I don’t understand the bitterness in those threads either. Heroes is prime time drama, it’s barely above braindead. They change the plots mid-swing to suit audience reaction. There is no great plan, it’s all about eye candy and making money. Save your hostility for art that matters.
As for nicknames, they annoy the piss out of me too. They’re just too fucking cutesy (except for Mystery Sock, just because).
Eh. If it gets up your kilt, don’t participate.
… A scottish Hero. Hmmm. They could team up like Samurai Jack and that other guy! AWESOME!
Since you quoted me without crediting it to me, I will respond. I do pay attention. However, I have trouble remembering the names of a whole bunch of people I just met. It takes me a while of meeting them over and over to learn their names. Now maybe you’re one of those super memory people who can meet a roomful of people and then remember everything about all of them 1 hour later but I’m not and I’m guessing most of the others who use nicknames aren’t either. When I am posting after a show I can make a Hiro face while I try to consti-remember a character’s name or I can search for the actual character name elsewhere or just use a quick description or nickname. Hmm, since these threads fill up fast I think I’ll just go with the quick option.
Oh, and for the record, I do know most of the established character’s names now and rarely use nicknames but I don’t hold it against other people who don’t or still like the established nicknames … except for those that keep calling Sylar, “Skyler”. C’mon people we’ve been hearing his name since the beginning, there’s no “k” in it! 
Sorry for the lack of credit; I thought I had done a “reply with quote” type deal, then when I saw otherwise I just let it stand.
What I don’t get is that you (and others) seem to be saying that you can’t remember the names of characters that you’re seeing week in and week out and which never change, but you can remember an unoffical nickname (or possibly two or more for some people, such as HRG and AED for Mr. Bennett) which to me seems more of a hassle than anything.
Obviously it’s not that big of a deal. I just find it annoying and it reminds me of LONG threads at TWOP where you had to wade through several pages of a thread to understand what all the fucking acronyms and catch phrases mean. Too many in-jokes for the average newcomer to just jump in and discuss things without someone popping in and using nicknames and acronyms for everything. ANNOYING.
I remember most of them now but it took me a while for some of them, like Mr. Bennett, and sometimes I still can’t remember the cop’s name because I always want to call him Greg, I usually just call him “the cop”. I don’t let it get my panties in a wad when other people seem to have more trouble or just enjoy using the Doppleskanker name. It’s not a big deal.
God forbid one should spell “Niki” as “Nikki” or “Nicki”!
Best. Spelling. Ever.
I will say in their defense that the nicknames are usually some sort of mnemonic, whereas the character’s name is pretty much random.
Right. OK, I can believe not remembering “Mr Bennett”, but then how can you not do “Claire’s dad” or even “Cheerleader’s Dad”? I mean “AED” is *no * whaaaay just someone not being able to remember a name. “The cop” is not so bad, nor is any nickname that anyone even slightly familiar with the show can figure out.
But “TCM” in Lost? :rolleyes: I mean “Tree crushing monster” we can figure out. But TCM all by itself, out of context- not so much. Incidently- how do dudes figure that the “Tree Crushing Monster” is the same as the black smoke thing?
Art is stupid. That’s why I watch TV.
Now THAT’S a sig line!
I was thinking about commenting on the television-as-art line, too. It’s television; it can be great, it can be useless, it can be art, but it usually isn’t. I like to learn from television shows and be entertained by them, and it is filling both of these requirements for me.
The nicknames in the Lost threads confused me so much when I started reading them in the middle of the first season. I eventually just went back to the very first thread and read everything from the beginning.
I don’t the Heroes threads are that bad. There has been a lot of snarkiness, particularly from people who hate the show but continue watching it for God knows what reasons. And a definite tendency to overanalyze. I just usually ignore most of it.
But with Heros, they give us title cards that tell you the character’s name - “Claire Bennett, Odessa Texas” - each time. There was really no reason to come up with a bunch of nicknames for everyone. Once we realized that guy was her dad, okay, we can call him “Claire’s dad” or “Mr. Bennett.” (Do we even know his first name yet?)
“AED” drives me nuts because I just can’t seem to remember what the letters stand for. To me, AED means Automated External Defibrillator. Having it used for a nickname just throws me off.
Using “The Cop” or “The Painter” is fine with me. Better than four or five different vague or cryptic names within the same thread.
Using some version of “Niki/Nicki/Nikki” is fine. People spell names wrong all the time. I hated “ikiN.” That seems to have stopped, thankfully.
There is no reason to watch TV or talk about it on a messageboard other than “We like to.”
And no reason to read threads about it if you don’t like to.
Geez, the Lost, Survivor and Amazing Race threads must really bug the crap out of some of you people. Especially the latter two.
Let’s see, to enjoy the threads I need to know:
RC, TC, IC, II, F3, EI, purple rock, pagonged, the ever arcane Rich Rankings; FORGOT TO FILE A 1040, EATING BEEF JERKY, WHO SAID ANYTHING ABOUT A MERGE?, HEY! LOOK AT HIS MOHAWK, LOOKING FOR A BIG TOM TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY, ARE YOU A RAT OR A SNAKE?
On Amazing Race we have the equally arcane weekly Taxi Assessment, FF, RB, NEL, and never mind all the nicknames the racers get even though they flash their real names on the screen.
You don’t have a group of sour grapes crapping all over those threads each week and I honestly don’t know what it is about Heroes and BSG that attracts all these petty whiners whose mission in life is to hijack perfectly pleasant threads and essentially shut them down two or three pages earlier than they’d normally have tapered off. Does it really make you all feel better? If you don’t like something, you’ll just crap on the thread until nobody gets to enjoy the discussion?
It really pisses me off the people who come in and thread crap are people who rarely if ever contribute anything to the ongoing discussions and mostly limit their contributions to bitching about other people using nicknames or over analyzing. Look, if you just want to sit on your couch, shut your brain off and let the lights, colors and sounds coming from your TV drift across your barely functioning and non-interactive consciousness please do so, and please stay out of threads you don’t have anything to contribute to.
The problem isn’t nicknames per se, it’s that they weren’t consistent between each poster. If we all stuck with Otto’s original names like Prognostipainter etc, then perhaps it would’ve been okay, but everybody decided to make up their own ones for the same characters and it just got absurdly confusing.
The Amazing Race teams themselves tend to come up with a lot of the names that become popular in the threads, and some are borrowed from TWOP, but for the most part there’s at least a consistency.
And I have never understood the Taxi Assessment bollocks. Completely nonsensical waste of effort.
I have NO idea what all those nicknames mean that you posted, and if I had to track down previous threads to understand what they do mean, it would be very annoying.
I just want to discuss the fucking show that I enjoy without the fucking clique attitude and in-jokes and nicknames and bullshit. If you want to keep using that shit, start a thread called “Heroes: nicknames welcome” or some shit like that, because not everyone wants to play your stupid fucking game. I have PLENTY to contribute to the discussion about the show, and guess what? I’m not so fucking BRAIN DEAD that I can’t remember what the actual NAMES OF THE CHARACTERS ARE. We’ve got ONE character, the Haitian, that we don’t know the name of. EVERYONE ELSE has had their full name revealed and IT’S ON THE FUCKING SCREEN EVERY TIME THE STORY CUTS TO THEM. Maybe some of the people you are complaining about because they “rarely if ever contribute anything to the ongoing discussions” just look at all the in-jokes and nicknames and say “fuck this, I’m going to discuss this show with people who can pay attention enough to know the names of the characters.”
Nothing personal, but aren’t you doing this very thing in the current BSG thread? I mean, where is the line between serious, intense critique and what you call “petty whining”? I think some of your crits are right on, and some I just think you want to find every possible item to bitch about. It just struck me as funny that, in this thread, you are railing against the nitpicking complaining, and then… you do it yourself.
You misunderstand me. I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with analyzing & nit-picking. It’s a waste of everyone’s time to go into a thread and do nothing but complain about nitpicking. You make a good example yourself in that same thread:
What is that supposed to mean? Great. Basically you’re just telling me to shut up and enjoy the show. How long do you think the thread would get if everyone just shut up and enjoyed the show? No nit-picking, no analyzing. Nope, just enjoy the show.
The stuff from Survivor and Amazing Race has been consistent from the beginning and is easy enough to figure out when it’s used in context, like TC, IC and pagonging or FF, RB and NEL. I don’t see much use of nicknames for people on Survivor, and on TAR it’s helpful to tell the teams apart. “The Models” and “The Chos” works in that situation.
The one that really drove me nuts was when Lost first started and people were calling everyone character names that they’d played in other shows or movies. Jack was called ‘Charlie’ after the character he played in Party of Five, but there was a character named Charlie on the show and to me, at least, it was very confusing while trying to read the threads. Yes, I know ‘Charlie’ was being called ‘Hobbit’ but it still was confusing. Some people used the nicknames and others didn’t, so there were two people being called ‘Charlie.’