One's Gotta Go: A Game

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Books?! Over my dead body. I play puzzle games everyday. I usually play them when I've got a show or movie on. At their best movies are better than shows but tv shows cover a broader range including live sports coverage and there are collective moments with TV that movies haven't quite matched. So bye bye movies *sob*

[Robert]

Picking between video games and movies is tough . . .

I’d say movies. Give me a good TV series over a film, anyways!

[Bill]

TV shows for me. I just don’t watch tv at all.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon]

Between TV shows and movies I'd currently keep movies, cause all my shows are boring or annoying me, and movies are my go-to.

There are some shows I'd miss, though.

This might change in the future.

[DivaDiane]

Definitely video games. My son would hate me. I don’t know maybe I’m just too old. I never got into gaming. I like pinball though.

[Karin]

Video games--I avoid them like the plague. If I found one I liked, I'd start off fine, but then would get into it and keep on playing. Better for me to play board games or reading games :)

[Sandy]

TV shows - just don't watch a lot of TV. Having said that - I just bing watched NCIS. LOL

[Amanda]

Movies. I so rarely find myself wanting to watch a movie (even if I might really enjoy it once I start). TV can be the same, but at least once I get into a show there's a lot more content to explore. Movies are just so short by comparison; I prefer having more to explore.

[HeyT]

I would probably axe movies because as much as I love seeing a movie in the theater I get annoyed by the length when I'm watching them at home.

[Phillip]

1. damaged vet
2. adorable child
3. quirky sidekick
4. relatable villain

I'm drowning the kid. Adorable leads to the death of competent adults real fast in SFF.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Aw, I just read a great book with adorable kids! I think I'd go damaged vet? I feel like a lot of authors confuse "PTSD" or "battle fatigue" with "abusive alcoholic" and that's just so unfair to that character trope.

[CBRetriever]

adorable child here too - I'd prefer a quirky child or a damaged child to an adorable one

[Sandy]

adorable child for me too

[CBRetriever]

Sandy wrote: "adorable child for me too"

yep, an adorable Harry Potter would have ruined the books

[DivaDiane]

I can’t think of any books with an adorable kid. Can you guys come up with any examples? So, I guess I could happily do without the adorable child. But otherwise, I agree with Allison and would do away with damaged vet. But that said, I can think of a few examples of damaged vet/warrior main characters which you can’t do without.

[Phillip]

Tiny Tim

[Sandy]

The Hannah Swenson books have an adorable child - her niece.

[CBRetriever]

Diane wrote: "I can’t think of any books with an adorable kid. Can you guys come up with any examples? So, I guess I could happily do without the adorable child. But otherwise, I agree with Allison and would do ..."

The Witches of Karres has the Leewit who is adorable but is also a witch with a bit of a temper.

[Gabi]

Damaged vet for me - and please take the damaged detective/police officer right with you when you leave.

[Sandy]

lol Gabi - you made me laugh.

[Leticia]

Phillip wrote: "1. Movies
2. TV shows
3. Books
4. Video games."

Games. I liked playing games a couple of years ago but they are such a time eater, now that I almost never playing anything except habitica I have time for everything else.

[Hereford]

Okay, movies go as I wouldn't be giving up much in the way of decent entertainment.
Video games are easy to lose as I am too old for the hand-eye coordination required and they no longer make decent strategy games.
TV stays due to the availability of Prime, Netflix, PBS, BBC, and a couple more. Also the news every now and then.
Books that can go:
Urban fantasy. Have yet to find one that equals Jacques Antoine's Girl series. The rest are cookie cutter.
Post-Apocalypse: No longer original and too depressing.
Rogue agents. Cookie cutter characters (you gotta admire alliteration)

[Phillip]

1. Time Travel
2. Faster Than Light Travel
3. Teleporters
4. Robots

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

TIME TRAVEL. Gosh, I think I can count on 1 hand the number of time travel books I've enjoyed.

[Leticia]

Robots, they always become smarter and get upset at how humans treat them, so they can remain at vacuum cleaning level for all that I care.

[Lowell]

just to be that pedantic nerd, aren't options 1 and 2 the same thing?

Also, how do we get rid of time travel and account for relativistic effects? AAAH brain melting!

so yeah, teleporters can go away. They just cause more problems (or Rikers- they can always cause more Rikers) than they are worth.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Putting aside the fact that we all travel through time, even if its in a linear fashion, so getting rid of it would be like being stuck in a photo, doesn't Time Travel involve teleportation as well? We're on rock hurtling through space around a star in an ever expanding universe. If you travelled in time by one minute you'd end up outside the Earth's atmosphere unless your location also changed.

I'd get rid of Faster Than Light Travel cause I wanna see where I'm going before I get there.

[Lowell]

Ryan wrote: "Putting aside the fact that we all travel through time, even if its in a linear fashion, so getting rid of it would be like being stuck in a photo, doesn't Time Travel involve teleportation as well..."

You are absolutely correct, and therefor I must change my answer to Robots.

[Kristin B.]

Allison wrote: "TIME TRAVEL. Gosh, I think I can count on 1 hand the number of time travel books I've enjoyed."

Took the words right out of my brain.

[Alabaster]

Allison wrote: "TIME TRAVEL. Gosh, I think I can count on 1 hand the number of time travel books I've enjoyed."

I'll do you one better. I can count them out on no hands.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

haha. that's unfortunate! I shall endeavor to learn your book preferences and see if I can rec at least one for you!

[Sandy]

Assuming that the teleporters ran off solar power, it would be great for the earth to minimize gas airplanes and cars. Faster than light would be the way to the stars and I would love to go back in time.

So by process of elimination - it has to be robots. Don't tell my rumba though!

[Rachel]

Can’t get rid of Time Travel cause Doomsday book. Can’t get rid of robots b/c Data. HmmmI guess That leaves teleporters?

[V.M.]

YouKneeK wrote: "Interesting game! Out of that list, I don’t particularly want any of them removed from existence. However, since you’re giving me threatening looks and forcing me to choose, I would choose Game of ..."

I've come late to this game and only just read the rules. I 100 % agree with you. I have read all the books up to when Martin stopped writing them to concentrate on his (more profitable) TV series. I didn't watch the TV series because my husband hates the genre and it would be unfair to either make him watch, or go elsewhere. He lives here, too! And, from what I heard, people hated the ending anyway.
I don't think I'll read anything else by George R.R. Martin in protest of him not finishing the books.

[V.M.]

Philip's list is interesting. I think I'd get rid of teleporters. Always danger of mistakes occurring. Think--The Fly!

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

The Fly is a great argument FOR teleportation!

[V.M.]

Ryan wrote: "The Fly is a great argument FOR teleportation!"

How come? If I remember correctly, it went wrong with terrible results.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Flies are great recyclers, maybe human sized ones could help with a waste problem. Or fly sized humans!

We could make Adrian Tchaikovsky's dream a reality and produce other human - animal hybrids. Oh the possibilities!

[V.M.]

Human's with fly heads? That's what happened in this case, if I remember correctly. And a fly with a human head, too.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Who knows what could happen if we get teleportation wrong in the right way. Maybe we'll change more than our heads.

I just remember the movie being horrifyingly wonderful.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Intergalactic spaceship design. You have to keep one of these counterintuitive safety aspects.

- Viewports
- Emergency escape pods
- Passwords on ship critical systems
- Self destruct... buttons/protocols

[Lowell]

Emergency escape pods seem like the least practical. If you’re ejecting from a ship in space into a small pod, seems to me that your problems are merely prolonged, painful, and slow death, rather than fast and painful.

[Mel]

Which one to keep?
Viewports.

Whatever safety hazard, they serve a mental health function. It's the one the ISS actual has (that we know of!) and I love to hear the astronauts talk about their love of endlessly gazing out of it.

[Mel]

Jemppu wrote: "I could do away with Potter. Just to clear it from haunting my GR recommendations: "

Hahahaha! I'm going back through the thread now and having a laugh. You literally can't go anywhere, can you? I can just imagine an infestation of them, having to shoo the flapping books out of the rafters with a broom. "Away w'ye!"

Oh, and of the first set, GoT would go. No-brainer for me, since I've never read the series or seen the show, and have no real desire to.

[Mel]

Allison wrote: "One tense/POV has to go:

1. Third person omniscient progressive (He is tripping down the road when he sees her. She is smiling, she is waving, she is planning his doom.)
2. Third person omniscient..."

Allison, I appreciated your little flash fiction in the examples. :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

haha, thanks!

[Leticia]

Not to keep:

Self destruct... buttons/protocols - They seem to be a measure that always works against the people of the ship itself unless the ship invaders are dumb enough to hang around.

[V.M.]

I'd keep the passwords to the ship's critical functions. There might be a way to save everyone somewhere in there.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

One's gotta go, which means you will continue to see 3 ad nauseum:

1. cliffhanger endings
2. First-book-as-prologue
3. flashbacks as deus ex machina (i.e. we learn how the MC got out of a scrape with a flashback instead of set up)
4. Secrecy as plot device (aka the "this book would have been 5 pages long if they'd had a conversation)

[CBRetriever]

runs screaming out of thread..... there is no good choice as they're all bad

tiptoes back in (and they're all in the Harry Potter books)