This is why I hate hate hate the term "speculative fiction". The future is a setting, no different than the past or the present. It exists to serve the story.

Even in your example, there is no default belief or not. You can simply not care if a story is true or not, or you can decide to reserve judgment until you know. Belief is something you have to chose to do, or not do. The default is disinterest or ignorance.

No, that's not true. "No opinion" is also an option. I have no opinion on what the results of a die will be before I cast it, other than what I know factually. I have no opinion on whether or not in a thousand years a man named Jed will look exactly like Sean Bean but be 5'2". I have no opinion on whether there is a…

That's not true. I neither believe nor disbelieve in the existence of a god any more than I believe or disbelieve that when I roll a roll a die it will result in a 5. I don't necessarily believe in any specific concept of God, but I certainly believe there could something that would be defined as a god, just as I…

I'd argue in the case of the Red Wedding, it was not only a deus ex machina, but a literal one as well. The machine of the (again, literal) gods being guest's rights, which came out of pretty much nowhere and solved a large chunk of the Lannister's problems for them.

Oh, I absolutely believe that he planned to kill Robb, and Ned, off from day one. I believe that he planned to build conventional medieval fantasy storylines just to turn them on their heads (or off their heads, as the case may be) at the last minute. I mean, the only reason Ned and Robb died was because they relied…

Actually, no. It's still a deus ex machina, just not for them. There had to be a lot of colossally stupid decisions made to get them there so that they could be killed. Same with Ned's whole subplot. Martin had these "shocking" resolutions planned from the start and used horror movie logic to make them happen. In the…

This is when I stopped watching the damn show. Not because I cared about any of these characters, because I didn't. Not because I was shocked or sad, because I wasn't. But because I had to sit through this tedious subplot on the vague hope that it would lead somewhere and then, nope, everyone's dead. That's when I…

When the minivan came out, there was no such thing as a large commercial van. That was just called a van. A minivan is a miniature version of that. And, yes, even the larger minivans of today are much smaller than a regular van.

Yeah, there is no dignified way to move that quietly that fast. He has to be doing a goofy little scamper on his tip-toes while holding his cape tight to keep in from rustling.

The words are real. They have actual meanings in English meant to elicit a response, which is why you are using them. The people playing the characters are still real, even if they are pretending to be someone else. And are you seriously defending your actions by comparing them to that of a child?

A game is part of real life is the part you are missing. The people are real, the words are real, the feelings are real, the time that is spent playing it is real. Even, to an extent, the actions in the game are real in that they effect those other things. "It's a game" is not an excuse, unless the game is…

You mean like the Japanese Spider-Man series where he had a leopard robot?

No, you think your fun is more important than everyone else's. That's the Special Pleading. You 'play rough'. You 'shouldn't have to play by those rules'. If they don't like it, well, they are the ones to blame. They are the ones who have to correct for your behavior if they don't like it, no matter how many of them…

You are not a special little snowflake. Everyone else playing those games has a job or goes to school, and they aren't paid to play the game either. Why do you get the play the way that you want, when they don't? Why do you get to take a feature of the game from them because they don't want to deal with you? You are…

In my part of NW FLA its the Mustang. Old, new, classic, beater...things are like cockroaches.

Here's the thing about Aragorn. He was around 80 at the start of LoTR. He was still just as much the king of Gondor when he was younger, but he still spent longer than most people lived in hiding, going by the name Strider and encouraging a reputation as a dangerous man. He was very shrewd and cautious, and not just…

The entirety of Asia is fantasy?

I still have that Shogun Warrior Godzilla....

Only if you spell it in Cyrillic.