Orion is an American undergraduate desperately trying to get his 21ness on the internet. When not opining profligately, he plays tabletop RPGs and writes fiction. He has been a shephard, a whitesmith, a karate teacher, and a Japanese teacher.
- 2013-01-25 06:29 - You, Blowhard - link I suspect Duncan has Lucifer gushing about the beauty of creation to solve a plot hole caused by his imported Catholic theology. Any even vaguely Catholic worldview requires that Satan be miserable. Partly so that it's clear that God is winning, but more ...
- 2013-01-25 06:11 - Kindlefluff 3: Royal Androids and Wanker Detectives - link You know, thinking over the Tungsten Method silliness, I almost wonder if it's meant as a Buffy shout-out. I don't Urban Fantasy enough to know if it's become standard, but Buffy really does spend an incredible amount of time hanging around with people wh...
- 2012-07-03 19:31 - Elephants On the Citadel - link I downloaded the Extended Cut and loaded an old save to check it out. So far the stupid three husks in the stupid cutscene with the stupid pistol have killed me 7 times. It took me literally 20 runs thrugh that scene to win the game the first t...
- 2011-11-02 21:55 - A Form of Dating - link I think a lot of this hinges on whether you look at it as a polemical tract with anecdotal evidence included or as a literary narrative with explanatory notes attached. If the book is an argument, then "prostitution is a form of dating" is a bad argument. ...
- 2011-10-28 20:03 - A Form of Dating - link Okay, so let me apologize in advance for double-posting as I know many communities frown on that. I also realize the number of pixels I've spilled on the subject is large enough that perhaps I really ought to have made it a blog post and linked it. What ...
- 2011-10-28 19:46 - A Form of Dating - link The trouble with bad press is that it so often has the opposite effect. The first time this article came around I was intrigued by the discussion, and when it popped up again the recent comments I caved in and downloaded it. I hope that Chester, who is h...
- 2011-10-13 07:59 - Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Smug. Bitch. - link But the flaw with the "Beowulf as Fantasy" meme isn't just that Beowulf is old; it's that it's largely uninterested in the things fantasy books are interested in and not addressed to the same audience. You can point to a great many differences in function...
- 2011-09-07 17:24 - Kitsch Kills - link Your link is broken and I must ask what story you have in mind.
- 2011-09-04 00:16 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link Just rewatched the movie. Noticed several things that incline me towards the autoinception reading: --Yusuf's assistant accuses Cobb of being unable to tell dreams from reality, despire apparently never having met Cobb before. --Cobb eviden...
- 2011-09-03 04:57 - NeverWhat? - link Fun fact: Neil Gaiman interviewed my Hindu Studies professor as research for American Gods. She is not at all pleased by his depiction.
- 2011-09-01 22:40 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link Meanwhile there's still the question of why Cobb is spinning the top, when nobody else is checking their totems. My pet theory for this si that he's not actually using it as a totem; he's using it as a Mal detector. It keeps spinning in his dreams becaus...
- 2011-09-01 22:38 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link The more I think about it, the more dubious I find the whole idea of totems. In what situation, exactly, is a totem supposed to be useful? We're told they're a defense against being "trapped in a dream" or something like that, but what does that even mea...
- 2011-09-01 21:48 - Doctor Who: The One With Hitler - link Descrime, Yeah, I remember being really shocked that the Future Cops regarded the Doctor as a Hero. I thought the theme of this season was that the universe at large hates and fears the Doctor?
- 2011-09-01 21:13 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link One argument I can see for a "Cobb is dreaming everything" interpretation is that he's the only person who seems to use a totem. Not only that, but the totem he is using is tainted. Mal or anyone who had rooted through Mal's memories cou...
- 2011-09-01 05:19 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link Jamie, if you choose to interpret the beach scene at the beginning of the film as a scene from near the end of the continuity being shown out-of-order, then the dinner scene where Cobb and Arthur explain dream manipulation to Saito becomes a nonsequitur. ...
- 2011-08-31 20:56 - Four Reasons Not To Let the Alleged Ambiguity Stop You Seeing Inception - link I'm leaning heavily on the "if you don't know how you got here, you're dreaming" principle. If you use that as your rule, then everything that happens "during" the film is a dream, but everything that happened "before" the film was real.
