Short Online Texts Thread

Music Thread

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (enjoyable while you're watching it, but dissatisfaction starts as the credits end. I largely agree with Harrison Searles's review. Problems: remake of A New Hope which refuses to admit it's a remake but pretends to be a sequel undercuts previous trilogy, is nonsensical, and lacks any suspense - who didn't see Han Solo being killed off like 20 minutes before he died, because his parallel with Obi-wan Kenobi was so unsubtle?; Abrams's style of movie-making is unbearably light and facile, to the point where blowing up multiple planets doesn't even register emotionally - and how did that particular scene even make sense? does this whole movie take place in a single solar system or something? - on top of the absurdly fast cutting which means you've forgotten half the movie before you've finished walking out of the theater; protagonist is a Mary Sue; the antagonist is risible - apparently the true power of the Dark Side is not anger & aggression but pomade & petulance, and I certainly cannot imagine being intimidated by Adam Driver intoning "if only you knew the pouter of the Dark Side" since he looks like he should be more concerned about acne & dates than agents & droids (remarkably, Driver is actually 32 years old); special effects are overly dominant except where they exhibit a bizarre lack of imagination/ambition, as no space battle in it is remotely as awe-inspiring as Return's Endor fleet battle or Revenge's opening Coruscant fleet battle, and even the lightsaber battles are a major letdown; no dialogue is particularly memorable, and the mish-mash of scenes borrowed from the earlier films winds up destroying any kind of mythic effect or drama. Was BB-8 the only original and genuinely good part of the movie? Entirely possible. In the end, it is just another Abrams movie: slick, SFX-heavy, and as substantial & satisfying as movie theater popcorn. In a way, it makes me long for the prequel trilogy; as barmy as opening a movie with tax disputes was or including Jar Jar Binks, Lucas at least tried for more than mediocrity & repetition. Let us hope that this is analogous to Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: a movie made dull & unoriginal because the new financial backer is worried about losing the investment, but as it made so much money, they could afford to be more interesting in 2.0.)

Music Thread

Did you learn from it? Improved your Brawl-agency?

Story time! Shortly after Brawl came out, I got pretty good at it. I could beat all my friends without much effort, so I decided to enter in a local tournament. In my first round I went up against the best player in my state, and I managed to hit him once, lightly, over the course of two games. I later became pretty good friends and practiced with him regularly.

At some point I completely eclipsed my non-competitive friends, to the extent that playing with them felt like a chore. All I had to do was put them in certain situations where I knew how they would react and then punish. It became a simple algorithm. Get behind them in shield, wait for the roll, punish. Put them in the air, jump after them, wait for the airdodge, punish. Throw them off the ledge, wait for the jump, punish. It felt like I was playing a CPU.

Meanwhile, I still couldn't reliably beat the best player from my state. One day, after he took off a particularly gruesome stock, I paused and, exasperated, asked for advice. We watched a replay and he showed me how I responded to certain situations in the same way every time, leading to a punish. My habits were less obvious than those of my friends, but they were still habits. He said, "you play like a robot, in a bad way."

So yeah. In that context, I've downgraded friends to CPUs because of their predictability, and been downgraded to a CPU by omega, because of my predictability.

Music Thread

An exact copy of me may be "me" from an identity perspective, but it is a separate entity from a utilitarian perspective. The death of one is still a tragedy, even if the other survives.

You should know this intuitively. If a rogue trolley is careening toward an unsuspecting birthday cake, you'll snatch it out of the way. You won't just say, "eh, in another time that cake will survive," and then watch it squish. Unless you're some sort of monster.

I am impressed. The production quality on this is excellent, and the new introduction by Rob Bensinger is approachable for new readers. I will definitely be recommending this over the version on this site.

I didn't want to tell it to you before because I thought it might prejudice your decision unfairly.

If Draco has has the last half-hour of his memory sealed off, then why does Harry say these words to him? Shouldn't Draco respond, "What decision?"

Unless it's a more nuanced memory charm, such that he only subconsciously remembers the conversation.