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9. George R.R. Martin Dying Before Completing the Song of Ice and Fire Series

If I had to describe George RR Martin, I would say something like “HIV-Positive Santa Claus” or “Gandalf After Getting Kicked Off ‘The Biggest Loser’ For Trying To Eat His Own Beard.” Neither of those things are sterling pictures of good health exactly, but they do more or less accurately describe the overweight, rapidly-aging fantasy author who still has two books left to complete his epic A Song of Ice and Fire saga. Not that he’s going to die tomorrow or anything, but time is not on George’s side here – and that’s the one thing he really needs. Maybe if he didn’t take 5 years apiece to write the previous two books in the series, we could be a little more optimistic. But since the series has expanded from a trilogy to a heptalogy (seven book series), who knows how much more George could stretch it out? He even recently announced he’s not going to even START writing the sixth entry – The Winds of Winter – until January 2012. George RR Martin is 63 years old – if he takes 5 years per book, that would put him at 73 by the end of the series. I don’t want to bring up statistics about the median lifespan of males, but…let’s just say Winter is coming, George. The way things are looking, he may only have time to write “And then everyone died.” for the last book. Hopefully from at least 6 perspectives.

8. Our Kids Seeing the Prequel Star Wars Before the Original Trilogy

Parents, generally, want the best for their children. They want them to have all of the best experiences possible while minimizing the amount of negative ones. Unfortunately, George Lucas has created a tough world for any prospective nerd parent. On the one hand, he’s given us some of the greatest films of all time – films that captured the imagination of nearly every child who saw them. Who wouldn’t want their kids to have that same experience?

Well, there was another group of films George Lucas made – these were wholly lacking in imagination, any sense of adventure, and – instead of being set off by a ruthless empire trying to quash a fledgling rebellion of scrappy fighters – was set off by a tariff dispute. This is not the thing that will inspire the hearts and minds of children everywhere. This is the kind of empty spectacle that will bore the sh*t out of a kid and make him or her never want to see another Star Wars again. You can’t control every aspect of your kid’s life – they could see the prequel trilogy first. Maybe a friend (with cruel, ungodly parents) have the movies sitting out. Maybe it’s on TV one day and you’re not around to slap the remote out of your child’s hands. And then it’ll be too late – Star Wars will never be that amazing, perfect trilogy. It’ll be a mediocre sci-fi franchise.

If the first Star Wars film you saw was The Phantom Menace, you probably wouldn’t be quite so psyched for 5 more installments, right? Plus, the prequel trilogy completely ruins one of the greatest reveals in cinematic history: that Anakin Skywalker is Darth Vader! Also, he built C-3PO. Can’t spoil that for the kiddies.

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A girl I’d been dating for a little over a month just broke up with me. As we all know, Skyrim just came out. I liked her and wanted to introduce her to my world, so I let her create a Skyrim character. She enjoyed it. Anyway, the break up hurt me a lot so I killed her wood elf to get even. Bitch.
-FrodoTheHutt

I pissed off a lot of guys on November 11 at Gamestop. They were there for the midnight release of Skyrim. I was there for the midnight release of Lego Harry Potter. I was first in line, and I took forever. The store clerk couldn’t find the game, it was buried in the back room somewhere.
-Sara S.

I’ve had Skyrim for over a week now, but I’m a high school teacher. I get less than an hour a day to play. My solution: I told my parents I was having Thanksgiving at my friends’ house. I told my friends I was having Thanksgiving with my family. I got to play Skyrim all day without worrying about cooking birds or drunk relatives.
-Mr. Fforde

In order to prepare for Skyrim, I played Red Dead Redemption and only used fire bottles. I pretended they were spells.
-Anonymous

Star Wars’ greatest advantage is its universe. You don’t need Luke to love Jedi. And you certainly don’t need C-3PO to love droids. Star Wars is a living, constantly changing franchise set over the course of tens of thousands of years.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some of the greatest stories in the Star Wars franchise aren’t actually the main movies. Sure, the first two and a half films are some of the best in movie history. But given the reigns, a few lucky writers, cartoonists, and game designers have managed to capture the best aspects of the series without any of the trade negotiations.

7. The Novelizations of The Movies

Hear me out. While most sci-fi novelizations take scripts and dumb them down for kids, the Star Wars novelizations actually expand on the events of the movies. They honestly read like George Lucas told not-crazy people what he wanted the stories to be and then said not-crazy people went, “Okay, time to make this not crazy.”

I especially recommend giving the prequel novelizations a try. They fix the greatest mistakes in science-fiction history. C3PO isn’t an idiot in the prequel novels. Anakin’s character fluctuations are explained and smoothed out. Jar Jar isn’t racist anymore, although that’s just because you can read him in a voice that doesn’t make you feel bad about your country’s history.

Almost everything that made the prequels terrible makes more sense and is delivered cleaner in the novelizations.

6. Tales From Mos Eisley Cantina

It’s easy to forget that, in a franchise where space wizards and sexy star pilots battle for the fate of the galaxy, there are still people who just get drunk in bars.

Tales From Mos Eisley Cantina takes the wretched hive of scum and villainy and makes it as sad as a real bar. The band doesn’t want to be playing there. Greedo is just a putz who was tricked into getting shot by Han (YES!). And remember that bartender who hates droids so much? Well, he discovers he likes droids for a super creepy reason (spoiler alert: don’t drink anything in that bar).

Best of all, you find out the genre of music the Mos Eisley band is playing is called “Jizz.” Really. And that musicians who specialize in Jizz are called “Jizz-wailers.” Which is just the best anything ever.

Last week, Dorkly users voted to elect the greatest N64 game of all time. The competition was tough. Palms were decimated by frantic joystick spinning, countless Capri-Suns were consumed, and Glover was left with only three fingers. Alas, the time has come to announce the games you picked as the console’s best. Out of a pool of 118 titles, here are the top 25.

25. Mortal Kombat Trilogy

It had everything you’d want in a Mortal Kombat and then some. Mortal Kombat Trilogy boasted the biggest roster of any MK game up to that point, including every character from the previous games and a whole slew of new ones. This meant ninjas, demon ninjas, purple ninjas, and robot ninjas that used to be regular ninjas. MK Trilogy let you play as virtually anyone you could ever want to play as — secret characters, bosses, classic characters — and introduced a myriad of new moves and stages. If you didn’t love Mortal Kombat Trilogy, then you didn’t love Mortal Kombat.

24. Bomberman 64

Sure, you could play Super Bomberman with four players, but only with a multi-tap and two extra controllers. And, honestly, who had enough allowance to spend on such an extravagance? For most people, Bomberman 64 was their first foray into four player Bomberman, and it was glorious. Whereas most games in the series require power-ups to perform any kind of special move, Bomberman 64 allowed players to pick-up, kick, throw, and pump up bombs right out of the gate. Couple the awesome multi-player with a solid single-player platforming experience and you’ve got arguably the best Bomberman game of all time.

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As it turns out, Wal-Mart did not have a midnight release for Skyrim.
-Vash

I’m a Fedex driver. When I get packages with videogames in them I deliver them early.
-radarorly

I was probably hit the hardest in my county by the freak East Coast snowstorm this October. A branch hit the power line outside my house, then some idiot hit it and dragged the line and my meter box through my front yard. I’m still without power due to the bureaucracy of installing a new meter box and getting it inspected. Needless to say, the release of Skyrim made the situation much more dire. Today I asked a neighbor if I could do laundry at their house. They said yes, and that they’d be out of the house for a few hours. In light of this, I dragged a 32 inch LED monitor and my desktop to their house. Hope they don’t mind when they get home.
-Styger

So you want to make video games. Who wouldn’t? It must be amazing creating new e-narratives and cyber stories. Working with a team of talented artists and programmers and probably Jennifer Hale, giving fans hours of joy, what could be better?

Anything. Literally anything could be better than working in video games. Despite its self-glamorization as a cool wolf pack having fun, wolf-packing around, the video game industry is serious business. And like any serious business, the people who make that serious business work are more or less interchangeable parts in a horrible machine of sadness. Don’t believe me? List time!

7. You Won’t Work On A Game You Like

Every video game is made by a group of people with their own hopes, dreams, and families. A lot of them are nice folks who are super excited to be part of the industry that shaped their childhood. So when you make your hilarious YouTube video mocking the shovelware in a Best Buy, try to remember that decent, mother-born humans were forced to create that Dora the Explorer game. And since around 90 to 99.9999% of games are total crap, you’ll probably also be forced to make that Dora the Explorer game. Especially at the entry level, which in the video games means “the rest of your life.”

Even if you’re lucky enough to land that dream job at Valve or Nintendo or Blizzard, and you get to work on a beloved franchise, you’ll hate it when you’re done. Try enjoying Halo after you get reprimanded for slightly coloring Master Chief’s helmet off the style guide. You won’t. The magic will be gone: An endless universe filled with infinite stories will be replaced by a group of bug logs reporting that Nathan Drake’s eyes are missing in cut scenes.

6. You’ll Be Expected To Move Far, Far Away

When Silent Hill Downpour lead designer Brian Gomez left the project this month, he said “I couldn’t keep making the commute between Los Angeles and Brno for another 4-6 months.” What a wuss! Just buy an audio book and suck it up, right?

Except that Brno isn’t some suburb a traffic jam away from Los Angeles. It’s in the Czech Republic. Because Brian Gomez is such a talented and in-demand designer, he was expected to spend the majority of his time in a country that’s not the country where his wife and children live.

He’s not the only one: job listings for video game companies often ask if applicants are willing to leave America. And stop getting excited, thinking it means you’ll be shooting movies in the luscious hills of New Zealand. It just means you’ll have to do your 18-hour programming day somewhere the one person willing to have sex with you isn’t. Usually Poland.