Obvious jokes are obvious…
Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find ???? https://t.co/VEv7ihyqG6
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) February 11, 2021
… but I think we’re okay, until somebody introduces the pigs to Red Bull. Or bitcoin.
In other news:
im sorry there has never been a good video game movie bye https://t.co/MtTrbmJuH0
— John DeVore (@JohnDeVore) February 12, 2021
Can’t have your hobby hijacked by Twitter cool kids if it’s too lame for them to publicly admit they play the game.
— Starfish Who Just Wants To Grill (@IRHotTakes) February 9, 2021
There are no new ideas left, part infinity:
— Sharon Kuruvilla (@Sharon_Kuruvila) February 9, 2021
But there are infinite variations on the human capacity to believe in the impossible…
BOOM. Your first look at TRUE BELIEVER: a long excerpt in @vulture about the scintillating, fraud-filled saga of Stan Lee Media, one of the most spectacular failures of the Dot-Com Bubble: https://t.co/6eB7NxCyp2
— Abraham Riesman ????? ??????? (@abrahamjoseph) February 12, 2021
Major Major Major Major
It is possible to do a good Dungeons & Dragons ‘adaptation’–Community did, twice–but they’re the only good ones I’ve seen.
As for that Powerpuff thing, I saw that, and… I mean yeah. Why. Not everything needs a grimdark reboot. Frankly I’d love to see a glittery reboot of some grimdark properties.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find”
Can they do it with their dicks? Otherwise they an’t true gamers.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Major Major Major Major: Viva la Dirt League does it right
https://youtu.be/14nYV7h-IiM
Emma
As someone who grew up loving the Powerpuff Girls and video games, this purported series is yet another example of “edgy” writers equating “mature” with “grimdark.” Thanks, I hate it. I feel bad for Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky, and everyone else who helped to create the original show having to see this abomination take form.
dnfree
Way back in the 1990s, there was an article in the magazine Computerworld, which was then must-read for computer professionals, about pigs playing a pong-like video game for fun, not receiving rewards. They had a big joystick they could grip with their mouths, and could play when they liked, which they did. The article claimed that pigs were the only animal found up to that time that seemed to enjoy the game in the sense that humans would. So this is now being rediscovered?
It’s actually part of the reason I became a vegetarian. Since then we’ve seen a lot more evidence of animals doing things just because they enjoy the activity.
evodevo
May I say in defense of pigs that that snout of theirs is a magnificent sniffing and manipulating machine…not surprised they can play games using it…
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
“Can they do it with their dicks? Otherwise they an’t true gamers.”
I’ve read that pigs have corkscrew shaped dicks. Probably work better than opposable thumbs.
What kind of respite thread is this? These mad scientists are playing God, and teaching the pigs to take over, with their dicks. If there is a containment failure at that lab, and those pigs escape, we are doomed.
Covid schmovid, this is dangerous.
Viva BrisVegas
Where were these guys in 2017 when we needed someone to train a pig how to be president?
RaflW
They’re coming for us. “Four legs good, two legs bad!
eta: I would like to see how they sit in video rockers, though.
Just Some Fuckhead
Speaking of DnD, I’m interested to know commenters’ DnD alignment as it applies to their inner self. Here’s the list.
I’m chaotic good which is why I get so animated about the the tyranny of the majority. Mrs. Fuckhead is Lawful Neutral. I’d love to hear others alignments. It could be revealing.
evodevo
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I would not be surprised at all, considering their penis is corkscrew-shaped and flexible…
Gravenstone
@Major Major Major Major: I will say this for the first attempt at a live action D&D movie – I had never seen an actual thespian of note (Jeremy Irons) chew scenery with such gusto and relish prior to that movie.
RaflW
@Just Some Fuckhead: I only ever played Monty Hall one-day DnD games. Not really substantial enough to have developed an Alignment.
gene108
There a couple of low-ish budget “D&D movies” made 15-20 years ago. They seemed to be generic straight to video sword and sorcery movies that someone decided to license the D&D brand name for to slap on it.
Major Major Major Major
@Just Some Fuckhead: I am neutral good, the laziest alignment.
Just Some Fuckhead
@RaflW: I’m not asking for a character alignment. I’m saying look at the list and peg your own personality to one of the 9 alignments.
Ken
How about those adaptations wossname did, Peter Jackson? I thought they were pretty good at capturing the flavor of the game[*]. The guy over at 20sidedtale agrees.
[*] Except for the unnecessary renaming of halflings to “hobbits” and treants to “ents”. Maybe he couldn’t get the rights?
randy khan
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Extremely boring – Lawful Good, with occasional shadings towards Neutral Good. Although in my DnD days (back when it was all on paper, I hesitate to admit), I kind of liked playing Neutral Neutral characters. And I’d rather have played a Chaotic Evil character than a Lawful Evil character.
Just Some Fuckhead
@randy khan: I always played chaotic neutral.
NotMax
Never seen a littler sumthin’ called Star Wars?
//
Ken
@Just Some Fuckhead: XKCD also provides a handy chart alignment chart for the scientifically-minded, as well as a version for, um, I’m not really sure – fry cooks?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ken: We’re just trying to ferret out the evil motherfuckers here. :) What is your alignment?
gene108
I wonder how sexed up Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup will be in the CW’s grim and dark reboot of Powerpuff Girls?
This could be the most disturbing thing.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I think the recent success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie has caused this in part.
Does anybody remember when video games were “just for kids” and if you played them as an adult you just had to be a maladjusted, immature loser who needed to grow up? That it was a “waste of time”?
I vaguely remember this attitude among older people when I was a kid 15-20 years ago. I wonder when exactly there stopped being an apparent stigma against video games and adults liking them/playing them?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
@Major Major Major Major:
Funny enough, the original cartoon already did this in an episode:
https://powerpuffgirls.fandom.com/wiki/The_City_of_Clipsville?file=Capture-20120507-102817.png
Ken
@Just Some Fuckhead: Oh, call it lawful good. We are talking about observable behavior, not the twisted power fantasies with which I lull myself to sleep?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ken: It’s the inner self, not the facade you put up to achieve your malign goals.
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. ’nuff said.
LOLs more than balance the limits of the budget. Hits every wrought iron nail square on the head.
:)
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major
Triumph of the Will: The Musical.
//
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I remember people talking about this attitude but I’m not sure I ever actually encountered it.
Ken
@Just Some Fuckhead: Tricky. It’s facades all the way down. Even I have no idea what I’m really like at the core.
(Which, for a change, I’m kind of being serious about. I’ve not been tested in any significant way. I like to think I’m good, but would that hold up under pressure?)
Martin
This is what happens when you have 60 year olds greenlight projects they themselves would never watch.
Ken
@NotMax: Ripoff of Springtime for Hitler.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Emma:
As much as I liked the PPG and Samurai Jack, there’s a some problematic elements in those shows. Samurai Jack’s depiction of an overcrowded future Earth full of aliens could be read as xenophobic imo
Just Some Fuckhead
lol
Louisiana GOP voted unanimously to censure Bill Cassidy for his impeachment conviction vote. I keep saying no matter how crazy you think nationally elected Republicans are, as you descend down through the party levels, they get crazier and crazier, ending with the GOP base who are basically stupid savages with guns. The GOP is literally riding the tiger.
Doug R
@Major Major Major Major: Ahem. Lord of the Rings.
Doug R
@Emma: After 2 seasons of “Harley Quinn” I got high hopes for a 20 something girrrrls hero show.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ken: You have to read through the alignments and test each of them against super secret you.
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Sure. Steal my answer. I ain’t mad. Just disappoint.
Just Some Fuckhead
The same people who think millennials are teens and early twenty-somethings.
Martin
Man, wait until you guys see the adult Velma series coming to HBO Max.
Major Major Major Major
@NotMax: fair, I was thinking of like, non-indie stuff.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Oh my god. This. It grinds my gears so bad. That, and the belief among Gen Zers that anybody over 45 is a “boomer”
Boomer and Millennial have just become synonyms for old and young
Ken
@Just Some Fuckhead: They should kick him out of the GOP and force him to caucus as an independent for the remainder of his term.
NotMax
Saw out of the corner of the eye some sort of vending machine (ATM?) at Safeway that was marked “Cash or Bitcoin.”
No idea what it does. Didn’t stop to check it out.
Baud
@Martin:
She can solve my case any time.
ruemara
@Just Some Fuckhead: As some would guess, I’m Chaotic Good. Good things done crazy, I guess.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You sure about that? Many of them were just good people.
@Doug R: I just couldn’t take 5 minutes of that show.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
This is true.
Citizen Alan
@Gravenstone: “NOOOW IS YOUR TIIMME TO DIIIIIEEE!”
Martin
Sitting here watching my daughter play Borderlands 3 with a friend of hers, and having completed all of the games myself, I cannot conceive of what they hope to get out of these in terms of plot for a movie. I mean, these are tongue-in-cheek loot shooters. There’s not a lot there. Certainly not enough to validate making a movie. We have no interest in seeing one.
Last of Us is different. There’s something there to work with.
RSA
I played my first game of D&D as an adult, and I never got the hang of it and felt dumb the entire time. For example, we come across a battle between some ugly-looking creatures and an encampment of humans, and right away my fellow players start figuring out how to kill the creatures. Me, I first want to figure out which side the good guys are on, one or the other, or both, or neither. That’s not in the spirit of the game, I guess.
Martin
@Baud: Not sure she’s interested in your kind of cases.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I have a pretty dim view of Boomers. I was working with an IT consultant who somehow got on a rant about Millennials, clearly confusing them with teenagers today. I let him finish and then I told him how bad Boomers (his generation) suck; a generation who was given everything by Big Gov and think they earned it.
ruemara
@RSA: I’ve been playin Warcraft for over a decade and I am so over the actual xenophobia of “they look different, ergo they are an evil faction opposed to us.”
West of the Rockies
@Major Major Major Major:
So, Donnie Darko’s Very Special Christmas?
Just Some Fuckhead
@RSA: I only ever played one game of DnD “in person” (it was a chat board). I was killed by a tree on my first move.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yeah, I actually had this happen to me. I was like, who are you calling a Boomer. I’m Gen X, asshole. The best generation ever.
West of the Rockies
@gene108:
Tom Hanks’ Mazes and Monsters comes to mind…
Just Some Fuckhead
@ruemara: Chaotic Goods of the world, unite. That’s three of us.
Mike in DC
Fallout, done as a series, makes some degree of sense. I think that’s a good fit, particularly if you have good writers and actors.
Martin
@RSA: It is, but it depends on the group you are playing in. You can play D&D as a pack of Mary Sues that always know who is good and bad, or you can play with a DM who is going to hold you to your alignment and introduce those kinds of play elements, and throw you curves like you just wiped out a band of innocent creatures that was being watched over by the local powerful good group, and now you’re a criminal, etc.
I will say, DMing with evil party members and mixed good and evil is pretty challenging. Not for the inexperienced DM, but it does sort of mandate that kind of playstyle.
West of the Rockies
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Why am I not surprised, Goku, that you know this?
ruemara
@gene108: Thank you for adding to my nightmares.
@West of the Rockies: I really liked that movie. What I can recall of it.
It was a tv movie, wasn’t it?
Martin
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think that was Next Door, not D&D.
Just Some Fuckhead
lol
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Cursed comment. But I’ll vote for ya Baud!
@ruemara:
Possibly. It’s been nearly 20 years since I watched it
Just Some Fuckhead
@Martin:
Like a killer tree.
West of the Rockies
@ruemara:
Yes, it was… very early Hanks
Just looked it up–1982. Almost four decades ago! How is that possible???
Ken
@Martin: All Baud has to do is put on a phosphorescent rubber fright mask and fisherman’s raincoat and hang out at an abandoned amusement park.
Just Some Fuckhead
Like he isn’t doing that already.
Martin
@Just Some Fuckhead: Killer trees aren’t really a curve. Most trees have murder deep in their bole but generally people are aware enough of the threat to dodge their sinister attacks. However, we’re all susceptible to being caught off-guard at any time.
After your ban is over, be sure to spread word of this threat to your neighbors.
Ascap_scab
Live action Powerpuff Girls? Do I really have to remind anyone of Howard the Duck?
Just Some Fuckhead
Anyone else play the DnD games on the old MajorBBS like Tele-arena, Crosswinds, Forbidden Lands?
Ken
Not as pithy as “blech”, but taglines are a matter of personal taste.
Martin
Regarding film adaptations of video games – they’re all doomed to fail because the whole point of good video games is that you have agency in the story. Film is a more reductive art form than games.
Ken
@Just Some Fuckhead: Those are campaign events, and his milage reimbursements are perfectly legal.
NotMax
@West of the Rockies
Even at the time, really awful “D&D is dangerous and will rot your mind” polemic.
NotMax
@Martin
Well, there’s the interactive episode of Black Mirror, which is more a novelty than an entirely successful experiment.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@West of the Rockies:
Well, I did watch PPG as a kid a lot lol. Even saw the movie in the theaters
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
Well, the Sonic movie broke that mold imo
CROAKER
D&D video games take over Nobodywood? WTF anyone watch the Tubes of U? Clan Mercer’s Roll of Crits crushed all others.
To the Nine Hells with Wizards of the Coast.
Asmodeus smiles as Hasbro consolidates it gripe on the games industry in the Trumpian State of Merica.
Long LIVE the GAYGX! Yeah another shitty D&D movie. Anyone up for a game? 5th is fine w me.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sounds like your experience with NextDoor.
LurkerNoLonger
i remember seeing Mortal Kombat in 1995 when I was 15 and enjoying it. I haven’t seen it since so I’m not sure how it holds up.
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Detective Pikachu was pretty fun.
Just Some Fuckhead
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Martin beat you there.
NotMax
Still have the Dark Tower game from ages past. Although the box is in an advanced state of decomposition the contents are fine (and working).
First time I used the Instant Pot was extra amusing because it makes some of the same beeping sounds as the game does.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Just Some Fuckhead: I noticed as I read on, was working here and took a break.
brantl
@Just Some Fuckhead: I am a boomer, the government hasn’t given me shit, if you’re going to hate me anyway, what do I have to do to get my free stuff that I never got, that you’ll hate me for, anyway?
Just Some Fuckhead
@brantl: I don’t hate you for being a Boomer. I hate you for that ridiculous response.
CROAKER
@NotMax: That is worth 1000s of gold pieces…
dm
@Major Major Major Major: Stranger Things isn’t bad as a D&D adaptation.
RSA
@ruemara: Yeah, that was what made it my only game.
LOL.
This is exactly what more experienced players told me afterwards, though I was skeptical. Thanks. I may give it another shot some day.
Just Some Fuckhead
@RSA: I share your skepticism. Actual in person DnD seems to have some inherent bias issues.
laura
I completely missed the entirety of computer gaming with a very brief exception when elder sibling got an Atari Pong game. I feel like there is no receptive port in my being for gaming. Spouse doesn’t game and we have no spawn. From the outside it looks like a really good way to have an alternative community with lots of self selection. So I guess what I’m asking is if this onion on my rope belt goes with these sensible shoes.
N M
It is extremely easy to know one’s own alignment. Behold, peasants, the email sign-off alignment chart:
https://mobile.twitter.com/juliarburnham/status/1159901209378951168
(perhaps some front pager will embed)
Just Some Fuckhead
@laura:
lol
Thank you for that comment and please tell me how I subscribe to your newsletter.
Just Some Fuckhead
@N M: And yet no one is sharing their alignment. That tells me we got a lot of evil motherfuckers down in this piece.
J R in WV
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Old BBS was CompuServe… they bought up an exercise center, and the racketball courts were the machine rooms… That was in the mid-1980s. one of my classmates was hired in to that org in 1984…
brantl
@Just Some Fuckhead: Sure, you say that now.
Just Some Fuckhead
@J R in WV: Start with an apology and we’ll move on from there.
Another Scott
@N M: Hehe!
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Just Chuck
@Ken: Far as I know, one can’t actually be ejected from the D or R party. They can refuse to back you when you run, but nothing stops you from claiming the affiliation.
Just Chuck
@Martin: I dunno, there’s some deeper subtext involving the Eridians, the Sirens, and their connection, which could have some legs for a decent writer to run with. Still, would be a better idea to just take the concept and divorce it from the otherwise silly (deliberately so) game.
As for D&D, I soured on it pretty quickly when I decided to play a marginally Evil character, had to pick that alignment, then ran into a party member casting “Detect Evil” and deciding I was The Enemy from then on. D&D’s alignment system is infantile — the best way to enjoy D&D is to ignore at least half its rules.
I’ve always been a fan of the White Wolf RPG series, which feel to me like they have “just enough rules” to keep it from being mere collaborative storytelling, but no more.