The thread where you post your mildly unpopular opinions

[Atomic Ant]

Isn't that called "high fantasy," generally? Low fantasy being things like Encanto where life is mostly normal but there's a little bit of magic? I know there are old hollywood terms for different kinds of fantasy, like "sword and sorcery" from the medieval european fairytale type stuff, but "sword and sandals" for gladiator bible times type stuff

High fantasy means it takes place in another world. Low fantasy is things that cant happen but on Earth

 

[Chromeo]

High fantasy means it takes place in another world. Low fantasy is things that cant happen but on Earth

King Arthur is high fantasy but happens on Earth, isn't it?

 

[Meat Target]

King Arthur is high fantasy but happens on Earth, isn't it?

No, because IIRC it's supposed to be in England.

Technically, even Tolkien's Legendarium is low fantasy because Middle Earth is supposed to be Europe in a mythological distant past, having become our world as magic left.

Similarly, 40k would also fit that bill, because it is our galaxy in a hypothetical distant future.

Nerd shit, but the codification of certain genres is bad. Especially fantasy and mechs.

Fantasy can, in theory, be anything you imagine. These days, fantasy means medieval Europe with elves, dwarves, and dragons.
Mecha can be any giant "robot" from Titanfall to Power Rangers, but now it means a simulation where your mechs generate heat and have reactors that go nuclear.

I get your drift, that genres can fall into clichés and formulas. But there's only a finite number of narratively-coherent stories one can tell before they become retreads. There's a reason the Monomyth/Hero's Journey is a thing.

Brandon Sanderson once made the analogy of writing a story like cooking a meal. It doesn't necessarily have to be one-of-a-kind to be enjoyable. It can still follow a known "recipe", so to speak.

 

[nycifer]

What would you recommend? Asking because I never see anything mentioned outside of that. Rarely someone will mention a Star Trek episode he wrote, but that's about it.

There is:

"Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman"
A Boy and his Dog (which helped serve as inspiration for the original Fallout games)

There was also that time he sued Orion Pictures because he claimed that the Terminator's premise was lifted from a 1964 episode work he did called 'Soldier' from The Outer Limits.

Harlan may be seen as kind of a dick, but he was someone who really went out of his way to protect his works. I do admire that kind of quality in someone, you create something and somebody thinks they can just carelessly copy it like the fucking chinese regularly do, you go out and sue their balls off over it.

 

[King Metalia]

If you can't get a GF become the GF is a great idea.

 

[Meat Target]

Harlan may be seen as kind of a dick

"Kind of" a dick? Let's list what he did:

1. Got banned from the campus of Texas A&M for calling their ROTC cadets the "next generation of American Nazis";
2. Mailed a dead animal to someone who pissed him off;
3. Responded to a fan's mail by telling her to "stop interrupting me";
4. Sexually assaulted a woman in public at a convention;
5. Went to bat for Ed Kramer, the founder of DragonCon and a SFWA member who was convicted of multiple sex crimes against children, and compared the prosecutors charging Kramer to the Spanish Inquisition.

Harlan Ellison wasn't just a dick. He was an evil bastard who is most likely in Hell. Fuck him. Do not sweep for him.

 

[AnOminous]

What would you recommend? Asking because I never see anything mentioned outside of that. Rarely someone will mention a Star Trek episode he wrote, but that's about it.

Just for starters, literally every story in Ellison Wonderland. There are 15 in there.

Got banned from the campus of Texas A&M for calling their ROTC cadets the "next generation of American Nazis";

So he had a retarded opinion shared by most of his leftist peers.

Mailed a dead animal to someone who pissed him off;

By "pissed him off" do you mean "stole from him" because that's what actually happened.

Responded to a fan's mail by telling her to "stop interrupting me";

So he was rude to someone. Wow. Heinous crime there.

Sexually assaulted a woman in public at a convention;

If you mean the Connie Willis thing, that was the pathetic act of an old man and not intended as an assault. It was massively overblown, even if it was a boob grope.

Went to bat for Ed Kramer, the founder of DragonCon and a SFWA member who was convicted of multiple sex crimes against children, and compared the prosecutors charging Kramer to the Spanish Inquisition.

Most of the retards of SFWA thought he was innocent, and quite unreasonably, until it was proven beyond even an unreasonable doubt that he wasn't. This is obviously the worst thing he did. The other things are trivialities.

Also he punched Charles Platt in the face, but that's not deserving of Hell.

 

[Pikanic]

Not American; starting get a bit annoyed and fatigued by Trump. I agree with 99% of what he's doing and wished our own leaders had such balls, I just wish he'd shut up in general, so our dumb media would stop talking about him every single day.

And if he can sort the world out before my remortgage is due, that would be great.

 

[BIG BILL HELL'S]

Responded to a fan's mail by telling her to "stop interrupting me";

I'm sorry, this is fucking funny, which possibly counts as my mildly unpopular opinion, I guess.

 

[Not A Bunny]

I just wish he'd shut up in general, so our dumb media would stop talking about him every single day.

They wouldn't stop. In fact, they'd ramp it up with the idea that he's hiding things.

The press will not ever let it go. Never.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

We should use nigga as a synonym for philosopher
"Many Enlightenment niggas in France were Freemasons..."
"Greek niggas proved the distance of the Sun..."
"Chinese nigga Confucius taught..."
It amuses me.

 

[Cardef1121]

Doomers are as bad, if not worse, than the things they complain about.

 

[enbysarentreal]

I wished "gamers" would stop sperging about Sony no longer making Playstation discs.
I'd rather download games instead of going to GameStop, which should have gone out of business 10 years ago.

 

[UniNawzhi]

I wouldn't say mildly unpopular, but in specific circumstances I think victim "blaming" isn't bad and is even sometimes necessary.

The amount of times when I hear someone getting into a relationship with a person who obliviously doesn't respect them, the person claiming that they find it "attractive" or "appealing", then shockingly wind up being abused (sometimes to the point where they have to get a restraining order against their abuser) just makes me want to tell those people that they reap what they sow. Especially when they tell others that try to warn or help them that they're the problem...

 

[The Last Stand]

I know stacking cards isn't a rule in UNO, but it should be.

 

[nycifer]

I wouldn't say mildly unpopular, but in specific circumstances I think victim "blaming" isn't bad and is even sometimes necessary.

The amount of times when I hear someone getting into a relationship with a person who obliviously doesn't respect them, the person claiming that they find it "attractive" or "appealing", then shockingly wind up being abused (sometimes to the point where they have to get a restraining order against their abuser) just makes me want to tell those people that they reap what they sow. Especially when they tell others that try to warn or help them that they're the problem...

Some people have to the learn the hard way of things. Others, multiple times.

If you're always finding yourself abused then maybe you ought to question your judgment of another's character. I can't sympathize a lot with those who always wind up in abusive relationships. "I CAN'T HELP IT! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!!" Do you mean to tell me that you don't have enough brain power to exercise what ability you have to do something about it? Like call the cops and reach out to services available to deal with this?

"Nobody listens to me! The police don't listen to me!" I find that shit hard to believe. If you document, don't retaliate where the scales will tip against you and keep your story straight, you will be believed. Police are going to have a hard time determining a decision when your mouth spits out your abusive relationship history when it was probably your fault in the first place.

It's all of those women who like the 'bad boys' in guys. Oh they're so bad that they ride a motorcycle you can just hop on to from behind, until you figure out how he's a multi-time felon with a bad track record by the time you're beaten on the floor bloodied and bruised because you didn't do what he wanted, right at the moment he asked to, whatever it was.

Yeah the appeal starts to rub off, doesn't it? But this is where a lot of feminism stems from, are dumbshit women who make constant poor choices in picking guys they want to date who're all-around shitbags. They get into a string of bad relationships until they commit to the "MEN BAD! MEN ALL BAD!" rhetoric.

 

[Mysterious Girlfriend X]

The success of Game of Thrones is one of the worst things to happen to Western culture. It helped raise a generation of lazy & childish hacks who equate shallow cynicism and edginess with maturity, and in doing so helped ruin fiction in general and fantasy in particular.

Martin is a shitty writer and a lazy one to boot.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Not American; starting get a bit annoyed and fatigued by Trump. I agree with 99% of what he's doing and wished our own leaders had such balls, I just wish he'd shut up in general, so our dumb media would stop talking about him every single day.

I'm honestly just sick of seeing his shriveled, rapidly-deteriorating face every day. It sounds petty putting it that way, and it's my fault for being terminally online, but I've seen his face every day for the last two years, every day for the period of 2016-2020 and intermittently in the intervening period. I have close friends in my personal circle I don't see that frequently.

I'm also not American, and I don't even really care what he says or does. I'm just sick of seeing him every day.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I wouldn't say mildly unpopular, but in specific circumstances I think victim "blaming" isn't bad and is even sometimes necessary.

The amount of times when I hear someone getting into a relationship with a person who obliviously doesn't respect them, the person claiming that they find it "attractive" or "appealing", then shockingly wind up being abused (sometimes to the point where they have to get a restraining order against their abuser) just makes me want to tell those people that they reap what they sow. Especially when they tell others that try to warn or help them that they're the problem...

If you're always finding yourself abused then maybe you ought to question your judgment of another's character.

Agreed 100%. I won't rant too much, but they claim it's impossible to see until it's too late, but everyone in their circle is telling them, he has a string of convictions for drugs, theft, and domestic abuse, has been married 6 times by the time he's 35, all of these are red flag they willingly ignore. He's not going to treat you differently. You can't change him. The warning signs are blatant and obvious but women willingly chooses to ignore them.

And then they complain "where have all the good men gone", while around good men that they dismiss for dumb reasons. He had a nerdy hobby, he's "short" (even though he's 6.1), or he has what Americans call a blue collar job.

I have more, but will leave it there for now.


Tax:
No sure if unpopular, or just not talked about. But I'm getting a bit sick of how doing anything different past the age of 35 is a "midlife crisis". Make a big ticket purchase you couldn't afford or justify before? Midlife crisis. Want to do something fun like a holiday or day trip? Midlife crisis. Take up a new hobby? Midlife crisis. They don't sell the socks you used to buy any more so you try some different ones? You're not going to find meaning by changing the colour of your socks bro.

And that's before you get to dating. Oof.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I allow as distance makes a difference, but I can’t help but notice that a lot of the same people that get indignant about the Kirk gravedancing also like to make jokes about John Lennon (a dude that sang songs) getting ventilated by a mad man. Because he had wrong opinions.