Evony, the MMO of highest quality

As one may know, sex and negative publicity attract attention. Knowing these important basic facts, the good people behind Evony, a browser-based MMO, decided to heavily invest into both aspects to promote their lovechild.

I'm not quite sure, but I have a nagging feeling that they got carried away too much at some point.

Exhibit A:



I think I don't really need to explain the UNNOTICEABLE part of this picture. I should, however, point out that the game has nothing to do with it. Perhaps it's just so bad and pathetic, though, that one might need to play it UNNOTICEABLY.

Exhibit B:



Yes, now we're getting there. This game is a shower simulator! And the graphics, they are so photo-realistic!

Exhibit 3:



Exhibit 3 comes complete with two exhibits, however, unlike Exhibit 2, the lady hasn't played the Shower Simulator Kingdom yet. But when she does, she plays secretly!

Maturity in Bioware's Dragon Age

According to an interview with one of Dragon Age designers, 

Making a decision early, deciding to make a mature game, to target an older audience, then knowing that all the way through... you play and it's like, "that's really challenging. I wasn't expecting that kind of motivation for these characters". That mixes up with, "I wasn't expecting to have that much sex". It goes into the same space. It works as one cohesive unit. It's kind of like having a blue period.

I wasn't expecting to have so much tripe. This is really challenging, I didn't expect Bioware's kind of motivation to let them sink this low.

"I wasn't expecting to have so much sex". Heh. Maturity. Heh. Blood, guts, gore. Heh.

Various fun stuff to do with texts

Vocabprofile

Last week's intensive course brought with it some interesting new links and nifty things to do with people's texts. One of them was from the Lexical Tutor website, a bot that calculates the complexity of the text for a second language reader.

A brief explanation may be in order, should you try to use the bot. K1 words are the words that are the bare necessities for the reader to even slightly understand what the text is about. K2 is the next step that enables the second language user to be able to communicate with a remote success. 

These are technically very basic words that are most frequently used and accessed by language speakers and learners and are the crucial part to understanding the text. The higher the total percentage of the first two items combined, the more accessable the text is supposed to be.

Other items on the lists, on the right side of the result breakdown are the word counts. Since a word can be categorised by different systems, the bot tries to address this in its algorythms and counts words as 1) Tokens (Each word is individually counted, no matter how many times it repeats), 2) Types (One word - one type, if it repeats through the text it won't be counted) and 3) Word Families (Inflected, derived and shortened forms of a word each count as a word family, for example, familiar - unfamiliar - familiarise - familiarity are all the same word family unit)

It's quite a neat bot and anyone concerned about the accessibility of their text ought to check it out some time. And waste their time pasting random texts into it as well, to spite people like Stephen King. Ghghgh.

Gematriculator

The Gematriculator is an oldie, but it's still an entertaining little bot that supposedly calculates your writings' evilness value. If you intend to become a pile of seething malevolence but lack a little guidance, you ought to start here (or pay me to write a guidebook about it). I do have to warn that it's not quite necessarily a reliable means of assessing a text, but it does calculate the "evil"-sounding compounds and words in an alright-ish manner.

Gender Guesser

A rather useless, but still fairly amusing bot named Gender Guesser. If you can't guess the gender of a text's author, you can try pasting it in for... well, some sort of a result. I'm going to test this on some test subjects and then, perhaps, report the finds (aka I probably won't bother), but, if any of you get called a female when you aren't, or vice versa, do tell of your finds!

The Gender Genie

Something I found through Gender Guesser just now, a bot that looks a lot more comprehensive and transparent and actually useable in academic research, writing and creating a fake gender identity. In fact, I'd recommend skipping Gender Guesser altogether and going for the Gender Genie if you want to mess around, as on top of being more comprehensive, it offers the option to choose from fiction, non-fiction and blog styles. Blog. Damn I hate that word.

Fat-Free Mayonnaise

Tastes like sugared-up hyena puke.

Don't try.

Ever.

Sexuality aspect in literature

I have an important announcement to make. Are we ready? Are we? Good.

Nobody cares about the sexuality of the guy that wrote that thing about stuff. Get over it.

Seriously, when you're reading, oh, I don't know, Harry Potter (god save you if you do, though), are you thinking, "Hmm, I wonder, is Rowling a flaming lesbian?"

If the answer is yes, and it's not in context of perverted fantasies, the italics of the second paragraph define your group and status in life. Get over it and please, never reproduce.

You see, we get it that some of the great people were gay, and some of the gay people were great. Awesome. Hooray. So what? A lot of great people were straight but we just don't make a point of it. And guess what? If you feel like advocating gay rights and stuff, how about you become gay and write something great instead of spewing academic (and otherwise) crap on (and into) the heads of the unsuspecting population? Can't do it? Then shut the hell up.

P.S: The author has nothing against homosexuals, heterosexuals, writing, academic writing and kittens. He does hate stupid trends, however.

P.P.S: This article was brought to you by the Class, Sexuality, Gender approach to literature analysis.

Antagonists

So, following my line of inquiry about literature and fiction as such in general...

What makes a good antagonist? I'd mean an "active" antagonist here, rather than "forces of nature", "life itself" and other such fanciful things. In other words, what makes for a good bad guy to you people?

Dragon Age: Origins

David Gaider, one of the lead designers/writers for BioWare, charged with writing an introductory novel to the setting, writes:

"Standing gingerly, Maric listened for where the voices were coming from. As soon as he ascertained their source, he headed in the opposite direction. It was an awkward hobble at first. His legs were bruised and cramped and he might have broken some bones, but he ignored the pain. With effort, he grabbed on to low-hanging branches and pulled himself farther into the darkness. They would pay for what they had done. If he did only one thing as King, he would make them pay."

Sigh. Same old crap. Dead royal parents, surviving heir, evil necromancer armies taking over a kingdom, warrior maidens, heroic rogues, revenge. It's as if people used 3% of their brain capacity in order to barf out this sort of pompous drivel.

Oh wait, they do.

The Male Opinion On Sex And The City

So a while earlier I got to see the Sex And The City movie, and I had such an estrogen injection right there I couldn't write a straight review until now. I mean, seriously, do you know what all those bags, blings, shoes and dresses do to a non-metrosexual male that's not very much in touch with his feminine side? I go to watch a movie that has "Sex" in it and what did I get? Fashion? Do those two equate for women? What? What?!

As an aside, I suppose that "sex" could refer to just the sexuality thing, since there was a token gay character and as gender is purely biological while the sexuality is an identity thing... I forgot the point I was making here so I move on.

So the movie called Sex and the City is about this woman that's about to get married so she has to get the best dress ever, the best house ever and the best spot ever in a public goddamned library with four hundred guests attending because she has a point to make. What's that point? I dunno really, probably that best guy ever has the fattest wallet ever to pay for the awesomest wedding ever or that she has a bipolar personality (as we later get to see when she finally gets the actual wedding off in some crammed office - woops, I just made a spoiler).

Now, if the film was actually about what the name claims it is, I'd say that about five minutes before or after the introduction of the clothes they'd be discarded as unnecessary, but the film director has different things in mind! And those things are called Product Placement! Gucci bags! Somebody's Rings! Named Dresses! 

Eventually, they collect enough sponsor money to move on with the plot - the guy, like, well, any normal guy, has enough of the nonsense, albeit in a horribly unrealistic way (Oh yes, that's what men do, doubt the whole wedding thing because a drunken friend of the bride with a trainwreck personal life says one sentence that doesn't go something like "I just saw your future wife kissing the chef in the kitchen!"), and the bride's friends decide to cheer her up by taking her to the honeymoon hotel in Mexico or whatever anyway, where they cry, hit on waiters (!), crap their pants (!!) and discuss personal life of the mentioned trainwreck woman by pointing out her bikini line (!!!). Truly, women are wondrous creatures of nature.

Anyway, then they get back to the city, fashion, internet, strong cool hip sistah from the hood (more stereotyping!), and then it turns out the groom was sending a letter to the bride every day and she goes like "OMG NOWAI" and the trainwreck woman tells like "IT WAS ALL MY FAULT" and the bride goes "How could you do it and why do you want me to forgive you when you can't forgive your husband!?" because adultery and being drunk and saying one stupid sentence that ruined a glam wedding are totally the same thing, and then everyone kisses and makes up except the other blonde that actually breaks up and kisses afterwards. And then there's a baby born from the character that was completely trivialised because she actually had a happy marriage!

And everybody is happy!

And oh my god what the hell (place I'm going to for uttering the Lord's name in vain as I'm being pointed out)

Anyway, it's not actually a bad movie, especially once you're stunned with all the fashion talk.

But just think of what the film Sex and the City would be like if it was about a guy spending his last unmarried days in company of three other guys. 

Hint: it wouldn't be about fashion.

tenorikissa - Mother's milk says:

Unless they're gay guys! It would be about fashion and gay orgies.

The Swedish Epic

It's mostly about butter and herring. In iambic pentameter.