Some of the films that I have enjoyed that have made an impact on me and/or changed my life.
La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty): My favorite film. I watch it every year on my birthday since it came out. Good movie about regret, life, and growing older.
Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Tugs at this recovering Catholic's heartstrings.
The Grand Budapest Hotel: Just damn funny
Anomaly and Gamma really tried. It really did. And it had an amazing plot. Scenes went on too long for my taste (7-9 hours. Oops! There goes my Saturday evening...), and some of the admins, I felt, needed a cross so that whenever they felt so damned unappreciated they could nail themselves up there. This could all be ignored if the reports system didn't hamstring roleplay. After doing a mission I kind of got tired having the admin's charbit tell me I forgot to format my report the correct way or whateverthefuck. What was the point of these reports? How did they enhance roleplay? We never used them that much in roleplay I don't think other than paper pushing RP.
Why is my prentendy funtime dominated by fucking reports? Don't I get this from my job already in the meatspace.*
What happened to Trek?
Well, a lot of things.
Star Trek: Enterprise I think really tried to do a lot for the franchise to revitalize it. But the cultural atmosphere of America doomed it. 9/11, the housing market, collapsing economies, Neoconservative paranoia, and social justice warriors stopped the whole positive future, let us use science and innovation in order to solve problems. Science Fiction is no longer popular because the future is no longer important for the majority of people. Kind of hard to do that when one is living paycheck to paycheck. This is why, I feel, shit like Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Zombie dramas are more popular. Political turmoil, the need to break social norms, and the fear of becoming well...meaningless...are hot topic.
I know I am not going to get a lot of +++++ for this but...this is Big Daddy Amin keeping shit real, aight?
Look at what is in the news today? With the exception of ISIS/Daesh (which doesn't get a lot of news coverage because the average American thinks Damascus is a city from Lord of the Rings), the majority is social justice: Planned Parenthood, women's liberation, gay marriage, etc.
I don't mean to insult the women in this forum but women are typically risk averse. They don't like to take chances (with the exception of a few cases like Tereshkova and Ride).
I speak as a man. We have all this fucking testosterone. Men didn't dominate the aerospace industry because they are smarter than women. Hell, my wife is light-years smarter than I am. But sometimes I wish women could just get in our bodies (because we all love getting in your bodies! 
) and feel what we feel. When your blood is full of testosterone sometimes all you want to do is fuck, fight, or....build a rocket and go to the Mars.
The new NASA is all about diversity roleplaying. But this is the old NASA.
This is a scene from Apollo 13. Look at the characters. NASA engineers who are men. White. Possibly Christian. Most of them have Southern accents. And they probably are monogamous heterosexuals. And OH MY GAWD they are smoking! It is a 21st century NIGHTMARE! TRIGGERING!
Our priorities aren't about space exploration because well...we have other priorities as a nation. This can be seen nowadays with ideals of beauty now (my grandpa probably would have fucked someone like Joan Halloway from Mad Men long before he'd pork Gina Carano) I'm not saying that is bad. But we have regressed prior to the sixties with manned space exploration.
So that is why Trek ain't popular.
With that said, would I rejoice in a Trek game? Yeah. But please, don't make it like Anomaly or Gamma One. While they had nice concepts, I am not in favor of Starfleet Bureaucrat Mediocrity MUX. And I don't want to play some lower level ensign who fills out TPS reports and I cannot reach LTCMDR unless I know the game's founder.
Only two days left at crappy job.
And drowning annoying coworker in cubicle next to me with J.J. Cale.
Ehhh. I am suspicious. Don't think the majority of people are going there to drink tea and hear the shamisen.
Not a lot of TS? Aren't there people who play courtesans?
I read Jacqueline Carey's novel Kushiel's Dart a few years ago. Take A Game of Thrones, Fifty Shades of Gray, and the Da Vinci Code, mix them in a blender, bake, serve with a French dip and a chilled Sauternes for dessert.
Essence of the story: It is an alternative historical fiction setting where Christianity didn't prevail throughout Europe. Christ and Mary Magdalene had a supernatural lovechild named Elua who caused a second rebellion with the bodiless powers (Angels) in Heaven. Angels went down with Elua, mated with the Gauls, and established the Kingdom of Terre d'Ange. Instead of Christian morals they based their society on the simple premise, "love as thou wilt" (sounds like Aleister Crowley?). They have state sponsored prostitution, polyamourous relationships, sadism, masochism..as Cole Porter says, "anything goes!"
Anything that doesn't involve Werewolves, Vampires, or Mages, I welcome.
Not all of us have that liberty, unfortunately. And while I could do a lot of what I do from home thanks to terminal servers and Remote Desktop, my manager refuses. But not my circus for very long, though....
That is almost as bad as my situation: co-worker in the cubicle next to me will not stop making personal calls, giggling like a forty-five year old woman going on sixteen. Manager is too chicken shit to call her out on it.
Thankfully, this is my last week here. Then I get an office to myself. Booyah.
A game set in the Sarantine court would be pretty cool.
Shreveport also has a cool rose garden and is the home of the American Rose Center...if you are into gardening like I am.
Oh, I could be more offensive in a WORA way, but I will refrain. If you wanted my input, I was just offering. That's all.
And if it is taking place in Shreveport (where the fictional bar Fangtasia is located), Shreveport could hardly be called "backwoods." Hell, Tyler, TX and Cheyenne, Wyoming are more "backwoods" than Shreveport.
Moving back to Louisiana (Acadiana, not North Louisiana), I would have to say I wouldn't want to live in Shreveport. Bossier, in particular North Bossier, has some nice areas, though. The bad thing about Shreveport is that you can be in a multi-million dollar area in one place, go a few blocks, and you are clutching your backpocket and praying not to get mugged. The crime is downtown though. Not around the casinos, surprisingly.
Best thing about Shreveport, and many major cities in Louisiana, is that there are ALWAYS festivals of some kind....
I'd be down with Louisiana, being from that part of the nation. Let me know if I can give you any help on adding "color."
@Cobaltasaurus
Perhaps I can run the pretentious coffee shop, hire a bunch of Japanese schoolgirl baristas to do my bidding, and steal votes from the Democratic Party by encouraging everyone to vote Green.
Please don't set it in Maine. Or the Pacific Northwest.
Like a lot of people who once enjoyed this hobby, I no longer have the time to devote myself to lengthy scenes. With having a wife, raising kids, a job, and other extracurricular things that are going on, I tend to not be around a computer during my free time moments.
Back in the nineties when I first started using the internet, I liked doing a lot of collaborative storytelling through email. PbEms were fun and before I got into MU*ing, this is what I played.
I kind of want to get back into that medium, even if I have to run it myself. I know that Tumblr and Reddit have roleplaying communities through forums, and I considered them. I also considered rebooting the PbEm format. Old school, I know, but eh. That and my tastes, I think, are just too weird to have a MUSH for, not to mention that I don't have the time to code it or admin it.
Just out of curiosity, any settings or games that people might be interested in? I am open to criticism as well as problems that the format as well as these settings might involve. Here are some of my ideas:
Game of Thrones rp: So far I thought about setting it in the Riverlands during the War of the Five Kings and go from there. I thought about basing it in a made-up house not mentioned in the books, focusing on the retainers, family, and townsfolk around the castle. Again, my thinking of "Downton Abbey meets Game of Thrones." My other thoughts were setting it before the Targaryen Conquest or in a setting taking place a century or two after the books.
Star Trek game, set after the Dominion War, probably a single ship focusing on the "planet of the day" kind of thing. Gene's "seek out new life and new civilizations" would be the main theme here.
nWoD. I know I know I know but it is popular. And well, I would be interested in playing in a more period-dated setting. And focusing on two spheres - mortal/vampire, probably. France in the 18th century? Or Colonial Haiti before the Revolution, 18th century? Or England, War of the Roses? Byzantine Empire, reign of Alexios I (1081 approx).