Literature

Books

Historical Fiction

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Old English

Beowulf

I remember it being a slog to read. Not enjoyable, and only somewhat interesting.

I believe I read a version that was translated into modern-ish English, like this one, because at the time I was interested in 'Anglish', a version of English where non-Germanic words are replaced by Germanic-origin English equivalents.

It's not even set in England! It's set in Denmark or Sweden. I think that was a disappointment to me - at the time I was very confused and couldn't quite understand if this was actually Beowulf, because it didn't match my expectations at all.

Napoleonic Era

Hornblower and Bolitho series

Both of these are merged in my mind. They were both Napoleonic-era naval series, about a man's naval career and the adventures along the way. One of these protagonists was embarrassingly 'goodie-two-shoes' - stoic, one-dimensional.

I read either Hornblower or Bolitho books when I was very young - maybe 9 years old. When I had my first crush on a girl, I didn't realise she was Asian - school only taught us about White, Brown and Black people - and because these books described the lifelong effects of 'Yellow Fever' (reoccurance of yellow skin), I just assumed that she had inherited it from her parents, because they all had quite yellow skin. But I was socially-aware enough not to ever ask her about it.

Sharpe series

I was also young when I read these books, maybe age 10 or 11. I remember being annoyed that Sharpe (was he a Lieutenant or Captain at the time?) was 'weakened' when he fell in love with a woman.

Death to the French

I can't remember if this book was a stand-alone or was part of the Sharpe books. It was set in the Spanish theatre of the Napoleonic Wars, and the title comes from Spanish anger at the French strategy of 'burned ground' (retreating and burning everything to stop the enemy taking supplies). In reality, the British started this tactic, and probably engaged in it more than the French, including in their ally Portugal's lands, leading to Portuguese anger at Britain (none of which is covered in this book, nor should you expect from this style of book).

?, maybe by Michael Crichton

This book was about a team of astronauts landing on and investigating a mysterious object in space. It sent them back into Genghis Khan's era. I don't remember much about it, but the woman became a concubine of Khan (ew).

SciFi Classic Authors

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Arthur C Clarke

Rama series

Remember that interstellar object that passed near the sun in 2017? 'Oumuamua (what an annoying name - yes it even includes an apostrophe) travelled far faster than expected for an interstellar object, and was said to be weirdly shaped (cylindrical?). Personally, I believe we should have nuked it, just in case it was an alien probe. Anyway, these Rama books are about an alien probe nicknamed Rama that enters the solar system, like 'Oumuamua, and the adventure of human astronauts who enter it. The probe 'reawakens' as it passes close to the sun. The first book ends on an ominous note, I think, about what would happen in centuries or millennia, when the probe's message is received by the alien civilisation - does the civilisation still exist, and is this probe here to target us for destruction or for communication?

Douglas Adams

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Good as books, but the movie was quite bad.

The Detective Agency

Quite good.

Michael Crichton

All of his books are great - even the climate-change-denial one. My favourite was the one where they were shrunk down to the size of ants and had to survive. I don't think the women are written very well; the last book I read of his, 'Sphere', is great but the woman was just quite shallow and one-dimensional.

The Three Body Problem by ?

Great books, except for the female characters, who are clumsily-written and clumsily-described. He didn't invent the 'dark forest' theory of galactic geopolitics, but he did market it better than whatever the previous term was.

Robert Heinlein

I've tried a couple of his books and I really don't like his style. His books are like a 14-year-old edgy techbro's writing, combined with the stubborn unsubtle idealism of a millennial cannabis-addicted hippie. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a terribly-written book about a revolution on the moon, but he did clearly put some thought into how a successful revolution should be led. It has stupid grandiose ideas, and the whole book revolving around unjustified ideals without any exploration of why those ideals would ever be opposed. Of course, the book is written from the perspective of a stubborn Moon-dweller - but that's a cheap get-out of having to write the other side's perspective.

Isaac Asimov

Foundation books

Inspired me to study maths instead of theoretical physics. I guess I would have been 15 when I started reading these books.

Obviously the idea of psychohistory is bullshit for many reasons - e.g. Sheldon couldn't have predicted the future because 1) he didn't have access to all data in the universe, 2) no entity within the universe is capable of accurately simulating (i.e. predicting) the future - but it's still a fun thought experiment.

The last book or two get a bit stupid. They pick up a kid who is super proud of his goddamn moustache, and Asimov's obsession with fucking androids is also easy to see. But worth reading the whole series regardless.

Galactic Empire books

Pebble in the Sky, The Stars Like Dust, The Currents of Space.

Apparently these were written in 1950-1952! They were still great when I read them in the late 2010s.

I particularly liked the short stories in this timeline - the one where the Earth is radioactive, and another where a young man is put in a seemingly-cruel training to become a mathematician (overseen by a psychologist).

Robot books

Asimov wants to fuck an android girlfriend. That comes across very strongly in some of these books, and it's a bit weird. But overall, still good reads.

I think the '3 laws of robotics' are dumb, and I was happy when he eventually agreed with me by introducing the 4th (or 0th) law, the most important of them all, which IIRC was introduced by a lone android who lived on the Moon and oversaw the radioactive dying Earth. But I might be thinking of a Galactic Empire book or short story that included this android - Asimov's series sometimes overlap.

Short stories

Usually great. Each one usually explores just one topic or idea in a very abstract way - for example, a future where the air is privatised, and the law is enforced by robots, so in effect robots execute poor people who can't afford to pay billionaires for the air they breathe.

Philip K Dick

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

See movie.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

One of the best books I've ever read!!! Undercover police officers spying on each other, in a world of drug addicts.

A Scanner Darkly

I love it. It's based on the insanity of the Cold War hysteria - set in the aftermath of an American civil war between student radicals and the authorities, which the students of course lost. The students are fugitives in hiding, slowly being discovered by undercover police and sent to prison camps.

The main character is not a radical but is forced into their lifestyle due to how inflexible the system is - he slips through the cracks and has no ID card - so he is thrust into the world of paranoia and political radicalism.

? - The Culture series

Everyone on Reddit said this was great, etc. At an airport, maybe in 2014 while in an airport returning from a family holiday, I picked up a Culture book - maybe 3rd or 4th in the series - and gave it a go. It was terrible.

Years later, I read that everyone generally considered that this exact book that I had read was the worst of the series. So maybe I would enjoy the first books.

Classics

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Harry Potter - it's interesting to see a teen boy written by a woman. I don't really care about the plot holes (why not use bullets?) or cliches (love is the most powerful magic) they were still enjoyable books. I get mixed up between the books and movies - I think my favourite book was #6 and my favourite movie was #5, but might be vice versa.

Lord of the Rings + Hobbit + Silmarillion - I'm shocked that I spelled 'Silmarillion' correctly even 6 years after reading it. Tolkien was a big language nerd, and maybe he'd have something to say about how English (unlike Chinese) can usually, but not always, be spelled correctly by a native speaker even if they've never seen the word written down before. The Silmarillion was honestly not worth reading by itself, but only for explaining the apparent 'plot holes' that you'd think Lord of the Rings has, most of which are solved if you know more of the backstory (or was Silmarillion written to fill these plot holes after they were pointed out to Tolkien?).

Misc

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Timothy Zahn

He wrote some of my favourite Star Wars 'Extended Universe' books - the ones that introduced or gave depth to Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade, I believe.

His Conquerors trilogy was great - it's about first contact with an alien species, the resulting war, and goes into perspectives and assumptions of the two different cultures, who are both 'diplomatic hegemons' who believe the other attacked first.

TV/Movies

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I watch movies either socially or just to get ideas for what to dream about - so I don't really care about the plot, some of my taste is trashy/comfort/slop or whatever you want to call it.

For example, I've never got into Breaking Bad, because it's too serious and involved. I'd enjoy that level of mundane detail in a fantasy/scifi setting, not some suburban middle-aged life.

Christopher Nolan's

Inception

A movie about lucid dreaming!

The Prestige

Movie about two rival magicians. Very good plot. I can tell it's one of the best 'cinema' movies in terms of its plot, but because I'm more of a book-lover I don't appreciate it as much as a movie-lover would - basically I mean it's a perfect fit for its medium (film) but I'm just biased against this kind of movie because I prefer movies that are adaptions of books.

Interstellar

Loved it. Stupid cliche 'time paradox' is at the heart of the plot, but if you ignore it then it's a nice pop-sci flick.


Tom Cruise's

He might be a Scientologist but his movies are great.

Edge of Tomorrow

Or 'Live Die Repeat'. Very good, but I think the ending was weak - it should have been arranged for her to kill the time-monster (I forgot what it's called), not him, so that she would remember what had happened but he wouldn't. That would have led to a more romantic ending, with her getting to know him, but instead with this current ending it makes the whole movie become just a memory in his head - he remembers every detail about her, but he remains a stranger to her.

Oblivion

Very good


Jake Gyllenhaal's

This guy loves MIC.

Zodiac

Hunt for the Zodiac killer. Good old-style movie.

End of Watch

Very good. Cocky police duo come across hardened drug cartel.

The second main actor is another Scientologist!

Source Code

I can't remember if I liked the ending, but I enjoyed the movie.

Prisoners

I think it's about two fathers whose daughters are kidnapped, and their struggle to get the police to investigate (maybe the police suspect them of involvement) and one father decides to do his own investigation, which involves torturing someone who he believes knows where his daughter is.

Rendition

It's about the CIA torturing an innocent man. I think I watched a few minutes of this, but gave up because it's a boring “we're the good guys but we make mistakes” story.


Sandra Bullock's

Murder by Numbers

Good old-style movie.

Gravity

It got loads of awards when it came out, but I don't know why. It's cinematic, not amazing, not something I'd watch with friends.


Emily Blunt's

Excluding Edge of Tomorrow

Sicario

It's okay. Grimey crime thriller or something. I liked it after watching 'End of Watch', and because I was reading about South American drug cartels at the time I was watching it. But it might feel empty without this context or prior interest.

Looper

It's alright. About time-travelling contract killers.


Scifi Classics

Battlestar Galactica

It's great except for some things, and except for the terrible ending. It is worth watching everything up until the final couple of episodes.

The sequel, Caprica, was also good - but more of a teen version of it. It begins with the growing threat of Monotheist terrorism. It follows three teen girls, one of whom is a genius terrorist or something IIRC, or maybe she was accidentally a terrorist - I can't remember. But they are groomed by their teacher, who is a Monotheist.

Minority Report

Hunger Games

First movie was good. But in future movies she goes ahead and leads a rebellion, and to counter her popularity they keep on putting her in more Hunger Games, which is lame.

Blade Runner 2049

I liked this movie. It's depressing in a good way.

I read the source book - 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' - after watching this, and it's crazy how different it is. The book is great in its own way, but the movie cuts out the most annoying part of the book - the idea that these all humans have morality and all androids don't, so a simple psychological quiz can determine if someone is an android or not. I think the book could easily have mentioned the existence of psychopaths, and it could have done without Mercer (the messiah figure that humans apparently worship through a telepathic VR technology).

Starship Troopers

The first movie was good. I think I've seen some other movies and they were mediocre.

Star Wars

I liked the first 6 movies, including the controversial prequels. The prequels dealt more with politics, which I liked. Personally I'd have liked Jar Jar to be revealed as a Sith Lord instead of an annoying side character, but George Lucas probably chickened out of that decision. Not a fan of the 'good vs bad' portrayal of the Force and Empire/Rebellion, but apparently in the books Count Dooku made a more compelling case against the Galactic Republic - but the film gave us almost no time to understand the new 'evil' characters it introduces us to (Dooku and Grievous), instead Episode 2 and 3 are like two episodes of 'bad-guy-of-the-week' TV storytelling.

Avatar

I would have liked it if the humans had won, and if it had sided with humans instead of those blue alien freaks!

Dr Who

Trash, but sometimes we like eating trash, don't we? The 'weeping angels' are the best. Anything to do with 'U.N.I.T.' is cringe and stupid, although when I was a kid I liked it because guns=cool.

My parents put it on all the time. It gave me nightmares, but I was too embarrassed to admit it to them, so they kept putting it on and I kept staying awake for hours in my bed staring at alien-ish shadows because I was scared they would move.

Game of Thrones

Great up to Season 5, when it just started to be dick jokes and cliches and everyone started teleporting around the world instead of taking their time and having long journeys.

Star Trek

TV Shows

Star Trek: Picard was just a revolving door of cameos. Picard can't simply have a completely new crew, oh no, he has to 'coincidentally' encounter each one of his old crew, one by one, until his ship is entirely manned by all the 80-year-old actors and actresses from the original series! It's just written to appeal to old fans' nostalgia.

The ninja boy was stupid. The Romulan incest was kind of weird, but that might just be Romulan culture.

But there were some good bits. For example, the android-who-thinks-they-are-human sub-plot.


Star Trek's moralising is annoying. Star Trek: The Next Generation in particular is obsessed with technicalities and legalisms.

Star Trek: Voyager was less moralising - presumably because Captain Janeway can be 'admonishing' if she needs to be, but she can't be as convincingly moralising as Picard.

Star Trek: Enterprise was the first Star Trek TV series I saw, because my mother watched it a lot. Apparently 'true' fans hate it because of the intro song. Some episodes are great, and it's my 2nd-favourite Trek series, but only because I enjoy the theme of a young Earth civilisation being small and navigating the dangers of unknown technologically-superior empires.

Star Trek: Discovery's first two seasons were my favourite Star Trek of all. But every 'true' Star Trek fan hates this season, because they were the least Star Trek of all seasons - militaristic and ruthless, not naive and optimistic.

Star Trek fans are adorable but it's unsettling how much they praise the show, and in particular how much weight they put in Star Trek's philosophical side. For example, there's a woman Youtuber who says Star Trek is a good look at how it is to be autistic - noting how people have to explain basics of human socialisation to aliens and androids - but I think that's a harmful view, because it pretends there is one correct way of 'being human' and that autists are 'doing it wrong' (instead of, in my opinion, that autists have a fundamentally different way of thinking that does not preclude an equally-justifiable philosophy of morality).

Movies

They blew up Vulcan and consequently voided the entire Star Trek canon... but otherwise a great movie.

Great movie with some stupid bits.

The 4 movies I've watched were more enjoyable

Misc Classics

Hannibal

The TV series with that Danish actor were great. I didn't expect to love this show, but it was amazing. The psychopath serial killer is the psychiatrist, and he secretly traumatises his victim until his victim becomes his closest confidant.


Scifi Semi-Classics

Divergent Series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant)

I enjoyed it. It's a teen scifi classic. People say it's kind of bad or something, but I actually can't really fault it - the characters are sometimes annoying but that's just because they're teenagers.

In Time

Stars Justin Timberlake (I misremembered this as Eminem). It re-imagines the economy with time as currency, instead of money.

Solaris

I liked it, comfy movie.

Ender's Game

A movie about a child wunderkind being trained as a strategist to lead the human military in a future battle against a dangerous alien civilisation.

I liked it, but I like any movie about killing aliens, so I can't really judge objectively.

Altered Carbon

It's an adaption of a recent scifi book. I remember reading it close to when it came out, because Reddit was saying it was amazing. I don't think I finished the book, it wasn't my taste, but its TV adaption was good.

A wealthy man living in a cloud mansion pays to bring a notorious terrorist back to life to investigate his own murder.

People, when they die, can reincarnate into bodies ('sleeves'). Most people get cheap 'sleeves' (disfigured, ugly, old, etc) - the wealthy man paid for his terrorist to have this sleeve.

Stereotypical 'no-nonsense police woman' who 'keeps track of the main character because she doesn't trust him'. Good chemistry though, I don't care if it is a bit cliche.

Season 1 started off good, but became terrible in the last couple of episodes. It's like they increasingly diverged from the book and reached a point where they had to write completely new material themselves, which was terrible.

The crazy sister and the poor family at the end were the worst elements by far. It's worth watching it and just ending it before these last episodes.

The Expanse

Season 1 started off good, but became terrible in the last couple of episodes. I've heard that the later seasons are increasingly bad, so I haven't watched them.

The Belters' accents are annoying, but they make sense - it's actually a true-to-book and believable bit of worldbuilding, but I just find the accents annoying.


Misc

The Report

Stars Adam Driver (Star Wars actor). It's about the official investigation into the CIA's kidnap-and-torture regime (called 'extraordinary rendition').

Silence of the Lambs

I didn't find it scary

Passenger

Stars the Hunger Games actress and Chris Pratt. I liked it, it's a cute movie. They could have made a 'clever' ending by making the same thing happen to her, but they went for the romantic ending instead, which I appreciated.

Jumper

I think I liked it. It stars Anakin Skywalker as a teleporting bank thief. But the plot is a bit stupid with an agency hunting teleporters like himself, and his mother being one of the hunters.

Alien, Prometheus

Alien was a good movie. The other Alien movies were good horror movies with some plot. Prometheus could have been a great movie but it's like they were given good ideas by a smart guy but had some idiots try to mesh those ideas together into a coherent story. So many plot holes that could have been easily avoided!

Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, Paul, End of the World

End of the World was weak, but the others were good comedies.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Its steampunk, I love it.

The only thing I dislike is that it doesn't properly introduce the characters - it's basically assumed that you've read the comics (i.e. grew up in the Stone Age i.e. the 1980s or something) - but it is still great.

Now You See Me

Group of 4 stage magicians commit crimes for good cause. It's okay, not great.

The Mauritanian

Dramatised documentary of a detainee who experienced democratic practices at the Guantanamo Bay freedom camp.

It does a good job of persuading the audience that maybe nothing really bad is happening, that this guy has admitted he is a terrorist, that torture is necessary to get information out of him, that the torture is only a teensy little bit harsh - up until the last 10 minutes of the movie, where it is revealed that he was tortured to sign a false confession, driven to a freshly-dug grave and had a drill put to his head threatening him with death, threatened that his children will be kidnapped too and sent to be tortured unless he signed the confession, etc.

Honestly I was shocked that Netflix would produce something like this - it's the most self-reflective and self-critical movie I've ever seen an American company make.

Koma

Russian coma film. Very good. Honestly I couldn't even tell it was dubbed at first, because I'm an idiot and I thought they were just bad actors. But actually the dubbing is quite good and just slightly 'off' emotionally.

Next

Guy who can see 2min into his future

Golden Compass

Steampunk, witches, dust, etc. Everyone says its dumb but I liked it.

Knowing

Christian apocalypse film

Baby Driver

It's okay. Most normal men I've talked with about movies seem to think it's amazing. But maybe my memory is tainted because my girlfriend broke up with me before we even finished watching it! Anyway, the whole thing about it is that the protagonist is an amazing driver, and everything is synced with the music. Maybe I just care about music less than normal, but it didn't do anything for me.


Classics

Merlin

TV series about King Arthur and Merlin. Available on BBC iPlayer.

Watched with a friend. It's a nice relaxing watch. But I have strong opinions on how they fucked over my girl Morgana!

Morgana did nothing wrong - Merlin and his old teacher decided to gaslight her about her magic powers, and her fear of being the lone magic-user in the castle led logically to her actions. She never went evil evil, just a little bit evil, she could have been saved!

Lots of meme-able moments:

Apparently there's a Netflix series about Merlin too (not a huge surprise), I need to check it out when I have time. It's called 'Cursed'.

Peep Show

The Thick of It

Raven

I think I was only able to watch this at my cousins' house, when I was younger than age 13.

It had cutscenes, and each season new recruits who had to fulfil challenges for some greater purpose, and this guy (did he have a northern accent?) was 'Raven', who was the task master or something.

Evidently there was some storyline too, because one cutscene had a boy turn into a bird, get attacked, and turn back into a human, with his wound being tended to by an older girl. I have no idea what the storyline is though - saving the world from evil powers???

Horrible Histories

Great music:

Music that I liked at the time:

And a lot of mediocre songs too, but tastes differ. A lot of girls seem to like the Highwayman song, but I think that's because they liked the guy who sang it.

Gone Girl

Psychotic BPD wife. I thought he over-reacted - she forgave him and saved his life. I mean yeah, sure, she was totally psychotic in framing him for murder, but he did kind of deserve it. I can fix her.

The Princess Bride

I think it was a good movie, I haven't watched it fully though.

Narnia

It's funny going back 15 years later and seeing that the older siblings - who at the time seemed really old - are just children too

Jurassic Park

Lord of the Rings

The 'army of the dead' was done terribly in the movie but fine in the books. The return of Gandalf was stupid in both!

In the books, the Steward of Gandalf was wise but corrupted by fear; in the movies he was a pointlessly short-sighted oaf.

In the movie, so many people 'die' off-screen, only to be revealed to be alive later. These are cheap fake-outs. Not just Gandalf, but Aragorn falling off the cliff, Frodo getting paralysed by the spider, Eowyn's brother crying in anguish at her body, Gollum falling off the cliff, one of the Rohan village children falling off a horse, probably others too that I've forgotten. If the purpose was not to falsely portray these as deaths in the first place, but merely as extremely exhausted or wounded, the characters should have at least moved a little bit.

Tolkien wrote these after fighting in the trenches in World War One for years, so it's natural that the focus is on male camaraderie.

The Hobbit movies were a fun childrens' version of it. Every 'true fan' says they hate The Hobbit movies, but the Hobbit books already break with Tolkien's LotR lore anyway so there's no real harm done.

The Matrix

The first movie was good.

Gladiator

Bittersweet movie.

Harry Potter

Comfort movie

Dune

I didn't enjoy the older movies when my dad tried to make me watch them, although they were more accurate to the books.

The newest movies are great to look at, but I don't think they'll age well, because all new movies are going to look this good. The actual plot is only good if you've already read the books, because if you haven't read the books it'll seem like there's lots of plot holes (like: “Why did the Guild not call Paul's bluff?”, which is only answered by the fact that Guild navigators can see into the future - as how they navigate with the Spice - and they couldn't see the future beyond Paul's decision).

Art

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You may have noticed that I like the 'realism' style of art.

Basically the only good things about AI art are:

Because AI art is so quick to produce, it is easy for non-art people to directly iterate over designs until they hit one that they like. Thus executives and marketing people are less likely to stick to the 'safe' style of art (copying the big tech companies) and more likely to be willing to try different styles, resulting in less Corporate Memphis.

Companies won't turn to the 'realism' art style, because - being a close representation of real life - it isn't abstract enough to have a 'brand' feel to it. I think companies they will stick to cartoons, but simply a wider variety of cartoon styles.

The prompt: 2021 Corporate Memphis style cartoon that features flat areas of color and geometric elements. Employees thank their boss. The style is insincere, pandering and over-saturated. Blue people, purple people, brown people, small heads and long limbs.
The prompt: Norman Rockwell painting of a blond young man (medium-length unstyled hair, medium jawline) in a dark laboratory. He is mixing chemicals together in glass flasks, which are slowly releasing thin colorful clouds of vapor that mix together. 1955. Subdued hue, neutral high key ambiance.

Music

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I like listening to songs in languages that I only somewhat understand. This allows me to fill in the gaps optimistically, instead of being annoyed at the lyrics being dumb or non-optimal.

German

Some of my favourite German pop songs were ruined when I actually bothered to read the lyrics and discovered how dumb they were - for example, Adel Tawil's 'Und ich singe diese Lieder...' which is a recap of recent world events rather than anything as grand as it originally sounded to me.

There's a woman singer - Alexa Feser or something - who wears a spacesuit in her music videos, and sometimes sings about space. Which I obviously like. But only some of her songs are about space - maybe the other songs are somewhat allegorical, and I haven't examined the lyrics carefully enough to see the links.

Video Games

Haven't played for years, except A Plague Tale, so most are very old games.

Catz 4 and Dogz 4

When I was a kid, my sister and I played these games a lot. We'd breed the best cats and dogs. I think there was also a way to trade them with each other, I can't remember.

Oolite

An open source space opera. You basically go in between star systems, dock at space stations, and buy/sell resources to make a profit, to upgrade ships. All the fun stuff happens in quests in addons.

When I was 9 years old, I created a really stupid addon for Oolite - a highly-advanced 'Cat-Alliance', featuring stupid 3d ships I designed in Blender, and a quest line that used Lua and XML copied-and-adapted from other peoples' addons - about the Empire's major war with some dog empire or something.

I went into the Oolite Wiki and put my Cat-Alliance front and centre. Here is the Wiki entry:

The Cat-Alliance

Added by The Cat-Alliance OXP

The Cat-Alliance is a freedom fighter organisation, said to be based on the moon of Diso in Galaxy 7.

It is rumoured however, that the Alliance has members from many professions in its ranks. Many are Lone Wolf Commanders, who trade or engage in piracy most of their working lives, only taking Assassination Contracts from time to time.

The exact procedures by which the Cat-Alliance recruits new members are unknown. It is thought that the Alliance has operatives within the Elite Federation of Pilots, who pass on the details of likely candidates to the “Council of Supreme Commanders”. It is known that membership is not easily obtained. The candidate is required to prove his talent, and loyalty.

The Alliance polices its own members. Commanders of the Alliance are contacted from time to time and offered assignments. Fees paid for these Assassinations are high, although members must pay a percentage of their earnings to the Cat-Alliance massive navy...

This oxp does not work, but it is for you to modify, and please contact me via my website 'add comments' if you make it work. contact me

There was an addon which added 'truffles' or something to the game - fluffy creatures that rapidly multiplied and would become annoying clutter on the screen. My sister loved the game after I gave her a saved game file with one truffle aboard.

The Witcher

Screenshot from the TV adaption, which I haven't watched yet.

I only cared about the story. It's a great story, great setting, great characters. Everyone says it has annoying combat, but that didn't bother me because I played it on easy mode (I only care about the story).

The way you are expected to play it is to do side-quests (for money or equipment) while slowly doing the main story. But the main story is about our adopted daughter being in danger!!! I can't do side-quests when I need to save my daughter!!! Doesn't make sense!!!

I played this game before I read the books, so I had no idea who the best love interest was. At first I chose Triss, because I thought Yennefer was too standoffish - but at some point I realised Yennefer was the best, so I had to start again from an earlier save in order to romance her instead of Triss.

Its a very European setting - European folklore with all its creepy monsters and gore.

A Plague Tale

I realised reviews are not subject to copyright (within reason), so I can use a real screenshot instead of AI.

You play as a noble girl whose parents were murdered by The Inquisition and who has to protect her younger brother - from rats and The Inquisition - as they try to investigate his connection to the plague that is spreading across the land.

It's set in medieval France, and it is great. The first game (Innocence) has much better voice acting than the second game (Requiem) - Innocence is voiced by French people, but Requiem has native English speakers.

Both are good (Innocence and Requiem), but Requiem's ending made me very sad.

Half-Life

I got into this after playing Half-Life: Alyx (the VR game). Alyx was by far the best VR game in existence up to that point, and it was an incredibly immersive horror game.

It's essentially about Earth becoming overrun by aliens and under alien occupation, who rule through an oppressive puppet government - constant raids, population transfers, rationing, and other aspects of life that are clearly designed to break a population's will to organise and resist (and which have parallels in the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, and presumably of people under foreign occupation in general).

I like the setting and the lore. It's a well-thought-out universe, to the point where I even started a habit of listening to some Youtuber talking about the lore while going to sleep (which resulted in me having intense dreams about Half-Life).

Not to get too political, but hearing about the drone warfare in Ukraine, and how Palestinians are treated in the West Bank, seems to have a lot of parallels with how the occupation government in the Half-Life universe treats its citizens (manhack drones scanning people at doors - yes, this is now happening in Ukraine with armed drones - constant raids, repeated forced evictions, hours of each day at checkpoints, total surveillance).

Some Horse Game

Possibly 'Ride: Equestrian Simulation' - but all horse games basically look the same.

My sister was big into horses, so we did horseriding (up until she fell off a horse, I think... I learned up to cantering and jumping).

We played a French multiplayer horse video game. It was a bit like the Heartland books - or whatever those horse books were called (I didn't really read much, I was just curious). Basically, you buy and maintain horses. To earn money, you do quests (such as delivery or tricks), or explore the map to find equipment and food.

I focused mostly on exploring the map and getting the best equipment, but my sister actually socialised with some of the other players and got one to pay subscription for her.

Minecraft/Roblox

When I was 10 or 11 years old, or something like that, I thought Minecraft was an old game, and Roblox was the cool new game. I played Roblox levels designed by other children, with Hunger Games style games for survival.

Years later, Pewdiepie popularised Minecraft again, and it peaked again in 2020. So, I finally tried Minecraft, and it was okay. I played the SkyFactory addon - which is basically a Minecraft version of Factorio, a systems engineering game of slowly designing an automated manufacturing economy.

When I played base Minecraft, I always found myself just building a long straight railway. It's a relaxing game, and I enjoyed it, but I was addicted to building railways for 'efficiency', so I had to quit.

Astro Empire

I played this when I was maybe 10 years old. It taught me to get up early, so I could get on the computer before my parents woke up, to queue my empire's buildings and fleet movements.

Within a year, I was one of the top 10 or so people in a medium-sized guild, then I splintered off and created my own guild. My guild was quite small, but a rival of mine got a bigger player to join my guild. That player then supplied our internal information to my rival, who raided us.

Keeping databases (of planet exploration etc) was against site rules, but each guild kept databases and just used 'sekrit talk' and it was an open secret (like “the dirty blonde won't let me between her legs” = “please grant me access to the database”).

Some bigger player gave me a few months' paid subscription. I don't know why. the game was obviously a lot more enjoyable with paid subscription - you could queue things up and colonise more planets.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II: Retribution

I liked playing as the humans or the Eldar (space elves). I only played the colloseum mode or single-player. Actual RTS-style gameplay (capturing capture points) was stressful and I didn't enjoy it.

World War III: Black Gold

Actually a great multiplayer RTS game.

I played it with my friend (who introduced it to me) and my sister, father and (once or twice) cousins. It was very easy to teach new players - probably because it is intuitive what units do (tanks = big but slow, helicopters, etc) and that oil = money.

It is set in a 3-way Bush-war between America, Iraq and Russia - for oil, of course.

Iraq was obviously the hardest faction to play - completely technologically outmatched - except for their main special ability of suicide bombers. Pretty macabre, and not historically accurate - suicide bombing only occurred after America had already defeated Iraq's military, and was caused by instability created by America's invasion (which America called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”).

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