Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Amperzand]

For reasons of homeschool shenanigans, I've been taking my GED over the past couple weeks. Thus far, the tests have been easy and I've gotten high scores, in two cases out of three thus far high enough to qualify for college credit.

[TheBiggerFish]

Got SAT scores

94th percentile

aw yiss

YISS
GO TAWA

For reasons of homeschool shenanigans, I've been taking my GED over the past couple weeks. Thus far, the tests have been easy and I've gotten high scores, in two cases out of three thus far high enough to qualify for college credit.

YISS
GO AMPERZAND

[Amperzand]

YAASS

But seriously though, half the questions in Social Studies and Science seem to be an attempt to prove you understand basic logical principles, it's great.

[Tawa]

Some guy cut around 4 hours out of the Hobbit movies, Phantom Edit-style

Spoiler: Excisions include (click to show/hide)

- The investigation of Dol Guldor has been completely excised, including the appearances of Radagast, Saruman and Galadriel. This was the most obvious cut, and the easiest to carry out (a testament to its irrelevance to the main narrative). Like the novel, Gandalf abruptly disappears on the borders of Mirkwood, and then reappears at the siege of the Lonely Mountain with tidings of an orc army.

- The Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle has also been removed. Indeed, Tauriel is no longer a character in the film, and Legolas only gets a brief cameo during the Mirkwood arrest. This was the next clear candidate for elimination, given how little plot value and personality these two woodland sprites added to the story. Dwarves are way more fun to hang out with anyway.

- The Pale Orc subplot is vastly trimmed down. Azog is obviously still leading the attack on the Lonely Mountain at the end, but he does not appear in the film until after the company escapes the goblin tunnels (suggesting that the slaying of the Great Goblin is a factor in their vendetta, as it was in the novel).

- Several of the Laketown scenes have been cut, such as Bard’s imprisonment and the superfluous orc raid. However, I’ve still left quite a bit of this story-thread intact, since I felt it succeeded in getting the audience to care about the down-beaten fisherfolk and the struggles of Bard to protect them.

- The prelude with old Bilbo is gone. As with the novel, I find the film works better if the scope starts out small (in a cosy hobbit hole), and then grows organically as Bilbo ventures out into the big, scary world. It is far more elegant to first learn about Smaug from the dwarves’ haunting ballad (rather than a bombastic CGI sequence). The prelude also undermines the real-and-present stakes of the story by framing it as one big flashback.

- Several of the orc skirmishes have been cut. I felt that the Battle of the Five Armies provided more than enough orc mayhem. If you pack in too much before then, they just become monotonous, and it lessons their menace in the audience’s mind. I was tempted to leave in the very first Azog confrontation (since it resembles a chapter from the novel), but decided to cut it for a variety of reasons. Specifically, I found it tonally jarring to jump from the emotional crescendo of Thorin being saved by Bilbo (and the sense of safety the company feels after being rescued by the eagles), straight back into another chase sequence. Plus, I think the film works better if Bilbo is still trying to earn Thorin’s respect the entire journey, as he was in the novel. Not to mention the absurdity of Bilbo suddenly turning into John McClane with a sword!

- Several of the action scenes have been tightened up, such as the barrel-ride, the fight between Smaug and the dwarves (no molten gold in this version), and the Battle of the Five Armies. Though, it should be noted that Bilbo’s key scenes—the encounter with Gollum, the battle against the Mirkwood spiders, and the conversation with Smaug—have not been tampered with, since they proved to be excellent adaptions (in no small part due to Freeman’s performance), and serve to refocus the film on Bilbo’s arc.

- A lot of filler scenes have been cut as well. These are usually harder to spot (and I’ve probably missed a couple), but once they’re gone, you’ll completely forget that they ever existed. For example, the 4-minute scene where Bard buys some fish and the dwarves gather up his pay.

He has done Ilúvatar's work.

[NRDL]

Life is Strange Episode 1 is FREEEEEEEEEEEE!

Downloading now.

[Emma]

Life is Strange Episode 1 is FREEEEEEEEEEEE!

Downloading now.

AND IT WORKS ON MAC NOW! I've been wanting to get it for a while but it only just seems to be available for mac as well as windows.

[KingofstarrySkies]

Ohhey, that's cool. Tawa, NOICE!

[ECrownofFire]

YAASS

But seriously though, half the questions in Social Studies and Science seem to be an attempt to prove you understand basic logical principles, it's great.

Yeah the tests are basically problem solving in various different forms. If you know algebra, math is pretty damn easy. And writing of course varies, but is fairly basic stuff.

If you have any questions, I got 99th percentile on them when I took them (in 2012) so I have a "GED with Honors"

[majikero]

Congratulations! You are both literate and can count.

[hector13]

Congratulations! You are both literate and can count.

Yet the world needs a certificate so you can prove it.

[KingofstarrySkies]

I keep bursting into song lyrics and it's really weird and kind of funny.
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN STONE mE AND SPIT IN mY EEEYYYYE

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I keep bursting into song lyrics and it's really weird and kind of funny.
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN STONE mE AND SPIT IN mY EEEYYYYE

Is this the real life?

[Tack]

Saw that random person I'd added on skype five years ago probably through a game had updated their status again.
Their status updates are usually kinda funny so this time I felt prompted to say thanks, y'know, for doin' what they do.

Which started an awkward conversation about where we knew eachother from. I guess I'm not really happy because it ended rather awkwardly, but I hope the random thanks made them happy.

I keep bursting into song lyrics and it's really weird and kind of funny.
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN STONE mE AND SPIT IN mY EEEYYYYE

Is this the real life?

Is this just fantasy?

[Loud Whispers]

Caught in a landslide

[hector13]

In your tree, a nude surprise, it's freakin' Busey.