I cannot bear to read Dickens. But - I am at peace with the idea that this is somehow a huge failing on my part, and I CAN see positive elements in these texts. At the very least, I can see why they must exist. Fanfic may not be the postmodernist trash I like to sully my mind with, but it does have some of the same merit. Examples such as Fifty Shades show that fanfic is (alas!) culturally important - maybe as an example of how not to write literature, but also due to it being phenomenally successful - this alone shows our society's involvement with art much better than a by-the-numbers reimagining of a realist text ever could. (Also, just to put all this stuff about culture into relief, fanfic is probably also tons of fun to write, and probably also written by people who don't give two hoots about who is going to read it. I DO think these two points the most important, but I have to argue from a position I at least know a little about.) SoT, you seem to regard fiction as a way of imagining events and situations that are impossible in real life (ignoring the most dominant genre of fiction in the 19th and early 20th centuries by doing so!), and, at the same time, see it as a way of showing "what really happened" - fixing things down (in realistic or non-realistic settings), right? Well, that's fine on occasion, but isn't ambiguity more fun sometimes? If we were told at the end of Inception that it was, in fact, reality that Cobb had reached, would that make it a better film? Personally, knowing that he's happy regardless makes it a far more compelling ending. Why does everything need to be resolved? I can understand that the ambiguities of the real world make a fixed and final answer desirable, but isn't this simply a false promise? Hearing that "this is what happened" and believing it is, I think, slightly lazy, and, more dangerously, denies somebody the ability to imagine, to create, something else. The responsibility I felt for the progression of the plot is taken from me, and I may as well have read a Wikipedia article. As an example, Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite books, and is quite rightly considered a classic. It also more or less ignores SoT's criteria for what fiction should be; it portrays events that are quite believable and imaginable in the context of "real life", and manages to end with nothing really being settled upon. We are told a story of a story, and it's up to us as readers to try and settle those, or move on and accept that they exist as they exist. Most pertinently, though, is the fact that this story, told by the housekeeper and then to us, confuses whether or not the people described are real, or imaginary, or whether they did the things they are supposed to have done, or not. Between the housekeeper's version of events, and the version of events that are then related to us, the reader, there are about three or four versions of Heathcliff and Cathy running around. The housekeeper is retelling a story that happened, and of course changing it as she does, and this story is then changed again when it is recorded for us: H+C are, I think you can argue, fanfictionalised in the very story they appear in (and where I have failed to do so here, I'm almost certainly going to when I have more time ) Fanfiction takes endings, which may or may not be fixed, and characters, and invests in them something new. It shows a reluctance not to accept blindly what we're told, a tendency to create and reimagine, and, again, it's probably also really really fun. 1. In fact, Goldenking and Lilith are now by far my two favourite posters. As I was reading this thread I grabbed my copy of Barthes, and was all but ready to directly quote until I came to GK's post. So now I have to do something else. Hmmph. 2. http://www.jgballard...hinoplasty.html (apologies for the poor quality. it's just about readable)

Haha, boars. —nikki, who would make a joke about welcoming a bore here, if he didn't walk a lot. Rather than risk being shot next time I'm out walking, a congratulations will have to suffice. 'grats.

Fable II also does this, and Fable III sort of, but not really. So it *does* happen, but I guess just very occasionally. Edit: Oh, and I guess also Fable 1, again sort of, though it's been a while since I've played. So really, all them do this.

At this point, I think a scenario about the creation of the scenario is the only way forward.

Pretty sure Tyranicus has this set. And LOTS of others. There's one picture which is frankly ridiculous, and of which I'm very jealous.

Is this Avadon 1? You could try trashing the app and redownloading it again. Unless Jeff has released a new version, the sounds definitely work in the program - I'm listening to them right now.